"Little goat, bleat, Little table, appear,"and a beautifully spread table will stand before you, with the most delicious food on it, so that you can eat as much as you want. And when you have had enough and don't want the little table any more, you have only to say,"Little goat, bleat, Little table, away,"and then it will vanish.' Then the wise woman went away.but Little Two-eyes thought, 'I must try at once if what she has told me is true, for I am more hungry than ever'; and she said,'Little goat, bleat, Little table appear,'and scarcely had she uttered the words, when there stood a little table before her covered with a white cloth, on which were arranged a plate, with a knife and fork and a silver spoon, and the most beautiful dishes, which were smoking hot, as if they had just come out of the kitchen. Then Little Two-eyes said the shortest grace she knew, and set to work and made a good dinner. And when she had had enough, she said, as the wise woman had told her,'Little goat, bleat, Little table, away,'Grimm - LITTLE ONE-EYE, LITTLE TWO-EYES, AND LITTLE THREE EYESHijau.. (1892)03/23/13
A collection of tales perhaps best taken on small dosis. Andrew Lang's were a landmark of fairy tales for children and still are a wortwhile reading. However, I must admit a certain dissapointment with the Green Fairy book. It wasn't that I was not transported to the lands of the fairies in every tale, but I'm afraid that the telling and the stories became somewhat repetitive from very early on: it just became too obvious who was the fairy, who the princess, who the prince, no matter what disguise/spell they were supposed to be underneath. The choice of tales gets better towards the end, when the choice of Grimm tales dominates. A final note: be warned that this retelling of fairy tales is very much Victorian, in terms of morals.
What do You think about The Green Fairy Book (1965)?
This one was front-loaded with a few literary ones I didn't much like. But it has a number I quite like, including some I had forgotten about. The Golden Blackbird I remembered but not The Little Soldier -- which combines plotlines I've seen from other tales, with a bit more sense than I've sometimes seen them -- with a twist I've seen elsewhere and forgot I saw here. We have a whole bunch of less usual Grimms, such as The White Snake and Spindle, Shuttle, and Needle. Seemed to me to be spread out in location a bit, with tales like Russian King Kojata, but I'm not sure, since there were a few far-fetched ones in the earlier versions.
—Mary Catelli
