Page:A Study of Fairy Tales.djvu/52

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A STUDY OF FAIRY TALES

repetition of the one word, "curtiosity," throughout the tale, simply makes the point of the whole story and makes that point delightfully impressive.

Rhythm and repetition also make a bodily appeal, they appeal to the child's motor sense and instinctively get into his muscles. This is very evident in Brother Rabbit's Riddle:—

De big bird bob en little bird sing;
De big bee zoon en little bee sting,
De little man lead en big hoss foller—
Kin you tell wat's good fer a head in a holler?

The song in Brother Rabbit and the Little Girl appeals also to the child's sense of sound:—

De jay-bird hunt de sparrer-nes;
De bee-martin sail all 'roun';
De squer'l, he holler from de top er de tree,
Mr. Mole, he stay in de ground;
He hide en he stay twel de dark drap down—
Mr. Mole, he hide in de groun'.

The simple and the sincere. The child's taste for the simple and the sincere is one reason for the appeal which Andersen's tales make. In using his stories it is to be remembered that, although Andersen lacked manliness in being sentimental, he preserved the child's point of view and gave his thought in the true nursery story's mode of expression. Since real sentiment places the emphasis on the object which arouses feeling and the sentimental places the emphasis on the feeling, sincerity demands that in using Andersen's tales, one lessen the sentimental when it occurs by omitting to give prominence to the feeling. An-