which is full of information. He considers that Straparola’s collection was the principal source from which Perrault and Madame D’Aulnoy took their tales.
It is characteristic of France that when she turned to the folk-tale, she clothed it in consummate literary form. Maury, who wrote a learned work on the Fays of the Middle Ages, observed that the Fairies were propitiated with altars in Roman Gaul. When Christianity came, they retired into the forest of Broceliande, whence, in the middle of the seventeenth century, when French literature was most brilliantly classical, they were brought to court by Madame Coulanges to amuse the ladies at Versailles. But it was a learned academician, Charles Perrault, who deserves the credit of introducing the fairy-tale to French literature, and he did so in 1696, when he published “La Belle au Bois Dormant” in a sort of magazine published at The Hague. This, with other stories, including “Red Riding Hood,” “Bluebeard,” “Puss in Boots” and “Cinderella,” was included a little later in a modest precious volume entitled “Tales of Mother Goose,” which is the “Iliad” of folk-lore. We have chosen for our collection “The Sleeping Beauty,” in the excellent translation of Mr. S. R. Littlewood, and it is well to point out that instead of ending with the release of the Princess from her disenchanted palace, this version goes on to describe what happened after that, in great detail. This is an instance of Perrault’s judgment, far superior in quality to that of his many critics and censors. To close this story where it usually ceases is to destroy its fairy meaning, which seems to depend on the overthrow of the Ogress-Queen, although it is highly probable that two stories had got rolled into one before they reached Perrault. To understand what is essential and what is not in a fairy-story, it is needful to have the heart of a little child. This the learned Perrault possessed, and the less we tamper with his text the wiser we shall be. It is noticeable that the French
