The Violet Fairy Book. Andrew Lang

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       Andrew Lang

      The Violet Fairy Book

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664176226

Table of Contents

       PREFACE

       A TALE OF THE TONTLAWALD

       THE FINEST LIAR IN THE WORLD

       THE STORY OF THREE WONDERFUL BEGGARS

       SCHIPPEITARO

       THE THREE PRINCES AND THEIR BEASTS (LITHUANIAN FAIRY TALE)

       THE GOAT’S EARS OF THE EMPEROR TROJAN

       THE NINE PEA-HENS AND THE GOLDEN APPLES

       THE LUTE PLAYER

       THE GRATEFUL PRINCE

       THE CHILD WHO CAME FROM AN EGG

       STAN BOLOVAN

       THE TWO FROGS

       THE STORY OF A GAZELLE

       HOW A FISH SWAM IN THE AIR AND A HARE IN THE WATER.

       TWO IN A SACK

       THE ENVIOUS NEIGHBOUR

       THE FAIRY OF THE DAWN

       THE ENCHANTED KNIFE

       JESPER WHO HERDED THE HARES

       THE UNDERGROUND WORKERS

       THE HISTORY OF DWARF LONG NOSE

       THE NUNDA, EATER OF PEOPLE

       THE STORY OF HASSEBU

       THE MAIDEN WITH THE WOODEN HELMET

       THE MONKEY AND THE JELLY-FISH

       THE HEADLESS DWARFS

       THE YOUNG MAN WHO WOULD HAVE HIS EYES OPENED

       THE BOYS WITH THE GOLDEN STARS

       THE FROG

       THE PRINCESS WHO WAS HIDDEN UNDERGROUND

       THE GIRL WHO PRETENDED TO BE A BOY

       THE STORY OF HALFMAN

       THE PRINCE WHO WANTED TO SEE THE WORLD

       VIRGILIUS THE SORCERER

       MOGARZEA AND HIS SON

PREFACE

       Table of Contents

      The Editor takes this opportunity to repeat what he has often said before, that he is not the author of the stories in the Fairy Books; that he did not invent them ‘out of his own head.’ He is accustomed to being asked, by ladies, ‘Have you written anything else except the Fairy Books?’ He is then obliged to explain that he has NOT written the Fairy Books, but, save these, has written almost everything else, except hymns, sermons, and dramatic works.

      The stories in this Violet Fairy Book, as in all the others of the series, have been translated out of the popular traditional tales in a number of different languages. These stories are as old as anything that men have invented. They are narrated by naked savage women to naked savage children. They have been inherited by our earliest civilised ancestors, who really believed that beasts and trees and stones can talk if they choose, and behave kindly or unkindly. The stories are full of the oldest ideas of ages when science did not exist, and magic took the place of science. Anybody who has the curiosity to read the ‘Legendary Australian Tales,’ which Mrs. Langloh Parker has collected from the lips of the Australian savages, will find that these tales are closely akin to our own. Who were the first authors of them nobody knows—probably the first men and women. Eve may have told these tales to amuse Cain and Abel. As people grew more civilised and had kings and queens, princes and princesses, these exalted persons generally were chosen as heroes and heroines. But originally the characters were just ‘a man,’ and ‘a woman,’ and ‘a boy,’ and ‘a girl,’ with crowds of beasts, birds, and fishes, all behaving like human beings. When the nobles and other people became rich and educated, they forgot the old stories, but the country people did not, and handed them down, with changes at pleasure, from generation to generation. Then learned men collected and printed the country people’s stories, and these we have translated, to amuse children. Their tastes remain like the tastes of their naked ancestors, thousands of years ago, and they seem to like fairy tales better than history, poetry, geography, or arithmetic, just as grown-up people like novels better than anything else.

      This is the whole truth of the matter. I have said so before, and I say so again. But nothing will prevent children from thinking that I invented