'Family Shakespeares'. Those who, with so large a choice of beauty
before them, would pick out and gloat over this or that coarseness or
freedom of expression, are like those who, in reading the Bible,
should always turn to Leviticus, or those whose Shakespeare would
open of itself at Pericles Prince of Tyre. Such readers the
Translator does not wish to have.




Notice to the First Edition

These translations from the _Norske Folkeeventyr_, collected
with such freshness and faithfulness by MM. Asbjoernsen and Moe, have
been made at various times and at long intervals during the last
fifteen years; a fact which is mentioned only to account for any
variations in style or tone--of which, however, the Translator is
unconscious--that a critical eye may detect in this volume. One of
them, _The Master Thief_, has already appeared in Blackwood's
Magazine for November 1851; from the columns of which periodical it
is now reprinted, by the kind permission of the Proprietors.

The Translator is sorry that he has not been able to comply with the
suggestion of some friends upon whose good-will he sets all store,
who wished him to change and soften some features in these tales,
which they thought likely to shock English feeling. He has, however,
felt it to be out of his power to meet their wishes, for the merit of
an undertaking of this kind rests entirely on its faithfulness and
truth; and the man who, in such a work, wilfully changes or softens,
is as guilty as he 'who puts bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter'.