HARVARD CLASSICS -THE FIVE-FOOT SHELFOFBOOKS OS Ell iiiQl QlllI] THE HARVARD CLASSICS The Five-Foot Shelf of Books throng peopf Tj-,'!-,' /.iirrv'nnr nut of the toicH In See hitn hanged V —Pogf 35-1 THE HARVARD CLASSICS EDITED BY CHARLES W. ELIOT, LL.D. Folk-Lore and Fable iEsop • Grimm Andersen W«/A \ntroductions and Urates \olume 17 P. F. Collier & Son Corporation NEW YORK Copyright, 1909 By p. F. Collier & Son MANUFACTUKED IN U. S. A. CONTENTS ^SOP'S FABLES— pace The Cock and the Pearl ii The Wolf and the Lamb ii The Dog and the Shadow 12 The Lion's Share 12 The Wolf and the Crane la The Man and the Serpent 13 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse 13 The Fox and the Crow 14 The Sick Lion 14 The Ass and the Lapdog 15 The Lion and the Mouse 15 The Swallow and the Other Birds 16 The Frogs Desiring a King 16 The Mountains in Labour 17 The Hares and the Frogs 17 The Wolf and the Kid 18 The Woodman and the Serpent 18 The Bald Man and the Fly 18 The Fox and the Stork 19 The Fox and the Mask 19 The Jay and the Peacock 19 The Frog and the Ox 20 Androcles 20 The Bat, the Birds, and the Beasts 21 The Hart and the Hunter 21 The Serpent and the File 22 The Man and the Wood 22 The Dog and the Wolf 22 The Belly and the Members 23 The Hart in the Ox-Stall 23 The Fox and the Grapes 24 The Horse, Hunter, and Stag 24 The Peacock and Juno 24 The Fox and the Lion 25 I CONTENTS PAGE The Lion and the Statue 25 The Ant and the Grasshopper 25 The Tree and the Reed 26 The Fox and the Cat 26 The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing 27 The Dog in the Manger 27 The Man and the Wooden God 27 The Fisher 27 The Shepherd's Boy 28 The Young Thief and His Mother 28 The Man and His Two Wives 29 The Nurse and the Wolf 29 The Tortoise and the Birds 29 The Two Crabs 3" The Ass in the Lion's Skin 30 The Two Fellows and the Bear 30 The Two Pots 3' The Four Oxen and the Lion 31 The Fisher and the Little Fish 31 Avaricious and Envious 3^ The Crow and the Pitcher 32 The Man and the Satyr 33 The Goose With the Golden Eggs 33 The Labourer and the Nightingale 33 The Fox, the Cock, and the Doc 34 The Wind and the Sun 34 Hercules and the Waggoner 35 The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey 35 The Miser and His Gold 3^ The Fox and the Mosquitoes 3^ The Fox Without a Tail 37 The One-Eyed Doe 37 Belling the Cat 3^ The Hare and the Tortoise 38 The Old Man and Death 39 The Hare With Many Friends 39 The Lion in Love 4° The Bundle of Sticks 40 The Lion, the Fox, and the Beasts 40 CONTENTS 3 PMSB The Ass's Brains 4^ The Eagle and the Arrow 41 The Milkmaid and Her Pail 4^ The Cat-Maiden 4a The Horse and the Ass 4a The Trumpeter Taken Prisoner 43 The Buffoon and the Countryman 43 The Old Woman and the Wine-Jar 43 The Fox and the Goat 44 GRIMM'S TALES— The Frog-King, or Iron Henry 47 Our Lady's Child 50 Faithful John 57 The Pack of Ragamuffins 64 Rapunzel 66 The Three Little Men in the Wood 69 The Three Spinners 74 Hansel and Grethel . 76 The Fisherman and His Wii„ 83 The Valiant Little Tailor 90 Cinderella 98 Mother Holle 104 The Seven Ravens 107 Little Red-Cap 109 The Bremen Town-Musicians II3 The Girl Without Hands 116 Clever Elsie 121 Thumbling 124 Thumbling as Journeyman 128 The Six Swans 132 Little Briar-Rose 137 FuNDEvocEL 140 King Thrushbeakd 142 Little Snow-White 146 Rumpelstiltskin I54 The Three Feathers 156 The Golden Goose 159 Allerleirauh 162 4 CONTENTS PAOB The Wolf and the Fox 167 Hans in Luck 168 The Goose-Girl 173 The Peasant's Wise Daughter 178 The Spirit in the Bottle 182 Bearskin 185 The Willow-Wren and the Bear 190 Wise Folks 192 The Shroud I95 The Two Kings' Children 196 The Seven Swabians 203 One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes 206 Snow-White and Rose-Red 213 ANDERSEN'S TALES— The Ugly Duckling 221 The Swineherd 230 The Emperor's New Clothes 234 The Little Sea-Maid 238 The Elfin Mound 259 The Wild Swans 265 The Garden of Paradise 280 The Constant Tin Soldier 293 The Daisy 297 The Nightingale 301 The Storks 310 The Darning-needle 315 The Shadow 3'^ The Red Shoes 329 Little Ida's Flowers 334 The Angel 34' The Flying Trunk 344 The Tinder-Box 349 The Buckwheat 355 The Bell 357 ^SOP'S FABLES INTRODUCTORY NOTE The habit of telling stories is one of the most primitive characteristics of the human race. The most ancient civilizations, the most barbarous savages, of whom we have any knowledge have yielded to investigators clear traces of the possession of this practise. The specimens of their narrative that have been gathered from all the ends of the earth and from the remotest times of which we have written record show traces of pur- pose, now religious and didactic, now patriotic and political; but behind or beside the purpose one can discern the permanent human delight in the story for its own sake. The oldest of stories are the myths: not the elaborated and sophisti- cated tales that one finds in, say, Greek epic and drama, but the myth pure and simple. This is the answer of primitive science to the question of the barbaric child, the explanation of the thunder or the rain, of the origin of man or of fire, of disease or death. The form of such myths is accounted for by the belief known as "animism," which assumed per- sonality in every object and phenomenon, and conceived no distinction in the kind of existence of a man, a dog, a tree, or a stone. Such myths are still told among, e. g., the American Indians, and the assumption just mentioned accounts for such features as the transformation of the same being from a man into a log or a fish, or the marriage of a coyote and a woman. Derived from this state of belief and showing signs of their origin, are such animal stories as form the basis of the artistically worked- up tales of "Uncle Remus." Thus in primitive myth, the divinities of natural forces are not f)ersoni- fications, for there was no figure of speech involved; the storm, the ocean, and the plague were to the mythmakers actually persons. The symbolical element in literary myths is a later development, possible only as man gradually arrived at the realization of his separateness in kind from the non-human objects of his senses. With this realization came the attempt to adapt the myths that had come down from more primitive times to his new way of thinking, and the long process of making the myths reason- able and credible set in. But while the higher myths were being thus transformed into the religions of the civilized man, the ways of thinking that had produced them in their original form survived to some extent in stories of less dignity, which made no pretensions to be either science or religion but which were told only because they entertained. Tales of this kind have 8 INTRODUCTORY NOTE come down from mouth to mouth in less sophisticated communities to our own day, and are now being killed out only by the printing-press and the diffusion of the art of reading. But happily many have been collected, and they are represented in the present volume by the "Marchen" or household tales preserved by Grimm. Far earlier written down, but less primitive in kind, are the itsopic Fables. In these allegorical tales, the form of the old animistic story is used without any belief in the identity of the personalities of men and animals, but with a conscious double meaning and for the purpwse of teaching a lesson. The fable is a product not of the folk but of the learned; and though at times it has been handed down by word of mouth, it is really a literary form. Still more recent, both in kind and in date, are the Wonder stories of modern manufacture represented here by the tales of Hans Christian Andersen. This nineteenth-century Dane had a marvelous knack of entertaining children by repeating old folk-tales of the type collected by Grimm; and his success in this led him on to attempt inventing new ones. The new ones were successful, too; but though the incidents were often suggested by traditional stories, Hans Christian Andersen's finished products are to be regarded as a form of modern fiction worked out under the influence of more or less primitive folk-tales. Msop is little more than the shadow of a name. He was a slave from the island of Samos, who flourished, according to Herodotus, about the middle of the sixth century before Christ; and his name is associated with the special use of the fable for political purposes at a time when the reign of the tyrants in Greece made unveiled speech dangerous.