Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends - Raising Funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal

Jewish folklore overflows with vivid stories that both entertain and teach. In 1919, "Aunt Naomi" (Gertrude Landa) wrote Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends, a book of 27 fairy tales based on stories of the Jewish interpretations of the Bible. While some of the themes are familiar from contemporary fairy tales and folklore, other stories in this collection are infused with the inimitably Jewish struggle for survival and dignity; all are flavoured with a large helping of gentle
humour.

Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends, illustrated by Alfred Feinberg and others, tells of the boyish exploits of Abraham, Moses, and David, but also includes stories of higgledy-piggledy palaces, beggar kings, quarreling cats and dogs, waterbabes, bogey-men, magic red slippers, a talmudic Sinbad, Alexander the Great, and even the story of a certain "Star Child".

Aunt Naomi strove to create a collection of Jewish delights that boys and girls could add to their treasuries of general fairy-lore and childish romance. In this she succeeded—Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends not only preserves a cultural history, but also is richly entertaining.

We invite you to curl up with this unique sliver of Jewish folklore not seen in print for over ninety years; immerse yourself in the tales and fables of yesteryear.

£3, or approx NZ$6.40, of the Publisher's profit from the sale of  every copy of this book will be donated to the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal.

For more information, a table of contents, to order or to view a sample of the text, go to http://www.abelapublishing.com/Jewish.html

To view titles rasining funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal

follow this link http://www.abelapublishing.com/christchurch.html

Abela Publishing
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Australian Legendary Tales - The Jungle Book of Australia - Raising Funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal

AUSTRALIA makes an appeal to the fancy which is all its own. When the first white settlers arrived in Australia, all was novel, and, while seeming fresh, was inestimably old. The grey gum-trees did not resemble any European forest, but were antique, melancholy and featureless. In a continent of rare hills, infrequent streams and interminable deserts nothing was concealed within the wastes, yet a secret was promised. The birds and beasts--kangaroo, platypus and emu—are, like the continent and all that is within - ancient. The natives were seemingly a race without a history, yet far more antique than Egypt and closer to the beginnings of mankind than any other people.

The manners and rites of the natives seemed to be by far the most archaic of all. They did not have Kings and nations; they were wanderers, houseless, but not homeless. The mysteries of the natives, their initiatory rites, a little of the magic, a great deal of the social customs and fragments of the myths had been recorded. But, till Mrs. Langloh Parker compiled this book, we had but few of the stories which Australian natives tell by the camp-fire or in the gum-tree shade.

These, for the most part, are Kinder Märchen, though they include many ætiological myths, explanatory of the markings and habits of animals, the origin of constellations, and so forth. Children will find here the Jungle Book of Australia, but there is no Mowgli, set apart as a man. For man, bird, and beast are all blended in the Aboriginal psyche. All are of one kindred, all shade into each other; all obey the Bush Law. 

Unlike any European Märchen, these stories do not have the dramatic turns of Western folklore. There are no distinctions of wealth and rank, no Cinderella nor Puss in Boots. The struggle for food and water is the perpetual theme, and no wonder, for the narrators dwell in a dry and thirsty land. We see cunning in the devices used for hunting, especially for chasing honey bees. The Rain-magic, actually practised, is of curious interest. In brief, we have pictures of the hard life of the Aborigines, romances which are truly realistic.

Parker has some odd connections with modern popular culture. She was rescued from drowning by an aborigine at an early age. This incident was portrayed in the film 'Picnic at Hanging Rock'. The song 'the Wind  They Call Mariah' was based on a story from this book and the pop singer Mariah Cary was reputedly named after this song.

£3, or approx. NZ$6.40, of the Publisher's profit from the sale of  every copy of this book will be donated to the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal.

For more information, a table of contents, to order or to view a sample of the text, go to http://www.abelapublishing.com/OzTales.html

To view all 10 Titles raising funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal follow this link http://www.abelapublishing.com/christchurch.html

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INDIAN FAIRY TALES - tales from the subcontinent of India - Raising funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal

Soils and national characters differ, but fairy tales are often the same in plot and incidents, if not in style. Most of the 27 tales in this volume of Indian fairy tales are known in the West in some form or other; how can we account for their simultaneous existence in both Europe and Asia?

Some lorists have declared that India is the home of the fairy tale, and that all European fairy tales have been brought from thence by crusaders, Mongol missionaries, Gypsies, Jews, traders, and travellers. After all, India is on one branch of the fabled Silk and Spice Routes, over which Europeans and Asians have been travelling for several millennia. We should be prepared, within certain limits, to hold a brief for India. The common fairy stories of the children of Europe, which form a greater part of their stories as a whole, are derived from Indian tales. In particular, the majority of the Drolls, or comic tales and jingles, can be traced without much difficulty back to the Indian peninsula.

To assemble this volume, Jacobs has selected the best from the Jatakas, the Bidpai, the Tales of the Sun, the Baluchi folk-tales, and the folk-tales of Kashmir. In this volume we find stories about Punchkin, the evil magician, and the quaint myth: "How Sun, Moon, and Wind went out to Dinner", the magic fiddle, the broken pot, the tiger, the Brahman, the Jackal, and more. In short, Jacobs has made this book a representative collection of all the fairy tales of India. It is only a further proof that fairy tales are something more than Celtic or Hindoo—they are human. So curl up  with a sliver of the Indian  sub-continent and lose yourself in a culture and lifestyle of the ancient, Eastern past.

£3, or approx. NZ$6.40, of the publisher's profit from the sale of every copy of this book will be donated to to the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal.

For more information, a table of contents, to order or to view a sample of the text, go to http://www.abelapublishing.com/Indian.html

To view all 10 Titles raising funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal follow this link http://www.abelapublishing.com/christchurch.html

Abela Publishing
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Legends and Popular Tales of the Basque People - Raising funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal

This collection of Basque legends, fairy tales, ballads, and popular stories , translated by Mariana Monteiro and illustrated by Harold Copping, having their origin in the ancient traditions which formed a portion of the sacred inheritance bequeathed to the Basque people by their forefathers, and handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. These tales constitute the archives of the Basque people, the treasures of their science and of their beliefs; they are the records of the lives of their forefathers, the landmarks of the grandeur of their past history.

In the midst of the great revolutions which have agitated the whole of Europe, causing radical changes, levelling to the ground or converting into ruins great empires, powerful nationalities, monuments; sweeping away languages, and even the very races themselves--the Basques have somehow passed unscathed through the many storms of devastation, preserving intact their nationality, institutions, laws, language, and customs.

In this volume you will find the tales of Aquelarre, Arguiduna, The Song of Lamia, the Prophecy of Lara, the Virgin of the Five Towns and more. So take some time out and travel back to a period before television, or even radio for that matter, when families would gather around a crackling and spitting hearth and granddad or grandma or an uncle or aunt would delight and captivate their audience with stories passed on to them from their mothers, fathers and grandparents.

£3, or approx NZ$6.40, of the publisher's profit from the sale of this book will be donated to the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal.

For more information, a table of contents, to order or to view a sample of the contents, go to http://www.abelapublishing.com/Basque.html

 

To see the 10 Titles raising funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal, follow this link http://www.abelapublishing.com/christchurch.html

Abela Publishing
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Old Peter's Russian Tales - Children's Tales from Old Russia - Raising funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal

This is a book of old Russian folklore retold for young people and the young at heart. The tales are a good sampling of Slavic märchen. The stories in this book are those that Russian peasants tell their children and each other.

This is a book written far away in Russia, for English children who play in deep lanes with wild roses above them in the high hedges, or by the small singing becks that dance down the gray fells at home. Illustrated by Dimitri Mitrokhin, Russian fairyland is quite different to anything seen or experienced in Western Europe or America. Under the windows of the author's house, the wavelets of the Volkhov River are beating quietly in the dusk. A gold light burns on a timber raft floating down the river. Beyond the river in the blue midsummer twilight are the broad Russian steppes, stretching all the way to the Ukraine, and the distant forests of Novgorod. Somewhere in that forest of great trees--a forest so big that the forests of England are little woods beside it--is the hut where old Peter sits at night and tells these stories to his grandchildren.

In Russia hardly anybody is too old for fairy stories, and the author even heard soldiers on their way to the front during WWI talking of very wise and very beautiful princesses as they drank their tea by the side of the road. He believed there must be more fairy stories told in Russia than anywhere else in the world. In this book are a few of those he liked best.

The author, Arthur Ransome, spent time in Russia during World War I as a journalist for a radical British newspaper, the Daily News, meeting among others, Lenin and Trotsky and was also known in the London bohemian artistic scene.

£3, or approx NZ$6.40, of the Publisher's profit from the sale of this book will be donated to charity.

For more information, a table of contents or to order, go to
http://www.abelapublishing.com/Russian.html

To view the "Western European Tales" collection follow this link
http://www.abelapublishing.com/UKandWesternEurope.html

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Legends of MA-UI (Maui) - raising funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal

MAUI (Ma-u-i, Ma-oo-e) is a Polynesian demi god. His name derives from “Mohyi” meaning "causing to: live" or "life," applied sometimes to the gods and
sometimes to chiefs as "preservers and sustainers" of their followers. The Maui
story probably contains a larger number of unique and ancient myths than that of any other legendary character in the mythology of any nation. They also form one of the strongest links in the mythological chain of evidence which binds the scattered inhabitants of the Pacific into one nation. They possess
remarkable antiquity.

There are three centres for these legends, New Zealand in the south, Hawaii in the north, and the Tahitian group in the east. In each of these groups of islands, separated by thousands of miles, there are the same legends, told in almost the same way, and with very little variation in names. Adventures from the great voyages of discovery carry fragments and hints of wonderful deeds.

They are not only different from the myths of other nations, but they are unique in the character of the actions recorded. Maui's deeds rank in a higher class than most of the mighty efforts of the demi gods of other nations and races, and are usually of more utility. The Maoris of New Zealand claim Maui as an ancestor of their most ancient tribes and class him as one of the most ancient of their gods, calling him "creator of land" and "creator of man" sometimes "the sun himself," "the solar fire," and "the sun god," while his mother Hina was called "the moon goddess." The Maui legends are full of  helpful imaginations, which are distinctly and uniquely Polynesian in nature.

£3, or approx NZ$6.40, will be donated to the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal for every copy sold.

For more info, a table of contents and to view a sample of the text, go to
http://www.abelapublishing.com/maui.html

To view all 10 books raising funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal, go
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The Book of Noodles - Stories of Simpletons, Fools and their Follies - Raising funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal

This book is filled with Noodle-tales from around the world. But what is a Noodle? After a fashion, the typical noodle of popular tales "point a moral". Poor fellow! he follows his instructions only too literally, and with a firm conviction that he is thus doing a very clever thing. But the consequence is almost always ridiculous or disasterous. He practically shows the fallacy of the old saw that "fools learn by experience," for his next folly is sure to be greater than the last, in spite of every caution to the contrary. He is generally very honest, and does everything "with the best intentions." His mind is incapable of entertaining more than one idea at a time; but to that he holds fast, with the tenacity of the lobster's claw: he cannot be diverted from it until, by some accident, a fresh idea displaces it; and so on he goes from one blunder to another. His blunders, however, which in the case of an ordinary man would infallibly result in disaster to himself or to others, sometimes lead him to unexpected good fortune. He it is, in fact, to whom the great Persian poet Sádí
alludes when he says, "The alchemist died of grief and distress, while the blockhead found a treasure under a ruin." 

Men of intelligence toil painfully to acquire a mere "livelihood" but the noodle stumbles upon great wealth in the midst of his wildest vagaries. In brief, he is--in stories, at least--a standing illustration of the "vanity of human life"!

So enjoy this collection of Noodle-tales brought together by W A Clouston, from widely scattered sources. While this book may bring you enjoyment and occasional bouts of mirth, its purchase, and for every book sold, will see  £3 or approx NZ$6.40, donated to the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal.

For more information, a table of contents or to view a sample of the interior, go to
http://www.abelapublishing.com/noodles.html

To see the books in Anthologies and Collections, follow this link
http://www.abelapublishing.com/FairyTaleCollections.html

 

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A Hundred Verses from Old Japan - or the Hyaku-nin-isshiu - Raising funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal

THE Hyaku-nin-isshiu, or 'Single Verses by a Hundred People', were collected together in A.D. 1235. They are placed in approximate chronological order, and range from about the year 670. Perhaps what strikes one most in connection with the Hyaku-nin-isshiu is the date when the verses were written; most of them were produced before the time of the Norman Conquest (AD 1066), and one cannot but be struck with the advanced state of art and culture in Japan at a time when Europe was still in a very elementary stage of civilization.

The Collection consists almost entirely of love-poems and what the editor calls picture-poems, intended to bring before the mind's eye some well-known scene in nature; and it is marvellous what effect little thumbnail sketches are compressed within thirty-one syllables. Some show the cherry blossoms which are doomed to fall, the dewdrops scattered by the wind, the mournful cry of the wild deer on the mountains, the dying crimson of the fallen maple leaves, the weird sadness of the cuckoo singing in the moonlight, and the loneliness of
the recluse in the mountain wilds; while those verses which appear to be of a more cheerful type are rather of the nature of the 'Japanese smile', described by Lafcadio Hearn as a mask to hide the real feelings.

Japanese poetry differs very largely from anything we are used to in the West. It has no rhyme or alliteration, and little, if any, rhythm, as we understand it. The verses in this Collection are all what are called Tanka which has five lines and thirty-one syllables, arranged thus: 5-7-5-7-7 which is an unusual metre for Western ears. For this translation the editor has adopted a five-lined verse of 8-6-8-6-6 metre, with the second, fourth, and fifth lines rhyming, in the hope of retaining at least some resemblance to the original form, while at the same time making the sound more familiar to English readers.

33% of the publisher's profit from the sale of this book will be
donated to the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal.

For more information, a table of contents or to order go to
http://www.abelapublishing.com/100VersesfromOldJapan.html

To view the entire Eastern Tales collection follow this link
http://www.abelapublishing.com/EasternTales.html

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POLYNESIAN MYTHOLOGY & ANCIENT TRADITIONAL HISTORY OF THE (MAORI) NEW ZEALANDERS - Raising funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal

TOWARDS the close of 1845 Sir George Grey was unexpectedly requested to administer the affairs of New Zealand.

On arrival he found the Maori tribes engaged in hostilities with the Queen's troops, against whom they had contended with considerable success. He quickly realised he could neither successfully govern, nor hope to conciliate, with a people whose language, manners, customs and religion he was quite unacquainted. He decided that he should be acquainted with the language of the (Maori) New Zealanders in order to redress their grievances. With no published Maori dictionary, nor books to study its construction, he found this to be a most difficult task.

To his surprise he found that the Maori chiefs, in their speeches or in their letters, frequently quoted fragments of ancient poems or proverbs, or made allusions which rested on an ancient system of mythology. This gave him further impetus to learn the language of the country. For more than eight years he devoted a great part of his available time to collecting these ancient myths, poems and legends, working in his spare moments in every part of the country.
Once, when he had amassed a large amount of materials to aid him in his studies, the Government House was destroyed by fire, and with it were burnt the materials he had so painstakingly collected, and thus he was left to recommence his difficult task.

The ultimate result, however, was the collection of a large mass of materials. He felt unwilling that the result of his labours should be lost to those whose duty it may be thereafter to deal with the natives of New Zealand; and he undertook to published his extensive collection of ancient traditional poems, religious chants, hakas and songs of the Maori race.

It is in this volume that Sir George Grey first presented "to the European reader" in 1854 the first written record and translation of the principal portions of ancient Maori mythology and of some of their most interesting legends.

£3, or approx. NZ$6.40, of the publisher's profit from the sale of each book is donated to the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal.

For more information, a table of contents or to order, go to
http://www.abelapublishing.com/newzealand.html

To view the "Australsian Tales" collection follow this link
http://www.abelapublishing.com/Australasia.html

Abela Publishing
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Forty-Four Turkish Fairy Tales - A Children's Literary Classic Given a New Lease of Life - Raising funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal

This volume is a treasure chest of classic Eastern tales drawing on  the rich folklore of Turkey which has witnessed the ebb and flow of cultures for millennia. As a result it has developed a rich tapestry of folklore and fairy tales. Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales has not been in print for almost 100 years, mainly because the original edition had lavish production standards. On the used market, mint copies of the 1913 original can cost up to four figures.

This volume is appropriately titled Fairy Tales because something definitely `fairy' occurs. There are talking animals, flying horses, birds that magically change into beautiful maidens, quests to win the hand of a princess, magical objects, simple, yet brave, peasants, wizards, witches, dragons and dungeons, epic journeys, and loveable fools.

The majority of these stories contain encounters with `Dews', or Turkish supernatural beings, better known in the West as 'Genies.' Sometimes the Turkish Dews are also called 'Arabs!' There are many other specifically Turkish elements and references in the stories, for which the glossary at the end of the book is of particular help. So this isn't simply an orientalised set of European Tales, but was drawn from an authentic Turkish oral storytelling tradition by Dr. Ignácz Kúnos . Plus, there are almost 200 illustrations exquisitely crafted by Willy Pogany. Our hardback COLLECTORS EDITION has faithfully reproduced the original colour plates. Bothe hardback and paperback do have  the  complete list of original illustrations.

Note: some of the illustrations could be considered unsuitable by 21st Century standards because they can be considered as caricatures with obvious ethnic stereotypes. However, in most cases, the illustrator is portraying imaginary creatures, which are supposed to be grotesque. Also to be remembered is the book was originally produced in 1913 when the world's attitudes towards racial tolerance and acceptance were quite different to those of today.

£3, approx NZ$6.40, from every copy sold will be donated the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal.

For more information, a table of contents or to view a sample of the interior  click on thse links

PAPERBACK http://www.abelapublishing.com/FortyFourTales.html

Colour Hardback Collectors Edition http://www.abelapublishing.com/FortyFourCollectors.html 

To view the complete Eastern European and Middle Eastern collection of Fairy Tales and Folklore
click on this link http://www.abelapublishing.com/EasternEurope.html
 

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