A Study of Fairy Tales Part 2

This very popular tale among children is a retelling of two old tales combined, _The Little Red Hen_ and the Irish _Little Rid Hin_.

_Humor_. The child loves a joke, and the tale that is humorous is his special delight. Humor is the source of pleasure in _Billy Bobtail_, where the number of animals and the noises they make fill the tale with hilarious fun. There is most pleasing humor in _Lambikin_. Here the reckless hero frolicked about on his little tottery legs. On his way to Granny's house, as he met the Jackal, the Vulture, the Tiger, and the Wolf, giving a little frisk, he said,--

To Granny's house I go, Where I shall fatter grow, Then you can eat me so!

Later, on returning, when the animals asked, "Have you seen Lambikin?" cozily settled within his Drumikin, laughing and singing to himself, he called out slyly--

Lost in the forest, and so are you, On, little Drumikin! Tum-pa, turn-too!

Humor is the charm, too, of Andersen's _Snow Man_. Here the child can identify himself with the Dog and thereby join in the sport which the Dog makes at the Snow Man's expense, just as if he himself were enlightening the Snow Man about the Sun, the Moon, and the Stove. There is most delightful humor in _The Cat and the Mouse in Partnership_, where the Cat has the face to play upon the credulity of the poor housekeeper Mouse, who always "stayed at home and did not go out into the daytime." Returning home from his ventures abroad he named the first kitten Top-Off, the second one Half-Out, and the third one All-Out; while instead of having attended the christening of each, as he pretended, he secretly had been visiting the jar of fat he had placed for safe-keeping in the church.

_Poetic justice_. Emotional satisfaction and moral satisfaction based on emotional instinct appeal to the child. He pities the plight of the animals in the _Bremen Town Musicians_, and he wants them to find a refuge, a safe home. He is glad that the robbers are chased out, his sense of right and wrong is satisfied. Poetic justice suits him.

This is one reason why fairy tales make a more definite impression often than life--because in the tale the retribution follows the act so swiftly that the child may see it, while in life "the mills of the G.o.ds grind slowly,"

and even the adult who looks cannot see them grind. The child wants Cinderella to gain the reward for her goodness; and he wishes the worthy Shoemaker and his Wife, in the _Elves and the Shoemaker_, to get the riches their industry deserves.

_The imaginative_. Fairy tales satisfy the activity of the child's imagination and stimulate his fancy. Some beautiful spring day, perhaps, after he has enjoyed an excursion to a field or meadow or wood, he will want to follow Andersen's Thumbelina in her travels. He will follow her as she floats on a lily pad, escapes a frog of a husband, rides on a b.u.t.terfly, lives in the house of a field-mouse, escapes a mole of a husband, and then rides on the back of a friendly swallow to reach the south land and to become queen of the flowers. Here there is much play of fancy. But even when the episodes are homely and the situations familiar, as in _Little Red Hen_, the act of seeing them as distinct images and of following them with interest feeds the imagination.

For while the elements are familiar, the combination is unusual; and this nourishes the child's ability to remove from the usual situation, which is the essential element in all originality. By entering into the life of the characters and identifying himself with them, he develops a large sympathy and a sense of power, he gains insight into life, and a care for the interests of the world. Thus imagination grows "in flexibility, in scope, and in sympathy, till the life which the individual lives is informed with the life of nature and of society," and acquires what Professor John Dewey calls Culture.

_Animals_. Very few of the child's fairy tales contain no animals. Southey said of a home: "A house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is in it a child rising three years old and a kitten rising six weeks; kitten is in the animal world what a rose-bud is in a garden." In the same way it might be said of fairy tales: No tale is quite suited to the little child unless in it there is at least one animal. Such animal tales are _The Bremen Town Musicians, Henny Penny, Ludwig and Marleen_ and _The Elephant's Child_. The episode of the hero or heroine and the friendly animal, as we find it retained in Two-Eyes and her little Goat, was probably a folk-lore convention--since dropped--common to the beginning of many of the old tales.

It indicates how largely the friendly animal entered into the old stories.

_A portrayal of human relations, especially with children_.

In _Cinderella_ the child is held by the unkind treatment inflicted upon Cinderella by her Stepmother and the two haughty Sisters. He notes the solicitude of the Mother of the Seven Kids in guarding them from the Wolf. In the _Three Bears_ he observes a picture of family life. A little child, on listening to _The Three Pigs_ for the first time, was overwhelmed by one thought and cried out, "And didn't the Mother come home any more?" Naturally the child would be interested especially in children, for he is like the older boy, who, when looking at a picture-book, gleefully exclaimed, "That's me!" He likes to put himself in the place of others. He can do it most readily if the character is a small individual like Red Riding Hood who should obey her mother; or like Goldilocks who must not wander in the wood; or like Henny Penny who went to take a walk and was accosted by, "Where are you going?" In _Brother Rabbit and the Little Girl_ the Little Girl takes the keenest enjoyment in putting herself in the customary grown-up's place of granting permission, while the Rabbit takes the usual child's place of mentioning a request with much persuasion. The child is interested, too, in the strange people he meets in the fairy tales: the clever little elves who lived in the groves and danced on the gra.s.s; the dwarfs who inhabited the earth-rocks and the hills; the trolls who dwelt in the wild pine forest or the rocky spurs, who ate men or porridge, and who fled at the noise of bells; the fairies who pleased with their red caps, green jackets, and sprightly ways; the beautiful fairy G.o.dmother who waved her wonderful wand; or those lovely fairy spirits who appeared at the moment when most needed--just as all best friends do--and who could grant, in a twinkling, the wish that was most desired.

_The diminutive_. This pleasure in the diminutive is found in the interest in the fairy characters, Baby Bear, Little Billy-Goat, Little Pig, the Little Elves, Teeny Tiny, Thumbelina, and Tom Thumb, as well as in tiny objects. In the _Tale of Tom Thumb_ the child is captivated by the miniature chariot drawn by six small mice, the tiny b.u.t.terfly-wing shirt and chicken-skin boots worn by Tom, and the small speech produced by him at court, when asked his name:--

My name is Tom Thumb, From the Fairies I come; When King Arthur shone, This court was my home.

In me he delighted, By him I was knighted.

Did you never hear of Sir Thomas Thumb?

_Doll i' the Gra.s.s_ contains a tiny chariot made from a silver spoon and drawn by two white mice, and _Little Two-Eyes_ gives a magic table. The child takes keen delight in the fairy ship which could be folded up and put into a pocket, and in the wonderful nut-sh.e.l.l that could bring forth beautiful silver and gold dresses. The little wagon of Chanticleer and Partlet that took them a trip up to the hill, and the tiny mugs and beds, table and plates, of Snow White's cottage in the wood--such as these all meet the approval of child-nature.

_Rhythm and repet.i.tion_. The child at first loves sound; later he loves sound and sense, or meaning. Repet.i.tion pleases him because he has limited experience and is glad to come upon something he has known before. He observes and he wants to compare, but it is a job. Repet.i.tion saves him a task and boldly proclaims, "We are the same." Such is the effect of the repet.i.tive expressions which we find in _Teeny Tiny_: as, "Now when the teeny-tiny woman got home to her teeny-tiny house, she was a teeny-tiny bit tired"; or, in _Little Jack Rollaround_, who cried out with such vigorous persistence, "Roll me around!" and called to the moon, "I want the people to see me!" In _The Little Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings_, one of the pleasantest tales for little children, the White Rabbit said to his Mammy, "Oh, Mammy, I wish I had a long gray tail like Bushy Tail's; I wish I had a back full of bristles like Mr. Porcupine's; I wish I had a pair of red rubbers like Miss Puddleduck's." At last, when he beheld the tiny red-bird at the Wishing-Pond, he said, "Oh, I wish I had a pair of little red wings!" Then, after getting his wings, when he came home at night and his Mammy no longer knew him, he repeated to Mr. Bushy Tail, Miss Puddleduck, and old Mr. Ground Hog, the same pet.i.tion to sleep all night, "Please, kind Mr. Bushy Tail, may I sleep in your house all night?" etc. Repet.i.tion here aids the child in following the characters, the story, and its meaning. It is a distinct help to unity and to clearness.

_The Elephant's Child_ is an example of how the literary artist has used this element of repet.i.tion, and used it so wonderfully that the form is the matter and the tale cannot be told without the artist's words. "'Satiable curtiosity,"

"the banks of the great, grey-green, greasy, Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees," and "'Scuse me," are but a few of those expressions for which the child will watch as eagerly as one does for a signal light known to be due. The repet.i.tion of the one word, "curtiosity," throughout the tale, simply makes the point of the whole story and makes that point delightfully impressive.

Rhythm and repet.i.tion also make a bodily appeal, they appeal to the child's motor sense and instinctively get into his muscles. This is very evident in _Brother Rabbit's Riddle_:--

De big bird bob en little bird sing; De big bee zoon en little bee sting, De little man lead en big hoss foller-- Kin you tell wat 's good fer a head in a holler?

The song in _Brother Rabbit and the Little Girl_ appeals also to the child's sense of sound:--

De jay-bird hunt de sparrer-nes; De bee-martin sail all 'roun'; De squer'l, he holler from de top er de tree, Mr. Mole, he stay in de ground; He hide en he stay twel de dark drap down-- Mr. Mole, he hide in de groun'.

_The simple and the sincere_. The child's taste for the simple and the sincere is one reason for the appeal which Andersen's tales make. In using his stories it is to be remembered that, although Andersen lacked manliness in being sentimental, he preserved the child's point of view and gave his thought in the true nursery story's mode of expression.

Since real sentiment places the emphasis on the object which arouses feeling and the sentimental places the emphasis on the feeling, sincerity demands that in using Andersen's tales, one lessen the sentimental when it occurs by omitting to give prominence to the feeling. Andersen's tales reflect what is elementary in human nature, childlike fancy, and emotion. His speech is characterized by the simplest words and conceptions, an avoidance of the abstract, the use of direct language, and a nave poetic expression adapted to general comprehension. He is not to be equaled in child conversations. The world of the fairy tale must be simple like the world Andersen has given us. It must be a world of genuine people and honest occupations in order to form a suitable background for the supernatural. Only fairy tales possessing simplicity are suited to the oldest kindergarten child of five or six years. To the degree that the child is younger than five years, he should be given fewer and fewer fairy tales. Those given should be largely realistic stories of extreme simplicity.

_Unity of effect_. The little child likes the short tale, for it is a unity he can grasp. If you have ever listened to a child of five spontaneously attempting to tell you a long tale he has not grasped, and have observed how the units of the tale have become confused in the mind that has not held the central theme, you then realize how harmful it is to give a child too long a story. Unity demands that there be no heaping up of sensations, but neat, orderly, essential incidents, held together by one central idea. The tale must go to the climax directly. It must close according to Uncle Remus's idea when he says, "De tale ain't persoon atter em no furder don de place whar dey [the characters] make der disappear'nce." It will say what it has to say and lose no time in saying it; and often it will attempt to say only one thing. It will be remarkable as well for what it omits as for what it tells. The Norse _Doll i' the Gra.s.s_ well ill.u.s.trates this unity. Boots set out to find a wife and found a charming little la.s.sie who could spin and weave a shirt in one day, though of course the shirt was tiny. He took her home and then celebrated his wedding with the pleasure of the king. This unity, which is violated in Grimm's complicated _Golden Bird_, appears pleasantly in _The Little Pine Tree that Wished for New Leaves_. Here one feeling dominates the tale, the Pine Tree was no longer contented. So she wished, first for gold leaves, next for gla.s.s leaves, and then for leaves like those of the oaks and maples. But the robber who stole her gold leaves, the storm that shattered her gla.s.s leaves, and the goat that ate her broad green leaves, changed her feeling of discontent, until she wished at last to have back her slender needles, green and fair, and awoke next morning, happy and contented.

Fairy tales for little children must avoid certain elements opposed to the interests of the very young child. Temperaments vary and one must be guided by the characteristics of the individual child. But while the little girl with unusual power of visualization, who weeps on hearing of Thumbling's travels down the cow's mouth in company with the hay, may be the exception, she proves the rule: the little child generally should not have the tale that creates an emotion of horror or deep feeling of pain. This standard would determine what tales should not be given to the child of kindergarten age:--

_The tale of the witch_. The witch is too strange and too fearful for the child who has not learned to distinguish the true from the imaginative. This would move _Hansel and Grethel_ into the second-grade work and _Sleeping Beauty_ preferably into the work of the first grade. The child soon gains sufficient experience so that later the story impresses, not the strangeness.

_The tale of the dragon_. This would eliminate _Siegfried and the Dragon_. A dragon is too fearful a beast and produces terror in the heart of the child. Tales of heroic adventure with the sword are not suited to his strength. He has not yet entered the realm of bold adventure where Perseus and Theseus and Hercules display their powers. The fact that hero-tales abound in delightful literature is not adequate reason for crowding the _Rhinegold Legends, Wagner Stories_, and _Tales of King Arthur_, into the kindergarten.

Their beauty and charm do not make it less criminal to present to little children such a variety of images as knighthood carries with it. These tales are not sufficiently simple for the little child, and must produce a mental confusion and the crudest of returns.

_Giant tales_. This would omit _Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack the Giant-Killer_, and _Tom Hickathrift_, moving them up into the primary field. A little girl, when eating tongue, confidingly asked, "Whose tongue?" and when told, "A cow's,"

immediately questioned with tenderness, "Don't he feel it?"

Thereafter she insisted that she didn't like tongue. To a child of such sensibilities the cutting off of heads is savage and gruesome and should not be given a chance to impress so prominently. Life cannot be without its strife and struggle, but the little child need not meet everything in life at once. This does not mean that absolutely no giant tale would be used at this time. The tale of _Mr. Miacca_, in which "little Tommy couldn't always be good and one day went round the corner," is a giant tale which could be used with young children because it is full of delightful humor.

Because of the simplicity of Tommy's language and his sweet childishness it appeals to the child's desire to identify himself with the character. Tommy is so clever and inventive and his lively surprises so brimful of fun that the final effect is entirely pleasing.

_Some tales of transformation_. The little child is not pleased but shocked by the transformation of men into animals. A little girl, on looking at an ill.u.s.tration of _Little Brother and Sister_, remarked, "If my Sister would turn into a fawn I would cry." When the animals are terrifying, the transformation contains horror for the child. This, together with the length and complexity of the story, would move _Beauty and the Beast_ up into the second grade where the same transformation becomes an element of pleasure. A simple tale of transformation, such as _The Little Lamb and the Little Fish_, in which Gretchen becomes a lamb and Peterkin a little fish, is interesting but not horrible, and could be used. So also could a tale such as Grimm's _Fundevogel_, in which the brother and sister escape the pursuit of the witch by becoming, one a rosebush and the other a rose; later, one a church and the other a steeple; and a third time, one a pond and the other a duck. In both these tales we have the witch and transformation, but the effect contains no horror.

_The tale of strange animal relations and strange creatures.

Tom t.i.t Tot_, which Jacobs considers the most delightful of all fairy tales, is brimful of humor for the older child, but here the tailed man is not suited to the faith and understanding of six years. _Rumpelstiltskin_, its parallel, must also be excluded. _The House in the Wood_, and its Norse parallel, _The Two Step-Sisters_, are both very beautiful, but are more suited to the second grade. In the kindergarten it is much better to present the tale which emphasizes goodness, rather than the two just mentioned, which present the good and the bad and show what happens to both. Besides there is a certain elation resulting from the superior reward won by the good child which crowds out any pity for the erring child. Such elation is a form of selfishness and ought not to be emphasized. _Snow White and Rose Red_ contains the strange dwarf, but it is a tale so full of love and goodness and home life that in spite of its length it could be used in the first grade.

_Unhappy tales_. The very little child pities, and its tender heart must be protected from depressing sadness as unrelieved as we find it in _The Little Match Girl_. The image of suffering impressed on a child, who cannot forget the sight of a cripple for days, is too intense to be healthful. The sorrow of the poor is one of the elements of life that even the very little child meets, and it is legitimate that his literature should include tales that call for compa.s.sion. But in a year or two, when he develops less impressionability and more poise, he is better prepared to meet such situations, as he must meet them in life.

_The tale of capture_. This would eliminate _Proserpine_. No more beautiful myth exists than this one of the springtime, but its beauty and its symbolism do not make it suitable for the kindergarten. It is more suited to the elementary child of the fourth grade. In fact, very few myths of any sort find a legitimate place in the kindergarten, perhaps only a few of the simpler _pourquois_ tales. _The Legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin_, which is very beautiful, and appeals to little children because of the piping and of the children following after, should be omitted from the kindergarten because the capture at the close--the disappearance of the children in the hill--is tragic in pathos. It is better to leave the literature as it is and offer it later when the child reaches the second grade. The effect of this tragic end has been realized by Josephine Scribner Gates, who (_St.

Nicholas_, November, 1914) has given to the children, "And Piped Those Children Back Again." This is a modern completion of _The Pied Piper_. It most happily makes the little lame boy who was left in Hamelin when the Piper closed the door of the mountain, the means of the restoration of the other children to their parents.

_The very long tale_. This would omit _The Ugly Duckling.

The Ugly Duckling_ is a most artistic tale and one that is very true to life. Its characters are the animals of the barn-yard, the hens and ducks familiar to the little child's experience. But the theme and emotional interest working out at length through varied scenes, make it much better adapted to the capacities of a third-grade child. _The White Cat_, a feminine counterpart of _Puss-in-Boots_--which gives a most charming picture of how a White Cat, a transformed princess, helped a youth, and re-transformed became his bride--because of its length, is better used in the first grade at the same time with _Puss-in-Boots_. The same holds true of _Peter, Paul, and Espen_, or its parallel, Laboulaye's _Poucinet_.

This is a fine tale telling how the youngest of three sons succeeded in winning the king's favor and finally the princess and half the kingdom. First, Espen had to cut down the giant oak that shadowed the palace and dig a well in the courtyard of the castle deep enough to furnish water the entire year. But after winning in these tests, he is required to conquer a great Ogre who dwells in the forest, and later to prove himself cleverer in intellect than the princess by telling the greater falsehood. It is evident that not only the subject-matter but the working out of the long plot are much beyond kindergarten children.

_The complicated or the insincere tale_. This would eliminate a tale of complicated structure, such as Grimm's _Golden Bird_; and many of the modern fairy tales, which will be dealt with later on.

The fairy tales mentioned above are all important tales which the child should receive at a later time when he is ready for them. They are mentioned because they all have been suggested for kindergarten use. The whole field of children's literature is largely uncla.s.sified and ungraded as yet, and such arrangements as we possess show slight respect for standards. There is abundant material for the youngest, and much will be gained by omitting to give the very young what they will enjoy a little later, much better and with freshness. It is true that a few cla.s.sics are well-suited to the child at any age, such as _Alice in Wonderland_, _The Jungle Books_, and _Uncle Remus Tales_. In regard to this grading of the cla.s.sics, Lamb in _Mackery End_, speaking of his sister's education, said, "She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a s.p.a.cious closet of good old English reading, without much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls they should be brought up exactly in this fashion." Lamb would have argued: Set the child free in the library and let him choose for himself, and feed on great literature, those stories which give general types of situation and character, which give the simplest pictures of a people at different epochs. But with all due respect to Lamb it must be said that Lamb is not living in this scientific day of discovery of the child's personality and of accurate attention to the child's needs.

Because the _Odyssey_ is a great book and will give much to any child does not prove at all that the same child would not be better off by reading it when his interests reach its life. This outlook on the problem would eliminate the necessity of having the cla.s.sics rewritten from a new moral viewpoint, which is becoming a custom now-a-days, and which is to be frowned upon, for it deprives the literature of much of its vigor and force.

II. THE FAIRY TALE AS LITERATURE

From the point of view of the child, we have seen that in a subjective sense, fairy tales must contain the interests of children. In an objective sense, rather from the point of view of literature, let us now consider what fairy tales must contain, what are the main standards which determine the value of fairy tales as literature, and as such, subject-matter of real worth to the child.

The old tale will not always be perfect literature; often it will be imperfect, especially in form. Yet the tale should be selected with the standards of literature guiding in the estimate of its worth and in the emphasis to be placed upon its content. Such relating of the tale to literary standards would make it quite impossible later in the primary grades when teaching the reading of _Three Pigs_, to put the main stress on a mere external like the expression of the voice. A study of the story as literature would have centered the attention on the situation, the characters, and the plot. If the voice is receiving training in music and in the phonics of spelling, then when the reading of the tale is undertaken it will be a willing servant to the mind which is concentrating on the reality, and will express what the thought compels.

The fairy tale first must be a cla.s.sic in reality even if it lacks the crowning touch of perfect form given through the re-treatment of a literary artist. In _Reynard the Fox_ we have an exact example of the folk-tale that has been elevated into literature. But this was possible only because the tales originally possessed the qualities of a true cla.s.sic. "A true cla.s.sic," Sainte-Beuve has said, "is one which enriches the human mind, has increased its treasure and caused it to advance a step, which has discovered some moral and unequivocal truth or revealed some eternal pa.s.sion in that heart where all seemed known and discovered; which is an expression of thought, observation, or invention, in no matter what form, only provided it be broad and great, refined and sensible, sane and beautiful in itself; which speaks in its own peculiar style which is found to be also that of the whole world, a style new and old, easily contemporary with all time."

Immediately some of the great fairy tales stand out as answering to this test--_Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Jack the Giant-Killer_,--which has been said to be the epitome of the whole life of man--_Beauty and the Beast_, and a crowd of others. Any fairy tale which answers to the test of a real cla.s.sic must, like these, show itself to contain for the child a permanent enrichment of the mind.

Fairy tales must have certain qualities which belong to all literature as a fine art, whether it is the literature of knowledge or the literature of power. Literature is not the book nor is it life; but literature is the sense of life, whose artist is the author, and the medium he uses is words, language. It is good art when his sense of life is truth, and fine art when there is beauty in that truth. The one essential beauty of literature is in its essence and does not depend upon any decoration. As words are the medium, literature will distinguish carefully among them and use them as the painter, for particular lights and shades. According to Pater literature must have two qualities, mind and soul. Literature will have mind when it has that architectural sense of structure which foresees the end in the beginning and keeps all the parts related in a harmonious unity. It will have soul when it has that "vagrant sympathy" which makes it come home to us and which makes it suggest what it does not say. Test the _Tale of Cinderella_ by this standard. As to mind, it makes one think of a bridge in which the very keystone of the structure is the condition that Cinderella return from the ball by the stroke of twelve. And its "vagrant sympathy" is quite definite enough to reach a maid of five, who remarked: "If I'd have been Cinderella, I wouldn't have helped those ugly sisters, would you?"

If the fairy tale stands the test of literature it must have proved itself, not only a genuine cla.s.sic according to Sainte-Beuve's standard, and a tale possessing qualities of mind and soul according to Pater's _Style_, but it must have shown itself also a work owning certain features distinguishing it as literature. These particular literary marks which differentiate the literary tale from the ordinary prose tale have been pointed out by Professor Winchester in his _Principles of Literary Criticism_. They apply to the old tale of primitive peoples just as well as to the modern tale of to-day. As literature the tale must have:

(1) a power to appeal to the emotions;