Success. The child likes the fairy tale to tell him of some one who succeeds. He admires the little pig Speckle who outwitted the Wolf in getting to the field of turnips first, or in going to the apple tree at Merry-Garden, or to the fair at Shanklin; who built his house of brick which would defy assault; and whose cleverness ended the Wolf's life. This observation of success teaches the child to admire masterliness, to get the motto, Age quod agis, stamped into his child life from the beginning. It influences character to follow such conduct as that of the Little Red Hen, who took a grain of wheat,—her little mite,—who planted it, reaped it, made it into bread, and then ate it; who, in spite of the Goose and the Duck, secured to herself the reward of her labors.
Action. Akin to his love of running, skipping, and jumping, to his enjoyment in making things go and in seeing others make things go, is the child's desire for action in his fairy tales; and this is just another way of saying he wants his fairy tales to parallel life. Action is the special charm of the Gingerbread Boy, who opened the oven door and so marvelously ran along, outrunning an old Man, an old Woman, a little Boy, two Well-Diggers, two Ditch-Diggers, a Bear, and a Wolf, until he met the Fox waiting by the corner of the fence. Dame Wiggins of Lee and Her Seven Wonderful Cats—a humorous tale written by Mrs. Sharp, a lady of ninety, edited by John Ruskin, who added the third, fourth, eighth, and ninth stanzas, and illustrated by Kate Greenaway—has this pleasing trait of action to a unique degree. So also has The Cock, the Mouse, and the Little Red Hen, a modern tale by Félicité Lefèvre. This very popular tale among children is a retelling of two old tales combined, The Little Red Hen and the Irish Little Rid Hin.
Humor. The child loves a joke, and the tale that is humorous is his special delight. Humor is the source of pleasure in Billy Bobtail, where the number of animals and the noises they make fill the tale with hilarious fun. There is most pleasing humor in Lambikin. Here the reckless hero frolicked about on his little tottery legs. On his way to Granny's house, as he met the Jackal, the Vulture, the Tiger, and the Wolf, giving a little frisk, he said,—
To Granny's house I go,
Where I shall fatter grow,
Then you can eat me so!
Later, on returning, when the animals asked, "Have you seen
Lambikin?" cozily settled within his Drumikin, laughing and
singing to himself, he called out slyly—
Lost in the forest, and so are you,
On, little Drumikin! Tum-pa, turn-too!
Humor is the charm, too, of Andersen's Snow Man. Here the child can identify himself with the Dog and thereby join in the sport which the Dog makes at the Snow Man's expense, just as if he himself were enlightening the Snow Man about the Sun, the Moon, and the Stove. There is most delightful humor in The Cat and the Mouse in Partnership, where the Cat has the face to play upon the credulity of the poor housekeeper Mouse, who always "stayed at home and did not go out into the daytime." Returning home from his ventures abroad he named the first kitten Top-Off, the second one Half-Out, and the third one All-Out; while instead of having attended the christening of each, as he pretended, he secretly had been visiting the jar of fat he had placed for safe-keeping in the church.
Poetic justice. Emotional satisfaction and moral satisfaction based on emotional instinct appeal to the child. He pities the plight of the animals in the Bremen Town Musicians, and he wants them to find a refuge, a safe home. He is glad that the robbers are chased out, his sense of right and wrong is satisfied. Poetic justice suits him. This is one reason why fairy tales make a more definite impression often than life—because in the tale the retribution follows the act so swiftly that the child may see it, while in life "the mills of the gods grind slowly," and even the adult who looks cannot see them grind. The child wants Cinderella to gain the reward for her goodness; and he wishes the worthy Shoemaker and his Wife, in the Elves and the Shoemaker, to get the riches their industry deserves.
The imaginative. Fairy tales satisfy the activity of the child's imagination and stimulate his fancy. Some beautiful spring day, perhaps, after he has enjoyed an excursion to a field or meadow or wood, he will want to follow Andersen's Thumbelina in her travels. He will follow her as she floats on a lily pad, escapes a frog of a husband, rides on a butterfly, lives in the house of a field-mouse, escapes a mole of a husband, and then rides on the back of a friendly swallow to reach the south land and to become queen of the flowers. Here there is much play of fancy. But even when the episodes are homely and the situations familiar, as in Little Red Hen, the act of seeing them as distinct images and of following them with interest feeds the imagination. For while the elements are familiar, the combination is unusual; and this nourishes the child's ability to remove from the usual situation, which is the essential element in all originality. By entering into the life of the characters and identifying himself with them, he develops a large sympathy and a sense of power, he gains insight into life, and a care for the interests of the world. Thus imagination grows "in flexibility, in scope, and in sympathy, till the life which the individual lives is informed with the life of nature and of society," and acquires what Professor John Dewey calls Culture.
Animals. Very few of the child's fairy tales contain no animals. Southey said of a home: "A house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is in it a child rising three years old and a kitten rising six weeks; kitten is in the animal world what a rose-bud is in a garden." In the same way it might be said of fairy tales: No tale is quite suited to the little child unless in it there is at least one animal. Such animal tales are The Bremen Town Musicians, Henny Penny, Ludwig and Marleen and The Elephant's Child. The episode of the hero or heroine and the friendly animal, as we find it retained in Two-Eyes and her little Goat, was probably a folk-lore convention—since dropped—common to the beginning of many of the old tales. It indicates how largely the friendly animal entered into the old stories.