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Updated: June 20, 2025
Questions of the meaning of old Hebrew texts that had often no meaning at all, and of folk-tales and fairy-stories out of the nursery of the race the problem of whether Jonah had swallowed the whale, or the whale had swallowed Jonah the problem of whether it was on Friday or Saturday that the Lord had finished the earth.
As he looked from his window and saw that vast limit of London laid peaceably before him, as his imagination ran out over Europe and saw everywhere that steady triumph of common sense and fact over the wild fairy-stories of Christianity, it seemed intolerable that there should be even a possibility that all this should be swept back again into the barbarous turmoil of sects and dogmas; for no less than this would be the result if the East laid hands on Europe.
Even novels and plays were no longer fairy-stories of entrancing young men and captivating young women who fell in love with each other in the first chapter, and after increasingly picturesque incidents were married in the last one in the absolute surety of being blissfully happy forevermore.
Moreover, I am certain from my own study that these survivals are of much wider occurrence than is believed, but as yet the facts are insufficiently established. It now remains to consider a new field of inquiry; and that is the abundant evidence of mother-right to be found in folk-lore, in heroic legends, and in the fairy-stories of our children.
You have often heard about "wishing-caps," and how the people in fairy-stories put them on and just wish themselves wherever they want to be, and quick as a flash they are there. Well, there is a wishing-cap that every boy and girl can put on when he is tempted; it is this prayer, "O God, help me not to do this thing which is wrong!"
That surely is the meaning of the old fairy-stories of men who have come upon the white woman in the woodland, and followed her, never to be seen again of their fellows, or of those who, like Hylas, have met the water-nymph by the lilied spring, and sunk with her down into the crystal deeps.
When night came, and he watched for Margaret on the sands, he was delighted to see that Ronald was with her. The lad had come home and nothing was now remembered against him. That night it was Ronald told him fairy-stories of great cities and universities, of miles of books and pictures, of wonderful machinery and steam engines, of delicious things to eat and drink.
One or two of the twelve had a sneaking suspicion that they had told the truth, but these were laughed out of their wits by the wiser majority who were not such fools as to believe in fairy-stories. As one of the ten put it: "That Dyckman guy may have gone out into the rain, but, believe me, he knew enough to come in out of the wet."
And this story of the Doomed Prince, which I have to tell you, belongs partly to Naharaina, and, as you will see, some of our own fairy-stories have been made out of very much the same materials as are used in it. Once upon a time there was a King in Egypt who had no child. And when they saw him, they said, "His doom is to die either by the crocodile, or by the serpent, or by the dog."
I began with the one next me, asking her the question: "Do you like fairy-stories?" "Yes, I do," answered she, heartily. "Did you ever hear of the princess with the blue foot?" "No. Will you tell me, please?" Then I turned to the one on my other side, and asked her: "Did you ever hear of the giant that was all skin not skin and bone, you know, but all skin?"
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