The fate of the Celt in the British Empire bids fair to resemble that of the Greeks among the Romans.
From Joseph Jacobs
Permanent bonds of culture began to be formed between the extreme East and the extreme West of Europe by intermarriage, by commerce, by the admission of the nobles of Byzantium within the orders of chivalry.
Soils and national characters differ, but fairy tales are the same in plot and incidents, if not in treatment.
In the Land of Ire, the belief in fairies, gnomes, ogres and monsters is all but dead; in the Land of Ind, it still flourishes in all the vigour of animism.
Certainly there is abundant evidence of the early transmission by literary means of a considerable number of drolls and folk-tales from India about the time of the Crusaders.
I have come to the conclusion that a goodly number of the fables that pass under the name of the Samian slave, Aesop, were derived from India, probably from the same source whence the same tales were utilised in the Jatakas, or Birth-stories of Buddha.
Up to 1870, it was equally said of France and of Italy that they possessed no folk-tales. Yet, within fifteen years from that date, over 1000 tales had been collected in each country.
The words 'fairy tales' must accordingly be taken to include tales in which occurs something 'fairy,' something extraordinary - fairies, giants, dwarfs, speaking animals.
Children, and sometimes those of larger growth, will not read dialect.
Generally speaking, it has been my ambition to write as a good old nurse will speak when she tells fairy tales.
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