User:Zginder/German Popular Stories &c.

German Popular Stories

Translated from the
Kinder und Haus Märchen
collected by
M. M. Grimm,
From Oral Tradition.

Published by C. Baldwyn. New
1912
LONDON,
1823.

PREFACE.

THE Translators were first induced to compile this little work by the eager relish with which a few of the tales were received by the young friends to whom they were narrated. In this feeling the Translators, however, do not hesitate to avow their own participation. Popular fictions and traditions are somewhat gone out of fashion; yet most will own them to be associated with the brightest recollections of their youth. They are, like the Christmas Pantomime, ostensibly brought forth to tickle the palate of the young, but are often received with as keen an appetite by those of graver years. There is, at least, a debt of gratitude due to these ancient friends and comforters. To follow the words of the author from whom the the motto in the title-page is selected, "They have been the revivers of drowzy age at midnight; old and young have with such tales chimed mattins till the cock crew in the morning; batchelors and maides have compassed the Christmas fire-block till the curfew bell rang candle out; the old shepheard and the young plow-boy after their daye's labor, have carold out the same to make them merrye with; and who but they have made long nightes seem short, and heavy toyles easie?"

But the amusement of the hour was not the translators' only object. The rich collection from which the following tales are selected, is very interesting in a literary point of view, as affording a new proof of the wide and early diffusion of these gay creations of the imagination, apparently flowing from some great and mysterious fountain head, whence Calmuck, Russian, Celt, Scandinavian, and German, in their various ramifications, have imbibed their earliest lessons of moral instruction.

The popular tales of England have been too much neglected. They are nearly discarded from the libraries of childhood. Philosophy is made the companion of the nursery: we have lisping chemists and leading-string mathematicians: this is the age of reason, not of imagination; and the loveliest dreams of fairy innocence are considered as vain and frivolous. Much might be urged against this rigid and philosophic (or rather unphilosophic) exclusion of works of fancy and fiction. Our imagination is surely as susceptible of improvement by exercise, as our judgement or our memory; and so long as such fictions only are presented to the young mind, as do not interfere with the important department of moral education, a beneficial effect must be produced by the pleasurable employment of a faculty in which so much of our happiness in every period of life consists.

It is, however, probably owing merely to accidental causes that some countries have carefully preserved their ancient stores of fiction, while here they have been suffered to pass to oblivion or (corruption, notwithstanding the patriotic example of a few such names as Hearne, Spelman, and Le Neve, who did not disdain to turn towards them the light of their carefully trimmed lamp, scanty and ill-furnished as it often was. A very interesting and ingenious article in the Quarterly Review, (No. XLI.) to which the Translators readily acknowledge their particular obligations, recently attracted attention to the subject, and has. shown how wide a field is open, interesting to the antiquarian as well as to the reader who only seeks amusement.

The collection from which the following Tales are taken is one of great extent, obtained for the most part from the mouths of German peasants by the indefatigable exertions of John and William Grimm, brothers in kindred and taste.—The result of their labours ought to be peculiarly interesting to English readers, inasmuch as many of their national tales are proved to be of the highest Northern antiquity, and common to the parallel classes of society in countries whose populations have been long and widely disjoined. Strange to say, "Jack, commonly called the Giant-killer, and Thomas Thumb," as the reviewer observes, "landed in England from the very same hulls and war ships which conveyed Hengist and Horsa, 'and Ebba the Saxon." 'Who would have expected that Whittington and his Cat, whose identity and London citizenship appeared so certain;—Tom Thumb, whose parentage Hearne had traced, and whose monumental honours were the boast of Lincoln;—or the Giant-destroyer of Tylney, whose bones were supposed to moulder in his native village in Norfolk, should be equally renowned among the humblest inhabitants of Munster and Paderborn?

A careful comparison would probably establish many other coincidences. The sports and songs of children, to which MM. Grimm have directed considerable attention, often excite surprise at their striking resemblance to the usages of our own country. We wish, with Leucadio Doblado, speaking of Spanish popular sports, "that antiquarians were a more jovial and volatile race, and that some one would trace up these amusements to their common source;" if such a thing were possible, or at any rate would 'point out their affinities. A remarkable coincidence occurs in the German song, to the Lady-bird or “Marien-würmchen." The second verse alone has been preserved in England; but it is singular that the burthen of the song should have been so long preserved in countries whose inhabitants have been so completely separated. The whole song, which is to be found in Wunderhorn, i. 235, may be thus translated:

Lady-bird! Lady-bird! pretty one! stay:

Come sit on my finger, so happy and gay;

With me shall no mischief betide thee;

No harm would I do thee, no foeman is near:

I only would gaze on thy beauties so dear,

Those beautiful winglets beside thee.

Lady-bird! Lady-bird! fly away home,

Thy house is a-fire, thy children will roam;

List! list! to their cry and bewailing:

The pitiless spider is weaving their doom,

Then, Lady-bird! Lady-bird! fly away home;

Hark! hark! to thy children's bewailing.

Fly back again, back again, Lady-bird dear!

Thy neighbours will merrily welcome thee here,

With them shall no perils attend thee;

They'll guard thee so safely from danger or care,

They'll gaze on thy beautiful winglets so fair,

And comfort, and love, and befriend thee.

The valuable notes and dissertations added by MM. Grimm to their work, have principally for their object to establish the connexion between many of these traditions and the ancient mythological fables of the Scandinavian and Teutonic nations. "In these popular stories," they are sanguine enough to believe, "is concealed the pure and primitive mythology of the Teutons, which has been considered as lost for ever; and they are convinced, that if such researches are continued in the different districts of Germany, the traditions of this nature which are now neglected, will change into treasures of incredible worth, and assist in affording a new basis for the study of the origin of their ancient poetical fictions." On these points their illustrations, though sometimes over-strained, are often highly interesting and satisfactory. Perhaps more attention might have been directed to illustrate the singular admixture of oriental incidents of fairy and romance, with the ruder features of Northern fable; and particularly to inform us how far the well-known vehicles of the lighter southern fictions were current at an early period in Germany. It often seems difficult to account for the currency, among the peasantry I, on the shores of the Baltic and the forests of the Hartz, of fictions which would seem to belong to the Entertainments of the Arabians, yet involved in legends referable to the highest Teutonic origin.

But it is curious to observe that this connexion between the popular tales of remote and unconnected regions, is equally remarkable in the richest collection of traditionary narrative which any country can boast; we mean the "Pentamerone, overo Trattenemiento de li Piccerille," ('Fun for the Little Ones,') published by Giov. Battista Basile, very early in the 17th century, from the old stories current among the Neapolitans. It is singular that the German and the Neapolitan tales, (though the latter were till lately quite unknown to foreigners, and never translated out of the Italian tongues,) bear the strongest and most minute resemblances. The French fairy tales that have become so popular, were chiefly taken from "The Nights (Notti. piacevoli) of Strapparola," published first in 1550; but in his collection such fictions occupy no prominent and apparently only an accidental station, the bulk of the tales being of what may be called the Classical Italian School. The Pentamerone was drawn from original sources, and probably compiled without any knowledge of Strapparola, although the latter is precedent in date. The two works have only four pieces in common. Mr. Dunlop would add greatly to the value of his excellent work on fiction, if he would include in his inquiries this most interesting branch of popular entertainment, to which Sir Walter Scott has already pointed in his notes to "The Lady of the Lake."

Among the most pleasing of the German tales are those in which animals support the leading characters. They are perhaps more venerable in their origin than the heroic and fairy tales. They are not only amusing by their playful and dramatic character, but instructive by the purity of their morality. None bear more strongly the impress of a remote Eastern original, both in their principles and their form of conveying instruction. Justice always prevails, active talent is every where successful, the amiable and generous qualities are brought forward to excite the sympathies of the reader, and in the end are constantly rewarded by triumph over lawless power. It will be observed as a peculiarity of the German fables, that they introduce even inanimate objects among their actors, a circumstance sometimes attended with considerable effect. Even the sun, the moon, and the winds, form part of the dramatis personæ.

The Translators can do little more than direct the attention of the curious reader to the source whence they have selected their materials. The nature and immediate design of the present publication exclude the introduction of some of those stories which would, in a literary point of view, be most curious. With a view to variety, they have wished rather to avoid than to select those, the leading incidents of which are already familiar to the English reader, and have therefore often deprived themselves of the interest which comparison would afford. There were also many stories of great merit, and tending highly to the elucidation of ancient mythology, customs, and opinions, which the scrupulous fastidiousness of modern taste, especially in works likely to attract tho attention of youth, warned them to pass by. If they should ever be encouraged to resume their task, they might undertake it with different and more serious objects. In those tales which they have selected they had proposed to make no alteration whatever; but in a few instances they have been compelled to depart in some degree from their purpose. They have, however, endeavoured to notice these variations in the notes, and in most cases the alteration consists is merely in the curtailment of adventures or circumstances not affecting the main plot or character of the story.

A few brief notes are added; but the Translators trust it will always be borne in mind, that their little work makes no literary pretensions; that its immediate design precludes the subjects most attractive as matters of research; and that professedly critical dissertations would therefore be out of place. Their object in what they have done in this department, has been merely to direct attention to a subject little noticed, and to point, however imperfectly, at a source of interesting and amusing inquiry.

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