hearty faith." The Grimms sought the purity of a straightforward
narration. They were against reconstruction to beautify and poetize
the legends. They were not opposed to a free appropriation for modern
and individual purposes. They kept close to the original, adding
nothing of circumstance or trait, but rendering the stories in a style
and language and development of detail which was their own literary
German.

Perrault (1628-1703) had taken the old tales as his son, Charles, a
lad of ten or twelve, told them. The father had told them to the son
as he had gathered them up, intending to put them into verse after the
manner of La Fontaine. The lad loved the stories and re-wrote them
from memory for his father with such charming naïveté that the father
chose the son's version in preference to his own, and published it.
But the tales of Perrault, nevertheless, show the embellishment of the
mature master-Academician's touch in subduing the too marvelous tone,
or adding a bit of court manners, or a satirical hit at the vanity and
failings of man.

Dasent (1820-96) has translated the Norse tales from the original
collection of Asbjörnsen and Moe. Comrades from boyhood to manhood,
scholar and naturalist, these two together had taken long walks into
the secluded peasant districts and had secured the tales from the
people of the dales and fells, careful to retain the folk-expressions.
Dasent, with the instinct, taste, and skill of a true scholar, has
preserved these tales of an honest manly race, a race of simple men
and women, free and unsubdued. He has preserved them in their
folk-language and in their true Norse setting. Harris (1848-1908) has
given his tales in the dialect of Uncle Remus. Jacobs (1854-) has
aimed to give the folk-tales in the language of the folk, retaining