The Fish-King and the Dog-Fish

TO

BARBARA MARY RACKHAM

WITH ALL GOOD WISHES
FOR HER FUTURE HAPPINESS
MABEL H. SPIELMANN

PREFACE

It's all very well—but you, and I, and most of us who are healthy in mind and blithe of spirit, love to give rein to our fun and fancy, and to mingle fun with our fancy and fancy with our fun.

The little Fairy-people are the favourite children of Fancy, and were born into this serious world ages and ages ago to help brighten it, and make it more graceful and dainty and prettily romantic than it was. They found the Folk-lore people already here—grave, learned people whose learning was all topsy-turvy, for it dealt with toads, and storms, and diseases, and what strange things would happen if you mixed them up together, and how the devil would flee if you did something with a herb, and how the tempest would stop suddenly, as Terence records, if you sprinkled a few drops of vinegar in front of it. No doubt, since then thousands of people have sprinkled tens of thousands of gallons of good vinegar before advancing tempests, and although tempests pay far less attention to the liquid than the troubled waters to a pint of oil, the sprinklers and their descendants have gone on believing with a touching faith. It is pretty, but not practical.

But what is pretty and practical too, is that all of us should sometimes let our fancy roam, and that we should laugh as well, even over a Fairy-story. Yet there are some serious-minded persons, very grave and very clever, who get angry if a smile so much as creeps into a Fairy-tale, and if our wonder should be disturbed by anything so worldly as a laugh. A Fairy-tale, they say, should be like an old Folk-tale, marked by sincerity and simplicity—as if humour cannot be sincere and simple too. "The true Fairy-story is not comic." Why not? Of this we may be sure—take all the true humourless Fairy-stories and take "Alice"—and "Alice" with its fun and fancy will live beside them as long as English stories are read, loved for its fancy and its fun, and hugged and treasured for its jokes and its laughter. The one objection is this: the "true Fairy-story" appeals to all children, young and old, in all lands, equally, by translation; and jokes and fun are sometimes difficult to translate. But that is on account of the shortcomings of language, and it is hard to make young readers suffer by starving them of fun, because the power of words is less absolute than the power of fancy in its merrier mood.

Some people, of course, take their Fairies very seriously indeed, and we cannot blame them, for it is a very harmless and very beautiful mental refreshment. Some, indeed, not only believe firmly in Fairies—in their existence and their exploits—but believe themselves to be actually visited by the Little People. For my part, I would rather be visited by a Fairy than by a Spook any day, or night: but when the "sincerity" of some of us drove the Fairies out, the world was left so blank and unimaginative, that the Spooks had to be invited in. The admixture of faith and imagination produces strange results, while it raises us above the commonplaceness of everyday life.

But, as I say, certain favoured people, mostly little girls, it is true, are regularly visited by Fairies even in the broad daylight, and they watch them at their pretty business, at their games and play (for Fairies, you may be sure, play and laugh, however much the Folk-lorists may frown when we are made to laugh with them). Two hundred and fifty years ago a Cornish girl declared that she had wonderful adventures with the Fairies—and she meant truly what she said. And it is only fifty years since an educated lady wrote a sincere account of her doings with Fairies and theirs with her, in an account which was reprinted in one of the most serious of papers, and which showed that the lady, like the uneducated Cornish girl two centuries before, was a true "fairy-seer." Here is a part of her story:—

"I used to spend a great deal of my time alone in our garden, and I think it must have been soon after my brother's death that I first saw (or perhaps recollect seeing) Fairies. I happened one day to break, with a little whip I had, the flower of a buttercup: a little while after, as I was resting on the grass, I heard a tiny but most beautiful voice saying, 'Buttercup, who has broken your house?' Then another voice replied, 'That little girl that is lying close by you.' I listened in great wonder, and looked about me, until I saw a daisy, in which stood a little figure not larger, certainly, than one of its petals.

"When I was between three and four years old we removed to London, and I pined sadly for my country home and friends. I saw none of them for a long time, I think because I was discontented; I did not try to make myself happy. At last I found a copy of Shakespeare in my father's study, which delighted me so much (though I don't suppose I understood much of it) that I soon forgot we were living where I could not see a tree or a flower. I used to take the book and my little chair, and sit in a paved yard we had. (I could see the sky there.) One day, as I was reading the 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' I happened to look up, and saw before me a patch of soft, green grass with the Fairy-ring upon it: whilst I was wondering how it came, my old friends appeared and acted the whole play (I suppose to amuse me). After this they often came, and did the same with the other plays."

There! what do you say to that? Do you wonder that the good folk of Blagdon, for example, still point to the hill "where the fairies come to dance," and show you the Fairy-rings, like that which Cedric saw (as is recounted in this book), with the Little People capering about? Of course, the country folk don't laugh at them, because it is all so mysterious, and, as the scientific professors declare, abnormal, if not supernormal; but do you believe for one moment, that in their joyous dance the fairies do not laugh and joke as well as play and caper? The Bird-Fairy, as appears later, was always grave and loving, and didn't laugh—but then she was an enchanted Princess, and had sad and serious business on hand, and was not quite sure, sanguine though she was, of defeating the machinations of the cunning and wicked Wizard. But look at the classic Grimm, at the tiny, dancing, capering tailors whose portraits Cruikshank drew so well in it, and say if there is not a peal of laughter in every open mouth of them, and a chuckle in every limb and joint. Not "comic," Mr. Folk-lorist? Why, they are the very spirit and personification of comedy and fun!

But then your scientist comes along and tries to explain away the Fairy-rings themselves, which have defied explanation since Fairy-rings first came among us. Once at Kinning Park at Glasgow (and thousands of times elsewhere) four Fairy-rings appeared in one night—on a cricket-ground, if you please! on which the cricketers had been continuously playing and practising; and the poets said that they were made by the Fairies dancing under the moonlight, or, when the moon went to bed, by the lamplight of a glow-worm. That, I think, must be the truth, simple and sincere. Each ring was a belt of grass darker and greener than the surrounding turf, and was eight or ten inches broad; and the largest were nine and ten feet in diameter, and the others five and six, measuring from the centre of the belt. And the circles were accurate and the advent of them quite sudden. Clearly, the Fairies must have made them. But then a learned professor arose and lectured about them before the British Association. He was a great naturalist, and said that the rings contained a great number of toad-stools. And he brought along a chemist who analysed the fungi, and said he found in them a lot of phosphoric acid and potash and peroxide of iron and sulphuric acid, and a lot of things the fairies had never heard of and certainly never brought there, and he said that that, with phosphated alkali and magnesia, accounted for the rings! And then another great professor said that they must have been years in coming, and that electricity might have something to do with it, and that small rings sometimes spread to fifty yards in diameter—which only proves the wonderful power of happy industry of the Fairies, even in their revels and in their play.

So much for the Fairies.

But everybody is not in love with Fairies; some people don't care for them, some (as we have seen) don't even believe in them! Many don't care to read about them, being insensible to their grace and pretty elegance, their exquisite dignity, and their ever-present youth. Who ever heard of a middle-aged fairy? Such folk, be their age what it may, generally prefer fun; especially do they love what Charles Dickens once for all defined and established as the Spirit of Christmas. Well, here they may find Father Christmas at home, and on his rounds. Here they will find revealed and laid bare the whole secret and mystery of Santa Claus—where the presents come from, and where they are stored—how they are packed and how delivered while we are all asleep in our beds, delivered from the waits. Here, too, the "old-fangled father" is justified in the eyes of his "new-fangled sons," who recognise that fundamental truths—and such truths!—are not shaken by the on-coming tide of Time. And here, besides, you may learn what goes on on that other side of the moon which we never see, and what is its service to Man, and to Woman and Child as well. And for the first time in the history of romance we discover what it was that the Sleeping Beauty dreamt. And there are stories of other kinds—with a touch of pathos, too.

Story-telling is the oldest of the arts—the art of which we never tire—the art which will be out-lived by none other, however fascinating, however beautiful, however perfect. It may deal with human thought and human passion; it may appeal to the highest intellect and the profoundest sentiments of men; or just to the brightest and dreamiest fancy of the young. Be it but well told, even though it does not stir our emotions, the little story delights the imagination, and makes us grateful to the teller for an hour well spent or pleasantly whiled away. That is the greatest reward of the writer, as it is the sole ambition of the author of these little tales.

Mister M. H. SPIELMANN.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

The Title-page and End-papers are by Mr. Carton Moore Park.