A Study of Fairy Tales. Laura Fry Kready
The imaginative. Fairy tales satisfy the activity of the child's imagination and stimulate his fancy. Some beautiful spring day, perhaps, after he has enjoyed an excursion to a field or meadow or wood, he will want to follow Andersen's Thumbelina in her travels. He will follow her as she floats on a lily pad, escapes a frog of a husband, rides on a butterfly, lives in the house of a field-mouse, escapes a mole of a husband, and then rides on the back of a friendly swallow to reach the south land and to become queen of the flowers. Here there is much play of fancy. But even when the episodes are homely and the situations familiar, as in Little Red Hen, the act of seeing them as distinct images and of following them with interest feeds the imagination. For while the elements are familiar, the combination is unusual; and this nourishes the child's ability to remove from the usual situation, which is the essential element in all originality. By entering into the life of the characters and identifying himself with them, he develops a large sympathy and a sense of power, he gains insight into life, and a care for the interests of the world. Thus imagination grows "in flexibility, in scope, and in sympathy, till the life which the individual lives is informed with the life of nature and of society," and acquires what Professor John Dewey calls Culture.
Animals. Very few of the child's fairy tales contain no animals. Southey said of a home: "A house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is in it a child rising three years old and a kitten rising six weeks; kitten is in the animal world what a rose-bud is in a garden." In the same way it might be said of fairy tales: No tale is quite suited to the little child unless in it there is at least one animal. Such animal tales are The Bremen Town Musicians, Henny Penny, Ludwig and Marleen and The Elephant's Child. The episode of the hero or heroine and the friendly animal, as we find it retained in Two-Eyes and her little Goat, was probably a folk-lore convention—since dropped—common to the beginning of many of the old tales. It indicates how largely the friendly animal entered into the old stories.
A portrayal of human relations, especially with children. In Cinderella the child is held by the unkind treatment inflicted upon Cinderella by her Stepmother and the two haughty Sisters. He notes the solicitude of the Mother of the Seven Kids in guarding them from the Wolf. In the Three Bears he observes a picture of family life. A little child, on listening to The Three Pigs for the first time, was overwhelmed by one thought and cried out, "And didn't the Mother come home any more?" Naturally the child would be interested especially in children, for he is like the older boy, who, when looking at a picture-book, gleefully exclaimed, "That's me!" He likes to put himself in the place of others. He can do it most readily if the character is a small individual like Red Riding Hood who should obey her mother; or like Goldilocks who must not wander in the wood; or like Henny Penny who went to take a walk and was accosted by, "Where are you going?" In Brother Rabbit and the Little Girl the Little Girl takes the keenest enjoyment in putting herself in the customary grown-up's place of granting permission, while the Rabbit takes the usual child's place of mentioning a request with much persuasion. The child is interested, too, in the strange people he meets in the fairy tales: the clever little elves who lived in the groves and danced on the grass; the dwarfs who inhabited the earth-rocks and the hills; the trolls who dwelt in the wild pine forest or the rocky spurs, who ate men or porridge, and who fled at the noise of bells; the fairies who pleased with their red caps, green jackets, and sprightly ways; the beautiful fairy godmother who waved her wonderful wand; or those lovely fairy spirits who appeared at the moment when most needed—just as all best friends do—and who could grant, in a twinkling, the wish that was most desired.
The diminutive. This pleasure in the diminutive is found in the interest in the fairy characters, Baby Bear, Little Billy-Goat, Little Pig, the Little Elves, Teeny Tiny, Thumbelina, and Tom Thumb, as well as in tiny objects. In the Tale of Tom Thumb the child is captivated by the miniature chariot drawn by six small mice, the tiny butterfly-wing shirt and chicken-skin boots worn by Tom, and the small speech produced by him at court, when asked his name:—
My name is Tom Thumb,
From the Fairies I come;
When King Arthur shone,
This court was my home.
In me he delighted,
By him I was knighted.
Did you never hear of
Sir Thomas Thumb?
Doll i' the Grass contains a tiny chariot made from a silver spoon and drawn by two white mice, and Little Two-Eyes gives a magic table. The child takes keen delight in the fairy ship which could be folded up and put into a pocket, and in the wonderful nut-shell that could bring forth beautiful silver and gold dresses. The little wagon of Chanticleer and Partlet that took them a trip up to the hill, and the tiny mugs and beds, table and plates, of Snow White's cottage in the wood—such as these all meet the approval of child-nature.
Rhythm and repetition. The child at first loves sound; later he loves sound and sense, or meaning. Repetition pleases him because he has limited experience and is glad to come upon something he has known before. He observes and he wants to compare, but it is a job. Repetition saves him a task and boldly proclaims, "We are the same." Such is the effect of the repetitive expressions which we find in Teeny Tiny: as, "Now when the teeny-tiny woman got home to her teeny-tiny house, she was a teeny-tiny bit tired"; or, in Little Jack Rollaround, who cried out with such vigorous persistence, "Roll me around!" and called to the moon, "I want the people to see me!" In The Little Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings, one of the pleasantest tales for little children, the White Rabbit said to his Mammy, "Oh, Mammy, I wish I had a long gray tail like Bushy Tail's; I wish I had a back full of bristles like Mr. Porcupine's; I wish I had a pair of red rubbers like Miss Puddleduck's." At last, when he beheld the tiny red-bird at the Wishing-Pond, he said, "Oh, I wish I had a pair of little red wings!" Then, after getting his wings, when he came home at night and his Mammy no longer knew him, he repeated to Mr. Bushy Tail, Miss Puddleduck, and old Mr. Ground Hog, the same petition to sleep all night, "Please, kind Mr. Bushy Tail, may I sleep in your house all night?" etc. Repetition here aids the child in following the characters, the story, and its meaning. It is a distinct help to unity and to clearness.
The Elephant's Child is an example of how the literary artist has used this element of repetition, and used it so wonderfully that the form is the matter and the tale cannot be told without the artist's words. "'Satiable curtiosity," "the banks of the great, grey-green, greasy, Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees," and "'Scuse me," are but a few of those expressions for which the child will watch as eagerly as one does for a signal light known to be due. The repetition of the one word, "curtiosity," throughout the tale, simply makes the point of the whole story and makes that point delightfully impressive.
Rhythm and repetition also make a bodily appeal, they appeal
to the child's motor sense and instinctively get into his
muscles. This is very evident in Brother Rabbit's Riddle:—
De big bird bob en little bird sing;
De big bee zoon en little bee sting,
De little man lead en big hoss foller—
Kin you tell wat 's good fer a head in a holler?
The song in Brother Rabbit and the Little Girl appeals also to the child's sense of sound:—
De jay-bird hunt de sparrer-nes;
De bee-martin sail all 'roun';
De squer'l, he holler from de top er de tree,
Mr. Mole, he stay in de ground;
He hide en he stay twel de dark drap down—
Mr. Mole, he hide in de groun'.
The simple and the sincere. The child's taste for the simple and the sincere is one reason for the appeal which Andersen's tales make. In using his stories it is to be remembered that, although Andersen lacked manliness in being sentimental, he preserved the child's point of view and gave his thought in the true nursery story's mode of expression. Since real sentiment places the emphasis on the object which arouses feeling and the sentimental