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This is volume 10, covering the time from Glencoe to the Jacobites.In many volumes of several thousand combined pages the series "The History of Scotland" deals with something less than two millenniums of Scottish history. Every single volume covers a certain period in an attempt to examine the elements and forces which were imperative to the making of the Scottish people, and to record the more important events of that time.

Perhaps there are some who will think we as a publisher are overexacting in our demands for childrens literature. Many of Dr. Churchs adaptations have come to us, and we cannot claim that they have added much to our respect for Homer. We always feel that we are backed up when we declare that in this retelling process, the large ruggedness which rightfully belongs to the classic is lost in the mild care we take of the sensitiveness of children. One is immediately drawn to Tales of Troy and Greece. Mr. Lang treats of Ulysses, Mellager, Theseus, Perseus, and puts into his text more substance than is found in the ordinary adaptation or rewritten classic.Contents:Ulysses The Sacker Of CitiesThe Wanderings Of UlyssesThe Fleece Of GoldTheseusPerseusThis book is fully illustrated and annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer.

A noted non-Catholic writer on pedagogical subjects stated some time ago that if his own religious body had the wealth of story contained in the lives of the saints of the Catholic Church, it would be abundantly supplied with religious literature for children. It is true that the lives of the saints are an inexhaustible treasure-house for all that will interest and stimulate children; and that the same treasure-house is too seldom drawn upon. Its riches are, comparatively speaking, little known to our children or, indeed, to our older folks.A book that taps this vein of Catholic inheritance is: The Book of Saints and Heroes, by Mrs. Lang, and edited by the late Andrew Lang. Needless to say the work is admirably well written, and no child, even though tired, would think of sleep while the story of Jerome and the Lion, or Francis and the Wolf of Agobio, was being read. Here is all that will arouse the imagination, fascinate the mind, and instill that romantic love of heroic deeds which, in turn, is so powerful a stimulus to virtue. The book is most richly and tastefully illustrated with page drawings, many of them beautifully colored. The author has combined legend and history, and has sought to give us an interesting story book. This book is illustrated and annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer.

With "The Pink Fairy Book" Mr. Lang has exhausted the primary colors without coming to an end of his store of fairytales. This time he has gone further afield, though without finding much that is new. Japan yields a few; and other sources which we do not remember in the earlier books have been drawn upon. Generally, however, it is from the folklore of European nations, and from that most admirable of story-tellers, Hans Christian Andersen, that we get the best things. It is true that, as Mr. Lang remarks, Andersen " wants to point a moral as well as "adorn a tale," whereas the true fairy-story should not have any more intelligible moral than that it is a great virtue to be the youngest son of three, and a still greater to be the youngest of seven. Not the less, however, is it true that, on the whole, these stories are on the side of goodness and kindness. It is difficult to make a choice among these good things. But perhaps, " How the Hermit Helped to Win the Kings Daughter," is as good as any. Among the few outlandish stories, "Wischimataro and the Turtle " may be mentioned.This book is fully illustrated and annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer.

This is volume 5, covering the time from Murray to the King of Many Enemies.In many volumes of several thousand combined pages the series "The History of Scotland" deals with something less than two millenniums of Scottish history. Every single volume covers a certain period in an attempt to examine the elements and forces which were imperative to the making of the Scottish people, and to record the more important events of that time.

This is volume 4, covering the time from Mary Stuart to the Two Murders.In many volumes of several thousand combined pages the series "The History of Scotland" deals with something less than two millenniums of Scottish history. Every single volume covers a certain period in an attempt to examine the elements and forces which were imperative to the making of the Scottish people, and to record the more important events of that time.

The babes of former generations were certainly lucky, for they possessed quite the best book of nursery rhymes which has ever been published. "The Nursery Rhyme Book" by Andrew Lang and illustrated by L. Leslie Brooke is a complete collection of the old nursery rhymes which have delighted so many generations, adorned with attractive pictures and accompanied by a preface written in one of Mr. Langs most engaging moods. The preface, of course, is not for the little ones, but for the mothers, whose duty it is to read the rhymes- and show the pictures. We do not know [says Mr. Lang] what poets wrote the old nursery rhymes, but certainly some of them were written down, or even printed, three hundred years ago. Grandmothers have sung them to their grandchildren, and they again to theirs, for many centuries. We did not know till we studied Mr. Langs table of contents that nursery rhymes may be divided into fourteen different kinds ; but they may, and Mr. Lang gives them all and discourses sweetly on many of them. No nursery which respects itself should be without this fascinating book.This book is fully illustrated and annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer.

This is volume 2, covering the time from the death of Wallace to James III.In many volumes of several thousand combined pages the series "The History of Scotland" deals with something less than two millenniums of Scottish history. Every single volume covers a certain period in an attempt to examine the elements and forces which were imperative to the making of the Scottish people, and to record the more important events of that time.

The aim of this book is to prove that the Homeric Epics, as wholes, and apart from passages gravely suspected in antiquity, present a perfectly harmonious picture of the entire life and civilisation of one single age. The faint variations in the design are not greater than such as mark every moment of culture, for in all there is some movement; in all, cases are modified by circumstances. If our contention be true, it will follow that the poems themselves, as wholes, are the product of a single age, not a mosaic of the work of several changeful centuries.This book is annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer. Contents:PrefaceChapter I - The Homeric AgeChapter Ii - Hypotheses As To The Growth Of The EpicsChapter Iii - Hypotheses Of Epic CompositionChapter Iv - Loose Feudalism: The Over-Lord In "Iliad," Books I. And Ii.Chapter V - Agamemnon In The Later "Iliad"Chapter Vi - Archaeology Of The "Iliad". Burial And CremationChapter Vii - Homeric ArmourChapter Viii - The BreastplateChapter Ix - Bronze And IronChapter X - The Homeric HouseChapter Xi - Notes Of Change In The "Odyssey"Chapter Xii - Linguistic Proofs Of Various DatesChapter Xiii - The "Doloneia"Chapter Xiv- The Interpolations Of NestorChapter Xv - The Comparative Study Of Early EpicsChapter Xvi - Homer And The French Mediaeval EpicsChapter Xvii - Conclusion

Fairy tales and stories of the Arabian Nights order are not often attempted by modern imaginations, but collections of the old legends are perennially popular. Mr. Andrew Lang has not yet exhausted the supply of these last, although he has to go to countries more and more remote for every new years gleanings. For the material in his latest volume, The Brown Fairy Book , he has searched the folk lore of the red Indians, the black Australians, the African Kaffirs, and the natives of Brazil and New Caledonia. Besides these, there are some tales of moment from the French and Persian, some of them being specially translated for this work. The beautiful illustrations in color are the work of Mr. Henry Ford.This book is illustrated and annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer.Contents: What The Rose Did To The CypressBall-Carrier And The Bad OneHow Ball-Carrier Finished His TaskThe BunyipFather GrumblerThe Story Of The YaraThe Cunning HareThe Turtle And His BrideHow Geirald The Coward Was PunishedHabogiHow The Little Brother Set Free His Big BrothersThe Sacred Milk Of KoumongoeThe Wicked WolverineThe Husband Of The Rats DaughterThe Mermaid And The BoyPivi And KaboThe Elf MaidenHow Some Wild Animals Became Tame OnesFortune And The Wood-CutterThe Enchanted HeadThe Sister Of The SunThe Prince And The Three FatesThe Fox And The LappKisa The CatThe Lion And The CatWhich Was The Foolishest?Asmund And SignyRubezahlStory Of The King Who Would Be Stronger Than FateStory Of Wali Dad The Simple-HeartedTale Of A Tortoise And Of A Mischievous MonkeyThe Knights Of The Fish

This book is annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer.It is not without hesitation that this book is offered to the reader. Very many people, for very various reasons, would taboo the subjects here discoursed of altogether. These subjects are a certain set of ancient beliefs, for example the belief in clairvoyance, in hauntings, in events transcending ordinary natural laws. The peculiarity of these beliefs is, that they have survived the wreck of faith in such elements of witchcraft as metamorphosis, and power to cause tempest or drought. To study such themes is impious, or superstitious, or useless. Yet to a pathologist, or anthropologist, the survivals of beliefs must always be curious and attractive illustrations of human nature.Contents:Preface.Introduction.Savage Spiritualism.Ancient Spiritualism.Comparative Psychical ResearchHaunted HousesCock Lane And Common-SenseApparitions, Ghosts, And Hallucinations.Scrying Or Crystal-GazingThe Second SightGhosts Before The LawA Modern Trial For WitchcraftPresbyterian Ghost Hunters.The Logic Of Table-TurningThe Ghost Theory Of The Origin Of Religion

Andrew Langs Fairy Books or Andrew Langs "Coloured" Fairy Books constitute a twelve-book series of fairy tale collections. Although Andrew Lang did not collect the stories himself from the oral tradition, the extent of his sources, who had collected them originally (with the notable exception of Madame dAulnoy), made them an immensely influential collection, especially as he used foreign-language sources, giving many of these tales their first appearance in English. As acknowledged in the prefaces, although Lang himself made most of the selections, his wife and other translators did a large portion of the translating and telling of the actual stories.The Blue Fairy Book assembled a wide range of tales, with seven from the Brothers Grimm, five from Madame dAulnoy, three from the Arabian Nights, and four Norse stories, among other sources.

It is well for the fairy-loving public that Mr. Andrew Lang should go bravely on publishing his delightful Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow Fairy Books as if the cry of " too many books " had never been uttered. The juvenile clientele whom he addresses is an ever-increasing one and is as many-colored as Josephs or as Parsifals coat. So skilful a caterer as this keen-eyed Scotchman is not often found: an intellectual gourmand of the first water, long since awarded the cordon bleu in the fine art of fairy-tales, he knows what his public likes-the exacting, appreciative boy-and-girl public whose instinctive cleverness tells them what is good and what is not. His sympathetic nature makes all children congenial to him, and he has remained child enough, despite Homeric disquisitions and scientific fads in folk-lore, to pick out with infallible taste just what they like. " The Yellow Fairy Book" is full of tales from uncouth tongues like Polish, Hungarian, Russian and Red Indian, but also sprinkled with old favorites like Andersens " Tin Soldier " and Grimms "Iron Stone." A glimpse or two from the fanciful French "Cabinet des Fees " is also to be found in this capital collection, which is prefaced by a good-natured but sharp-tongued stricture on the false position of Mr. Laurence Gomme and his rather portentous Folk-Lore Society. This book is fully illustrated and annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer.

Andrew Langs Fairy Books or Andrew Langs "Coloured" Fairy Books constitute a twelve-book series of fairy tale collections. Although Andrew Lang did not collect the stories himself from the oral tradition, the extent of his sources, who had collected them originally (with the notable exception of Madame dAulnoy), made them an immensely influential collection, especially as he used foreign-language sources, giving many of these tales their first appearance in English. As acknowledged in the prefaces, although Lang himself made most of the selections, his wife and other translators did a large portion of the translating and telling of the actual stories.The Red Fairy Book is the second in the series.

Andrew Langs Fairy Books or Andrew Langs "Coloured" Fairy Books constitute a twelve-book series of fairy tale collections. Although Andrew Lang did not collect the stories himself from the oral tradition, the extent of his sources, who had collected them originally (with the notable exception of Madame dAulnoy), made them an immensely influential collection, especially as he used foreign-language sources, giving many of these tales their first appearance in English. As acknowledged in the prefaces, although Lang himself made most of the selections, his wife and other translators did a large portion of the translating and telling of the actual stories.The Blue Fairy Book assembled a wide range of tales, with seven from the Brothers Grimm, five from Madame dAulnoy, three from the Arabian Nights, and four Norse stories, among other sources.

JOAN OF ARC was perhaps the most wonderful person who ever lived in the world. The story of her life is so strange that we could scarcely believe it to be true, if all that happened to her had not been told by people in a court of law, and written down by her deadly enemies, while she was still alive. She was burned to death when she was only nineteen: she was not seventeen when she first led the armies of France to victory, and delivered her country from the English.Joan was the daughter of a poor man, in a little country village. She had never learned to read, or write, or mount a horse. Yet she was so wise that many learned men could not puzzle her by questions: she was one of the best riders in France; one of the most skilled in aiming cannons, and so great a general that she defeated the English again and again, and her army was never beaten till her King deserted her. She was so brave that severe wounds could not stop her from leading on her soldiers, and so tender-hearted that she would comfort the wounded English on the field of battle, and protect them from cruelty. She was so good that her enemies could not find one true story to tell against her in the least thing; and she was so modest that in the height of her glory she was wishing to be at home in her fathers cottage, sewing or spinning beside her mother.

The archologist studies human life in its material remains; he tracks progress (and occasional degeneration) from the rudely chipped flints in the ancient gravel beds, to the polished stone weapon, and thence to the ages of bronze and iron. He is guided by material survivalsancient arms, implements, and ornaments. The student of Institutions has a similar method. He finds his relics of the uncivilised past in agricultural usages, in archaic methods of allotment of land, in odd marriage customs, things rudimentaryfossil relics, as it were, of an early social and political condition. The archologist and the student of Institutions compare these relics, material or customary, with the weapons, pottery, implements, or again with the habitual law and usage of existing savage or barbaric races, and demonstrate that our weapons and tools, and our laws and manners, have been slowly evolved out of lower conditions, even out of savage conditions. The anthropological method in mythology is the same. In civilised religion and myth we find rudimentary survivals, fossils of rite and creed, ideas absolutely incongruous with the environing morality, philosophy, and science of Greece and India. Parallels to these things, so out of keeping with civilisation, we recognise in the creeds and rites of the lower races, even of cannibals; but there the creeds and rites are not incongruous with their environment of knowledge and culture. There they are as natural and inevitable as the flint-headed spear or marriage by capture. We argue, therefore, that religions and mythical faiths and rituals which, among Greeks and Indians, are inexplicably incongruous have lived on from an age in which they were natural and inevitable, an age of savagery.

If we could see in a magic mirror the country now called Scotland as it was when the Romans under Agricola (81 A.D.) crossed the Border, we should recognise little but the familiar hills and mountains. The rivers, in the plains, overflowed their present banks; dense forests of oak and pine, haunted by great red deer, elks, and boars, covered land that has long been arable. There were lakes and lagoons where for centuries there have been fields of corn. On the oldest sites of our towns were groups of huts made of clay and wattle, and dominated, perhaps, by the large stockaded house of the tribal prince. In the lochs, natural islands, or artificial islets made of piles (crannogs), afforded standing-ground and protection to villages, if indeed these lake-dwellings are earlier in Scotland than the age of war that followed the withdrawal of the Romans.

Since the first publication of Custom and Myth, many other works have appeared, dealing on the same principles with matters of belief, fable and ritual. Were the book to be re-written, numerous fresh pieces of evidence might be adduced in support of its conclusions. In Mr. Frazers Golden Bough (Macmillan) the student will find a carefully conceived argument, and a large collection of testimonies, bearing on the wide diffusion, among savages and civilised peoples, of ancient rites and ancient ideas. The works of Mannhardt have practically been introduced to the English reader by Mr. Frazer, with much new matter of his own. The main topics are the worship of human gods and the superstitions connected with vegetation. To push a theory too far is the common temptation of mythologists, and perhaps Mr. Frazers cornstalk does rather threaten to overshadow the whole earth and exclude the light of sun and sky. But the reader, whatever his opinions, will find great pleasure and profit in Mr. Frazers remarkable studies, and in those of Mannhardt, which were unknown to myself when I wrote Custom and Myth.

The sin of witchcraft is as the sin of rebellion. The idea which inspires this text probably is that a person who seeks to obtain his ends by witchcraft is rebelling against the deity or deities through whom alone these ends should be sought. Witchcraft is also an insult and injury to the official priests, who regard the witch as the surgeon regards the bone-setter, or as the geologist regards the dowser or water-finder who uses the divining-rod. Magic or witchcraft falls into two main classes. The former is magic of the sort used by people who think that things accidentally like each other influence each other. You find a stone shaped like a yam, and you sow it in the yam plot You find a stone like a duck, and expect to have good duck-shooting while you carry the stone about in a bag. In the same way the part influences the whole; you burn some of a mans hair, and so he catches a fever. Imitation works in the same manner; you imitate the emergence of grubs from the larv, and you expect grubs to emerge. All magic of this kind is wrought by material objects, sticks, stones, hair, and so forth, which sometimes have been charmed by songs chanted over them. Among the Arunta of Central Australia, in many respects a backward people, we do hear of an evil spirit influencing the material object which has been charmed.[1] We also hear of spirits which instruct men in medical magic. But, as a rule, the magic is materialistic. It really does produce effects, by suggestion: a man dies and a woman is won, if they know that magic is being worked to kill or woo. The second sort of magic acts by spells which constrain spirits or gods to do the will of the magician. This magic involves itself in religion when the magical ceremonies are, so to speak, only symbolic prayers expressed in a kind of sign-language. But if the idea is to put constraint by spells on a god or spirit, then the intention is magical and rebellious. Though the official priest of a savage god may use magic in his appeal to that deity, he is not a wizard. It is the unofficial practitioner who is a witch, just as the unqualified medical practitioner is a quack.