Andrew Lang

MANY years ago a book on the Folk-Tales of the Eskimo was published, and the editor of The Academy (Dr. Appleton) told one of his minions to send it to me for revision. By mischance it was sent to an eminent expert in Political Economy, who, never suspecting any error, took the book for the text of an interesting essay on the economics of "the blameless Hyperboreans." Mr. Dayrell's "Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria" appeal to the anthropologist within me, no less than to the lover of what children and older people call "Fairy Tales." The stories are full of mentions of strange institutions, as well as of rare adventures. I may be permitted to offer some running notes and comments on this mass of African curiosities from the crowded lumber-room of the native mind. I. The Tortoise with a Pretty Daughter.--The story, like the tales of the dark native tribes of Australia, rises from that state of fancy by which man draws (at least for purposes of fiction) no line between himself and the lower animals. Why should not the fair heroine, Adet, daughter of the tortoise, be the daughter of human parents? The tale would be none the less interesting, and a good deal more credible to the mature intelligence. But the ancient fashion of animal parentage is presented. It may have originated, like the stories of the Australians, at a time when men were totemists, when every person had a bestial or vegetable "family-name," and when, to account for these hereditary names, stories of descent from a supernatural, bestial, primeval race were invented. In the fables of the world, speaking animals, human in all but outward aspect, are the characters. The fashion is universal among savages; it descends to the Buddha's jataka, or parables, to sop and La Fontaine. There could be no such fashion if fables had originated among civilised human beings.

Adventures Among Books is a classic collection of Andrew Lang essays dealing with literary history and criticism regarding the following subjects: Adventures among books -- Recollections of Robert Louis Stevenson. -- Rab's friend -- Oliver Wendell Holmes -- Mr. Morris's poems -- Mrs. Radcliffe's novels -- A Scottish romanticist of 1830 T. T. Stoddart] -- The Confessions of Saint Augustine -- Smollett -- Nathaniel Hawthorne -- The paradise of poets -- Paris and Helen -- Enchanted cigarettes -- Stories and story-telling -- The supernatural in fiction -- An old Scottish psychical researcher G. Sinclair] -- The boy.

Magic and Religion is a classic religious studies text by Andrew Lang. Recent years have brought rich additions to the materials for the study of early religion, ritual, magic, and myth. In proportion to the abundance of information has been the growth of theory and hypothesis. The first essay in this collection, 'Science and Superstition, ' points out the danger of allowing too ingenious and imaginative hypotheses to lead captive our science.