By Barbara Dugan

But first a note from Robert Royal:

Note: Today's beautiful reflections on a Christian classic remind us that there's always more available to us in our rich tradition than the mere rough-and-tumble of political and Church controversies. As important as those disputes are, we also need to be cultivating the next generation - which will otherwise be taken captive by a toxic culture. And dust on our heads if we don't use every resource we have to keep that from happening. At The Catholic Thing we're ready to work on all fronts toward Catholic renewal. Are you? If so, please, if you haven't already, click the button and join us in this crucial work.

Now for Ms. Dugan's column...

The great and good G.K. Chesterton once said that, of all the stories he had read, The Princess and the Goblin, a fairy tale by George MacDonald, is the one he found most like real life. That book, he claimed, had "made a difference to my whole existence."

That's a tremendous claim. But traditional fairy tales, contrary to what some might think, are like real life because they are ordered to happiness, and this implies a world of meaning. And where there is meaning there is someone to mean it, as Chesterton noted. The conditions for happiness are as confounding in fairy tales, however, as they are in real life. Be home by midnight or the coach turns back into a pumpkin. Eat an apple and death enters the world.

The Princess and the Goblin is specifically like real life, according to Chesterton, because the events happen in and around home, where the worst and best things are nearby.

The story goes like this. Goblins, demon-like creatures, live inside the darkness of a mountain in self-exile as a way to evade obedience toward an ancient king. And they nurse an endless grudge towards his ancestors.

One night these demons tunnel into the wine cellar of the reigning king's home to kidnap the princess. The king's guards are overwhelmed. Unafraid, a young boy - a miner - fights to defend the princess, routing the goblins by making up verses that they can't bear to hear and stomping on their weak feet (iniquity cannot stand).

Crucial help also comes in a mysterious way from a certain lady who lives in a tower room in Princess Irene's castle home.

Why write about princesses? MacDonald posits this question at the start of his story and immediately answers: because every girl is a princess, daughter of a king. By logical inference, every boy is likewise a prince, son of a king.

The Princess and the Goblin appears to make a quiet claim for the common origin of humanity in God, the King of all of us. And further, the story implies that demons wish to take captive into darkness every child. Evil is parasitical and seeks to destroy the goodness and beauty that marks Creation.

The Princess and the Goblin offers several parallels to our time and also some differences worth examining. But why bother at all with a tale that, on its surface, seems intended for children?

Given its glimpse into a world of moral clarity, the story reinvigorates us with its "center of sanity," as Chesterton calls the humble characteristics of traditional fairytales by which they convey to us timeless truths. Truths such as the hero's soul will be sane; that he will be brave, full of faith, reasonable, and respectful of his parents.

Writers of fairy tales may invent their own worlds, George MacDonald argued in his own reflections on the genre, but not new moral worlds. Its laws may not be turned upside down. Moreover, as Chesterton observes, MacDonald sees the world bathed in divine love. The Princess and the Goblin, therefore, can help us to re-see our own world as similarly lavished by this Love.

As to terms of parallels between The Princess and the Goblin and our own moment, demons, as it were, have tunneled into the basement of our homes in many ways, notably via the Internet. They threaten to take captive our children by leading them into the darkness of various falsehood...