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Product Description
Illustrated. Formatted for the Kindle. Linked Table of Contents.

Excerpt from the editor’s Preface:
“Nobody really wrote most of the stories. People told them in all parts of the world long before Egyptian hieroglyphics or Cretan signs or Cyprian syllabaries, or alphabets were invented. They are older than reading and writing, and arose like wild flowers before men had any education to quarrel over. The grannies told them to the grandchildren, and when the grandchildren became grannies they repeated the same old tales to the new generation. Homer knew the stories and made up the ‘Odyssey’ out of half a dozen of them. All the history of Greece till about 800 B.C. is a string of the fairy tales, all about Theseus and Heracles and Oedipus and Minos and Perseus is a Cabinet des Fées, a collection of fairy tales. Shakespeare took them and put bits of them into ‘King Lear’ and other plays; he could not have made them up himself, great as he was. Let ladies and gentlemen think of this when they sit down to write fairy tales, and have them nicely typed, and send them to Messrs. Longman & Co. to be published. They think that to write a new fairy tale is easy work. They are mistaken: the thing is impossible. Nobody can write a new fairy tale; you can only mix up and dress up the old, old stories, and put the characters into new dresses, as Miss Thackeray did so well in ‘Five Old Friends.’ If any big girl of fourteen reads this preface, let her insist on being presented with ‘Five Old Friends. …”

CONTENTS:
The Shifty Lad,
The False Prince and the True,
The Jogi’s Punishment,
The Heart of a Monkey,
The Fairy Nurse,
A Lost Paradise,
How Brave Walter Hunted Wolves,
The King of the Waterfalls,
A French Puck,
The Three Crowns,
The Story of a Very Bad Boy,
The Brown Bear of Norway,
Little Lasse,
‘Moti’,
The Enchanted Deer,
A Fish Story,
The Wonderful Tune,
The Rich Brother and the Poor Brother,
The One-Handed Girl,
The Bones of Djulung,
The Sea King’s Gift,
The Raspberry Worm,
The Stones of Plouhinec,
The Castle of Kerglas,
The Battle of the Birds,
The Lady of the Fountain,
The Four Gifts,
The Groac’h of the Isle of Lok,
The Escape of the Mouse,
The Believing Husbands,
The Hoodie-Crow,
The Brownie of the Lake,
The Winning of Olwen

The Lilac Fairy Book