Fairy tales were very popular in the Middle Ages. In the long winter months fields could not be cultivated, traveling had to be abandoned, and all were kept within doors by the cold and snow. We know what the knight’s house looked like in those days. The large beamed hall or living room was the principal room. At one end of it, on a low platform, was a table for the knight, his family, and any visiting knights and ladies. At the other tables on the main floor were the armed men, like squires and retainers, who helped defend the castle from attack, and the maids of the household. The story-teller, who was sometimes called a bard or skald or minstrel, had his place of honor in the center of the room, and when the meal was over he was called upon for a story. These story-tellers became very expert in the practice of their art, and some of them could arouse their audiences to a great pitch of excitement. In the note that precedes the story “The Treason of Ganelon,” in the volume “Heroes and Heroines of Chivalry,” you can see how one of these story-tellers, or minstrels, sang aloud a story to the soldiers of William the Conqueror to encourage them as he led them into battle. The fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm were first published in 1812. They spent thirteen years collecting them, writing them down as they were told by the peasants in Hesse, a mountainous province of Germany lying far removed from the great main roads. Their friends helped them, but their best friend was the wife of a cowherd, a strong, intelligent woman of fifty, who had a perfect genius for storytelling. She knew she told the stories well, and that not many had her gift. The Grimms said that though she repeated a story for them three times, the variations were so slight as to be hardly apparent. The American Indian stories of Manabozho the Mischief-Maker and his adventures with the Wolf and the Woodpeckers and the Ducks were collected in very much the same way by Henry R. Schoolcraft (1793–1864), the explorer and traveler, who lived among the Indian tribes for thirty years. Mrs. Steel has told us how she collected her Hindu stories, often listening over and over to poor story-tellers who would spoil a story in trying to tell it, until one day her patience would be rewarded by hearing it from the lips of the best storyteller in the village, who was generally a boy. As all nations have their fairy tales, you will find in this collection examples of English, Irish, French, German, Scandinavian, Icelandic, Russian, Polish, Serbian, Spanish, Arabian, Hindu, Chinese, and Japanese fairy tales, as well as those recited around the lodge fires at night by American Indians for the entertainment of the red children of the West.