| Kinder- und Hausmrchen ("Folk Tales for Children and the Home"), as gathered and brought out in its more or less cannonical form by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in 1857 and often loosely and inaccurately referred to as "Grimms' Fairy Tales," is a collection of eighteenth-century and earlier German folk tales, in part taken from contemporary oral tradition, in part from older printed sources. As finally presented by the Grimms, these appear in a straightforward, somewhat unadorned though by no means barren style, while a certain matter-of-factness and chattiness colors the whole. Here the translators have assumed the challenging task of trying to reproduce some of these agreeable effects though without hope of more than suggesting Wilhelm Grimm's final achievement of one of the noblest monuments of German prose. |
| Originally composed by intelligent, keen-witted German peasant folk and told for mutual entertainment by grown-ups for grown-ups, these famous folk tales are, contrary to popular notion, not essentially for younger children, to whom, in fact, only a few are likely to appeal. A limited number, perhaps some twenty or thirty commonly included in almost innumerable select translations especially designed for children, have, to be sure, achieved notable success among children; yet because of its false emphasis, the Grimms subsequently regretted using the word Kinder in their title. In favor of the present title, German Folk Tales, substituted for the somewhat unwieldy translation of the German original, is that it quite exactly describes the contents, disposes of the misleading emphasis on "children," and leads to no ambiguity since there are no other genuine German folk tales outside of the Grimms' collection. The tales will, as a whole, appeal essentially to grown-ups with a taste for a good story well told. In the diction, style, and development of the various narratives there is nothing childish or juvenile, still less anything mannered or from the point of view of the original teller anything |
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