IS DEDICATED1
THE VIOLET FAIRY BOOK
Preface
The Editor takes this opportunity to repeat what he has often said before, that he is not the author of the stories in the Fairy Books; that he did not invent them ‘out of his own head.’ He is accustomed to being asked, by ladies, ‘Have you written anything else except the Fairy Books?’ He is then obliged to explain that he has NOT written the Fairy Books, but, save these, has written almost everything else, except hymns2, sermons, and dramatic works.
The stories in this Violet Fairy Book, as in all the others of the series, have been translated out of the popular traditional tales in a number of different languages. These stories are as old as anything that men have invented. They are narrated3 by naked savage4 women to naked savage children. They have been inherited by our earliest civilised ancestors, who really believed that beasts and trees and stones can talk if they choose, and behave kindly5 or unkindly. The stories are full of the oldest ideas of ages when science did not exist, and magic took the place of science. Anybody who has the curiosity to read the ‘Legendary Australian Tales,’ which Mrs. Langloh Parker has collected from the lips of the Australian savages6, will find that these tales are closely akin7 to our own. Who were the first authors of them nobody knows — probably the first men and women. Eve may have told these tales to amuse Cain and Abel. As people grew more civilised and had kings and queens, princes and princesses, these exalted8 persons generally were chosen as heroes and heroines. But originally the characters were just ‘a man,’ and ‘a woman,’ and ‘a boy,’ and ‘a girl,’ with crowds of beasts, birds, and fishes, all behaving like human beings. When the nobles and other people became rich and educated, they forgot the old stories, but the country people did not, and handed them down, with changes at pleasure, from generation to generation. Then learned men collected and printed the country people’s stories, and these we have translated, to amuse children. Their tastes remain like the tastes of their naked ancestors, thousands of years ago, and they seem to like fairy tales better than history, poetry, geography, or arithmetic, just as grown-up people like novels better than anything else.
This is the whole truth of the matter. I have said so before, and I say so again. But nothing will prevent children from thinking that I invented the stories, or some ladies from being of the same opinion. But who really invented the stories nobody knows; it is all so long ago, long before reading and writing were invented. The first of the stories actually written down, were written in Egyptian hieroglyphs9, or on Babylonian cakes of clay, three or four thousand years before our time.
Of the stories in this book, Miss Blackley translated ‘Dwarf Long Nose,’ ‘The Wonderful Beggars,’ ‘The Lute10 Player,’ ‘Two in a Sack,’ and ‘The Fish that swam in the Air.’ Mr. W. A. Craigie translated from the Scandinavian, ‘Jasper who herded11 the Hares.’ Mrs. Lang did the rest.
Some of the most interesting are from the Roumanion, and three were previously12 published in the late Dr. Steere’s ‘Swahili Tales.’ By the permission of his representatives these three African stories have here been abridged13 and simplified for children.
点击收听单词发音
1 dedicated | |
adj.一心一意的;献身的;热诚的 | |
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2 hymns | |
n.赞美诗,圣歌,颂歌( hymn的名词复数 ) | |
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3 narrated | |
v.故事( narrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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4 savage | |
adj.野蛮的;凶恶的,残暴的;n.未开化的人 | |
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5 kindly | |
adj.和蔼的,温和的,爽快的;adv.温和地,亲切地 | |
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6 savages | |
未开化的人,野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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7 akin | |
adj.同族的,类似的 | |
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8 exalted | |
adj.(地位等)高的,崇高的;尊贵的,高尚的 | |
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9 hieroglyphs | |
n.象形字(如古埃及等所用的)( hieroglyph的名词复数 );秘密的或另有含意的书写符号 | |
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10 lute | |
n.琵琶,鲁特琴 | |
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11 herded | |
群集,纠结( herd的过去式和过去分词 ); 放牧; (使)向…移动 | |
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12 previously | |
adv.以前,先前(地) | |
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13 abridged | |
削减的,删节的 | |
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