[It was] at the insistence of my two young sons that I wrote my first children's book, they being much charmed with two short stories I had written for them in a style which was then new to me.

There was an old, old device, however, at the heart of this style; the device on which I have since hung all the books my publishers call fantasies, and which I have borrowed from Celtic folk-lore.

A voice is implied, and as in folk-lore, the voice sounds as if recounting a familiar and accepted tale in which fact is seamlessly integrated with fancy. The modern story-teller, however, does not have an audience conditioned to accept and believe in all those incidents of the supernatural which give folk-lore its dramatic dimensions, and thus a further device is required to make such fantasies credible.

Quickly, on to the matter-of-fact opening scene...