Читать онлайн «Collected Folk Tales»
Автор Алан Гарнер
Dedication
For Sam
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Prayer
Introduction
Gobbleknoll
Shick-Shack
Vukub-Cakix
Tops or Bottoms
The Voyage of Maelduin
The Fort of Rathangan
Willow
Maggoty’s Wood
Edward Frank and the Friendly Cow
Yallery Brown
Moowis
The Lady of the Wood
A Voice Speaks from the Well
Bash Tchelik
Iram, Biram
The Goblin Spider
To the Tengu Goblins and other Demons
The Secret Commonwealth
The Piper of Shacklow
The Adventures of Nera
The Green Mound
A Letter
Halloween
Great Head and the Ten Brothers
Faithful John
The Trade that No One Knows
Jack and his Golden Snuff-Box
A Charm against Witches
Tarn Wethelan
Mist
Asrai
Hoichi the Earless
The Breadhorse
Ramayana
The Island of the Strong Door
The Smoker
R. I. P.
Wild Worms and Swooning Shadows
Assipattle and the Mester Stoorworm
The Barguest of Nidderdale
Loki
Baldur the Bright
The Flying Childer
Father, Wait for Me
Glooskap
The Wonderful Wood
Wae’s Me
The Green Mist
Other Books by Alan Garner
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prayer
Graunt that no Hobgoblins fright me,
No hungrie devils rise up and bite me;
No Urchins, Elves, or drunkards Ghoasts
Shove me against walles or postes.
O graunt I may no black thing touch.
Though many men love to meet such.
John Day
1604
Introduction
“Believe the fairy tales. What were the fairy tales, they will come true. ”
That is a common beginning to Russian stories, and it is a wise one. We have always tried to make sense of the natural forces in the world and of the hidden forces in ourselves. Sometimes we give them shapes as gods and devils and spirits; sometimes we make them into animals; sometimes we subject them to rules, which we call magic. And I would call much of magic “the science we have not discovered yet”.
Four hundred years ago, a man could write in England: “Our mothers maids have so terrified us with an ouglie divell having hornes on his head, fier in his mouth, and a taile in his breache, eies like a bason, fanges like a dog, claws like a beare, and a voice roring like a lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we hear one cry Bough; and they have so fraied us with bull beggers, spirits, witches, urchins, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, syleens, kit with the cansticke, tritons, centaures, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars, conjurers, nymphes, changelings, Incubus, Robin good-fellowe, the spoorne, the mare, the man in the oke, the hell waine, the firedrake, the puckle, Tom thombe, hob goblin, Tom tumbler, boneles, and such other bugs, that we are afraid of our own shadows.
”Little has changed since then. We may have lost our faith in the terror of the cornfield and the greenwood, but we still need terror. Boneles and such other bugs now ride flying saucers, and it is in the galaxy, not the churchyard, that menace lies.
We need to be scared. It is healthy and good for us. But not all traditional stories are about confronting fear. They can show us our humanity and convey a sense of the numinous.
Traditional stories may be myth, legend, fairy tale or folk tale. Each of these terms has a different and technical meaning; but this book is not technical. It is for anyone that loves a story, whether the story be anecdote or epic.
