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        [Illustration: LANCELOT BEARS OFF GUENEVERE (p. 153)]


                                 THE

                           BOOK OF ROMANCE




                              EDITED BY

                             ANDREW LANG


             _WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. J. FORD_




                       LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

                      39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

                         NEW YORK AND BOMBAY

                                 1902




                            Copyright 1902

                                  BY

                        LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.

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_PREFACE_


It is to be supposed that children do not read Prefaces; these are
Bluebeard's rooms, which they are not curious to unlock. A few words
may therefore be said about the Romances contained in this book. In
the editor's opinion, romances are only fairy tales grown up. The
whole mass of the plot and incident of romance was invented by nobody
knows who, nobody knows when, nobody knows where. Almost every people
has the Cinderella story, with all sorts of variations: a boy hero in
place of a girl heroine, a beast in place of a fairy godmother, and so
on. The Zunis, an agricultural tribe of New Mexico, have a version in
which the moral turns out to be against poor Cinderella, who comes to
an ill end. The Red Indians have the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice,
told in a very touching shape, but without the music. On the other
hand, the <DW64>s in the States have the Orpheus tale, adapted to
plantation life, in a form which is certainly borrowed from Europeans.
This version was sent to me some years ago, by Mr. Barnet Phillips,
Brooklyn, New York, and I give it here for its curiosity. If the
proper names, Jim Orpus and Dicey, had not been given, we might not
feel absolutely certain that the story was borrowed. It is a good
example of adaptation from the heroic age of Greece to the servile age
of Africans.


DICEY AND ORPUS


Dat war eber so long ago, 'cause me granmammy tell me so. It h'aint no
white-folks yarn--no Sah. Gall she war call Dicey, an' she war borned
on de plantation. Whar Jim Orpus kum from, granmammy she disremember.
He war a boss-fiddler, he war, an' jus' that powerful, dat when de
mules in de cotton field listen to um, dey no budge in de furrer.
Orpus he neber want no mess of fish, ketched wid a angle. He just take
him fiddle an' fool along de branch, an' play a tune, an' up dey
comes, an' he cotch 'em in he hans. He war mighty sot on Dicey, an'
dey war married all proper an' reg'lar. Hit war so long ago, dat de
railroad war a bran-new spick an' span ting in dose days. Dicey once
she lounge 'round de track, 'cause she tink she hear Orpus a fiddlin'
in de fur-fur-away. Onyways de hengine smash her. Den Jim Orpus he
took on turrible, an' when she war buried, he sot him down on de
grave, an' he fiddle an' he fiddle till most yo' heart was bruk.

An' he play so long dat de groun' crummle (crumble) an' sink, an' nex'
day, when de peoples look for Jim Orpus, dey no find um; oney big-hole
in de lot, an' nobody never see Jim Orpus no mo'. An' dey do say, dat
ef yo' go inter a <DW54>'s burial-groun', providin' no white man been
planted thar, an' yo' clap yo' ear to de groun', yo' can hear Jim's
fiddle way down deep belo', a folloin' Dicey fru' de lan' of de Golden
Slippah.[1]

[Footnote 1: Mr. Phillips, writing in 1896, says that the tale was
told him by a plantation hand, thirty years ago, 'long before the
Uncle Remus period.']

       *       *       *       *       *

The original touch, the sound of Orpus's fiddle heard only in the
graveyards of the <DW64>s (like the fairy music under the fairy hill
at Ballachulish), is very remarkable. Now the Red Indian story has no
harper, and no visit by the hero to the land of the dead. His grief
brings his wife back to him, and he loses her again by breaking a
taboo, as Orpheus did by looking back