The Lilac Fairy Book. Andrew Lang

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       Andrew Lang

      The Lilac Fairy Book

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664174376

Table of Contents

       Preface

       The Shifty Lad

       The False Prince and the True

       The Jogi’s Punishment

       The Heart of a Monkey

       The Fairy Nurse

       A Lost Paradise

       How Brave Walter Hunted Wolves

       The King of the Waterfalls

       A French Puck

       The Three Crowns

       The Story of a Very Bad Boy

       The Brown Bear of Norway

       Little Lasse

       ‘Moti’

       The Enchanted Deer

       A Fish Story

       The Wonderful Tune.

       The Rich Brother and the Poor Brother

       The One-Handed Girl

       The Bones of Djulung

       The Sea King’s Gift

       The Raspberry Worm

       The Stones of Plouhinec

       The Castle of Kerglas

       The Battle of the Birds

       The Lady of the Fountain.

       The Four Gifts

       The Groac’h of the Isle of Lok

       The Escape of the Mouse

       The Believing Husbands

       The Hoodie-Crow.

       The Brownie of the Lake

       The Winning of Olwen

Preface

       Table of Contents

      ‘What cases are you engaged in at present?’ ‘Are you stopping many teeth just now?’ ‘What people have you converted lately?’ Do ladies put these questions to the men—lawyers, dentists, clergymen, and so forth—who happen to sit next them at dinner parties?

      I do not know whether ladies thus indicate their interest in the occupations of their casual neighbours at the hospitable board. But if they do not know me, or do not know me well, they generally ask ‘Are you writing anything now?’ (as if they should ask a painter ‘Are you painting anything now?’ or a lawyer ‘Have you any cases at present?’). Sometimes they are more definite and inquire ‘What are you writing now?’ as if I must be writing something—which, indeed, is the case, though I dislike being reminded of it. It is an awkward question, because the fair being does not care a bawbee what I am writing; nor would she be much enlightened if I replied ‘Madam, I am engaged on a treatise intended to prove that Normal is prior to Conceptional Totemism’—though that answer would be as true in fact as obscure in significance. The best plan seems to be to answer that I have entirely abandoned mere literature, and am contemplating a book on ‘The Causes of Early Blight in the Potato,’ a melancholy circumstance which threatens to deprive us of our chief esculent root. The inquirer would never be undeceived. One nymph who, like the rest, could not keep off the horrid topic of my occupation, said ‘You never write anything but fairy books, do you?’ A French gentleman, too, an educationist and expert in portraits of Queen Mary, once sent me a newspaper article in which he had written that I was exclusively devoted to the composition of fairy books, and nothing else. He then came to England, visited me, and found that I knew rather more about portraits of Queen Mary than he did.

      In truth I never did write any fairy books in my life, except ‘Prince Prigio,’ ‘Prince Ricardo,’ and ‘Tales from a Fairy Court’—that of the aforesaid Prigio. I take this opportunity of recommending these fairy books—poor things, but my own—to parents and guardians who may never have heard of them. They are rich in romantic adventure, and the Princes always marry the right Princesses and live happy ever afterwards; while the wicked witches, stepmothers, tutors and governesses are never cruelly punished, but retire to the country on ample pensions. I hate cruelty: I never put a wicked stepmother in a barrel and send her tobogganing down a hill. It is true that Prince Ricardo did kill the Yellow Dwarf; but that was in fair fight, sword in hand, and the dwarf, peace to his ashes! died in harness.

      The object of these confessions is not only that of advertising my own fairy books (which are not ‘out of print’; if your bookseller says so, the truth is not in