Why did the early arrivals in Australia imagine that the aborigines had no folk-lore, no legends, hardly any manners, habits and customs? Is it that they really had none, or that the blacks were merely incomprehensible? I think it was the latter. Australia had much of country to be explored difficult country-on the Coast cool…
PRELUDE. A PRINCESS (Australian Legends) by C. W. Peck
In a little settlement for aborigines not far from Sydney lives the last full-blooded person of the once-powerful Cammary Tribe. She lives in the past. The present has no lure for her, and very little interest. She has to eat and she has to sleep and she has to dress. She looks for no pleasure,…
EAST O’ THE SUN AND WEST O’ THE MOON (Popular Tales from the Norse) By SIR GEORGE WEBBE DASENT
Once on a time there was a poor husbandman who had so many children that he hadn’t much of either food or clothing to give them. Pretty children they all were, but the prettiest was the youngest daughter, who was so lovely there was no end to her loveliness. So one day, ’twas on a…
THE OLD DAME AND HER HEN (Popular Tales from the Norse) By SIR GEORGE WEBBE DASENT
Once on a time there was an old widow who lived far away from the rest of the world, up under a hillside, with her three daughters. She was so poor that she had no stock but one single hen, which she prized as the apple of her eye; in short, it was always cackling…
The Goatherd and the Wild Goats (Aesop’s fables) by Aesop
A GOATHERD, driving his flock from their pasture at eventide, found some Wild Goats mingled among them, and shut them up together with his own for the night. The next day it snowed very hard, so that he could not take the herd to their usual feeding places, but was obliged to keep them in…
The Vain Jackdaw (Aesop’s fables) by Aesop
JUPITER DETERMINED, it is said, to create a sovereign over the birds, and made proclamation that on a certain day they should all present themselves before him, when he would himself choose the most beautiful among them to be king. The Jackdaw, knowing his own ugliness, searched through the woods and fields, and collected the…