Four and Twenty Fairy Tales

That is, the day after Twelfth Day, and is evidently the relic of some pagan rite in honour, most probably, of Freya or Frega, the Venus of the Scandinavians. "Dame Bertha horned," is one of the characters in Les Evangiles des Conoilles (Quenouilles), the joint composition of Jean d'Arras and three other writers, in 1475. It was translated into English, and printed by Winkyn de Worde, with the title of The Gospelles of Distaffs.[51 - See a learned and interesting paper on the Distaff and Spindle, by J. Y. Akerman, Esq., Sec. F.S.A., Archæologia, vol. xxxvii.]

A writer who signs himself Philetymus, has acutely pointed out a more probable origin of the title of Contes de ma (or de le) Mère l'Oye, which it is clear, from passages in Boileau and Molière, was applied to a certain collection of old stories, long before Perrault published his Histoires du Temps Passé. This writer refers us to the customs of antiquity and the superstitions of the middle ages. He recals to us that the ancient Romans confided their dwellings to the care of their geese. He alludes to the two hundred thousand Crusaders who, in 1096, directed their march by the flight of a goose from Hungary to Jerusalem; to the guardian fairies of the Château de Piron in the Contentin, who, at the time of the invasion of the Normans, transformed themselves into wild geese; to the benevolent and protecting dwarfs of the Canton of Berne, who are said to have been all goose-footed; and above all, to Marguerite de Navarre, who, in her Heptameron, calls herself Oisille; and he concludes by saying, "C'est que la bonne dame Oisille, veuve de grand expérience y représente la Mère l'Oie; c'est que du conté le moins discret elle sait tirer toujours une conclusion favorable à la morale… Contes de la Mère l'Oie c'est à dire contes de la vieille grand mère, jaseuse et criande comme l'Oie mais comme l'Oie, surtout gardienne vigilante de la maison… J'allais dire de la Vertu."

There is, amidst all this suggestion, one fact to repose upon. It is, that Perrault was not the inventor of the stories he published; that he merely transmitted to writing, no doubt with some touches of his own, tales of the nursery which had descended orally from the earliest ages of the Celtic occupation of Armorica or Bretagne, to the peculiar superstitions of which we shall find, as we proceed, they all have more or less reference, and that the particular stories printed in the first edition of his Histoires du Temps Passé, had long been popularly known as Contes de ma Mère l'Oye. In 1678, at the age of fifty, Perrault retired from his public office to dedicate himself entirely to literature and the education of his children. Some ten years afterwards he composed a novel in verse, founded on a celebrated tale in the Decamerone of Boccaccio, and well known to us as Patient Grizzel, his title being La Marquise de Salusses; ou, la Patience de Griselidis. It was published at Paris, by Jean Baptiste Coignard, in 1691. La Fontaine had, as early as 1678, said, in the fourth Fable of his eighth Book, Le Pouvoir des Fables

– "Et moi même
Au moment que je fais cette moralité
Si Peau d'Ane m'etait conté
J'y prendrais un plaisir extrême."

These lines it would seem induced Perrault to versify the old nursery story of Peau d'Ane, with which Louis XIV., when an infant, used to be rocked to sleep; and in 1694, on the publication of the second edition of his Griselidis, he added to it his metrical version of Peau d'Ane, and Les Souhaits Ridicules, known to us as The Three Wishes. The success of these stories led him to publish, in 1697, his collection of Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye, under the title of Histoires du Temps Passé, and in the name of his son, as before stated. This collection consisted of eight stories only, all in prose: La Belle au Bois Dormant, Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, Barbe Bleue, Le Chat Botté, Les Fées, Cendrillon, Riquet à la Houpe, and Le Petit Poucet– a proof that Peau d'Ane was not one of the Contes de ma Mère l'Oie, any more than Griselidis or Les Souhaits Ridicules. The same eight stories alone appear in the second edition in 1707 (four years after the death of Perrault), and in the third edition by Nicolas Gosselin, in 1724. It is not until 1742, when an edition of the Histoires du Temps Passé was published at the Hague,[52 - There was another edition, in French and English, published at the Hague three years afterwards: —Contes de ma Mère l'Oye, en Français et en Anglais. Par Perrault, avec des figures gravées par Fokke. La Haye: Neaulme, 1745. 12mo. It was a rare book in 1784, when it was sold, at the sale of the library of the Duc de la Vallière, for twenty-three livres nineteen sous.] that we find any addition to the first eight stories, and then we have for the first time the story of L'Adroite Princesse; ou, Les Aventures de Finette, presented to us, with a dedication to the Countess of Murat, as a story by Perrault, although a story with that title and on that subject was published by Madlle. Lheritier in 1696, in a work entitled, Œuvres Mêlées, contenant Nouvelles et autres Ouvrages en Verse et en Prose, in which also appears a letter from the author to the daughter of Perrault. But even in the Hague edition of 1742, there is no Peau d'Ane, and it is only in comparatively modern collections that a prose version of that story, as well as the one in verse actually written by Perrault, is, with L'Adroite Princesse, Griselidis, and Les Souhaits Ridicules, added to the eight original Contes de ma Mère l'Oie, or Histoires du Temps Passé.

From these eight stories I have selected six, omitting only Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, and Les Fées, so well known in the nursery as Little Red Riding Hood (why "Riding?") and Toads and Diamonds, and for the atmosphere of which they are alone calculated. On the others I shall now offer a few observations in their order of publication, and in the same spirit as those appended to the Fairy Tales of the Countess d'Aulnoy.

BLUE BEARD

La Barbe Bleue is founded, according to Mons. Colin de Plancy, on a tradition of Lower Brittany; and he remarks that Perrault must have heard it from the lips of nurses, or perhaps peasants, to have written with so much naïveté the scene of Sister Anne. He states also that it is pretended that Blue Beard was actually a nobleman of the house of Beaumanoir. He does not, however, seem to have been aware that the original of this terrible portrait is also said to have been Gilles de Laval, Seigneur de Raiz, created Maréchal de France, June 21st, 1429, for his defence of Orleans against the English, but whose infamous conduct in Brittany so exasperated the public against him, that in 1440 he was arrested by order of the Procureur-Général de Bretagne, and having been tried and found guilty, was condemned to be hanged and burnt, and underwent that sentence in a field at Nantes, on the 8th of October (some say 23rd of December) of that same year, after exhibiting, says the chronicler, great signs of repentance; his body was taken out of the flames, and buried in the church of the Carmelites at Nantes. It was, we are told, his taste for luxury and libertinism which plunged him into all the crimes for which he was so fearfully punished. He squandered a revenue of two hundred thousand crowns per annum, an enormous sum in those days, and which he had inherited at the age of twenty. He never travelled without being accompanied by an army of cooks, musicians, dancers of both sexes, packs of hounds, and two hundred saddle horses. Unfortunately for him, he thought it necessary to include in his suite of attendants some fortune-tellers and pretended magicians, which it is possible in those days may have caused the credulous multitude to impute to him some atrocities of which he may have been innocent. The whole procès is said to be still extant: but we are not furnished with any details which would identify him with the gentleman who rejoiced in a blue beard, and expiated his offences by being run through the body with cold iron, instead of being roasted at a stake like the guilty but penitent Marshal.[53 - Mr. Dunlop, who alludes to this story, speaks of the murder of his wives. The author of L'Art de Vérifier des Dates, gives him but one wife, Catharine de Thouars, daughter and heiress of Mille de Thouars, Seigneur de Chabanais et Confolent, whom he married December 31st, 1420, and who survived him, and was re-married to Jean de Vendôme, Vidame d'Amiens. She therefore lived with him for twenty years, and bore him one daughter, Marie de Laval, Dame de Raiz, who married twice, and died the 1st of November, 1458. Père Anselme says he was contracted in 1416 to Jeanne Paynel, daughter and co-heiress of Fouques, Seigneur de Hambye; but that she died previous to the celebration of the marriage.] Whether the line of Beaumanoir or of Laval has the best claim to the honour of his relationship, may be still a matter of dispute; but the fact more important to our present inquiry is, that in either case it is a tradition of Bretagne, and therefore strengthens the theory of Mons. de Plancy and the Baron Walkenaër.

There is no fairy in this story, but there is an enchanted key. "La clef," says the author, "etait fée." In the old translations this is rendered "the key was a fairy." "Fée" is, however, in such instances as these, not a noun substantive, but an adjective, now obsolete, but to be found in Cotgrave, spelt with a third e in the feminine. "Fée, m.; éee, f.: Fatall appointed, destined; also, taken, bewitched or forespoken; also, charmed, inchanted." – Edit. 1650.

There is another popular passage in this story which requires a word of remark: – "Je ne vois rien que le soleil qui poudroie et l'herbe qui verdoie." This has been generally translated, "I see nothing but the sun which makes a dust, and the grass which looks green." Mons. de Plancy appends a note to this passage, as follows: – "1. Poudroyer, darder, éblouir les yeux. 2. Verdoyer, jeter un éclat vert."

With great submission to so high an authority, I must venture to differ with him on this point. "Poudroyer" is an old French verb, signifying to reduce to powder. "Je poudroie, tu poudroies, il poudroie," &c. "Un cheval Espagnol poudroyant tous les champs," J. B. Rouss; and Bescherelle, in his Dictionnaire National, remarks, quoting the actual passage from Perrault, "Ce mot sonore poètique, épargnant une périphrase est a regretter." Verdoyer is also a verb active, signifying to grow or become green, and I have therefore taken the liberty to render the above celebrated reply, "I see nothing but the sun making dust" (that is to say, reducing the soil to dust by its heat), "and the grass growing green." It is the flock of sheep that afterwards raise or make a dust. It may be thought I am "making a dust," to use a familiar phrase, about a trifle; but I wished to point out that unless we could say in English, "the sun that dusts and the grass that greens," we cannot approach the terse and graphic description of dear Sister Anne.

Mons. de Plancy observes that the incidents of this story (excepting, of course, that of the enchanted key) are not impossible, provided they are supposed to have occurred in the middle ages; but that Perrault has placed them nearer his own times, by saying that Blue Beard's widow employed part of her fortune in purchasing commissions for her two brothers, as the sale of commissions in the French army was not known before the reign of Francis I.; but he does not notice that the mention of dragoons and musqueteers brings them still nearer. Blue Beard has been a favourite subject with the dramatists, both French and English. The celebrated melodrama by George Colman the younger, produced at Drury Lane Theatre, in 1798, in which the scene was transferred to the East, was rendered still more popular by the music of Michael Kelly: the "March in Blue Beard" was perpetrated on every piano alternately with the "Duke of York's March," the "Battle of Prague," and the "Overture to Lodoiska."

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY IN THE WOOD

The charming fairy tale of La Belle au Bois dormant is the gem of the collection. Its popularity is as great at the present day as it was two hundred years ago. I have called the reader's attention in a marginal note to the first mention probably of seven league boots,[54 - In the marginal note I have mentioned Jack and the Bean-stalk. This is an error. There are no seven league boots in that story. It is Jack the Giant Killer only who is the fortunate proprietor of the "shoes of swiftness," which either suggested, or were suggested by, the boots aforesaid.] but I reserved for the Appendix some observations upon the earliest mention of Ogres and Ogresses. The Baron Walkenaër, in his letters already quoted, has, I think successfully, combated the earlier notion that the word Ogre was derived from a classical source. He deduces it from the Oigours or Igours, a Turkish race mentioned by Procopius in the sixth century. Some tribes of Oigurs established themselves in the Crimea, and their language was called "Lingua Ouguresca" by the Italian merchants who first traded with them. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries all Tartars were confounded under the name of Oigurs. When the Magyars, a Tartar tribe from the banks of the Wolga, overran Dacia and Pannonia, the names of the ancient Huns and of the ferocious Oigurs were united to designate them. They were first called Hunnie-Gours, and their country Hunnic-Gourie, from whence Hongrois and Hungary. The atrocities committed by and attributed to the Oigurs spread horror and alarm throughout Europe. Their cruelties to infants, in which they have been only equalled by the barbarous Sepoys in the recent calamitous events in India, took especial hold of the imaginations of those to whose care children were specially entrusted, and the appellation of Oigur or Ogre became synonymous with that of cannibal, or any other ferocious monster in human form. In Roquefort's Glossaire de la Langue Romaine, Ogre is also derived from the same source. That "l'Huorco" of the Italians, the Orco of Bojardo and Ariosto, may be derived from the Latin Orcus, according to Minucci, as Mr. Keightley imagines, I am not prepared to dispute. Such curious coincidences are common to all who have wandered in the mazes of etymology; but I will merely suggest that it is quite as probable that Orco and Huorco were also derived from Oigur, the name by which the Tartars of the Crimea were known to the Italians as early as the twelfth century, as we have already seen. Florio, however (1598), says, "Orco as Orca, a sea monster," which the Ogre never was.

Spinning with the distaff is the oldest form. A wheel appears in illuminations of the fourteenth century, but the woman hent stood to her work. The more modern spinning-wheel, at which women sit, was invented in 1530, by a citizen of Brunswick, named Jurgen. For illustration of the accident to the Princess, it is perhaps worthy of remark that in the Pyrenees and western provinces of France the spindle is sometimes pointed with iron. "It is thus," says Mr. Akerman (the author of a paper on the Distaff in the Archæologia, vol. xxxvii.), "rendered a stiletto, with which the woman could defend herself." The same antiquary informs us that "the art of spinning in its simplest and most primitive forms is yet pursued in Italy, where the women of Caià still twirl the spindle unrestrained by that 'ancient rustic law which forbade its use without doors.'" So that the father of the Sleeping Beauty had a sort of precedent for his "Must not spin with spindles Act."

The Germans have a version of this story called Briar-Rose: vide Grimm's Kinder und Hausmärchen.

MASTER CAT; OR PUSS IN BOOTS

Maître Chat; ou, le Chat Botté.– This capital story is said by Mr. Dunlop and Mr. Keightley to be taken from a collection of stories by Giovan Francesco Straparola, printed at Venice in 1550-54, under the titles of Tredici Piacevole Notte, and translated into French "with considerable embellishments" in 1585. That the first story of the Eleventh Night is derived from the same source as Perrault's there can be little doubt; but I am not by any means prepared to admit that Perrault was indebted to that or any other printed collection for this or any one of those eight stories which it is clear were well known in France as Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye. Straparola, who seems to have borrowed largely from Morlini, and collected stories wherever he could find them, drew upon the traditions of Brittany as well as on the fabliaux of Provence. It is indeed notorious that the Italian novelists were indebted almost entirely to the Trouvères or Troubadours of Languedoc, whilst they themselves admit that the plots of their romances were of Armorican origin.

In Britanie of old time
These lays were wrought, so saith this rhyme.

Says the old translator of the Lai le Fraine, the author of which Mr. Dunlop acknowledges "must have been better informed than any modern writer" (History of Fiction, 8vo, 1845, p. 196). In the second edition of the Countess D'Aulnoy's Fairy Tales, I took an opportunity of vindicating that lady from the charge so hastily preferred against her both by Mr. Dunlop and Mr. Keightley, and I now contest as strongly the accuracy of the opinions of the same writers respecting the tales of Charles Perrault. Neither in the story of Straparola, first of the Eleventh Night, nor in the Gagliuso of Signor Basile (whose Pentamerone, published in 1672, is also roundly asserted to have been the "origin" of the French Contes des Fées[55 - "Of the ten stories in the Mother Goose's Fairy Tales of Perrault, seven are to be found in the Pentamerone," says Mr. Keightley, in his Tales and Fictions, p. 184. I have already shown that there were only eight stories in the Contes de ma Mère l'Oye, and in the Pentamerone I find but two that have any similitude to the tales of Perrault – viz., Gagliuso and La Gatta Cenerentola, both differing widely in many points from the ancient Breton traditions.]), do we find Puss in Boots. What would Le Maître Chat be, were he not also Le Chat Botté? Nor is there an Ogre – that especial characteristic of a legend of Brittany – nor consequently the delicious scene between him and Puss, which so dramatically winds up the French story. The same unmistakeable indications of its being a veritable Histoire du Temps Passé, militate against the belief alluded to by M. de Plancy, that the Marquis de Carabas was intended as a portrait of some particular nobleman of the time of Louis XIV.; and therefore that the usurpation of the castle and property of the ogre might be an allusion to the indelicate seizure by D'Aubigné of the domains of a Protestant, an exile in consequence of the religious persecutions at the close of the seventeenth century, "In which case," he adds, "the Cat would be Madame de Maintenon!" What a pity so ingenious an idea should be destitute of foundation. It is more probable that the wits of the day compared the illustrious individuals to the Marquis de Carabas and his Cat.

I have kept the old English title of Puss in Boots, though it is not literally that of the original. It would have been an indictable offence to have altered it.

The tricks of the cat to catch the rats are described almost in the words of Lafontaine, in his fable of Le Chat et le Vieux Rat, in which Maître Mitis, "l'Alexandre des chats," a second Rodillard, "se pend la tête en bas" and "s'enfarine" for the same purpose.

CINDERELLA; OR THE LITTLE GLASS SLIPPER

Cendrillon; ou, la Petite Pantoufle de Verre. Here, again, could it enter the heart of an Englishman to call this anything but Cinderella? I am proud to say I was not equal to such a sacrifice to principle. I should have been afraid to meet the eyes of my grandchildren. There are persons, however, who have been cruel enough to tamper with the second title, to destroy "the little glass slipper," and tell us that in the original story it was not a pantoufle "de verre," but "de vair" —i. e., a fur much worn in the middle ages, and from which the charge of vair in heraldry was taken. I thank the stars that I have not been able to discover any foundation for this alarming report. Even should it be unfortunately the fact, it would not affect the Conte de ma Mère l'Oye, as handed down to us by Perrault. In that, it is an undeniable "pantoufle de verre," and has been said to represent allegorically the extreme fragility of woman's reputation, and the prudence of flight before it is too late. There appears to be no doubt that this story is founded on an old Armorican tradition, as in 1826 an alteration of an ancient Breton chronicle was published by Madame Piette, entitled Laurette de Karnabas; ou, la Nouvelle Cendrillon, which is taken from the same source, but divested of its fairy agency; and the Countess d'Aulnoy had previously availed herself of some portions of the tale of Cendrillon in her story of Finette Cendron.

The trial of the slipper is like that of the ring in the story of Peau d'Ane, and a "little glass shoe" is the subject of a German fairy tale. The Germans have also a version of Cinderella, in which the slipper is of "pure gold."

At the banquet it will be remembered that the Prince is said to have given Cinderella both oranges and citrons. These do not appear to us at present as particularly suggestive of the magnificence of a royal collation; but in the seventeenth century, Portugal oranges were considered a present worthy princes of the blood. "Monsieur, me vint voir," says the Duchesse de Montpensier, in her Memoirs, "il me donne des oranges de Portugal." Molière, in his description of the comedy which formed a portion of the famous fêtes given at Versailles, in 1668, by Louis XIV., tells us that "d'abord on vit sur le théâtre une colation magnifique d'oranges de Portugal;" and in his own comedy, L'Avare, when Harpagon apologises to his mistress for not having prepared a collation for her, his son replies, "J'y ai pourvu, mon père, et j'ai fait apporter ici quelques bassins d'oranges de la Chine, de citrons doux, et de confitures." Also, according to L'Emery (Traités des Aliments, 1705), the citron was supposed to give a better colour to the lips, and the ladies of the Court in the 17th century, therefore, "portoient en main des citrons doux, quelles mordoient de tems en tems pour avoir les livres vermeilles." – Le Grand D'Aussi. —Vie Privée des Français, tom. i. p. 251.

RIQUET WITH THE TUFT

Riquet à la Houpe is perhaps the least known of the eight Contes de ma Mère l'Oye; but although it has not the attractive qualities which have occasioned the popularity of the others, it is an excellent story, with a valuable moral, though, strangely enough, the moralité with which it concludes takes no notice of it. The object of the story is evidently to show the superiority of mental to personal qualifications, and the power of the former not only to compensate for ugliness and deformity, but even to make one forget them. The concluding verses, however, point only to the fact that love can embellish its object, and turn even defects into beauties, passing over the more important one of the cause of the love itself.

Some writers have fancied the hero of this story to have been a person of distinction at the Court of Louis XIV., forgetting that, like the rest in the collection, it is a "histoire du tems passé." But, as Monsieur de Plancy remarks, "On voit souvent des allusions ou il n'y en a point;" and, as in the case of Le Chat Botté, the application may have been made to the man from the story.

The reader has been referred to this Appendix by a marginal note at page 32, respecting the Queue de Renard. The explanation offered by the editor of the French edition of 1826 is, that "les cuisiniers élégans se coiffaient dans leur négligé de travail de la peau de quelqu' animal, dont ils laissaient pendre la queue;" and he adds, "on voit encore, dans certaines provinces, des chasseurs coîffé ainsi." That a huntsman should sport a fox's brush, or wear a cap made of the fur of any animal, is not in the least remarkable or uncommon; but I do not see how it can be taken as a fact in support of the assertion that cooks did so either in the time of Louis XIV. or at present; and the Editor does not give us any authority for that assertion. Of all animals, a fox would be the last I should imagine a French cook would select to furnish him with a trophy or a sign of company, and that "twenty or thirty rôtisseurs" should all have "la lardoire à la main et la queue de renard sur l'oreille," appears to me, if we are to consider the author to have meant actually the tail of a fox, a very remarkable circumstance, as the use of the definitive article in both cases shows the "queue de renard" must have been as much the mark of a cook as the "lardoire," or larding-pin. I confess I am not satisfied with this explanation; and all my own researches and those kindly made for me by friends both in Paris and London, have hitherto failed in throwing any light upon this curious passage. "Queue de Renard" is the name of a plant known by us as foxtail, and it is also applied to a particular family of flowers; but it is likewise the name of an implement. "Outil a deux biseaux ou chanfreins par le bout dont on se sert pour percer." – Bescherelle. This description looks vastly like some accessory to the larding-pin.

The same authority has also: "Queue de renard à étouper. Le queue de cet animal dont se servent les doreurs pour appliquer les feuilles d'or ou d'argent." This, as we know, is not the entire brush, but a portion of the hair. In default of any positive information, I will merely make three suggestions: 1. A portion of the herb foxtail, dried, which might be used as a whisk. 2. A small instrument for piercing or skewering. 3. A portion of the brush, as used by gilders of wood or metal, and probably by the rôtisseurs of that day, as we find it was customary to gild the beaks and legs of the game and poultry served up at the royal banquets. Favin, amongst other writers, tells us of a grand banquet in which "le quatrième service fut d'oyseaux tans grands que petits, et tous le service fut doré."

In the Form of Cury there is a receipt for making "Viande Riall" (royal), in which the cook is told, after he has dressed it in "dysshes plate," to "take a barre of golde foyle and another of silver foyle, and lay hom (them) on, Saint Andrew's cross wyse, above the potage, and then take sugre plate, or gynger plate, or paste royale, and kutte hom of lozenges, and plante hom in the voide places between the barres, and serve hit forthe." The peacock served in his "hakell," —i. e., neck feathers, or in his "pride" —i. e. with tail displayed, &c. – had always his bill gilt.

Whatever, in fine, the "queue de renard" may have been, I cannot doubt that, worn "sur l'oreille," it was a distinctive mark of a rôtisseur of that day, as a pen behind the ear has been of a clerk in ours; and the probability is in favour of the third interpretation, as rôtisseurs were, as their name implies, those cooks who prepared the roasted dishes only, and in all the old accounts it is especially the "rotie" that is "doré."

Riquet à la Houpe is supposed to have inspired Madame de Villeneuve with the idea of the Beauty and the Beast. In my notice of that story, I shall have a word to say in refutation of that supposition. Riquet with the Tuft was the first of those fairy extravaganzas which the public have so kindly received during twenty years, at the Olympic, Covent Garden, Drury Lane, the Haymarket, and the Lyceum. It was written in conjunction with Mr. Charles Dance, and produced at the Olympic under Madame Vestris's management, December 26th, 1836

LITTLE THUMBLING

Le Petit Poucet.– This story, under the titles of Hop o' my Thumb, Little Thumb and his Brothers, &c., has been continually reprinted amongst our English nursery tales; and as I have already spoken of ogres and seven-leagued boots, there is little else in it that calls for observation. The latter are said to have been "fées" —i. e. enchanted, as the key in Blue Beard. The attempt of the parents to lose the children in the wood is an incident in Madame d'Aulnoy's story of Finette Cendron, drawn, no doubt, from the same source, as Cambry, in his Voyage au Finisterre, bears witness to Le Petit Poucet having been an "ancien conté populaire," which has for ages amused "les enfans de la Basse Bretagne." I think it is quite unnecessary for me to go into the question of this story being founded on an episode in Homer's Odyssey, to prove that Perrault was not thinking of Ulysses in the cave of Polyphemus, or that the pebbles and bread were not suggested by the clue of Ariadne.

In Grimm's Kinder und Hausmärchen are several stories about Thumbling; and I need scarcely remind the reader that England has her own renowned Thomas Thumb.

THE COUNTESS DE MURAT

Henriette Julie de Castelneau, daughter of Michel, second Marquis de Castelnau, Governor of Brest, and granddaughter by the mother's side, to the Count d'Angnon, Marshal of France, was born at Brest in 1670. At the age of sixteen, she came to Paris in the costume worn by the peasants in Brittany, the language of which province she spoke very fluently. Her appearance in this dress caused such a sensation that the Queen desired her to wear it on her presentation at Court. She married Nicholas, Count de Murat, Colonel of Infantry and Brigadier des Armées du Roi, descended from a family established in Auvergne before 1300, and that afterwards passed into Dauphiné. Being suspected by Madame de Maintenon of having been part author of a libel in which all the persons composing the Court of Louis XIV., in 1694, were caricatured or insulted, she was banished to Auch, Department du Gers. After the death of Louis XIV., the Regent Duke of Orleans, at the request of Madame de Parabere, recalled Madame de Murat in 1715. She did not, however, long enjoy her return to Paris, as she died at her Château de la Buzardiere in Maine the following year (1716), at the early age of forty-six. She was the author of many works, both in prose and verse,[56 - Her Histoires Sublimes et Allegoriques has been attributed by the Abbé Langlet du Fresnoy to the Countess d'Aulnoy.] but is best known by her Contes des Fées, six of the most popular of which are here translated. Four of these (Le Parfait Amour, Anguillette, Jeune et Belle, and Le Palais de la Vengeance) were printed in 1766, and again in 1817, in the collection of Fairy Tales attributed to the Countess d'Aulnoy, of whom Madame de Murat was the contemporary, but certainly not the rival. Her stories have more the character of romances and novels than fairy tales, with a strong infusion of sentiment, such as is to be found in the writings of Madame de Scuderi, Madlle. de La Fayette, the Countess d'Auneuil, and others of that period.

The plots of them were most probably taken from

"Les contes ingenus quoique remplis d'addresse Qu'ont inventés les Troubadours."

For to this she is specially invited in the verses at the end of the prose story of L'Adroite Princesse, which is dedicated to her, and attributed to Perrault. It has been shown, however, that if that version of L'Adroite Princesse were really written by him, it was not published till 1742, thirty-nine years after the death of the reputed author, and twenty-six after the death of the lady to whom it is dedicated.

PERFECT LOVE

Le Parfait Amour is a story exhibiting considerable talent, although deficient in those lively sallies, those amusing whimsicalities and allusions to the manners and dresses of the period which give so much piquancy to the Fairy Tales of Perrault, and the more elaborate compositions of Madame d'Aulnoy. The interest is entirely of a serious character; but the magic ring, with its power over the four elements – the value of which is destroyed by the too hasty wish of the lover – is an ingenious and dramatic idea, and the fatal lamps a truly affecting situation. This is the first Fairy Tale that gives us a picture of the Gnomes, and their subterraneous magnificence – a superstition existing all over Europe; the Trolls, or underground men of the North; the little people and ground mannikins of Germany; and the Korr or Korred of Brittany.

"The wise
And prudent little people, who keep warm
By their fine fires, many a fathom down
Within the inmost rocks. Pure native gold,
And the rock crystals, shaped like towers, clear,
Transparent, gleam with colours thousand-fold
Through the fair palace; and the little folks,