I wandered through Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book the other day and came across the tale of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. Now, it so happens that when I was growing up, the Giant recited: ‘Fe fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive or be he dead, I’ll grind his […]
A beautiful witch-maiden explains the powers of a precious gold ring in ‘The Dragon of the North’, a fairy tale in Andrew Lang’s Yellow Fairy Book, which I read eagerly a long, long time ago. She says: “If I put the ring on the little finger of my left hand, then I can fly like […]
I was 8 years old when I read this comic book story by Dick Moores in 1952. And what a great story it was. I mean, look, I’m posting about it 60 years later! An old car bought by Goofy is possessed by the spirit of its creator, who was cheated out of his invention […]
The Blue Fairy Book, the first of Andrew Lang’s folk and fairy tale collections, was published in 1889. You’ll find the monstrous three-headed Red Etin in there searching for a young man who “had not been long in his hidy-hole before the awful Etin came in; and no sooner was he in than he was […]
Here’s an edition of Andrew Lang’s The Brown Fairy Book illustrated by Omar Rayyan. You can read a tale told by Australian aborigines in there. It’s all about a creature called the Bunyip. It’s a good idea to avoid her. “The side of the pool where she lives is always shunned by everyone, as nobody […]
This is my copy of The Folio Society edition of Andrew Lang’s The Crimson Fairy Book with paintings and decorations by Tim Stevens. Andrew Lang collected folk and fairy tales and bound them up in his books of color. He didn’t write the fairy tales. Well, how did they get invented then? Andrew Lang said, […]
I only know snippets of the language spoken on the world of Boad. One phrase occurs repeatedly from the earliest chronicles of Harpo all the way through those of Lace, Bekka and Plumly. ‘Sabeek orrun’ is the phrase, and it means ‘Practice patience’. Most often it spouts from the mouths of elders trying to calm […]
Why isn’t ‘earhear’ in the dictionary? ‘Eyesight’ is in the dictionary. As far as I’m concerned, ‘earhear’ is a perfectly good word, and I intend to use it in my writing and in my every day life from this day forward. Do you have good eyesight? Do you have good earhear? As for me, my […]
Here are quite a few of my Boadlian characters hanging out on my fridge. Let’s see, there are two sets of twins, one set of triplets and more than a few characters pictured both as youngsters and oldsters. Only one dragon, though.
Here is the Oz corner of my library. Left to right are Kabumpo in Oz, The Wonder City of Oz, The Gnome King of Oz, The Shaggy Man of Oz, Lucky Bucky in Oz, The Emerald City of Oz, The Royal Book of Oz, The Road to Oz, and The Annotated Wizard of Oz. Stacked […]
