Canadian Wonder Tales

First published in 1918, Canadian Wonder Tales is a collection of Canadian folk fables compiled from oral history; these universal stories are about understanding one's place in and how to make sense of the elemental world. Mostly animal stories, with "all the usual features of magic and transformation and interchange of more or less kindly offices between man and beast," Canadian Wonder Tales is a spellbinding record of Canada's unique mythologies. "[You' ll] learn in this book the answers to such conundrums as the following--why Aspen leaves tremble, what Woodpecker and Bluejay were before they were changed into birds, why the Moon usually travels alone in the forest." (from the 1917 introduction)

Canadian Wonder Tales by Cyrus MacMillan. The author's has taken down from the lips of living people, pretty much as they were given to him, a series of stories which obviously contain many elements that have been handed down by oral tradition from some far-off past. They are mostly animal stories, with all the usual features of magic and transformation, articulate speech on the part of the animals, and interchange of more or less kindly offices between man and beast. The result is a collection of fables which-especially as illustrated by an eminent artist-will provide a book for children, and will give their elders also some food for reflection. Not that there is, so far as I have been able to discover, any moral about some at least of the tales. They are not "stories with a purpose." But they suggest to the adult reader the essential identity of many of the methods by which in a more or less remote antiquity the human race expressed itself in various parts of the world.

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Excerpt from Canadian Wonder Tales Batteries, and from Somewhere in France he has asked me to stand sponsor for his volume. The author's method resembles that followed by the brothers Grimm a century ago. He has taken down from the lips of living people, pretty much as they were given to him, a series of stories which obviously contain many elements that have been handed down by oral tradition from some far-off past. They are mostly animal stories, with all the usual features of magic and transformation, articulate speech on the part of the animals, and interchange of more or less kindly offices between man and beast. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The tales in this collection have been gathered in various parts of Canada. They have been selected from a larger collection of folk-tales and folk-songs made by the writer for more academic and scientific purposes. They are not the product of the writer's imagination; they are the common possession of the "folk." Many of them are still reverently believed by the Canadian Indians, and all are still told with seriousness around camp fires in forests and on plains, upon the sea and by cottage hearths. The dress in which they now appear may be new, but the skeleton of each story has been left unchanged.