Tale
English Fairy Tales
Joseph Jacobs · 1890
Synopsis
Forty-three tales. A girl who has eaten five pies marries a king who will demand of her, in the last month of the year, five skeins spun each day; a little black thing with a long tail offers to spin in her place, but if she has not guessed its name before the end of the month, she will belong to it. Three little pigs set out to seek their fortune and each builds a house. Jack exchanges his mother's cow for beans. A suitor swears to return only after finding three fools greater than his betrothed and her parents.
Context
The preface opens with a question: who says the English have no tales of their own? Its author had found traces of about a hundred and forty and gives only a selection here; a quarter had been collected in the preceding ten years, and some had never appeared. He explains this absence by the gap between the classes that govern and write and labouring classes that are mute to others but eloquent among themselves. He recalls that the same was said of France and Italy until 1870, and that in fifteen years more than a thousand tales were collected in each of the two countries. He asks his readers to send him, care of his publisher, any stories they may know, written down as they are told.
Who it is for
Tales made to be read aloud, according to the preface; notes at the end of the volume give the source of each.
Prizes and reception
It popularised in English the best-known versions of Jack and the Beanstalk and of The Three Little Pigs; the collection has not been translated into French.
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