Children's Literature Part 75

As he spoke, the figure of the dwarf became indistinct. The playing colors of his robe formed themselves into a prismatic mist of dewy light: he stood for an instant veiled with them as with the belt of a broad rainbow. The colors grew faint, the mist rose into the air; the monarch had evaporated.

And Gluck climbed to the brink of the Golden River and its waves were as clear as crystal, and as brilliant as the sun. And, when he cast the three drops of dew into the stream, there opened where they fell, a small circular whirlpool, into which the waters descended with a musical noise.

Gluck stood watching it for some time, very much disappointed, because not only the river was not turned into gold but its waters seemed much diminished in quant.i.ty. Yet he obeyed his friend the dwarf, and descended the other side of the mountains, towards the Treasure Valley; and, as he went, he thought he heard the noise of water working its way under the ground. And when he came in sight of the Treasure Valley, behold, a river, like the Golden River, was springing from a new cleft of the rocks above it, and was flowing in innumerable streams among the dry heaps of red sand.

And, as Gluck gazed, fresh gra.s.s sprang beside the new streams, and creeping plants grew, and climbed among the moistening soil. Young flowers opened suddenly along the river sides, as stars leap out when twilight is deepening, and thickets of myrtle, and tendrils of vine, cast lengthening shadows over the valley as they grew. And thus the Treasure Valley became a garden again, and the inheritance, which had been lost by cruelty, was regained by love.

And Gluck went and dwelt in the valley, and the poor were never driven from his door; so that his barns became full of corn, and his house of treasure. And for him, the river had, according to the dwarf's promise, become a River of Gold.

And, to this day, the inhabitants of the valley point out the place where the three drops of holy dew were cast into the stream, and trace the course of the Golden River under the ground, until it emerges in the Treasure Valley. And at the top of the cataract of the Golden River are still to be seen TWO BLACK STONES, round which the waters howl mournfully every day at sunset; and these stones are still called by the people of the valley

THE BLACK BROTHERS.

SECTION V

FABLES AND SYMBOLIC STORIES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jacobs, Joseph, _History of the Aesopic Fable_.

The only elaborate and scholarly study in English. Vol. I of a reprint of _Caxton's Aesop_. [Bibliotheque de Carabas Series.]

Published in 1889 in a limited edition and not easily accessible.

Jacobs, Joseph, _The Fables of Aesop_. [Ill.u.s.trated by Richard Heighway.]

Eighty-two selected fables. The Introduction is a summary of all the essential conclusions reached in the study above.

Wiggin, Kate D., and Smith, Nora A., _The Talking Beasts_.

The best general collection from all fields, including both the folk fable and the modern literary fable.

Babbitt, Ellen C., _Jataka Tales Retold_.

Dutton, Maude Barrows, _The Tortoise and the Geese, and Other Fables of Bidpai_.

Ramaswami Raju, P. V., _Indian Folk Stories and Fables_.

These three books are excellent for simplified versions of the eastern group. Those desiring to get closer to the sources may refer to Cowell [ed.], _The Jataka, or Stories of the Buddha's Former Births_; Rhys-Davids, _Buddhist Birth Stories_; Keith-Falconer, _Bidpai's Fables_.

SUGGESTIONS FOR READING

It is possible to piece out a very satisfactory account of the nature and history of the traditional fable by looking up in any good encyclopedia the brief articles under the following heads: Folklore, Fable, Parable, Apologue, aesop, Demetrius of Phalerum, Babrias, Phaedrus, Avian, Romulus, Maximus Planudes, Jataka, Bidpai, Panchatantra, Hitopadesa.

For a popular account of the whole philosophy of the apologue consult Newbigging, _Fables and Fabulists: Ancient and Modern_.

For distinctions between various kinds of symbolic tales see Canby, _The Short Story in English_ (pp. 23 ff.); Trench, _Notes on the Parables_ (Introduction); Smith, "The Fable and Kindred Forms," _Journal of English and Germanic Philology_, Vol. XIV, p. 519.

For origins and parallels read Muller, "On the Migration of Fables,"

_Selected Essays_, Vol. I (reprinted in large part in Warner, _Library of the World's Best Literature_, Vol. XVIII); Clouston, _Popular Tales and Fictions_, Vol. I, p. 266, and Vol. II, p. 432. The more general treatises on folklore all touch on these problems.

For suggestions on the use of fables with children see MacClintock, _Literature in the Elementary School_ (chap. xi); Adler, _Moral Instruction of Children_ (chaps. vii and viii); McMurry, _Special Method in Reading in the Grades_ (p. 70).

For a clear and helpful account of the French writers of fables, the most important modern group, read Collins, _La Fontaine and Other French Fabulists_. Representative examples are given in most excellent translation. The best complete translation of La Fontaine is by Elizur Wright; of Krylov, in verse by I. H. Harrison, in prose by W. R. S.

Ralston; of Yriarte, by R. Rockliffe. Gay's complete collection may be found in any edition of his poems.

Satisfactory collections of proverbial sayings useful in finding expressions for the wisdom found in fables are Christy, _Proverbs, Maxims, and Phrases of All Ages_; Hazlitt, _English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases_; Trench, _Proverbs and Their Lessons_.

A book of great suggestive value covering the whole field of the prose story is Fansler, _Types of Prose Narratives_. It contains elaborate cla.s.sifications, discussions and examples of each type, and an extended bibliography. Pp. 83-127 deal with fables, parables, and allegories.

SECTION V: FABLES AND SYMBOLIC STORIES

INTRODUCTORY

_The character and value of fables._ Some one has pointed out that there are two kinds of ideals by which we are guided in life and that these ideals may be compared to lighthouses and lanterns. By means of the lighthouse, remote and lofty, we are able to lay a course and to know at any time whether we are headed in the right direction. But while we are moving along a difficult road we need more immediate illumination to avoid the mudholes and stumbling-places close at hand. We need the humble lantern to show us where we may safely step.

Fables are lanterns by which our feet are guided. They embody the practical rules for everyday uses, rules of prudence that have been tested and approved by untold generations of travelers along the arduous road of life. They chart only minor dangers and difficult places as a rule, but these are the ones with which we are always in direct contact.

Being honest because it is the "best policy" is not the highest reason for honesty, but it is what a practical world has found to be best in practice. Fables simply give us the "rules of the road," and these rules contribute greatly to our convenience and safety. Such rules are the result of the common sense of man working upon his everyday problems. To violate one of these practical rules is to be a blunderer, and blundering is a subject for jest rather than bitter denouncement. Hence the humorous and satirical note in fables.

The practical, self-made men of the world, who have done things and inspired others to do them, have always placed great emphasis upon common-sense ideals. Benjamin Franklin, by his _Poor Richard's Almanac_, kept the incentives to industry and thrift before a people who needed to practice these everyday rules if they were to conquer an unwilling wilderness. So well did he do his work that after nearly two hundred years we are still quoting his pithy sayings. It may be that his proverbs were all borrowed, but the rules of the road are not matters for constant experiment. Again, no account of Abraham Lincoln can omit his use of aesop or of aesop-like stories to enforce his ideas. His homely stories were so "pat" that there was nothing left for the opposition to say. Only one who grasps the heart of a problem can use concrete ill.u.s.trations with such effect.

No one really questions the truths enforced by the more familiar fables.

But since these teachings are so commonplace and obvious, they cannot be impressed upon us by mere repet.i.tion of the teachings as such. To secure the emphasis needed the world gradually evolved a body of striking stories and proverbs by which the standing rules of everyday life are displayed in terms that cling like burrs. "The peculiar value of the fable," says Dr. Adler, "is that they are instantaneous photographs, which reproduce, as it were, in a single flash of light, some one aspect of human nature, and which, excluding everything else, permit the entire attention to be fixed on that one."

_aesop and Bidpai._ The type of fable in mind in the above account is that known as the aesopic, a brief beast-story in which the characters are, as a rule, conventionalized animals, and which points out some practical moral. The fox may represent crafty people, the a.s.s may represent stupid people, the wind may represent boisterous people, the tortoise may represent plodding people who "keep everlastingly at it."

When human beings are introduced, such as the Shepherd Boy, or Androcles, or the Travelers, or the Milkmaid, they are as wholly conventionalized as the animals and there is never any doubt as to their motives. aesop, if he ever existed at all, is said to have been a Greek slave of the sixth century B.C., very ugly and clever, who used fables orally for political purposes and succeeded in gaining his freedom and a high position. Later writers, among them Demetrius of Phalerum about 300 B.C. and Phaedrus about 30 A.D., made versions of fables ascribed to aesop. Many writers in the Middle Ages brought together increasing numbers of fables under aesop's name and enlarged upon the few traditional facts in Herodotus about aesop himself until several hundred fables and an elaborate biography of the supposed author were in existence. Joseph Jacobs said he had counted as many as 700 different fables going under aesop's name. The number included in a present-day book of aesop usually varies from 200 to 350. Another name a.s.sociated with the making of fables is that of Bidpai (or Pilpay), said to have been a philosopher attached to the court of some oriental king. Bidpai, a name which means "head scholar," is a more shadowy figure even than aesop. What we can be sure of is that there were two centers, Greece and India, from which fables were diffused. Whether they all came originally from a single source, and, if so, what that source was, are questions still debated by scholars.

_Modern fabulists._ Modern fables are no more possible than a new Mother Goose or a new fairy story. For modern times the method of the fable is "at once too simple and too roundabout. Too roundabout; for the truths we have to tell we prefer to speak out directly and not by way of allegory. And the truths the fable has to teach are too simple to correspond to the facts in our complex civilization." No modern fabulist has duplicated in his field the success of Hans Christian Andersen in the field of the nursery story. A few fables from La Fontaine, a few from Krylov, one or two each from Gay, Cowper, Yriarte, and Lessing may be used to good advantage with children. The general broadening of literary variety has, of course, given us in recent times many valuable stories of the symbolistic kind. Suggestive parable-like or allegorical stories, such as a few of Hawthorne's in _Twice Told Tales_ and _Mosses from an Old Manse_, or a few of Tolstoy's short tales, are simple enough for children.

_The use of fables in school._ Not all fables are good for educational purposes. There is, however, plenty of room for choice, and those that present points of view no longer accepted by the modern world should be eliminated from the list. Objections based on the unreality of the fables, their "unnatural natural history," are hardly valid. Rousseau's elimination of fables from his scheme of education in _Emile_ is based on this objection and on the further point that the child will often sympathize with the wrong character in the story, thus going astray in the moral lesson. Other objectors down to the present day simply echo Rousseau. Such a view does little justice to the child's natural sense of values. He is certain to see that the Frog is foolish in competing with the Ox in size, and certain to recognize the common sense of the Country Mouse. He will no more be deceived by a fable than he will by the painted clown in a circus.

The oral method of presentation is the ideal one. Tell the story in as vivid a form as possible. In the earlier grades the interest in the story may be a sufficient end, but almost from the beginning children will see the lesson intended. They will catch the phrases that have come from fables into our everyday speech. Thus, "sour grapes," "dog in the manger," "to blow hot and cold," "to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs," "to cry 'Wolf!'" will take on more significant meanings. If some familiar proverb goes hand in hand with the story, it will help the point to take fast hold in the mind. Applications of the fable to real events should be encouraged. That is what fables were made for and that is where their chief value for us is still manifest. Only a short time need be spent on any one fable, but every opportunity should be taken to call up and apply the fables already learned. For they are not merely for pa.s.sing amus.e.m.e.nt, nor is their value confined to childhood. Listen to John Locke, one of the "hardest-headed" of philosophers: "As soon as a child has learned to read, it is desirable to place in his hands pleasant books, suited to his capacity, wherein the entertainment that he finds might draw him on, and reward his pains in reading; and yet not such as should fill his head with perfectly useless trumpery, or lay the principles of vice and folly. To this purpose I think _aesop's Fables_ the best, which being stories apt to delight and entertain a child, may yet afford useful reflections to a grown man, and if his memory retain them all his life after, he will not repent to find them there, amongst his manly thoughts and serious business."

The best aesop collection for teachers and pupils alike is _The Fables of aesop_, edited by Joseph Jacobs. It contains eighty-two selected fables, including those that are most familiar and most valuable for children. The versions are standards of what such retellings should be, and may well serve as models for teachers in their presentation of other short symbolic stories. The introduction, "A Short History of the aesopic Fable," and the notes at the end of the book contain, in concise form, all the practical information needed. The text of the Jacobs versions was the one selected for reproduction in Dr. Eliot's _Harvard Cla.s.sics_.

Nos. 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 213, and 233 in the following group are by Mr. Jacobs. The other aesopic fables given are from various collections of the traditional versions. Almost any of the many reprints called aesop are satisfactory for fables not found in Jacobs.

Perhaps the one most common in recent times is that made by Thomas James in 1848, which had the good fortune to be ill.u.s.trated by Tenniel.

The versions are brief and not overloaded with editorial "filling."