The Animal Story Book - The Original Classic Edition. Lang Andrew

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      THE

       Animal Story Book EDITED BY ANDREW LANG

       WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. J. FORD

       LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

       FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK LONDON, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA AND MADRAS

       1914

       Copyright, 1896,

       By Longmans, Green, & Co.

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       All rights reserved.

       First Edition, September, 1896. Reprinted, November, 1896, July, 1899, June, 1904, February, 1909,

       September, 1914.

       THE FAIRY BOOK SERIES Edited by Andrew Lang

       New and Cheaper Issue

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       EACH VOLUME, $1.00 NET

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       THE BLUE FAIRY BOOK. With 138 Illustrations. THE RED FAIRY BOOK. With 100 Illustrations. THE GREEN FAIRY BOOK. With 101 Illustrations. THE GREY FAIRY BOOK. With 65 Illustrations.

       THE YELLOW FAIRY BOOK. With 104 Illustrations. THE PINK FAIRY BOOK. With 67 Illustrations.

       THE BLUE POETRY BOOK. With 100 Illustrations. THE TRUE STORY BOOK. With 66 Illustrations.

       THE RED TRUE STORY BOOK. With 100 Illustrations. THE ANIMAL STORY BOOK. With 67 Illustrations.

       THE RED BOOK OF ANIMAL STORIES. With 65 Illustrations.

       THE ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS. With 66 Illustrations.

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       THE VIOLET FAIRY BOOK. With 8 Coloured Plates and 54 other Illustrations. THE CRIMSON FAIRY BOOK. With 8 Coloured Plates and 43 other Illustrations. THE BROWN FAIRY BOOK. With 8 Coloured Plates and 42 other Illustrations. THE OLIVE FAIRY BOOK. With 8 Coloured Plates and 43 other Illustrations. THE ORANGE FAIRY BOOK. With 8 Coloured Plates and 50 other Illustrations. THE BOOK OF ROMANCE. With 8 Coloured Plates and 44 other Illustrations. THE RED ROMANCE BOOK. With 8 Coloured Plates and 44 other Illustrations.

       THE BOOK OF PRINCES AND PRINCESSES. By Mrs. Lang. With 8 Coloured Plates and 43 other Illustrations. THE RED BOOK OF HEROES. By Mrs. Lang. With 8 Coloured Plates and 40 other Illustrations.

       THE LILAC FAIRY BOOK. With 6 Coloured Plates and 46 other Illustrations.

       THE ALL SORTS OF STORIES BOOK. By Mrs. Lang. With 5 Coloured Plates and 43 other Illustrations. THE BOOK OF SAINTS AND HEROES. By Mrs. Lang. With 12 Coloured Plates and 18 other Illustrations.

       THE STRANGE STORY BOOK. By Mrs. Lang. With Portrait of Andrew Lang, 12 Coloured Plates and 18 other Illustrations.

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       LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO., NEW YORK

       ANDROCLES IN THE ARENA To

       MASTER FREDERICK LONGMAN This year our Book for Christmas varies, Deals not with History nor Fairies

       (I can't help thinking, children, you Prefer a book which is not true). We leave these intellectual feasts,

       To talk of Fishes, Birds, and Beasts. These--though his aim is hardly steady-- These are, I think, a theme for Freddy! Trout, though he is not up to fly,

       He soon will catch--as well as I! So, Freddy, take this artless rhyme, And be a Sportsman in your time! [vii]

       PREFACE

       Children who have read our Fairy Books may have noticed that there are not so very many fairies in the stories after all. The most

       common characters are birds, beasts, and fishes, who talk and act like Christians. The reason of this is that the first people who

       told the stories were not very clever, or, if they were clever, they had never been taught to read and write, or to distinguish between Vegetable, Animal, and Mineral. They took it that all things were 'much of a muchness:' they were not proud, and held that beast and bird could talk like themselves, only, of course, in a different language.

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       After offering, then, so many Fairy Books (though the stories are not all told yet), we now present you (in return for a coin or two) with a book about the friends of children and of fairies--the beasts. The stories are all true, more or less, but it is possible that Monsieur Dumas and Monsieur Theophile Gautier rather improved upon their tales. I own that I have my doubts about the bears and serpents in the tales by the Baron Wogan. This gentleman's ancestors were famous Irish people. One of them [viii] held Cromwell's soldiers back when they were pursuing Charles II. after Worcester fight. He also led a troop of horse from Dover to the Highlands, where he died of a wound, after fighting for the King. The next Wogan was a friend of Pope and Swift; he escaped from prison after Preston fight, in 1715, and, later, rescued Prince Charlie's mother from confinement in Austria, and took her to marry King James.

       He next became Governor of Don Quixote's province, La Mancha, in Spain, and was still alive and merry in 1752. Baron Wogan, de-

       scended from these heroes, saw no longer any king to fight for, so he went to America and fought bears. No doubt he was as brave as his ancestors, but whether all his stories of serpents are absolutely correct I am not so certain. People have also been heard to express doubts about Mr. Waterton and the Cayman. The terrible tale of Mr. Gully and his deeds of war I know to be accurate, and the story of Oscar, the sentimental tyke, is believed in firmly by the lady who wrote it. As for the stories about Greek and Roman beasts, Pliny, who tells them, is a most respectable author. On the whole, then, this is more or less of a true story-book.

       There ought to be a moral; if so, it probably is that we should be kind to all sorts of animals, and, above all, knock trout on the head when they are caught, and don't let the poor things jump about till they die. A chapter of a very learned sort was written about the cleverness of beasts, proving that there must [ix] have been great inventive geniuses among beasts long ago, and that now they have rather got into a habit (which I think a very good one) of being content with the discoveries of their ancestors. This led naturally to some observations on Instinct and Reason; but there may be children who are glad that there was no room for this chapter.

       The longer stories from Monsieur Dumas were translated from the French by Miss Cheape.

       'A Rat Tale' is by Miss Evelyn Grieve, who knew the rats.

       'Mr. Gully' is by Miss Elspeth Campbell, to whom Mr. Gully belonged.

       'The Dog of Montargis,' 'More Faithful than Favoured,' and 'Androcles' are by Miss Eleanor Sellar. Snakes, Bears, Ants, Wolves, Monkeys, and some Lions are by Miss Lang.

       'Two Highland Dogs' is by Miss Goodrich Freer.

       'Fido' and 'Oscar' and 'Patch' are by Miss A. M. Alleyne.

       'Djijam' is by his master.

       'The Starling of Segringen' and 'Grateful Dogs' are by Mr. Bartells.

       'Tom the Bear,' 'The Frog,' 'Jacko the Monkey' and 'Gazelle' are from Dumas by Miss Blackley. All the rest are by Mrs. Lang.

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