Polis Reading Edition
The Lilac Fairy Book
edited by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford
Stories1910
- 1The Shifty Lad27 MinA widow’s clever only son will learn no trade but thieving, and she warns him that thieves end up hanged at the bridge of Dublin.
- 2The False Prince and the True17 MinA young noble who struck a king’s son in the face at tennis has fifteen days before his trial, and nobody can find an excuse for the blow.
- 3The Jogi’s Punishment14 MinA holy man fasting outside a city wins the trust of its rajah, whose closely guarded daughter longs to see the holy man for herself.
- 4The Heart of a Monkey19 MinA monkey who takes his breakfast in a tree hanging over deep water begins dropping fruit down to a shark that has been watching him from below.
- 5The Fairy Nurse10 MinA farmer wakes to find his wife gone, and his children say a crowd of little people led her out of the house as if she were sleepwalking.
- 6A Lost Paradise9 MinA passing king overhears a starving charcoal-burner’s wife blame all her troubles on Eve’s curiosity, and say that she herself never wants to know anything.
- 7How Brave Walter Hunted Wolves15 MinA boy of six who can crow like a cock and cannot yet read is famous at home for saying that one wolf would be nothing, and that there ought to be at least four.
- 8The King of the Waterfalls26 MinA young king with nothing left to amuse him decides to go and play a game with a wicked fairy who lives up the road.
- 9A French Puck7 MinA mischievous spirit who can take any shape except a needle plays tricks on the shepherds and cowherds of the mountain pastures in central France.
- 10The Three Crowns23 MinA king’s youngest daughter is sure that a fine boat waiting on a lake is enchanted, but her two proud elder sisters want to sail in it.
- 11The Story of a Very Bad Boy14 MinA widow's idle son, who will not go to work, is told by his own mother that he will certainly never catch a wolf by the tail.
- 12The Brown Bear of Norway21 MinAn Irish king asks his three daughters in jest whom they would like to marry, and the youngest names a creature out of her nurse's stories.
- 13Little Lasse16 MinA little boy creeps into a garden pea bed to pick the longest shells he can find, because he wants to make boats.
- 14‘Moti’18 MinA youth too clumsy to walk past a bowl of milk without standing in it is handed his father's life savings and told to go and make his fortune.
- 15The Enchanted Deer19 MinA poor fisherman’s son in Erin is leading his mother’s cart-horse along a road when a stranger with a gun, a falcon and a dog asks to buy the horse.
- 16A Fish Story5 MinPeople in the desert of central Australia say that fishes once lived and hunted on land, and might be hunting there still if a terrible thing had not happened.
- 17The Wonderful Tune14 MinA blind piper in Munster knows one tune that will set anything, dead or alive, dancing, and he will not say where he learned it.
- 18The Rich Brother and the Poor Brother24 MinA rich old man is so taken up with counting the week's gold that he never notices his son's face has changed, or that the young man starts when he is spoken to.
- 19The One-Handed Girl33 MinDying, with no herd and next to nothing in the house to leave behind, a father asks each of his two children one question: will they have the property, or will they have the blessing?
- 20The Bones of Djulung10 MinThe youngest of seven orphaned sisters, who is given the hardest work of cutting the firewood, finds a little fish as bright as a rainbow while bathing in the river.
- 21The Sea King’s Gift23 MinA fisherman and his wife keep a summer hut on a bare rock far out at sea, where they want for nothing except the one thing she cannot stop thinking of: a cow their boat is too small to carry and their rock too bare to feed.
- 22The Raspberry Worm13 MinFour children cleaning raspberries find a worm on one of the berries, and cannot agree what should be done with it.
- 23The Stones of Plouhinec16 MinOn a desolate moor near the Breton coast stand two rows of stones so huge it seems nobody could ever have set them upright, and nearby lives a girl who wants only the one young man her brother says is too poor to marry her.
- 24The Castle of Kerglas29 MinA poor village idiot is eating on a farmhouse doorstep when a knight rides up, asking the way to a castle where a magician keeps a golden bowl that can bring the dead back to life.
- 25The Battle of the Birds27 MinA prince arrives late at a great battle between the creatures of the earth and the birds of the air, to find only one fight left, between a snake and a great black raven.
- 26The Lady of the Fountain35 MinWhile King Arthur sleeps before supper, the oldest knight at his table tells the others how a black knight at a magic fountain once knocked him off his horse and left him on foot.
- 27The Four Gifts22 MinA miserly farm woman in Brittany forbids her niece to speak to the young labourer she loves, because he is poor.
- 28The Groac’h of the Isle of Lok21 MinTwo poor cousins in Brittany cannot afford to marry, and as the young man leaves to seek his fortune, the girl shares out three magic gifts her parents left her.
- 29The Escape of the Mouse19 MinTwo couples come out of a sudden wall of mist to find their whole country empty of people and cattle.
- 30The Believing Husbands7 MinA young bride sits crying under a heavy pack-saddle in the stable, because she has just thought how dreadful it would be if it fell and killed her.
- 31The Hoodie-Crow10 MinA hoodie crow perches by a river where a farmer’s three daughters are washing clothes, and asks each of them in turn to marry him.
- 32The Brownie of the Lake16 MinAn ugly farmhand, in love with his master’s daughter though she makes fun of him, hears a voice from the bushes by a lake telling him not to give up yet.
- 33The Winning of Olwen32 MinA dying queen, afraid that a second wife will make the king forget their little son, makes him promise not to remarry until a briar with two blossoms grows on her grave.