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Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (Arabian Nights) Volume 12
This is a collection of stories collected over thousands of years by various authors, translators and scholars. They are an amalgam of mythology and folk tales from the Indian sub-continent, Persia, and Arabia. No original manuscript has ever been found, but several versions date the collection’s genesis to somewhere between AD 800-900. The stories are wound together under the device of a long series of cliff-hangers told by Shahrazad to her husband Shahryar, to prevent him from executing her. Many tales that have become independently famous come from the Book, among them Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor. This collection comes from the twelfth of sixteen volumes translated by Richard Francis Burton and comprises a number of new tales and variants of earlier ones. -
Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (Arabian Nights) Volume 09
This is a collection of stories collected over thousands of years by various authors, translators and scholars. The are an amalgam of mythology and folk tales from the Indian sub-continent, Persia, and Arabia. No original manuscript has ever been found for the collection, but several versions date the collection's genesis to somewhere between AD 800-900. The stories are wound together under the device of a long series of cliff-hangers told by Shahrazad to her husband Shahryar, to prevent him from executing her. Many tales that have become independently famous come from the Book, among them Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor. This collection comes from the ninth of sixteen volumes translated by Burton. -
Aino Folk-Tales
Not for the squeamish or for children, these folk-tales are from the Ainu, the somewhat mysterious indigenous people of Japan, thousands of whom still live in the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. Ranging over all of the usual themes of folklore, from creation to marriage to war, these stories have a pungent, ribald frankness concerning all aspects of human life that offended their scholarly collector Basil Hall Chamberlain (his apologies to the reader are themselves entertaining) but that make them fresh, provocative, and amusing to the twenty-first century reader. Attention to the Ainu is especially timely because of the revival in Japan of Ainu activism on behalf of indigenous rights, pride, and culture, but are well worth reading for their purely entertainment value. -
Legend Land V 1 and 2
"Being a collection of some of the OLD TALES told in those Western Parts of Britain served by the GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY, now retold by LYONESSE" -
Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park
James Willard Schultz, or Apikuni, (1859 – 1947) was a noted author, explorer, Glacier National Park guide, fur trader and historian of the Blackfoot Indians. Schultz is most noted for his prolific stories about Blackfoot life and his contributions to the naming of prominent features in Glacier National Park. -
Prometheus Illbound
There is a witty and absurdist character to this contemporary setting of the plight of Prometheus, in which Zeus appears as a tremendously wealthy banker, meting out gratuitous fortune. Prometheus' troubled relationship with his liver-devouring eagle provides a means of insight for those he encounters. Rather than a myth the story has the nature of a fable. ( Peter Tucker) -
Psyche
This is a very different Moliere, not the usual satire of everyday life. It is instead a classical tale based on the ancient story of Psyche and Cupid, and was performed for Louis XIV with ballet interludes to music by Jean-Baptiste Lully (which we do not include here) in 1671. -
Twilight Land
The room was all full of twilight; but there they sat, every one of them. I did not count them, but there were ever so many: Aladdin, and Ali Baba, and Fortunatis, and Jack-the-Giant-Killer, and Doctor Faustus, and Bidpai, and Cinderella, and Patient Grizzle, and the Soldier who cheated the Devil, and St. George, and Hans in Luck, who traded and traded his lump of gold until he had only an empty churn to show for it; and there was Sindbad the Sailor, and the Tailor who killed seven flies at a blow, and the Fisherman who fished up the Genie, and the Lad who fiddled for the Jew in the bramble-bush, and the Blacksmith who made Death sit in his apple-tree, and Boots, who always marries the Princess, whether he wants to or not-- a rag-tag lot as ever you saw in your life, gathered from every place, and brought together in Twilight Land.
(Extracted from the first chapter of the book) -
Stories from Virgil
Alfred J. Church created 26 stories from the original Greek version of Virgil's Aeneid. He included well-known ones, such as "The Horse of Wood" and "The Love and Death of Dido," as well as many others perhaps less well-known, such as "King Evander" and "The Funeral Games of Anchises." -
Australian Legendary Tales Folk-Lore of the Noongahburrahs As Told To The Piccaninnies
A Collection of Australian Aboriginal Legendary Folk-Lore Tales, legends of the Narran tribe,
known among themselves as Noongahburrahs.
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Folk-Lore and Legends: Scandinavian
Thanks to Thiele, to Hylten-Cavallius and Stephens, and to Asbjörnsen and Moe, Scandinavian Folklore is well to the front. Its treasures are many, and of much value. One may be almost sorry to find among them the originals of many of our English tales. Are we indebted to the folk of other nations for all our folk-tales? It would almost seem so.
I have introduced into the present volume only one or two stories from the Prose Edda. Space would not allow me to give so much of the Edda as I could have wished.
In selecting and translating the matter for this volume, I have endeavoured to make the book such as would afford its readers a fair general view of the main features of the Folklore of the North. -
Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts
Poems and Christian stories of the animal encounters of various saints. -
In Indian Tents
A collection of the legends and stories of North Eastern Indians "In the summer of 1882 and 1883, I was associated with Charles G. Leland in the collection of the material for his book The Algonquin Legends of New England, published in 1884. I found the work so delightful, that I have gone on with it since, whenever I found myself in the neighborhood of Indians. The supply of legends and tales seems to be endless, one supplementing and complementing another, so that there may be a dozen versions of one tale, each containing something new. I have tried, in this little book, in every case, to bring these various versions into a single whole; though I scarcely hope to give my readers the pleasure which I found in hearing them from the Indian story-tellers. Only the very old men and women remember these stories now; and though they know that their legends will soon be buried with them, and forgotten, it is not easy task to induce them to repeat them. One may make half-a-dozen visits, tell his own best stories, and exert all his arts of persuasion, in vain, then stroll hopelessly by some day, to be called in to hear some marvellous bit of folklore. These old people have firm faith in witches, fairies, and giants of whom they tell; and any trace of amusement or incredulity would meet with quick indignation and reserve." - Abby L. Alger -
Myths And Legends Of British North America
[The Native American] story tellers of the camp related, with dramatic gestures, stories of the Days of the Grandfathers, in the beginning of the Newness of Things. Nothing was too large or too small to come within the bounds of their beliefs, or within the play of their fancy. Only authentic myths and legends have been used in the compilation of this volume. The leading authorities are the publications of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, of the Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, as well as the ethnological publications of the Canadian Bureau of Mines. As in all other volumes of this series, only the quaint, the pure, and the beautiful, has been taken from the tales of the Indians. Any one wishing pure ethnology, good and bad together, would do better to go to ethnological reports. The material here is from these tribes: Haida, Eastern Eskimo, Bella Coola, Wyandot, Cree, Thompson River, Carrier, Shuswap, Lillooet, Ojibwa, Central Eskimo, Chicotin, Kwakiutl, Nicola Valley and Fraser River, Algonquin. -
Dragon Of Wantley, The, Version 2
A novel, The Dragon of Wantley, was written by Owen Wister (best known as the author of The Virginian) in 1892. Published by Lipincott Press, the story is a comic "burlesque" (in the author's words), concerning the "true" story of the Dragon. It is a romantic story set at Christmastime in the early 13th century. The book was a surprise success, going through four editions over the next ten years. This is the 1895 edition. -
Singing Mouse Stories, The
The singing mouse tells tales of nature in songs. This book is for those who want to know how the mountains ate up the plains, what the waters said or where the city went. -
Hero and Leander
“Who ever lov’d, that lov’d not at first sight?”
The wonder-decade of the English drama was suddenly interrupted in 1592, when serious plague broke out in London, forcing the closure of the theatres. Leading playwrights took to penning languorously erotic poetry to make ends meet: so we have Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece - and Marlowe’s blazing masterpiece, Hero and Leander.
Marlowe’s poem became more notorious than either of Shakespeare’s, due not only to its homophile provocations but also to the scandal attaching to every aspect of Marlowe’s brief life, violently ended in a mysterious brawl, leaving the poem in an unfinished state.
The edition read here includes the wonderful continuation by George Chapman, a versatile playwright: tragedian as well as author of Jonsonian metropolitan comedies: in short, an all-round literary craftsman, whose Homer translation was famously admired by Keats. Chapman excels in extended allegory, but also in pithiest epigram –
“Love is a golden bubble, full of dreams,
That waking breaks, and fills us with extremes.”
All these playwrights come from the generation of grammar-school alumni raised on the secular curriculum of Latin poetry: above all, Ovid – the source of the story of Hero and Leander, and their “love-death” in the Hellespont.
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Lore of Proserpine
If a thing is not sensibly true it may be morally so. If it is not phenomenally true it may be so substantially. And it is possible that one may see substance in the idiom, so to speak, of the senses. That, I take it, is how the Greeks saw thunder-storms and other huge convulsions; that is how they saw meadow, grove and stream—in terms of their own fair humanity. They saw such natural phenomena as shadows of spiritual conflict or of spiritual calm, and within the appearance apprehended the truth. So it may be that I have done. Some such may be the explanation of all fairy experience. Let it be so. It is a fact, I believe, that there is nothing revealed in this book which will not bear a spiritual, and a moral, interpretation; and I venture to say of some of it that the moral implications involved are exceedingly momentous, and timely too. I need not refer to such matters any further. If they don't speak for themselves they will get no help from a preface. -
Princess Pourquoi
Once upon a time, a princess was born, and a fairy cursed her with a mind: "She is a woman-child, and yet she shall think. She shall be alien to her own sex, and undesired by the other. She shall ask and it will not be given her. She shall achieve and it shall count her for naught. Men shall point the finger at her like this...and shall whisper, 'There goes the woman with brains, poor thing!" This and four other joyful feminist fairy tales make up The Princess Pourquoi. -
Songs of a Sentimental Bloke
The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke is a verse novel by Australian novelist and poet C. J. Dennis. The book sold over 60,000 copies in nine editions within the first year, and is probably one of the highest selling verse novels ever published in Australia.
The novel tells the story of Bill, a larrikin of the Little Lonsdale Street Push, who is introduced to a young woman by the name of Doreen. The book chronicles their courtship and marriage, detailing Bill's transformation from a violence-prone gang member to a contented husband and father. C.J. Dennis went on to publish three sequels to this novel: The Moods of Ginger Mick (1916), Doreen (1917) and Rose of Spadgers (1924(Introduction from Wikipedia) -
Knyght Ther Was, A
"But the Knyght was a little less than perfect, and his horse did not have a metabolism, and his 'castle' was much more mobile - timewise! - than it had any business being!" In 2178, once time travel had become a simple task, it had also been outlawed. Those who chose to ingnore this law were known as time-thieves, and Tom Mallory was among the best of them. When he learns the precise whereabouts of the Holy Grail in 542, he sets out to obtain it with the intention of returning it to the 22nd century to make a handsome profit and to settle on Get-Rich-Quick Street. Off to the year 542 he travels to the castle of Carbonek where the great Knight Sir Launcelot is said to have possession of the Sangraal. -
Folk-lore and Legends: Oriental
The East is rich in Folklore, and the lorist is not troubled to discover material, but to select only that which it is best worth his while to preserve. The conditions under which the people live are most favourable to the preservation of the ancient legends, and the cultivation of the powers of narration fits the Oriental to present his stories in a more polished style than is usual in the Western countries. The reader of these tales will observe many points of similarity between them and the popular fictions of the West—similarity of thought and incident—and nothing, perhaps, speaks more eloquently the universal brotherhood of man than this oneness of folk-fiction. At the same time, the Tales of the East are unique, lighted up as they are by a gorgeous extravagance of imagination which never fails to attract and delight. -
Peasant Tales of Russia
Collection of Russian peasant tales:
"The Deserted Mine" - The key to saving the trapped miners is held by a man who hasn't spoken a word in 10 years.
"Mahmoud's Family" - Escaping prisoners of war should be shot, but Mahmoud has a family.
"A Misunderstanding" - A young woman seeks escape from her past, in a convent.
"The Luck of Ivan the Forgetful" - An incorrigible criminal escapes from a sentence of hard labor to find freedom and perhaps a kind of redemption in the forest.
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Elves and Heroes
This volume describes, in verse, the mythical creatures and people of ancient Scotland. It also includes explanatory notes about about the characters and folk tales that inspired the author's poetry. -
Arabian Nights Entertainments, Volume 04
The fourth and final volume of Middle Eastern tales, originally written in Arabic. Scheherazade tries to prolong her husband's interest in her - and therefore her life - by telling her tales in installments. -
Arabian Nights Entertainments, Volume 01
The main frame story concerns a king and his new bride. The king, Shahryar, upon discovering his ex-wife's infidelity executes her and then declares all women to be unfaithful. He begins to marry a succession of virgins only to execute each one the next morning. Scheherazade agrees to marry him and each night, beginning on the night of their marriage, she tells the king a tale but does not end it so that the king keeps her alive in order to hear the next tale. The stories proceed from this original tale; some are framed within other tales, while others begin and end of their own accord. Some editions contain only a few hundred tales, while others include 1001 or more stories and "nights."
Well known stories from the Nights include Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor. -
Arabian Nights Entertainments, Volume 03
The third of four volumes of Middle Eastern tales, originally written in Arabic. Scheherazade tries to prolong her husband's interest in her - and therefore her life - by telling her tales in installments. -
Arabian Nights Entertainments, Volume 02
The second of four volumes of Middle Eastern tales, originally written in Arabic. Scheherazade tries to prolong her husband's interest in her - and therefore her life - by telling her tales in installments.