“As to the stories I invented myself, I fared like other imaginative children. I could imagine the most marvelous things about every member of the household, and while telling them, but only during that time, I often fancied they were true. Yet the moment I was asked whether these things had actually occurred, it seemed that I woke from a dream. I at once separated what I imagined from what I actually experienced, and it never would have occurred to me to persist against my better knowledge. So the vividly awakened power of imagination led neither me, my brothers and sisters, nor my children and grandchildren into falsehood.”
Dr. Ebers’ words are based on sound psychology. The child’s imaginative nature should be developed, but there should never be any doubt in his mind as to what is make-believe and what is real. Let him wander at will through every realm of fancy, along its sun-kissed highways, among its shadowy glens and wild cascades, but let him realize it is a world of make-believe, not of fact, which he inhabits during that period. His imagination will be as much aroused, his emotional nature will be stirred as deeply, and there will be no discovery later that his mother or teacher deceived him, no temptation to present as fact what he knows to be purely fancy, which is a certain step toward the field of falsehood. If he questions whether a fairy story is true or not, tell him, “No, but once upon a time people thought it was true,” and picture how the early tribesmen sat around the fire at night listening to tales told by some of their wise men, just as Indians and Eskimos do to this day. It will make him sympathetic toward the struggles of his remote forefathers, and he will not think the narrator tried to dupe him, nor will he regard the narrative itself as a silly yarn. It will be a dignified tale to him because it was believed in the long ago.
Since we can give only according to the measure in which we possess, whoever tells fairy stories to children ought to know something of their history and meaning. He should have some understanding of how they have come from the depths of the past to their present form, some idea of the work of notable collectors, and some insight into the fundamental principles of the science of folklore.
There are several theories about the origin of these tales, the first and oldest being that they are sun myths and can be traced back to the Vedas, and the exponents of this belief offer many arguments to prove the truth of their contention. The similarity of tales found among people of widely separated regions, they claim, is evidence that they must have come from a common source. “Little Half-Chick,” a Spanish folk tale, is found in slightly different dress among the Kabyles of Africa; “Cinderella,” in some form or other, is common to every country of Europe and to several oriental lands; while the Teutonic tale of “Brier Rose” and the French of “Sleeping Beauty” are modifications of the same conte. Therefore, the orientalists contend, they must have come from a common source and have been modified to suit conditions of life in lands to which they were carried.
Another theory is that all European fairy tales are remnants of the old mythology of the north, the nucleus of the stories having been carried abroad by the Vikings, while still another theory, the most notable advocate of which was the late Andrew Lang, traces fairy tales to the practices and customs of early man and a totemistic belief in man’s descent from animals.
Then there are those also who contend that fairy tales are primitive man’s philosophy of nature, his explanation of the working of forces he did not understand. The adherents of this theory admit the similarity of tales found among different tribes, but claim that the incidents, which are few, and the characters, who are types, might occur anywhere. In the French story of “Blue Beard” and the Greek tale of “Psyche” curiosity leads to destruction—in the one case of life, in the other of happiness. In the French “Diamonds and Toads,” the Teutonic “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” and the Bohemian “The Twelve Months,” selfishness brings punishment and kindness reward, while the cruel stepmother, the good prince, and the fairy godmother are common to tales of every nation.
But however authorities disagree as to the origin of these stories, they unite in declaring them to be one of the oldest forms of literature. The first collection of fairy tales of which we have any record was published in Venice in 1550 by Straparola, and was a translation of stories from oriental sources. From Italian the book was done into French and, for those early days when books were rare and costly, had a wide circulation. For almost a century this was the only collection of fairy tales in existence. Then, in 1637, a book was published in Naples, Il Pentamerone, which Keightley declares is the best collection of fairy tales ever written. The stories were told in the Neapolitan dialect and were drawn from Sicily, Candia, and Italy proper, where Giambattista Basile had gathered them from the people during years of wandering.
About sixty years later, in a magazine published at The Hague, appeared a story, “La Belle au Bois Dormant,” by Charles Perrault, which was none other than the tale we know as “Sleeping Beauty.” It did not originate with Perrault, but had been told him in childhood by his nurse, who was a peasant from Picardy. A year later seven other stories appeared, “Red Riding Hood,” “Blue Beard,” “Puss in Boots,” “The Fairy,” “Cinderella,” “Riquet o’ the Tuft,” and “Hop o’ My Thumb.” They were published under the title, Contes du Temps Passé avec Moralités, and signed, “P. Darmancour.” Darmancour was a stepson of Perrault, and wrote them at the older man’s request from the nurse’s tales; so they live in literature as Perrault’s work. After this French collector came the German scholars, the Grimms, who gathered and preserved the folklore of the Thuringian peasants; Goethe, the Sage of Weimar; Madame Villeneuve; Ruskin; Andrew Lang; and several others. Each of these added to the work begun by Straparola and Basile, until now we have tales from almost every nation, tales proving that a belief in the supernatural is common to primitive people in every clime.
Another aspect wonderfully interesting in the study of fairy tales is the distinctive features of those of different regions, which are so marked that they can be classified according to the locality and topography of the region in which they originated. The largest number of these supernatural beliefs is found among nations whose scenery is wild and rugged, where there are mountains, morasses, dangerous cataracts, and tempestuous oceans, while in flat, cultivated countries away from the sea the fairy superstition is not so strong and the tales are less fantastic. This fact argues powerfully in favor of the Aryan theory that they are primitive man’s philosophy of nature, the expression of his religion, and some educators claim that as they were religious stories to the race, they still are religious to the child.
Whether this theory is accepted or refuted, there can be no doubt in the mind of a thinking person that if fairy tales are given to children they should be given intelligently and with discrimination. The narrator should exercise care in their selection, and have some fixed principles to govern that selection, because of the quantity and doubtful literary and ethical quality of much juvenile material.