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Some who discuss English fairy tales focus on the fairy tale traditionamong the English speaking peoples, primarily of the British Isles and sometimes of America.Others use the term to designate the fairy tale tradition specifically in England. This discussionwill take the more limited focus on the fairy tale tradition in England.The second term that needs clarification is fairy tale. It is the English word for a class offolktale (a tale that is part of the oral narrative tradition that characterized pre-literate societies)that is more accurately expressed by the German word Märchen or by more recent terms, magictale or wonder tale.

These tales do not generally have anything to do with fairies, as the Englishterm implies; they are identified by the presence of certain tale motifs (such as wickedstepmothers, fairy godmothers, magical transformations, etc.); they take place in an undefinedtime and place, in an unreal world filled with the marvelous.

In this marvelous world, peopled bysupernatural beings, magical objects, and enchantments, humble heroes (or heroines) overcomeevil, succeed to kingdoms and marry princesses (or princes).The oral fairy tale tradition in England has been largely lost to history. The Englishpeople, like those of all cultures, must have had a rich narrative tradition as evidenced byreferences to then well-known tales and characters that have come to us from literature,correspondence, and other writings of English authors ranging from Chaucer, to Shakespeare andBen Johnson, to James Boswell.

Unfortunately, before anyone conceived of the idea ofcollecting England’s native oral fairy tales and preserving them in print.A ballad is a poem usually set to music; thus, it often is a story told in a song. Any mythform may be told as a ballad, such as historical accounts or fairy tales in verse form.

It usuallyhas foreshortened, alternating four-stress lines ("ballad meter") and simple repeating rhymes,often with a refrain.Native English fairytales must once have been abundant, but unfortunately at the veryperiod when someone might have thought of collecting them and transferring them from oralityto print, a flood of foreign tales appeared—first the French ones of Charles Perrault (1697),Madame d'Aulnois (1698), and Madame de Beaumont (1756), then the German ones of theBrothers Grimm (1812, and subsequent editions), who collected and wrote down many fairytales. They said fairy tales were the remains of ancient myths and should be set down andstudied.Selections from these were quickly translated and cheaply printed; by now established favouritessuch as Cinderella, Bluebeard, Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, The FrogPrince, Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, Rapunzel, The Tinder Box, and TheLittle Mermaid are totally absorbed into English culture, together with a few items from theArabian Nights, notably Aladdin.The English fairytales which did get printed in chapbooks were humorous ones (Jackand the Beanstalk, Jack the Giant-Killer, Tom Thumb), except for the more magical Three Headsin the Well.

Later, Victorian collectors found some oral examples, including Tom Tit Tot andCap o' Rushes from Suffolk, the Small-Tooth Dog from Derbyshire, and the Rose Tree fromDevon. However, the great majority of fairytale texts recorded in Britain were found either inScotland and Wales or among Gypsy storytellers; the typical English narrative genres are thejocular anecdote, the horrific anecdote (e.g., Mr. Fox), and the local legend. However, currentresearch among teenage schoolchildren shows that some evolve personal versions of fairytalesand tell them orally to their peer group (Wilson, 1997: 255-60).The best collection is Philip, 1992, with accurate texts and valuable introduction andcomments, with some texts summarized; Jacobs, 1890/1968, with texts often reworked.

All threecollections include other genres of folktale besides the fairytales.One of the oldest printed fairy tales in England was Tom Thumb which appeared in 1621in a chapbook. Chapbooks were works of popular literature sold for a few pence by pedlars or‘chapmen’ from the 16th to the 19th cent. In 1711 there appeared the first printed version of Jackthe Giant Killer, a popular English folk tale.Tom Thumb is born in answer to the wish of a childless poor couple, who desire a son even if heshould be no bigger than his father’s thumb. Magician Merlin answers their wish and the FairyQueen names him and gives him a hat made of oak leaf and a shirt of spider’s web.

Tom thenencounters many adventures. The last of them is being eaten by a fish which is then caught forKing Arthur’s table; Tom becomes a knight and when he dies is mourned by the whole Arthur’scourt.Jack the Giant Killer is a story of witty and ingenuous Jack, the only son of a Cornishfarmer. He decides to destroy a giant terrorizing Cornwall. Armed with horn, shovel and pickaxe, at night he digs a pit outside the giant’s cave.

Then he wakes the giant with a blast on thehorn and after the giant falls into the trap he kills him with his pick-axe. As a reward he gets thegiant’s treasure and the title ‘the Giant Killer’. He continues in the same style and kills two moregiants; he also helps king Arthur’s son to marry a lady of his heart and becomes a knight of theRound Table. In the second part he sets out to rid country of all giants and monsters and finallyto release a duke’s daughter whom he then marries and lives happily with on an estate given tohim by the kingHowever, most fairy tales circulated in England only in oral form.

Puritan writers, whowere the first to write for children, considered tales about magical wonders inappropriate forchildren; John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, regretted a childhood spent readingchapbook stories about marvellous happenings and in New England in America another writer,Cotton Mather, complained of ‘foolish Songs and Ballads’ on such fanciful subjects andrecommended writing ‘poetical compositions full of Piety’.In the 18th century English translations of French fairy tales mainly by Perrault werepublished in England and from the beginning of the 19th century also English folk fairy talesstarted to appear in print, e.g.

Jack and the Beanstalk.Jack and the Beanstalk is a story of lazy Jack, the only child of a poor widow. When shesends him to the market to sell her cow, he returns with a handful of beans instead of money. Shethrows the beans away and in the morning there is a huge beanstalk in the garden. Jack climbs toits top and finds there a barren land. He meets a fairy who tells him that nearby lives a giant whodeceived and killed Jack’s father years ago.

Jack goes to the giant’s house where he is given foodand drink by his wife who then hides him in the oven. When the giant returns home and fallsasleep Jack steals his hen which can lay golden eggs, climbs down the beanstalk and gives thehen to his mother. Later he makes two more journeys up the beanstalk and gets back with thegiant’s money-bags and a magic harp. When stealing the harp it starts speaking so the giantwakes up and chases Jack; when he starts climbing down the stalk, Jack cuts it so that the giantfalls down and is killed by the fall.Fairy tales-collectingAround the middle of the 19th century J. O. Halliwell and Robert Chambers collectedfairy tales, the latter in Scotland. In 1890 were published English Fairy Tales collected by JosephJacobs, followed by more collections of this editor.Tales are stories that tell of miraculous and fantastic happenings. The main character in fairytales are often supernatural and can do all sorts of extraordinary things.

These beings could becreatures such as fairies, goblins, brownies, pixies, elves, giants, trolls, leprechauns, witches andwizards. Fairies appear in both fairy tales (in an imaginary world) and in legends (in the realworld).In folklore, a diminutive supernatural creature, generally in human form, dwelling in animaginary region called fairyland; and the stories of its interventions through magic in mortalaffairs.The term fairy is also loosely applied to such beings as brownies, gnomes, elves, nixies,goblins, trolls, dwarfs, pixies, kobolds, banshees, sylphs, sprites, and undines.

The folkimagination not only conceives of fairyland as a distinct domain, but also imagines fairies asliving in everyday surroundings such as hills, trees, and streams and sees fairy rings, fairy tables,and fairy steeds in natural objects.The belief in fairies was an almost universal attribute of early folk culture. In ancientGreek literature the sirens in Homer's Odyssey are fairies, and a number of the heroes in his Iliadhave fairy lovers in the form of nymphs.

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