And going where this pathway goes,
You too, at last, may find, who knows?
The Garden of the Singing Rose.



PREFACE

The Editor thinks that children will readily forgive him for
publishing another Fairy Book. We have had the Blue, the Red,
the Green, and here is the Yellow. If children are pleased, and
they are so kind as to say that they are pleased, the Editor does
not care very much for what other people may say. Now, there is
one gentleman who seems to think that it is not quite right to
print so many fairy tales, with pictures, and to publish them in
red and blue covers. He is named Mr. G. Laurence Gomme, and he
is president of a learned body called the Folk Lore Society.
Once a year he makes his address to his subjects, of whom the
Editor is one, and Mr. Joseph Jacobs (who has published many
delightful fairy tales with pretty pictures)[1] is another.
Fancy, then, the dismay of Mr. Jacobs, and of the Editor, when
they heard their president say that he did not think it very nice
in them to publish fairy books, above all, red, green, and blue
fairy books! They said that they did not see any harm in it,
and they were ready to 'put themselves on their country,' and be
tried by a jury of children. And, indeed, they still see no harm
in what they have done; nay, like Father William in the poem,
they are ready 'to do it again and again.'