About old storytellers Author:Donald Grant Mitchell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: they were first made generally known, and how they were handed down from year to year, and from generation to generation. Of such are the fairy-stories belong... more »ing to all countries, and to the books of all nations, — stories to which children listen always with such open-eyed wonder. Do the old people tell you there is harm in them ? Well, it is a harm that must be met and conquered. We cannot root them out. The House that Jack built, it is hard to pull down. The gossips will be gossips. The evening shadows will throw grotesque lines on the greensward, that children will change into queer shapes. And while we tell of them, and of the colors which story-tellers have put upon these strange shapes of unreal things, we will try and pluck all the harm out of them, by treating them as we would treat any other unreal shadows of things which are actual. Those fairy-stories which have held their ground longest and best have almost always some good common-sense point in them ; and in no one that I can call to mind, do indolence and conceit win greater rewards than industry; or cunning and folly gain the battle over straightforward honesty. Apollyon is a great, shining fellow in Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress;" but the point of Christian's sword finds out the weak places in his harness of iron; and under Great-Heart (which is a capital name for a hero), he goes down altogether, and is heard of no more. Little Red Riding Hood may be eaten up by the wolf who has put on her grandmother's cap; but the little Red Riding Hoods who are left will look all the sharper on those who are full of professions, and not judge people by their caps, and not believe the lying words of the strangers they meet upon the high-roads. Such patient, quiet, steadfast toil as that of Cinderella, is ap...« less