Fairy Tales Around the World [antikvár]

V The fire flickered .the smoke curled up the huge old chimney. Outside, the wind howled, and the rain heat against the narrow windows. But the folk gathered around thefire heard none of it. Their ears werefor the old man who sat in the chimney corner, for he was the teller of tales . . . This was long ago, and the tales he told of enchantments and Princesses, of wizards and dragons, and kings and Princes were old even then, for he had learned them from his father, and him from his father before that, and so on back into the shadows ofthe enchanted past. No man knew, or knows today who told them first. Perhaps they were history, for who can tell whether the magic in them came from the tales, or from the tellers. But the old man in the chimney corner held his audience entranced, as his words painted a living picture of long ago andfar away, of once-upon-a-time. Later tellers of tales set them down on paper, and then they were printed in books. So they have come to us. These are the well-loved tales, the tales that nobody grows up without discovering anew. We have written them down afresh. Let us be your tale tellers, that you, the young world of today's readers, may be enchanted by their everlasting magic.