Page:The Allies Fairy Book.djvu/28

 literature, was of opinion that they were not really folk-lore, but that they had definite authors, whose names have not been preserved. We are here in presence of a question similar to that which inquires whether Straparola and Perrault invented or merely reported their famous “contes.” In each case there can be very little doubt that the legend existed, but that a practised author, Italian or French or Japanese, gave it its permanent expression.

The fairy-stories of the Japanese were unknown in the West until 1871, when they were translated by my lamented friend, Mr. A. B. Mitford (afterwards the first Lord Redesdale) in his “ Tales of Old Japan,” now one of the classics of our language. Mr. Mitford could only discover nine of them, printed in little separate pamphlets with stereotyped illustrations, the blocks of which had become so worn that the print was scarcely legible. They had fallen into such disuetude that when Mr. Mitford asked cultivated Japanese whether there were not others of the same kind to be met with, they thought he was poking fun at them, and they were offended. Since then, however, Japanese critics have observed the enthusiastic comments of Bakin, and bibliographers have waked up to the value of these little books, the original editions of which are now highly prized by native collectors. The earliest of these which has been discovered is the story called “The Rat’s Wedding,” of which there is an edition which dates before 1661. The fairy-stories of the Japanese, like their lyrical poems—their “hanka” and their “tanka”—are essentially so brief that we have included three of them in the present collection, using the excellent translation by Lord Redesdale.

In all cases but one we have found little difficulty in choosing examples which seemed to us characteristic of the country concerned and yet suitable for representation. But Belgium has given us a great deal of anxiety. There are not, so far as we have been able to discover, any