Читать книгу Old Farm Fairies: A Summer Campaign In Brownieland Against King Cobweaver's Pixies - Henry C. McCook - Страница 3

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This preface shall be a personal explanation. The following book was written during the winter of 1876–77, more than eighteen years ago. Its origin was in this wise: Some of my readers will know that for more than twenty years I have studied the habits of our spider fauna. During the first years of these studies, the thought came to me to write a book for youth wherein my observations should be personified in the imaginary creatures of fairy lore, and thus float into the young mind some of my natural history findings in such pleasant form that they would be received quite unconsciously, and at least an impression thereof retained with sufficient accuracy to open the way to more serious lessons in the future.

It further seemed to me that the fairies of Scotland, with whom I had been familiar from childhood, might afford vivid personalities for my plan. Accordingly, the spiders were assigned the part of Pixies or goblins, the ill-natured fairies of Scotland and Northern England. The Brownies, or friendly folk, the "gude neebours," or household fairies, were made to personify those insect forms, especially those useful to man, against which spiders wage continual war. Moreover, to express the relations of the lower creatures to human life, and their actual as well as imaginary interdependence, human characters were introduced, and conflicts between Pixies and Brownies were interwoven with their behaviour.

This purely personal statement has been intruded upon the reader to explain that the Brownies, as represented in this book, are not imitations. They antedated, by a number of years, the popular creations of Mr. Palmer Cox. The writer well understands as a naturalist that priority depends not upon originality of intention or invention, or even of preparation, but upon precedence in publication. It will be found, however, that my conception and treatment of these wee folk differ from those of Mr. Cox. As they appear to me from the recollections of childhood, they have a more serious aspect, a more human-like nature, which ought not to be wholly sacrificed to their jovial characteristics. I have therefore presented the Brownies as beings with humanized affections, passions and methods reflected in miniature.

I confess some qualms, on the scientific side of my conscience, at compelling my friends, the spiders, to play the part of Pixies. But there seemed no other course out of regard both to common belief and the necessity imposed by the facts. As I went on with the work, I wondered at the ductility with which the current habits of the aranead tribes yielded to personification. The water spiders permitted the introduction of smugglers, pirates and sailors; the burrowing and trapdoor spiders opened up tales of caves and subterranean abodes; the ballooning spiders permitted an adaptation of modern military methods of reconnoissance; and so on through a long list of aranead habits.

In order to make this more apparent, and to give adult readers, parents and teachers, and the older class of youthful readers, a scientific key to the various situations, brief notes have been added in an Appendix, to which foot-note references have been made in most of the chapters. Moreover, the natural habits personified are interpreted by figures set into the text with no explanation but the legend written thereunder.

The crudely drawn cuts which figure in the pages as "The Boy's Illustrations" are exact reproductions of sketches made by a lad in my own family, between eight and nine years old, to whom, with others, the manuscript was read as a sort of test of its quality. Encouraged by the advice of one of the keenest and most sympathetic students of child life in America, I have ventured to give a few of these drawings to the public, as a curious study in the operations of child-mind.

I had agreed with myself not to print the Brownie Book until my scientific work upon the spiders was finished, and the manuscript remained untouched until the winter of 1885–6. At that time I seemed to see the nearing end of my studies, and portions of the Brownie-Pixie story were distributed to various artists, among them Mr. Dan. C. Beard and Mr. Harry L. Poore. Some of the illustrations at that time made, appear in the following pages, bearing date 1886. "Tenants of an Old Farm" had now appeared, and was so well received that it was thought advisable to connect this book with that by an "Introductory Chapter" intended for older readers, and which gives the key to the motive of the story. Early in 1886 I recalled all contracts and arrangements for publication, as a prolonged sickness compelled me to drop scientific work and defer the issue of the "American Spiders." On the very day that the binders placed the first finished copy of the third and last volume of that work in my hands, the "copy" of "Old Farm Fairies" went to the printer.

H. C. McC.

The Manse, Philadelphia, May 21, AD 1895.