Read The Victorian Fairy Tale Book (Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library) Online
Authors: Michael Patrick Hearn
The Victorian Fairy Tale Book (Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library)
Copyright © 1988 by Michael Patrick Hearn
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in 1988 and in softcover in 1990 by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Victorian fairy tale book.
Summary: A collection of classic Victorian fairy tales by such authors as John Ruskin, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde.
1. Fairy Tales—Great Britain. 2. English fiction—19th century.
[1. Fairy tales. 2. Short stories]. I. Hearn, Michael Patrick.
PR1309.F26V48 1988 823’.8’08[Fic] 87-36039
eISBN: 978-0-307-81415-9
v3.1
PICTURE CREDITS
I am indebted to the following for helping me obtain examples of the original illustrations for these works:
Cynthia Hearn Dorfman, for “Goblin Market”; Barry Klugerman, for
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens
; The Library of Congress, for
The King of the Golden River
, “The Fairies,” “The Golden Key,”
The Little Lame Prince and His Travelling-Cloak
, “The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde,” “The Selfish Giant,” and “The Deliverers of Their Country”; and The New York Public Library, for “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,”
The Rose and the Ring
, “Melilot,” and “Rocking-Horse Land.”
For Laura Jane Musser
M. P. H.
I am grateful to the following people who have helped, in one way or another, towards the completion of
The Victorian Fairy Tale Book
: Cynthia Hearn Dorfman, Michael Emyrs, Rodney K. Engen, Brigitte Heinrich, Daniel Hirsh, Barry Klugerman, C. A. McDonald, Bernard McTigue, Glenn Edward Sadler, Justin G. Schiller, Barbara Seaman, Jane Yolen, and Jack Zipes. And of course Wendy, Mitch, and Helena.
M. P. H.
A lake and a fairy boat
To sail in the moonlight clear,—
And merrily we would float
From the dragons that watch us here!
Thy gown shall be snow-white silk,
And strings of orient pearls,
Like gossamers dipp’d in milk,
Should twine with thy raven curls!
Red rubies should deck thy hands,
And diamonds should be thy dow’r—
But Fairies have broken their wands,
And wishing has lost its pow’r!
THOMAS HOOD
“Song: For Music”
Contents Introduction
O
NCE UPON A TIME
—but not so long ago—the fairies were not welcome in the British nursery. The battle over Elfland raged for centuries. With the coming of Christianity to the British Isles towards the end of the Roman Era, the Celtic faërie kings and queens went underground as ancient local traditions were absorbed or transformed by the country’s new religion. Those who in the old legends were merely amoral were now, in the eyes of the early church fathers, evil.
Yet a wealth of fairy lore still survived in French and English medieval romances and ballads. King Arthur and his chivalric knights consorted with fays, Sir Gawain battled with the Green Knight, Thomas the Rhymer was spirited off by the Queen of Elfland, and fair maidens were deflowered by Young Tam Lin, the Elfin Knight. Even so, by the Elizabethan age, the very existence of fairies was widely disputed. In 1584, Reginald Scot argued in his
Discoverie of Witchcraft
that only “sicke folke, children, women and cowards” still believed such superstitious nonsense. The preaching of the Gospel had, he said, largely driven out most of the old legends. But ancient beliefs were not so quickly uprooted. King James VI of Scotland was so outraged by Scot’s treatise that he wrote his own repudiation,
Daemonologie
, declaring the reality of fairies and brownies; and on ascending the throne of Great Britain as King James I, he ordered
The Discoverie of Witchcraft
publicly burned.
The sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were a renaissance of fairy literature in England. The works of Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, Robert Herrick, John Lyly, and, of course, William Shakespeare eagerly explored the wonders of fairyland. However, with the exception of Spenser, whose
Faerie Queene
(1590, 1596) was lovingly modeled on the old romances, these poets did not take elfin tradition seriously. Thus the powerful Queen Maeve of Irish legend became Mab, the fairies’ midwife, in
Romeo
and Juliet.
Perhaps the clearest expression of the Elizabethan decadent attitude to fairyland is Drayton’s
Nimphidia
(1627), his parody of courtly romance, in which the diminutive fairy knight Pigwiggen
quickly Armes him for the Field,
A little Cockle-shell for his Shield,
Which he could bravely wield:
Yet it could not be pierced:
His Speare a Bent both stiffe and strong,
And well-neere of two Inches long;
The Pyle was of a Horse-flyes tongue,
Whose sharpnesse naught reversed.
The old fairy lore, if remembered at all, was now considered fit only for children and peasants and circulated as old wives’ tales and in chapbooks, the cheap pamphlets hawked about the provinces by itinerant dealers, offering the histories of Tom Thumb and Jack the Giant-Killer.
The Puritans had no patience with such petty amusements. In their pursuit of a temporal state based upon the Word of God, they denounced all forms of popular literature as pernicious trash. Hugh Rhodes warned parents in
The Book of Nurture
(1554) to keep their boys and girls “from reading feigned fables, vain fantasies, and wanton stories, and songs of love, which bring much mischief to youth.” In
A Candle in the Dark
(1656), Thomas Ady told parents to beware of old wives “who sit talking, and chatting of many fake old stories of Witches, and Fairies, and Robin Good-Fellow … all which lying fancies people are more naturally to listen after than the Scriptures.”
Religious zealots all but exiled the fairies from Britain’s shores. With the Revolution of 1688, after which even the celebrating of Christmas was outlawed, “Farewell, rewards and fairies!” resounded throughout the land. Yet even Puritan literature was not wholly free of the fairies’ spell: no matter what its pious intent, John Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress
(1678, 1684), with all its fearsome giants and marvelous monsters, was no more than an allegorical fairy tale.
Meanwhile, the fairies found refuge in France, at the court of Louis XIV. Bored with the popular novels of the day, the lords and ladies who attended Mme. Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy’s salon coddled one another with fairy tales. So fashionable did these diversions become that
Le Cabinet des fees
(1785–1789), the authoritative collection of these stories, reached forty-one volumes by the fall of the Ancien Régime. Designed to entertain their upper-class audience, they tended to be overwrought extravaganzas, and consequently
most have long been forgotten. The best, composed by a minor member of the French Academy named Charles Perrault, still endure. His classic retellings of “Cinderella,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood,” “Bluebeard,” and “Puss in Boots” appeared in 1697 in
Histoires ou contes du temps passé
, which was first published in English in 1729 and became popularly known as “Tales of Mother Goose.” Although variants of these stories were known prior to Perrault, so charming were his versions that they immediately entered the world’s folklore. While retaining the simplicity and directness of the oral originals, Perrault transformed them according to the high standards he set for a literature designed specifically for children. Dedicating the small volume to a niece of Louis XIV, Perrault removed all the licentiousness that he felt had marred earlier versions and might corrupt the virtue of princesses. In the manner of La Fontaine’s fables, he appended little morals in verse to each selection, but happily his well-meant lessons do not intrude on the graceful storytelling.