Selected Tales [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONThe modest, almost deprecating title under which what are often called the 'Grimm fairytales' appeared in Germany in 1812 and thereafter was Kinder- und Hausmärchen, gesammelt durch die Brüder Grimm. This wording may remind us of three things: first, of the still not wholly stale controversy, to which we must later revert, about whether they are in fact stories 'for children and the household'; secondly, of the difficulty of translahng the word Märchen; thirdly and most importantly, of the fact that they were 'collected by' the brothers Grimm, who were of course their transcribers and editors and not their authors. Etymologically Märchen is simply a story or tale, like conte in French or skazka in Russian, the cüminutive chen being no more significant than the ka of skazka. The common English rendering 'fairytale' is misleading. It is not quite true to say that hardly any of these stories concern 'fairies', since in a number of them there is a supernatural being referred to as Fee in the 1812 edition, after which the Grimms for reasons of linguistic purism altered it to Zauberin (enchantress, sorceress). But they are certainly not peopled by creatures such as those in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the word 'fairy' thus has inappropriate associations for English readers. On the other hand the majority, and nearly all the most interesting and famous of the tales, operate in a world of wish-fulfilments and magic events, usually involving the laying and/or lifting of some magic speU {Verwünschung, a bewitching, literally a 'be-wishing'), and the word Märchen has by traditional usage taken on this more specialized meaning of a 'magic tale' or 'tale of enchantment' {Zaubermärchen, volshebnaya skazka)-, Tolkien indeed, in his well-known essay 'On Fairy-Stories', finds the term acceptable provided that 'fairy' is taken to mean not an elvish creature but simply magic or enchantment, the realm of féerie. The word Märchen is also more loosely applied to the