Front Matter

To the Child-Reader

In this book you will find many tales which have delighted children for many years, and will continue to delight them as long as there are  children in the world, and 'grownups' to listen to their prayer, 'Tell me a story!'

Some of these tales you know already, and will welcome as old friends; others, perhaps, you will now meet for the first time. They come from many different lands, and most of them are so  old that nobody knows just how  old they really are.

You can imagine the small boys of long, long ago listening to them over and over again, and always ready to listen once  more. Some were told first in the golden East, among the domes of Baghdad, and the cherry-groves of Japan, and the rice-fields and willow-brooks of China; others came from the grey north; from Norway, and from Denmark, and from the gorgeous Russia of olden days. Our old friend, the Pied Piper, hails from 'Hamelin town in Brunswick'; the Boy who learned the Language of the Beasts was an Italian boy, and the Half-Chick was a Spanish chick.

All this makes these stories very interesting, and we mal well think gratefully of the men and women who took the trouble to write them down. If they had not taken that trouble, some of our favourites might have been forgotten altogether by now, for memories are not so good in these days of printed books as they used to be when few people could read, and when not only fairy-tales, but the histories of whole tribes and nations were handed down by word of mouth. So all children—and their elders, too—owe a debt of gratitude to Monsieur Perrault, and Madame d'Aulnoy in France, the brothers Grimm in Germany, Hans Christian Andersen in Denmark, and others in other lands, including the author—or authors—of The Arabian Nights.

In the olden times, when merchants from the west went forth in their beautiful sailing-ships with carved and gilded prows and gaily-coloured square sails, they brought back from distant countries, with the cargoes that you could touch and see, others that you could not see, but that you could hear. These last were the stories of wonder and adventure which the seafarers picked up on their travels, and carried with them from port to port. Pilgrims, too, used to bear such stories to and fro. And for these and other reasons it comes about that many of our favourites seem to belong to several different countries, and it is impossible to make sure when or where they first arose. Some, indeed, have belonged to almost all the children in the world from the very dawn of time, and, in slightly varying colours and forms, are equally well known to the Maoris and little Redskins, little Chinamen and little Turks, little Europeans and the boys and girls of the American and Australian continents.

You are sure to like some of the stories here better than others, and those are the ones you will want to hear, or to read, most often; which  you will choose must depend upon what pleases you most, and whether you like best to hear animals or human beings talking, to laugh at something quaint and funny, or to be so thrilled by the events in the tale that you can hardly bear to wait until the end.