Joseph Jacobs English Fairy Tales

Joseph Jacobs published his "English Fairy Tales" in 1890. In his preface, he asks the question "WHO says that English folk have no fairy tales of their own?" Many of the 140 or so tales he collected had not previously been written down. The explanation for this oversight, he concludes, is "The lamentable gap between the governing and recording classes and the dumb working classes of this country".

His collection marked a revival of the English tradition in fairy tales. During the previous 200 years, European fairy tales had become popular in England. In the 18th Century, France's Charles Perrault had embellished folk-lore with courtly romance (as in Cinderella). The Danish Hans Christian Andersen created sophisticated and touching stories such as the Snow Queen (1845). The German fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm play on fears and human weakness, and plumb dark psychological depths.

The English Fairy tales, however, are closer to their folk-lore roots. Stories such as Jack and the Beanstalk, The Three Little Pigs, and Johnny-Cake (The Gingerbread Man), are characterised by what a later introduction calls "rude vigour". The style is plain and unadorned, and the action is often violent.

Storynory has drawn heavily on versions by Jacob's friend, Andrew Lang. This the reason why our Three Little Pigs are pursued by a fox, not a wolf, and he doesn't "huff and puff" as in Jacob's tale. Our (Lang) version of the Jack and the Beanstalk is much more fanciful than Jacob's, including an encounter with a good fairy and a lengthy back-story about Jack's father, an honourable knight.

I think, however, that there's a lot to be said for Jacob's more vigorous style. It works well orally. After all, folk-lore is made to be told aloud. We will be recording more of Jacob's versions.