Old English Fairy - Tales. Collected by S. Baring Gould.
(Methuen and Co.) —There is very good reading in these tales, as indeed there is sure to be in whatever Mr. Baring-Gould is pleased to give us. It is true that we are never quite sure whether he is making fun of us, or how far he uses the license of " introducing episodes," not so much from other stories as from his own store of inventions. Where, for instance, did the device of the mother using glue to keep her son's heart in the right place come from ? It sounds very modern. " I must admit," he writes in the notes to this tale, "that the bit of ballad (p. 91) is not a genuine old fragment." If he would make a clean breast of it we should have some carious con- fessions. Where, we wonder, did he "collect" the conversa- tions between the King and Queen in " The Shepherd's Daughter " ? However, the tales are good fun, wherever they may come from, and the notes at the end are not the worst part of the entertainment.—Legends from River and Mountain. By Carmen Sylva (H.M. the Queen of Roumania) and Alma Strettell. (George Allen.)—The volume contains ten folk-lore stories taken from the Queen of Roumania's pub- lished volumes, and a number of stories, mostly, we gather, invented by Miss Strettell, though these, too, have some old material, common to the fairy-tales of many nations, worked up in them. The Queen's contributions are mostly of a melancholy turn. That seems to be the character of the legends of South-Eastern Europe. There is something more cheery, and to our taste, we must own, more pleasing, about the others. Mr. T. H. Robinson's illustrations are graceful. Pretty faces and figures with easy curves have still some admirers.— Such people will not find much satisfaction in The House of Joy, by Laurence Housman (Kagan Paul and Co.) Hero we have eight fairy-stories for which Mr. Housman has done the work both of pen and pencil. The art is of the advanced kind—not as far on as Mr. Aubrey Beardsley's—but beyond old-fashioned tastes. The literature is good in its way, though we must own to a difficulty in determining whether it is grown-up people or children that are expected to like it.—The Kanter Girls. By Mary L. B. Branch. (Downey and Co.)—Little girls in America are, we are glad to see, beginning to share in the privileges long enjoyed by little girls in the Old World. A peculiar kind of blue bird brought to the two sisters Prue and Janet Kanter rings by which they might become invisible at will, a golden chariot drawn by swans, and other marvels. They find a dryad to play with, and discover that the variety is already common in tho backwoods. With many other delightful things and persons they become acquainted, all their adventures and discoveries being related with becoming gravity by their chronicler.
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