Greek Fairy Tales

Nine greek classic fairy tales with distinctive and beautiful D S Walker's illustrations that say it all.

THE name of this book is borrowed from the Ode in which Pindar has enshrined the loveliest of fairy stories the "leaf-fringed legend" of the Pansy Child. The poet was bidden to prepare that Ode in honour of a friend's victory in the Olympic Games, and he likens his task to the building of a palace. Golden pillars, he says, must bear up the porch of this House of Song, and the glories of the victor shall form those pillars, glittering afar in the sumptuous frontal of the fabric. Now, chief among the victor's glories, was his descent from the namesake of the Pansy, the holy Seer of Olympia, and so, through that Golden Porch, Pindar leads us into Fairyland.

In adding one more to the innumerable collections of stories from the Greek, I have hoped to break fresh ground by reproducing the myths of
Pindar's Odes, as far as possible in a free translation, and with such additions only as were needed to form a framework. Some of these legends are already wholly or partly familiar, but several will be new, I think, to English readers.

It may be said that Greek myths, especially as handled by the poet who wove into them his deepest criticisms of life, are misleadingly, if not profanely, entitled fairy tales.