Victorian Sources of Fairy Tales: A Collection of Researches

Victorian Sources of Fairy Tales: (1) A Collection of Researches. 5 vols, with an introduction by Robert A Gilbert. Bristol: Thoemmes, 2002. 1420 pp. Illus. 395.00 [pounds sterling] (hbk). ISBN 4-901481-32-0

This series of five reprints makes available once again a body of important work in the development of folklore studies; in particular, the study of fairy beliefs in Britain, Scotland and Ireland during the nineteenth century. Like other nineteenth-century folklore, it was the imaginative--what we would now call "romantic"--aspects of culture, legends and magical beliefs that interested these writers. Their concerns are generally with primitive origins of folklore and its survival among marginal groups. Nevertheless, understanding the history of a discipline is essential, and several of these writers, in particular Sidney Hartland and David Mac Ritchie, helped to establish the parameters of the discipline that is today folklore studies.

The series is prefaced by a short introduction. Reprints of this type certainly require some context, but this introduction is neither clear nor very helpful. The author, R. A. Gilbert, begins by tackling the uses of the term "fairy tale," a perennial problem for anyone attempting to use this material. The first paragraphs imply that the term is used in relation to beliefs about fairies. Indeed Ritson, Mac Ritchie, and Halliwell deal with fairy beliefs and the theories about them. However, there is also considerable discussion of "folk-tales and legends in general" in the volumes by Hartland and Bunce, and of this there is no indication whatsoever. The introduction abounds with references to interesting Victorian literature using fairies, but contains little or no information on the authors of the books, and while it talks vaguely of a "folklore approach" it actually misses important folklore research on the topics that Gilbert feels these volumes may illuminate (pp. x-xii). For example, the use of fairy lore as an educational tool has been studied by Bruno Bettleheim, and Diane Purkiss, and the link between fairies and female empowerment is also considered by Purkiss and several other well-known female scholars. A number of folklorists (Richard Dorson, W. F. H. Nicolaisen, Jacqueline Simpson, Gillian Bennett, Juliette Wood) have written on the history of folkloristics in the nineteenth century. Frankly it is not clear how this introduction will give a non-specialist any useful line through the five volumes or any way to evaluate what the writers are saying. However, the shortcomings of the introduction do not mean that the works are not valuable in themselves.

The earliest researcher of the five reprinted here is the English antiquary, Joseph Ritson (1752-1803). He is perhaps best known for his work on the Robin Hood ballads, and he established standards of accuracy in editing which still resonate today. The collection reprinted here, Fairy Tales, Now First Collected: To which are Prefixed Two Dissertations on Pygmies; On Fairies, give examples drawn from classical and Western European sources. The examples are linked together with the smooth prose style of the educated scholar and create the impression of a continuous history (at, it has to be said, the expense of local variation) and this approach remained popular until the work of Katharine Briggs on fairies. Ritson's selection of "fairy tales" includes texts, some literary, some from medieval chronicles, which refer to contacts with the fairy world, many of which are mentioned in his treatise.

The author of the second volume, Illustrations of the Fairy Mythology of a Midsummer's Night's Dream (1845), is the Shakespearean scholar, James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (1820-89). This still-useful collection gives edited texts (not summaries) dealing with fairy mythology that are roughly contemporary with Shakespeare. He includes well-known romances such as Sir Launfal and Sir Orfeo, and hard to find material such as The Midnight Watch (p.273-9). The author's introduction, with its air of gentle regret for times past, expresses an important perspective of Victorian collectors. For them the tradition was dying and could be found only in literature works, which they valued highly, or among the "superstitions" of rural, slightly backward, groups like the Celts whom they romanticised.

Fairy Tales, Their Origin and Meaning, with Some Account of Dwellers in Fairyland (1878) by John Thackray Bunce, newspaper proprietor and a founder of the Birmingham City Art Gallery, began as a series of talks for young people. It has worn less well than the other volumes since Bunce was not a theorist, collector, or pioneer in folk studies. In its day it would have been a welcome, and not at all condescending, "inducement" for young people, as he intended. It also underlines the inadequacy of the introduction, since Bunce considers tales such as "Eros and Psyche" (a wonder tale), as well as fairy material on pixies, trolls, and so on.