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    THE RAINBOW BOOK


          _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

            LITTLEDOM CASTLE

            MY SON AND I

            MARGERY REDFORD

            THE LOVE FAMILY

            THE CHILD OF THE AIR


    _All rights reserved_


    [Illustration: _The Fish-King and the Dog-Fish_]


    [Illustration:
                   The
                   Rainbow
                   Book

                   Tales of Fun & Fancy

                   By
                   Mrs. M. H. SPIELMANN

                   Illustrated by
                   Arthur Rackham
                   Hugh Thomson
                   Bernard Partridge
                   Lewis Baumer
                   Harry Rountree
                   C. Wilhelm

                   NEW YORK
                   FREDERICK WARNE AND CO.
                   1909]

    TO

    BARBARA MARY RACKHAM

    WITH ALL GOOD WISHES

    FOR HER FUTURE HAPPINESS

                    MABEL H. SPIELMANN




PREFACE


It's all very well--but you, and I, and most of us who are healthy in
mind and blithe of spirit, love to give rein to our fun and fancy, and
to mingle fun with our fancy and fancy with our fun.

The little Fairy-people are the favourite children of Fancy, and were
born into this serious world ages and ages ago to help brighten it, and
make it more graceful and dainty and prettily romantic than it was. They
found the Folk-lore people already here--grave, learned people whose
learning was all topsy-turvy, for it dealt with toads, and storms, and
diseases, and what strange things would happen if you mixed them up
together, and how the devil would flee if you did something with a herb,
and how the tempest would stop suddenly, as Terence records, if you
sprinkled a few drops of vinegar in front of it. No doubt, since then
thousands of people have sprinkled tens of thousands of gallons of good
vinegar before advancing tempests, and although tempests pay far less
attention to the liquid than the troubled waters to a pint of oil, the
sprinklers and their descendants have gone on believing with a touching
faith. It is pretty, but not practical.

But what _is_ pretty and practical too, is that all of us should
sometimes let our fancy roam, and that we should laugh as well, even
over a Fairy-story. Yet there are some serious-minded persons, very
grave and very clever, who get angry if a smile so much as creeps into a
Fairy-tale, and if our wonder should be disturbed by anything so worldly
as a laugh. A Fairy-tale, they say, should be like an old Folk-tale,
marked by sincerity and simplicity--as if humour cannot be sincere and
simple too. "The true Fairy-story is not comic." Why not? Of this we may
be sure--take all the true humourless Fairy-stories and take
"Alice"--and "Alice" with its fun and fancy will live beside them as
long as English stories are read, loved for its fancy and its fun, and
hugged and treasured for its jokes and its laughter. The one objection
is this: the "true Fairy-story" appeals to all children, young and old,
in all lands, equally, by translation; and jokes and fun are sometimes
difficult to translate. But that is on account of the shortcomings of
language, and it is hard to make young readers suffer by starving them
of fun, because the power of words is less absolute than the power of
fancy in its merrier mood.

Some people, of course, take their Fairies very seriously indeed, and
we cannot blame them, for it is a very harmless and very beautiful
mental refreshment. Some, indeed, not only believe firmly in Fairies--in
their existence and their exploits--but believe themselves to be
actually visited by the Little People. For my part, I would rather be
visited by a Fairy than by a Spook any day, or night: but when the
"sincerity" of some of us drove the Fairies out, the world was left so
blank and unimaginative, that the Spooks had to be invited in. The
admixture of faith and imagination produces strange results, while it
raises us above the commonplaceness of everyday life.

But, as I say, certain favoured people, mostly little girls, it is true,
are regularly visited by Fairies even in the broad daylight, and they
watch them at their pretty business, at their games and play (for
Fairies, you may be sure, play and laugh, however much the Folk-lorists
may frown when we are made to laugh with them). Two hundred and fifty
years ago a Cornish girl declared that she had wonderful adventures with
the Fairies--and she meant truly what she said. And it is only fifty
years since an educated lady wrote a sincere account of her doings with
Fairies and theirs with