The Lilac Fairy Book

The Lilac Fairy Book

Edited by Andrew Lang




Preface 



'What cases are you engaged in at present?' 'Are you stopping
many teeth just now?' 'What people have you converted lately?'
Do ladies put these questions to the men--lawyers, dentists,
clergymen, and so forth--who happen to sit next them at
dinner parties?

I do not know whether ladies thus indicate their interest in the
occupations of their casual neighbours at the hospitable board.
But if they do not know me, or do not know me well, they
generally ask 'Are you writing anything now?' (as if they should
ask a painter 'Are you painting anything now?' or a lawyer 'Have
you any cases at present?'). Sometimes they are more definite and
inquire 'What are you writing now?' as if I must be writing
something--which, indeed, is the case, though I dislike being
reminded of it. It is an awkward question, because the fair being
does not care a bawbee what I am writing; nor would she be much
enlightened if I replied 'Madam, I am engaged on a treatise
intended to prove that Normal is prior to Conceptional Totemism'-
-though that answer would be as true in fact as obscure in
significance. The best plan seems to be to answer that I have
entirely abandoned mere literature, and am contemplating a book
on 'The Causes of Early Blight in the Potato,' a melancholy
circumstance which threatens to deprive us of our chief esculent
root. The inquirer would never be undeceived. One nymph who, like
the rest, could not keep off the horrid topic of my occupation,
said 'You never write anything but fairy books, do you?' A French
gentleman, too, an educationist and expert in portraits of Queen
Mary, once sent me a newspaper article in which he had written
that I was exclusively devoted to the composition of fairy books,
and nothing else. He then came to England, visited me, and found
that I knew rather more about portraits of Queen Mary than he
did.

In truth I never did write any fairy books in my life, except
'Prince Prigio,' 'Prince Ricardo,' and 'Tales from a Fairy
Court'--that of the aforesaid Prigio. I take this opportunity of
recommending these fairy books--poor things, but my own--to
parents and guardians who may never have heard of them. They are
rich in romantic adventure, and the Princes always marry the
right Princesses and live happy ever afterwards; while the wicked
witches, stepmothers, tutors and governesses are never cruelly
punished, but retire to the country on ample pensions. I hate
cruelty: I never put a wicked stepmother in a barrel and send her
tobogganing down a hill. It is true that Prince Ricardo did kill
the Yellow Dwarf; but that was in fair fight, sword in hand, and
the dwarf, peace to his ashes! died in harness.

The object of these confessions is not only that of advertising
my own fairy books (which are not 'out of print'; if your
bookseller says so, the truth is not in him), but of giving
credit where credit is due. The fairy books have been almost
wholly the work of Mrs. Lang, who has translated and adapted them
from the French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Catalan,
and other languages.

My part has been that of Adam, according to Mark Twain, in the
Garden of Eden. Eve worked, Adam superintended. I also
superintend. I find out where the stories are, and advise, and,
in short, superintend. I do not write the stories out of my own
head. The reputation of having written all the fairy books (an
European reputation in nurseries and the United States of
America) is 'the burden of an honour unto which I was not born.'
It weighs upon and is killing me, as the general fash of being
the wife of the Lord of Burleigh, Burleigh House by Stamford
Town, was too much for the village maiden espoused by that peer.

Nobody really wrote most of the stories. People told them in all
parts of the world long before Egyptian hieroglyphics or Cretan
signs or Cyprian syllabaries, or alphabets were invented. They
are older than reading and writing, and arose like wild flowers
before men had any education to quarrel over. The grannies told
them to the grandchildren, and when the grandchildren became
grannies they repeated the same old tales to the new generation.
Homer knew the stories and made up the 'Odyssey' out of half a
dozen of them. All the history of Greece till about 800 B.C. is a
string of the fairy tales, all about Theseus and Heracles and
Oedipus and Minos and Perseus is a Cabinet des F‚es, a collection
of fairy tales. Shakespeare took them and put bits of them into
'King Lear' and other plays; he could not have made them up
himself, great as he was. Let ladies and gentlemen think of this
when they sit down to write fairy tales, and have them nicely
typed, and send them to Messrs. Longman & Co. to be published.
They think that to write a new fairy tale is easy work. They are
mistaken: the thing is impossible. Nobody can write a new fairy
tale; you can only mix up and dress up the old, old stories, and
put the characters into new dresses, as Miss Thackeray did so
well in 'Five Old Friends.' If any big girl of fourteen reads
this preface, let her insist on being presented with 'Five Old
Friends.'