near Cassel, who told her story with exactness and never changed anything in repeating.  Grimm himself said, “Our first care was faithfulness to the truth.  We strove to penetrate into the wild forests of our ancestors, listening to their noble language, watching their pure customs, recognizing their ancient freedom and hearty faith.”  The Grimms sought the purity of a straightforward narration.  They were against reconstruction to beautify and poetize the legends.  They were not opposed to a free appropriation for modern and individual purposes.  They kept close to the original, adding nothing of circumstance or trait, but rendering the stories in a style and language and development of detail which was their own literary German.

Perrault (1628-1703) had taken the old tales as his son, Charles, a lad of ten or twelve, told them.  The father had told them to the son as he had gathered them up, intending to put them into verse after the manner of La Fontaine.  The lad loved the stories and re-wrote them from memory for his father with such charming naivete that the father chose the son’s version in preference to his own, and published it.  But the tales of Perrault, nevertheless, show the embellishment of the mature master-Academician’s touch in subduing the too marvelous tone, or adding a bit of court manners, or a satirical hit at the vanity and failings of man.

Dasent (1820-96) has translated the Norse tales from the original collection of Asbjoernsen and Moe.  Comrades from boyhood to manhood, scholar and naturalist, these two together had taken long walks into the secluded peasant districts and had secured the tales from the people of the dales and fells, careful to retain the folk-expressions.  Dasent, with the instinct, taste, and skill of a true scholar, has preserved these tales of an honest manly race, a race of simple men and women, free and unsubdued.  He has preserved them in their folk-language and in their true Norse setting.  Harris (1848-1908) has given his tales in the dialect of Uncle Remus.  Jacobs (1854-) has aimed to give the folk-tales in the language of the folk, retaining nurses’ expressions, giving a colloquial and romantic tone which often contains what is archaic and crude.  He has displayed freedom with the text, invented whole incidents, or completed incidents, or changed them.  His object has been to fill children’s imaginations with bright images.  Andrew Lang (1844-1912) has given the tale mainly to entertain children.  He has accepted translations from many sources and has given a straightforward narration.  He has collected fairy tales indefatigably in his rainbow Fairy Books, but they are not always to be recommended for children.

Andersen (1805-75), like Perrault, made his tale for the child as an audience, and he too has put the tale into literary form.  Andersen’s tale is not the old tale, but an original creation, a number of which are based on old folk-material.  Preserving the child’s point of view, Andersen has enriched his language with a mastery of perfection and literary style.  And the “mantle of Andersen” has, so far, fallen on no one.