Page:The Allies Fairy Book.djvu/17



presenting a selection of the fairy-stories of the Allies we make not the slightest pretence of being logical or historical. We are conscious of all the objections which may be brought against us by the learned, and we do not seek to rebut them. We are perfectly well aware of the fact that variants of the stories we have chosen can be pointed out in the folk-lore of other nations than those with whom we have the happiness to be joined in our great national struggle to preserve the civilization of the world. But we think that the form in which every story we have chosen is told, although perhaps not the essence of the story itself, is characteristic of each particular country, and all that we need say more is that it has amused us to bring together specimens of the folk-lore of the fighting friends of humanity.

We have not forgotten the almost universal distribution of fairy-tales, and the uniformity with which a certain tradition reappears in the legends of one country after another. The “people of peace” have no politics and are ignorant of the elements of patriotism; at all events they own no allegiance to the particular States which they inhabit, and we cannot be sure what part they take in the quarrels and dissensions of mankind. So independent of racial prejudice are these creatures of the supernatural world that the only law they seem to recognize is the primitive one: Be kind to those who are kind to you.

The popular idea of a fairy is bound up with the image of a diminutive woman, dressed in wings and a ballet-skirt, who is small enough to sit among the petals of a full-blown rose, and light enough to be wafted through the air on a wild bird’s wing. Sometimes this being is on a somewhat larger scale, as in W. S. Gilbert’s ix