Page:A Study of Fairy Tales.djvu/251

Rh have a large realistic element. In The Little Elves we have the realistic picture of a simple German home. In Beauty and the Beast we have a realistic glimpse of the three various ways the wealthy merchant's daughters accommodated themselves to their father's loss of fortune, which reminds us of a parallel theme in Shakespeare's King Lear. In Red Riding Hood we have the realistic starting out of a little girl to visit her grandmother. This realistic element appeals to the child because, as we have noted, it accords with his experience, and it therefore seems less strange.

In Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse the setting is realistic but becomes transformed into the romantic when natural doings of everyday life take on meaning from the unusual happening in the tale. It is realistic for Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse to live in a little house, to get some corn, to make a pudding, and to put it on to boil. But when the pot tumbled over and scalded Titty, the romantic began. The stool which was real and common and stood by the door became transformed with animation, it talked: "Titty's dead, and so I weep"; and it hopped! Then a broom caught the same animation from the same theme, and swept; a door jarred; a window creaked; an old form ran round the house; a walnut tree shed its leaves; a little bird moulted his pretty feathers; a little girl spilled her milk; a man tumbled off his ladder; and the walnut tree fell with a crash, upsetting everything and burying Titty in the ruins. They all learned to convey the