| Title | : | Collected Folk Tales |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 337 |
| Publication | : | First published October 27, 2011 |
The definitive collection of traditional British folk tales, selected and retold by the renowned Alan Garner.
Following on from the fiftieth anniversary of Alan Garner’s seminal fantasy classic, THE WEIRDSTONE OF BRISINGAMEN, here are collected all of Alan’s folk tales, told with his unique storytelling skill and inimitably clear voice. Essential reading for young and old alike.
Among the stories collected here are:
• Kate Crackernuts
• Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree
• Yallery Brown
Collected Folk Tales Reviews
-
"There was a hill that ate people," begins the first story. Just like that. "Far away, and a long time ago, on a high mountain, without trees for shelter, without body or arms for anything, on spindly legs, ran Great Head," begins another story. We are in the realm of folk tales, where we are told what happened, and we must simply go along with it.
There is something of the national treasure about Alan Garner. He has been writing excellent books for more than 50 years. He was, I suspect, the first person to write what now we would describe as urban fantasies. His prose at its best (and it is pretty much always at its best) seems inevitable, and pushes reviewers into using similes that compare it to rocks and gorges and unchanging natural formations.
As I read the Collected Folk Tales there was a feeling of happy familiarity from the first, a déjà vu, as if I knew these stories, some of them intimately. My assumption as I read was that I had encountered most of them in other forms and other places (folk tales are told and retold, after all), but then, when I finished reading, I looked at the copyright page, and realised that more than half the stories had been published in 1969 as The Hamish Hamilton Book of Goblins. I read it when I was nine, and reread it often. I could remember it in my local library, remembered taking it off to a quiet corner, remembered how much I had loved it.
It is peculiar to encounter a book half of which was assembled up to 40 years after the rest and not to be able to see any obvious difference in the writing or the writer. The prose in the old stories feels as inevitable as the new. The stories are written in a variety of voices, emulating the places the tales came from, but the prose is always spare and hard, not a word wasted, not a word out of place.
Here we have stories from Britain and Ireland and all over the world, retold with assurance. Some of the high points that were not in the original collection include "The Flying Children", a story of lies and sex and supernatural revenge and murder that I first encountered in Neil Philip's Penguin Book of English Folk Tales. It is a story that makes authors want to retell it (I shoehorned it into Sandman). Then there's a tale Garner calls "Iram Biram", which Philip called "The Pear Drum" when he collected it, and which is a curiosity in itself, because it began as a nightmarish Victorian short story by Lucy Clifford called "The New Mother". Garner strips it down to its elements. It's an act of literary ventriloquism that illuminates the oral and folk tradition. Two girls named Blue Eyes and Turkey are tempted by a wild girl to be naughty, with the promise of a gift of a mysterious "pear drum". They are not naughty enough to get the drum, but are still so naughty that their mother leaves, and a new mother, with glass eyes and a wooden tail, takes her place.
Garner goes beyond the original ending, playing with the sound and the meaning of words:
There were no lamps lit, but in the glow of the fire they saw through the window the glitter glitter green glass of a mother's eye. They heard the thump; thump; thump of a wooden tail.
Iram, biram, brendon bo
Where did all the children go?
They went to the east, they went to the west
They went where the cuckoo has its nest.
Iram. Biram. Brendon. Bo.
And the Wild Girl wept.
Garner makes up a poem, and adds the haunting image of the Wild Girl weeping as a way of closing the tale, thus moving it somewhere entirely new, away from Victorian nursery horror and into the realm of the twice-told tale.
The book itself has a core of goblin stories – but a goblin can be anything, and Garner's own preferences seems to be for moments of the inexplicable. So many of the tales lack explanation for the events in them, as if the stories were the lyrics of folk songs, and the true meaning is in the music. There is an essay in here on the roots of the fairy folk, and who they really were, or might have been. There are a few dialect pieces, written, Garner says, in the voice of his blacksmith grandfather. There are poems: some collected from "Anon" and the dead, others by Garner himself, my favourite being "R.I.P", which begins: "A girl in our village makes love in the churchyard. / She doesn't mind who, but it must be the churchyard," and continues, lusty and honest to its bitter-hopeful end.
There is a version of Valmiki's Ramayana. There are Norse gods, Algonquin revenge magic and a hero's odyssey from Ireland to a series of magical islands.
This Collected Folk Tales is, by definition and by temperament, a patchwork, and reading it is like entering a rag and bone shop in which every object has been polished up and repaired and made fit for use, while always leaving in the cracks and dents that show that the goods have had years of use already. With the exception of some of the poems, there is nothing new or shining here, and the book is all the better for it. If I had small children, or a class, I would read to them from it.
And if, by the time I have grandchildren, there are still public libraries, as I hope there will be, I trust that they will find this book themselves in one (for it will be all the better for not being given or suggested or recommended to them by an adult), and take it to a quiet corner and read.
This review originally went up at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/... -
I started this book last night as many others over the past few days ... my problem is that I can't seem to finish them (I'm in a funk) so I thought short fairy tales would cure me. And they did - in fact, I got more than I ever imagined I would!
I had never heard of Alan Garner before but apparently he is a very well-known British author for children's fantasy books,all with mythological roots, and even Neil Gaiman has praised him a couple of times (no actual surprise since he loves mythology too).
Not to mention this nice comment by Philip Pullman on the back of my edition:The great collections of British folk tales, such as this one, should be treated in two ways: first, they should be bound in gold and brought out on ceremonial occasions as national treasures; and second, they should be printed in editions of hundreds of thousands, at the public espense, and given away free to every young teacher and every new parent.
I quite agree.
Too few kids are still told about the old fairy tales (a topic Brad and I discussed only last night when we were talking about the Kalevala - I bet many here don't know what that is - and how most myths are somehow either descended from one another or at least make us see how related different languages and cultures are) and not many books are still telling the tales of old. Sure, some survive in popular works by Tolkien, Gaiman and Garner or even thanks to comicbook adaptations for the big screen. But most are completely lost; often also due to the fact that they were oral histories, only rarely recorded in written form. Books like this one are trying to help these stories survive.
This book contains 18 to me previously unknown stories and poems (some retold by Garner, some penned by the man himself). I always like discovering tales I've never known before because it is exciting; like standing before a cave in the dark, not knowing what to expect inside (a sense of adventure overcomes me every time I open such a book). :D
Some of the stories and poems are about well-known characters such as Loki and Baldur while others are about obscure ones like "rabbit" and "Shick-Shack"; some are from British folklore while there even is a Mayan legend (Vukub-Cakix) in it. Some at least have recognizable themes (one story, for example, is about the flood and vanishing/re-creation of land), but all are fantastic and let the imagination soar and one can feel the author's enthusiasm for fairy tales.
Thus, I was thrilled to discover so many new stories and was thoroughly entertained - not to mention the enchantment of the writing style that matched the magical theme of the book! -
I've wanted to read this book ever since I read Neil Gaiman's review of it here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and he later gave me a direct--albeit brief--answer to a question I addressed to him in a starstruck way.
I didn't get as massive a dose of déjà vu as Neil did, for the simple reason that I hadn't read the collection (or rather a part thereof) in an earlier manifestation. One or two of the stories did seem familiar though. And I got a really strong twinge from "Assipattle and the Mester Stoorworm" although I'm not exactly sure where I've read it before.
We are in a world where we witness the marvelous, the magical, the mythological and sometimes the macabre without raising so much as an eyebrow. I don't know if Mr. Spock could have done the same; I can imagine him getting fatigued from the constant elevation of a single brow and then offering a few dry remarks on the general lack of logic of the human race. However, I might say in rebuttal that many of the tales have an inner logic of their own. As in many fairy tales, the rules must be followed and dire consequences arise when they are broken.
I found some of the stories funny, others sad, and still others really creepy; occasionally, as in "Yallery Brown," all three of these reactions were elicited by the same story. I also found the somewhat haphazard arrangement a bit disconcerting, as it sometimes gave me the feeling of lurching unexpectedly from one culture to another. However, in general I found this collection... fascinating. -
Lovely collection of folk stories from all over the world, all jumbled together in quite a lovely mix. There's old stories from time past knowing from Britain alongside the story of Rama and Sita, alongside the tales of the Norse gods. I'm sure there're probably criticisms of such a jumble of stories, but the fact that they can sit more or less easily together in this collection -- as easily as folk tales ever do sit, which isn't very -- says something about the way people tell stories, the same the world over. And Alan Garner did manage to capture the oral nature of the stories, as originally told, in most cases.
-
This was pure magic.
This is going to sound odd, perhaps, but reading this made me really proud of where I come from. Because of my family, and where I live (in America), I have a very diverse heritage. Holding this book was the equivalent of holding my ancestry in my hands. Tales from North America, Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, Zambia, Scandinavia, and Russia. Nordic stories about mischievous Loki, Irish faeries tricking mortals into an eternity of misery, strong Native American warriors nursing broken hearts, King Arthur and his cursed pride...It filled me with this delicious, cozy feeling that could only be described as magic.
It also made me realize the (age-old) superstitions my ancestors had carried with them through their posterity, away from their old countries and into this new one, have actually lasted for generations - even as their faith's changed; that odd combination of praying, and then simultaneously throwing a dash of salt over your shoulder so the evil spirits of the mool don't get you. I still can't open up an umbrella inside.
Some of my favorite stories that come to mind were:
-The Secret of the Commonwealth
-Loki
-Baldr the Bright
I have no doubt I'll be reading this and re-reading this for years to come.
Highly recommend! -
This book is not an entirely new collection from Garner nor is it his complete output of folk tales. Most of the pieces were originally published in 1969 under the title
The Hamish Hamilton book of goblins which was later reprinted variously as: "A Book of Goblins" and "A Cavalcade of Goblins" which are all poor titles as the stories cover a wide range of topics only occasionally featuring Goblins.
Around a third of the present volume is made up of pieces that have never been collected before. The stories and poems range in length from 4 lines to 40 pages.
There's no getting away from it some of these stories are utterly baffling, I just couldn't see the point in quite a few, but in far more cases they are just wonderful.
Here are some, but not all of the very best:
Gobbleknoll
Tops or bottoms
Yallery Brown
Iram, Biram
Faithful John
Jack and the golden snuff box
The smoker
Loki
The flying childer
The green mist
However the highlight of the book for me was Garner's poem RIP.
If you enjoyed this, it might be worth mentioning Garner has over the years produced quite a number of other collections of folk tales, which are now sadly mostly out of print, but it might be worth trawling the secondhand bookshops and internet for:
The Guizer
The Lad of the Gad
Fairytales of Gold
Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales
A Bag of Moonshine.
-
Ok, I'm biased: I loved the author's books as a child and have reread them often as an adult. So when I saw this in the window of a local bookshop I stopped in my tracks. The book itself is beautiful, but what's inside is gold. From essays on faerie-folk and dark beasties, from strange, surreal Celtic voyages to dark and twisted poetry, Japanese tragedies and Native American fables, even a section of the Ramayana, every piece in this collection is valuable.
Anyone with a love of stories and storytelling - either the craft or just as a reader - would be well-served to read this. This is not academic - hell, I smiled frequently during the reading of certain tales. Oh, and although I found this in the children's section it's not really a book for kids. At least not young kids. This is not Disney, nor bowdlerised. Bad, violent things happen to children, and there is rape and seduction. These are tales as they should be - oral, visceral, charming and disturbing. -
Having a tough time with this one, wish I hadn't bothered buying it. BUT it is the 100th book I've bought for our Kindles (just thought I'd make a little note about that.
-
I was disappointed in how this book tasted.
-
Patchy. Some good. Some dull.
-
3 stars,
Metaphorosis Reviews
Summary
A collection of folk tales or fairy stories compiled and edited by Alan Garner, including stories from around the world, along with a handful of Garner's own poetry.
Review
I very much liked Alan Garner’s own books when I was young, and in the search for modern, e-versions, turned up this collection. Not Garner’s own work, of course (though that turns out to be only mostly true), but I still thought it would be interesting to see what stories he liked.
The result, unfortunately, is only mildly interesting. The stories are (with the exception of one taken from the Ramayana) generally short and easily digested, and they range fairly broadly around the world (though with a focus on Europe). Their brevity, unfortunately, works against them for adult or adolescent reading, but they might, especially with their frequent use of dialect, be fun reading for or to younger children.
A surprising inclusion is a number of speculative poems by Garner himself. I tend not to be a big fan of such poems, but these weren’t bad. I wouldn’t seek them out, but I thought they fit the collection well. According to the copyright page, the book itself draws heavily from the Garner-edited Hamish Hamilton Book of Goblins, taking roughly half the stories from there, along with new material.
If you’re looking for quick, lightly scary stories for young children, this book might suit you well. If you’re looking for stories more than bite-sized, look elsewhere. -
Si bien las historias tradicionales pueden ser mitos, leyendas, cuentos de hadas o cuentos populares. Este libro es sobre todo para cualquier persona que ama una historia por breve que esta sea e independientemente que esta sea épica o no, y aunque por naturaleza, el cuento popular se dirige al oído y su primer atractivo es para un oyente y no para un lector, estos no pierden su esencia y puedes detenerte a considerar cada matiz cultural, así el libro te lleva a lugares que van desde Guatemala, Canadá, Japón, India, Zambia, Inglaterra, Irlanda y Rusia ofreciéndote la oportunidad de entender un poco a través de su folklore su visión del mundo.
Por otro lado también se disfrutan algunas de sus historias enfocadas en el miedo cual si fueras un niño siendo asustado una noche antes de dormir. muchas son sus historias sin embargo mención especial para Yallery brown, Iram Biram, Hoichi the Earless, Bash Tchelik y The voyage of Maueldin. -
3/5 - Gobbleknoll
2/5 - Shick-Shack
2/5 - Vukub-Cakix
2/5 - Tops or Bottoms
4/5 - The Voyage of Maelduin
3/5 - Willow
2/5 - Edward Frank and the Friendly Cow
3/5 - Yallery Brown
3/5 - Moowis
3/5 - The Lady of the Wood
4/5 - Bash Tchelik
3/5 - Iram, Biram
3/5 - The Goblin Spider
2/5 - The Silent Commonwealth
3/5 - The Adventures of Nera
2/5 - A Letter
3/5 - Great Head and the Ten Brothers
2/5 - Faithful John
2/5 - The Trade That No One Knows
2/5 - Jack and his Golden Snuff-box
1/5 - Tarn Wethelan
2/5 - Asrai
3/5 - Hoichi the Earless
3/5 - Ramayana
3/5 - The Smoker
3/5 - Wild Worms and Swooning Shadows
3/5 - Assipattle and the Mester Stoorworm
3/5 - The Barguest of Nidderdale
4/5 - Loki
2/5 - Baldur the Bright
1/5 - The Flying Childer
1/5 - Father, Wait for Me
2/5 - Glooskap
1/5 - The Wonderful Wood
2/5 - The Green Mist -
I loved this. You should read Neil Gaiman's review. He lauds this book way better than I ever could. It's quoted below:
"There was a hill that ate people," begins the first story. Just like that. "Far away, and a long time ago, on a high mountain, without trees for shelter, without body or arms for anything, on spindly legs, ran Great Head," begins another story. We are in the realm of folk tales, where we are told what happened, and we must simply go along with it.
There is something of the national treasure about Alan Garner. He has been writing excellent books for more than 50 years. He was, I suspect, the first person to write what now we would describe as urban fantasies. His prose at its best (and it is pretty much always at its best) seems inevitable, and pushes reviewers into using similes that compare it to rocks and gorges and unchanging natural formations.
As I read the Collected Folk Tales there was a feeling of happy familiarity from the first, a déjà vu, as if I knew these stories, some of them intimately. My assumption as I read was that I had encountered most of them in other forms and other places (folk tales are told and retold, after all), but then, when I finished reading, I looked at the copyright page, and realised that more than half the stories had been published in 1969 as The Hamish Hamilton Book of Goblins. I read it when I was nine, and reread it often. I could remember it in my local library, remembered taking it off to a quiet corner, remembered how much I had loved it.
It is peculiar to encounter a book half of which was assembled up to 40 years after the rest and not to be able to see any obvious difference in the writing or the writer. The prose in the old stories feels as inevitable as the new. The stories are written in a variety of voices, emulating the places the tales came from, but the prose is always spare and hard, not a word wasted, not a word out of place.
Here we have stories from Britain and Ireland and all over the world, retold with assurance. Some of the high points that were not in the original collection include "The Flying Children", a story of lies and sex and supernatural revenge and murder that I first encountered in Neil Philip's Penguin Book of English Folk Tales. It is a story that makes authors want to retell it (I shoehorned it into Sandman). Then there's a tale Garner calls "Iram Biram", which Philip called "The Pear Drum" when he collected it, and which is a curiosity in itself, because it began as a nightmarish Victorian short story by Lucy Clifford called "The New Mother". Garner strips it down to its elements. It's an act of literary ventriloquism that illuminates the oral and folk tradition. Two girls named Blue Eyes and Turkey are tempted by a wild girl to be naughty, with the promise of a gift of a mysterious "pear drum". They are not naughty enough to get the drum, but are still so naughty that their mother leaves, and a new mother, with glass eyes and a wooden tail, takes her place.
Garner goes beyond the original ending, playing with the sound and the meaning of words:
There were no lamps lit, but in the glow of the fire they saw through the window the glitter glitter green glass of a mother's eye. They heard the thump; thump; thump of a wooden tail.
Iram, biram, brendon bo
Where did all the children go?
They went to the east, they went to the west
They went where the cuckoo has its nest.
Iram. Biram. Brendon. Bo.
And the Wild Girl wept.
Garner makes up a poem, and adds the haunting image of the Wild Girl weeping as a way of closing the tale, thus moving it somewhere entirely new, away from Victorian nursery horror and into the realm of the twice-told tale.
The book itself has a core of goblin stories – but a goblin can be anything, and Garner's own preferences seems to be for moments of the inexplicable. So many of the tales lack explanation for the events in them, as if the stories were the lyrics of folk songs, and the true meaning is in the music. There is an essay in here on the roots of the fairy folk, and who they really were, or might have been. There are a few dialect pieces, written, Garner says, in the voice of his blacksmith grandfather. There are poems: some collected from "Anon" and the dead, others by Garner himself, my favourite being "R.I.P", which begins: "A girl in our village makes love in the churchyard. / She doesn't mind who, but it must be the churchyard," and continues, lusty and honest to its bitter-hopeful end.
There is a version of Valmiki's Ramayana. There are Norse gods, Algonquin revenge magic and a hero's odyssey from Ireland to a series of magical islands.
This Collected Folk Tales is, by definition and by temperament, a patchwork, and reading it is like entering a rag and bone shop in which every object has been polished up and repaired and made fit for use, while always leaving in the cracks and dents that show that the goods have had years of use already. With the exception of some of the poems, there is nothing new or shining here, and the book is all the better for it. If I had small children, or a class, I would read to them from it.
And if, by the time I have grandchildren, there are still public libraries, as I hope there will be, I trust that they will find this book themselves in one (for it will be all the better for not being given or suggested or recommended to them by an adult), and take it to a quiet corner and read. -
An atmospheric, if jumbled, collection of tales. I was expecting far more British and Celtic stories, and those that there were I enjoyed. I particularly felt that the retelling of the Ramayana was out of place, but Garner's writing style is perfectly attuned to the oral style of the black dog and boggart tales in this collection, and it's worth reading for that along. Plus, that cover!!!
-
No matter how hard one may try, it is extremely difficult to express that particular feeling in dreams when the fantastical is immediately accepted as ordinary. Alan Garner’s prose is woven with that indescribable feeling. Without a wasted word, he manages to convince readers instantly that there is nothing random about blood tinted, or the fact that April can be tasted. Each story, passed on by generations, teaches the human mind's incredible capability of making the incredible acceptable and understanding.
-
One of the best collections and retellings of folk tales out there, with some nice additions of Garner's own tales and poetry.
-
It wasn't exactly what I thought it would be, but that's on me, not on the book. It's interesting, but, as it's said on the introduction, it's meant to be hear more than read.
-
Perhaps I missed something with this collection but despite enjoying previous work by Alan Garner, this really wasn't for me I'm afraid.
-
I expected bedtime stories but that's not quite what I got! Most stories are pretty dark.
-
Variable. I skipped some of them.
-
"The great collections of British folk tales should be treated in two ways: first, they should be bound in gold and brought out on ceremonial occasions as national treasures, and second, they should be printed in editions of hundreds of thousands, at the public expense, and given away free to every young teacher and every new parent"
-
Now I have to be honest here I love fairy tales and origin stories. Two of most cherished books are a plain red cover hardback of Grimm’s fairy tales and the other is called ‘The Dreamtime’ which is Australian Indigenous stories. I have probably read both a couple hundred times and I am not kidding there. So when it comes to fairy tales I am a bit of a devotee and thus somewhat biased.
Alan Garner has collected a really interesting group of fairy tales from around the world.Garner’s collection is wonderful, the stories vary in length and complexity. I really enjoyed the ‘Goblin Spider’, Tarm Wethelan’. ‘Asari’, ‘Hoichi – The Fearless’, Assipattle and the Mester Stoorworm’, ‘Loki’ and ‘Baldur the Bright’.
I found the story ‘Barguest of Nidderdale’ quite tongue in cheek as you have this very scary beast that will not heed to anyone but scampers when the wife opens the front door.
I like with Assipattle how the tongue of the Stoorworm cloving the earth and makes a length of sea that now divides Denmark from Swedeland and Narroway. I love those origin stories that tell you how things commenced.
Tarm Wethelan is a story featuring King Arthur. As part of his quest King Arthur has to discover what a woman’s greatest desire is and the correct answer will surprise you for is pure simplicity and absolute correctness.
The Norse stories of Loki and Baldur the Bright were wonderful and the humour was just fantastic.
Read this book, escape into a world where right and wrong can be blurred, good and evil is mixed and the worlds created are surreal, magical and familiar. It is a great collection of stories and I really enjoyed the book. -
This is a book to dip into and it will reward deep reading rather than skating over the surface. Give it time and thoughts will rise up like "yeast" as Garner terms it at one point when describing reading folk tales. Many of these stories were new to me and had me racing to Lore of the Land - a folklore encyclopedia - to put still more meat on the bones. Incredibly inspiring - I could imagine many of the tales being worked as themes into longer works and they must have proved much of Garner's inspiration over the years. It was good also to see a tale local to my hometown and yet neglected in many folklore works, the Barghest of Nidderdale, making an appearance and everywhere there is Garner's sly wit and eye for a story bubbling under. Unfortunately I have to give this copy back to my friend but I have a birthday coming up and I think I know what I shall be asking for...
-
These tales from around the globe hold a strange power; like the centuries of our collective unconscious unfurling or genetic remnants being stoked. Even the seemingly half-baked and nonsensical tales invoke a poetic surrealism. Garner honors some of native dialect and language, but they never get in the way. (The book looks gorgeous too, resembling a lost, magical tome.) The inclusion of the Ramayana and Nordic mythology was a bold move, yet the tales fit very well. Small narrative and lyrical poems (most by Garner) add to the effect. Inspirational material for writers indeed.
-
This collection of folk tales from around the globe is a must for anyone interested in the roots of folklore, fairy tales, myths and legends. Garner retells these stories with straightforward, effective prose and you can tell that there is a lifetime of immersion in these tales behind every word. Scattered throughout are some of Garner's own poems, which fit perfectly amongst stories of black dogs, Norse gods and Hindu myth.
Probably not to everyone's taste, but a thoroughly enjoyable book if you're in the right mindset.q -
I want to write like that: not using many words, just the right amount, and for them to possess poetic beauty.
This is a fascinating mixture of folk tales and legends, mostly British, but not always. At one point you'll be reading folk tales of Black Shuck (or Grim; you know, the black dog from Harry Potter), then a Guatemalan myth or a Russian fairy tale. Or a prose version of Ramayana, because why not. In all, a curious little collection.
