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Fairy Tales and Folk-tales
Ruth B.Bottigheimer
Tales about Fairies and Fairy TalesTales about fairies are elaborate narratives that depict the fairy kingdom and elfland; the
leprechauns, kobolds, gnomes, elves, and little people (Briggs 1976, 1978) that populate
its stories are authors of unintelligible actions that often have no moral point and
frequently lead to troublingly amoral consequences and conclusions. Based on surviving
Celtic lore, tales about fairies flowered in ornate seventeenth-century versions composed
during the reign of Louis XIV by the French précieuses and their followers. Their fairies
and giantesses, invented for literate adult aristocratic French audiences, soon found
favour among children. A representative example, Mme d’Aulnoy’s Yellow Dwarf, opens
with a princess disdainful of her suitors and continues with an unfortunate promise of
betrothal to a physically deformed yellow dwarf. When the princess finally meets and
falls in love with the valorous and virtuous King of the Gold Mines, a worthy suitor, the
yellow dwarf kills him and the princess swoons and dies in sympathy. The tale ends in a
manner hardly calculated to delight seventeenth- and eighteenth-century moralists: ‘The
wicked dwarf was better pleased to see his princess void of life, than in the arms of
another’ (1721 vol. 1, story VII; here Opie 1974:80).
Humble people had also become familiar with the fairy world, and in the same period
used simple stories of the fairy world to frighten children. John Locke decried this
practice and urged readers of his Thoughts on Education to eschew hobgoblins and their
ilk altogether (Locke 1693:159). Despite his influence in other educational questions, his
advice was often ignored, and tales about fairies specifically for children began to appear
after 1700 as part of the chapbook trade (Darton 1932/1982:94).
Fairy tales, unlike tales about fairies, more often than not, do not include fairies in
their cast of characters and are generally brief narratives in simple language that detail
a reversal of fortune, with a rags-to-riches plot that often culminates in a wedding.
Magical creatures regularly assist earthly heroes and heroines achieve happiness, and
the entire story is usually made to demonstrate a moral point, appended separately, as
in Perrault, or built into the text, as in Grimm.
In terms of the history and development of children’s literature, tales about fairies and
fairy tales postdate the earliest writing for children—instructional manuals, grammars,
school texts and books of courtesy. Bible stories, too, regularly preceded the appearance