Andrew Lang

I recently posted a pin on Pinterest, because I thought it was funny… but the more I got to thinking about it, the more it reminded me of something that Andrew Lang once wrote in his foreward to The Lilac Fairy Book.

On Fairie Stories

“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 or writing, and arose like wild flowers before men had any education to quarrel over.  The grannie 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 Grece till about 800 B.C. is  a string of the fairy tales, all about Theseus and Hercules and Oedipus and Minos and Perseus is a Cabinet des Fes, 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 takes, and have them nicely types, and send them to Messrs. Longman and 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 Thackery 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.’
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But the three hundred and sixty-five authors who try to write new fairy tales are very tiresome.  They always begin with a little boy or girl who goes out and meets the fairies of polythuses and gardenias and apple blossoms: ‘Flowers and fruits, and other winged things.’  These fairies tr to be funny, and fair; or they try to preach, and succeed. Real fairies never preach or talk slang. At the end, the little boy or girl wakes up and finds that he has been dreaming.”

~Andrew Lang, Forward to The Lilac Fairy Book

It doesn’t make a lot of sense, being out of the context of the entire forward, but what Lang is really saying, in his rambling way, is that all new stories are simply redressed tales which have been told before.  And if you ever get a chance to read the rest of Lang’s ramblings from the forward to his book, you really should.  I think The Lilac Fairy Book is even a free download for the Kindle.