Do You Believe In Fairies?

Oscar Wilde has never had any sort of niche in my mind as a writer of fairy tales. Nor is it probable that the edition just published by Bodley Head is intended merely as entertain ment for small fry.

r[IS edition of Wilde’s Fairy Tales contains The Happy Prince and Other Tales, first published in 1888, and A House of Pomegran ates, first published in 1891. It is a beautifully produced volume, with illustrations by Charles Mozley, and is more a coliector’s piece than something you would give young Mary on her 7th birthday.

The Tales are not of the happy ending variety, and like other similar writings of that time, used more to express the writer’s inner sorrow over life and its inequalities in general, and man’s inhumanity to man.

They have an inner meaning, if perhaps not exactly a moral, quite above the heads of most youngsters even though they are capable of appreciating the thread of sadness that runs through them.

I remain unconvinced that the folk tales and fairy stories of the masters of this craft are suitable, in unexpurgated versions, for chil dren —not as bed-time stories any way.

I can still remember as a youngster going to bed with solid, undigested lumps of the Brothers Grimm and

other classical fairy-story write stuck in my chest, while the cc New Zealand wind shrieked outsic and witches and worse lurked in t;. corners of the bedroom.

I may have been one of the fashionable “highly-strung” ch: dren of the period—l often hea: my mother say so—but I very mm doubt it.

All I remember now is that in tl privacy of my own bedroom I somi times suffered hell on behalf Bluebeard’s victims or sweet litt maids who were forced to wa through snow-bound winter wooi inhabited by wolves, demons ai wicked uncles.

The fact is that even children wl are arrogant, little hellions durii daylight hours are capable of bi coming arrant little cowards oni the light is out, they are alone an soaring imagination takes over.

Wilde, of course is not in tl same class as Messrs. Grimm f; creeps but the beautiful English which the tales are written, pi. their note of cynicism, will probab give more pleasure to adult rathi than child audiences. (FAIRY TALES. Published by Bodll Head. Australian price, 22/6.)