16 NOVEMBER 1907, Page 8

The Olive Fairy Book. Edited by Andrew Lang. (Longmans

and Co. 6s.)—The fairy-tales in this volume come from various sources,—India, France, Turkey, Armenia, and Denmark. Mr. Lang talks to us in the preface of Perrault, the raconteur who amused the Court of Louis XIV., and his imitators, whose stories were collected in "Lo Cabinet des Fees," and to whom we owe some -famous nursery-tales. The collection is an excellent one— Mr. Lang's editorship vouches for that—and one and all are enter- taining. It would be difficult to decide between those taken from "The Fairy Cabinet," with their old familiar conventionality

of treatment, the Armenian tales with their poetic flavour, and the Punjabi stories of Major Campbell. The "Fairy Book" series does not need praise from us, but we can suggest that The Olive Fairy Book should be added to its predecessors. It is well illus- trated,-and is in every sense on a par with them.