As fairy tales have a common plot in many languages, so has there been a common way of preserving and transmitting them. This has been by oral tradition. They were originally to be given by word of mouth, a method that is yet best fitted to curious children. The teacher must give them through the ear, if they are to be learned and retained. Whenever it is possible in doing this, he must not forget to start with the pleasant beginning, "once upon a time," nor yet to omit the best of all conclusions, "and all went well ever afterwards"—neglecting, of course, to add that truism for grown-ups, "that didn't go ill." In this practice of giving a few choice tales through the ear is the preparation for the time when a boy will eagerly thumb a favourite volume of his own in some quiet nook. But a few of the better tales must first have been mastered so that they can be told with dramatic directness. Here then the same practice must hold that is followed in all reading: do not overread. A few stories are to be well learned and a few books to be owned, but only a few. If the boy once comes to feel his strength from a limited number of good stories, the made-to-order story for the fellow with the curls will never appeal to him. What he knows he will know and be glad to know.
If it be presumption to select a limited list of stories by grades when the world is so full of stories, it must be presumption. There are stories that can have no substitutes until the world has had another accumulated experience of some hundreds of years of fireside lore. The list that follows has been found good for a limited list, yet as complete a one as a child can master. No apology need be offered for the insertion of Ruskin's great story or the two stories of jungle life by Kipling. They are modern, but form a good bridge to modern books that have real merit. A boy who will not read "Red Dog" with an interest on fire had better grow weak on a Rollo book. His taste is surely to be lamented. He will early fall in love and later fall into cynicism.
Here is the list for the first four or five grades to be given in about the order in which they are written: "The Old Woman and Her Pig," "The Three Little Pigs," and "Henny-Penny," all as told by Jacobs in "English Fairy Tales"; "The Three Bears" as told by the poet Southey, where the little old woman continues to play a part; "Little Red Riding Hood" in which the wolf eats her up, "Cinderella; or, the Glass Slipper," and "The Master Cat; or, Puss in Boots" from "The Tales of Mother Goose" as told by Charles Welsh; "Tom Tit Tot," "The History of Tom Thumb," "Jack the Giant Killer," and "Whittington and His Cat" from "English Fairy Tales"; "Beauty and the Beast" and "Hop o' My Thumb" from "The Children's Book"; "Hansel and Grethel," "The Blue Light," and "The Golden Bird" from Taylor's translation of the Grimm tales; "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Fir Tree" from Andersen; "The Story of Aladdin; or, the Wonderful Lamp," "The History of Ali Baba and the Forty Robbers Killed by One Slave," and "The Story of Sinbad the Sailor" from "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments"; "The King of the Golden River" by John Ruskin; "Kaa's Hunting" and "Red Dog" from "The Jungle Books" of Rudyard Kipling.
When these stories have been well learned through the ear, their purpose as literature and as groundwork for narrative speech will have been accomplished. Of course, the teacher must read many stories to his class besides the ones named above; but he is not to require more than a mere listening to the reading from a point of interest only. By and by the boy will fall into the habit of reading aloud to some one else, and this may now be trusted to carry him along. Wise suggestion on the part of the teacher will direct him in getting a few good volumes that he can call his own. A fairy library, not large but well selected, will become a comfort to him in later years when the lamp is getting dim. For the man who finds himself unable to read with pleasure a fairy tale that charmed him in youth proclaims himself a slave either to relentless materialism or to cold and dignified egotism. And if he be not obstinately short-sighted, he cannot help seeing that the man who yet loves a fairy tale is one who also fears God, is clear of head, and is brave of heart.
In the succession of the seasons, the coming of spring puts young blood into old veins much as it dresses the gray of winter in a lively green. The possibilities of the daughter of Ceres while she dwells beneath the earth are likewise to be found between the covers of a fairy library. A man might travel many a long way in search of a better fountain of youth.
CHAPTER II
CLASSIC MYTHS IN LITERATURE
"Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne."—Keats.