In this book Mr. Deulin inclines to the view that the stories as first
published by Perrault were not really written by him, but by his little
son of ten or eleven, to whom Perrault told the stories as he had
gathered them up with the intention of rendering them in verse after the
manner of La Fontaine. The lad had an excellent memory, much natural
wit, and a great gift of expression. He loved the stories his father
told him and thoroughly enjoyed the task his father set him of rewriting
them from memory, as an exercise. This was so happily done, in such a
fresh, artless, and engaging style, exactly befitting the subjects of
the stories, that the father found the son's version better than the one
he had contemplated and gave that to the world instead.

These stories made their way slowly in England at first, but in the end
they nearly eclipsed the native fairy tales and legends, which, owing to
Puritan influence, had been frowned upon and discouraged until they were
remembered only in the remoter districts, and told only by the few who
had not come under its sway. Indeed, the Puritanical objection to
nursery lore of all kinds still lingers in some corners of England.

The stories of Perrault came in just when the severer manifestations of
Puritanism were beginning to decline, and they have since become as much
a part of English fairy lore as the old English folk and fairy tales
themselves. These latter, thanks to Mr. Joseph Jacob, Mr. Andrew Lang,
Mr. E.S. Hartland, and others, have been unearthed and revived, and
prove to have lost nothing of their power of taking hold upon the minds
of the little folk.

Perrault says of his collection that it is certain these stories excite
in the children who read them the desire to resemble those characters
who become happy, and at the same time they inspire them with the fear