The red book of animal stories

ANIMAL STORIES

EDITED BY ANDREW LANG.

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LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 39 Paternoster Row, London
New York and Bombay.

THE RED BOOK

OF

Animal Stories

SELECTED AND EDITED

BY

ANDREW LANG

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. J. FORD

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

NEW YORK AND BOMBAY

1899

All rights reserved

Copyright 1899

BY

Longmans, Green, & Co.

TO

MISS SYBIL CORBET

Author of ‘Animal Land’ ‘Sybil’s Garden of Pleasant Beasts’
and ‘Epiotic Poems’

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Sybil, the Beasts we bring to you
Are not so friendly, not so odd,
As those that all amazed we view,
The brutes created by your nod—
The Wuss, the Azorkon, and the Pod;
But then our tales are true!

Fauna of fancy, one and all
Obey your happy voice, we know;
A garden zoological
Is all around, where’er you go.
Mellys and Kanks walk to and fro,
And Dids attend your call.

We have but common wolves and bears,
Lion and leopard, hawk and hind,
Tigers, and crocodiles, and hares:
But yet they hope you will be kind,
And mark with sympathetic mind
These moving tales of theirs.

PREFACE

Children who read this book will perhaps ask whether all the stories are true? Now all the stories are not true; at least, we never meet the Phœnix now in any known part of the world. To be sure, there are other creatures, such as the Mastodon and the Pterodactyl, which are not found alive anywhere, but their bones remain, turned into stones or fossils. It is unlikely that they were changed into rocks by a witch, or by Perseus with the Gorgon’s Head, in the Greek story. It must have been done in some other way. However, the bones, now stones, show that there were plenty of queer beasts that have died out. Possibly the sight of the stone beasts and birds made people believe, long ago, in such creatures as Dragons, and the water-bulls that haunt the lochs in the Highlands. One of these was seen by a shepherd about eighty years since, and an account of it was sent to Sir Walter Scott. There is also the Bunyip, a strange creature which both white and black men say that they have seen in the lakes of Australia. Then there is the Sea Serpent; many people have seen him alive, but no specimen of a dead Sea Serpent is in any of the museums. About 1,300 years ago, more or less, St. Columba saw a great water-beast, which lived in the river Ness, and roared as it pursued men; but the Saint put an end to its adventures. For my part, I do not disbelieve that there may be plenty of strange animals which scientific men have not yet dissected and named by long names. Some of the last of these may have been remembered and called Dragons. For, if there were never any Dragons, why did all sorts of nations tell stories about them? The Fire Drake, however, also the Ice Beast, or Remora, do seem very unlikely creatures, and perhaps they are only a sort of poetical inventions. The stories about these unscientific animals are told by Mr. H. S. C. Everard, who found them in very curious old books.

The stories about Foxes are by Miss B. Grieve, who is a great friend of Foxes, and takes their side when they are hunted by the Duke of Buccleuch’s hounds. I am afraid she would not tell where the Fox was hiding, if she knew (as she sometimes does), just as you would not have told his enemies, if you had known that Charles II. was hiding in the oak tree. Not that it is wrong to hunt foxes, but a person who is not hunting naturally takes the weaker side. And, after all, the fun is to pursue the fox, not to catch him. The same lady wrote about sheep in ‘Sheep Farming on the Border.’

The stories about ‘Tom the Bear’ are taken from the French works on natural history by M. Alexandre Dumas. We cannot be sure that every word of them is true, for M. Dumas wrote novels chiefly, which you must read when you are older. One of these novels is about Charles I, and it is certainly not all true, so we cannot believe every word that M. Dumas tells us. He had a great deal of imagination—enough for about thirteen thousand living novelists.

Most of the other tales are written by Mrs. Lang, and are as true as possible; while Miss Lang took the adventures of a Lion Tamer, and ‘A Boar Hunt by Moonlight,’ out of French and German books. The story of greedy Squouncer, by Mrs. Lang, is true, every word, and I wrote ‘The Life and Death of Pincher,’ who belonged to a friend of mine.^[1] Squouncer’s portrait is from a photograph, and does justice to his noble expression.

Miss Blackley also did some of the stories. Most of the tales of ‘Thieving Dogs and Horses’ were published, about 1819, by Sir Walter Scott, in ‘Blackwood’s Magazine,’ from which they are taken by Mrs. Lang.

I have tried to make it clear that this is not altogether a scientific book; but a great deal of it is more to be depended on than ‘A Bad Boy’s Book of Beasts,’ or Miss Sybil Corbet’s books, ‘Animal Land,’ and ‘Sybil’s Garden of Pleasant Beasts.’

These are amusing, but it is not true that ‘the Garret Lion ate Sybil’s mummy.’ Indeed, I think that when people, long ago, invented the Fire Drake, and the Ice Beast, they were just like Miss Corbet, when she invented the Kank, the Wuss, and other animals. That is to say, they were children in their minds, though grown up in their bodies. They fancied that they saw creatures which were never created.

If this book has any moral at all, it is to be kind to all sorts and conditions of animals—that will let you. Most girls are ready to do this, but boys used to be apt to be unkind to Cats when I was a boy. There is no reason why an exception should be made as to Cats, and a boy ought to think of this before he throws stones or sets dogs at a cat. Now, in London, we often see the little street boys making friends with every cat they meet, but this is not so common in the country. If anything in this book amuses a boy, let him be kind to poor puss, and protect her, for the sake of his obedient friend,

ANDREW LANG.

CONTENTS

	PAGE
The Phœnix	1
Griffins and Unicorns	4
About Ants, Amphisbænas, and Basilisks	12
Dragons	20
The Story of Beowulf, Grendel, and Grendel’s Mother	33
The Story of Beowulf and the Fire Drake	43
A Fox Tale	49
An Egyptian Snake Charmer	55
An Adventure of Gérard, the Lion Hunter	61
Pumas and Jaguars in South America	84
Mathurin and Mathurine	98
Joseph: Whose proper name was Josephine	102
The Homes of the Vizcachas	108
Guanacos Living and Dying	112
In the American Desert	117
The Story of Jacko II	128
‘Princess’	135
The Lion and the Saint	138
The Further Adventures of ‘Tom’, a Bear, in Paris	143
Recollections of a Lion Tamer	154
Sheep Farming on the Border	171
When the World was Young	177
Bats and Vampires	196
The Ugliest Beast in the World	200
The Games of Orang-Outangs, and Kees the Baboon	206
Greyhounds and their Masters	224
The Great Father, and Snakes’ Ways	232
Elephant Shooting	238
Hyenas and Children	252
A Fight with a Hippopotamus	257
Kanny, the Kangaroo	261
Collies, or Sheep Dogs	266
Two Big Dogs and a Little One	273
Crocodile Stories	280
Lion-Hunting and Lions	285
On the Trail of a Man-eater	304
Greyhounds and their Arab Masters	310
The Life and Death of Pincher	317
A Boar Hunt by Moonlight	321
Thieving Dogs and Horses	328
To the Memory of Squouncer	339
How Tom the Bear was born a Frenchman	344
Charley	357
Fairy Rings; and the Fairies who make them	364
How the Reindeer Live	370
The Cow and the Crocodile	376

ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES

The Lion falls in love with Aissa	Frontispiece
The Griffin	to face p. 4
How the Unicorn was Trapped	9
Finding a Mermaid	16
Victor carried up the Chasm by the Dragon	26
Queen Waltheow and Beowulf	34
Grendel’s Mother drags Beowulf to the bottom of the Lake	38
The Death of Beowulf	44
The Lion falls in love with Aissa	62
Aissa’s Father finds her Axe	70
The Lion appears at the top of the Ravine	78
Maldonada guarded by the Puma	88
The Jaguar besieged by Peccaries	92
Joseph’s Breakfast	104
St. Jerome draws out the Thorn	138
Tom frightens the Little Girl	144
Just in time to save Tom	150
Securing a Mammoth	178
Megatheria	184
The Vampire Bat	196
How the Namaquas hunt the Rhinoceros	202
Orang-Outangs eating Oysters on the Sea-shore	208
The Orang determines to throw the rival Monkeys overboard	212
When this Prize was laid at the feet of the Lady, the Giver might ask in return for anything he chose	to face p. 224
Baker shooting the Elephants at the Island	240
Hannibal’s Elephants	248
The Lion was in the air close to him	290
The Woodman and the Lions get the best of the Bear	296
The Highwayman’s Horse	334
The Captain had a Strange Dream	346
The Bear instantly rose on its hind legs and began to Dance	352
Then a soft nose touched him	358

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IN TEXT

The Phœnix	2
The Odenthos	13
The Demon of Cathay	15
Ragnar does battle with the Serpents	23
De Gozon and his Dogs fight the Dragon	31
The Snake Charmer	57
The Lion said to the Gazelles ‘Do not flee’	67
The Lion laughs at the Marabout’s Question	75
Mathurin and Mathurine	99
Spaniards meeting a Caravan of Llamas	113
Watching the Combat	121
The Moccason Snake fascinates the Orioles	123
‘Princess and the Invalid’	136
The Lion rescues the Ass from the Caravan	142
I seized him by the scruff of the neck	159
The Lion Tamer offers to wake the (stuffed) Crocodile!	163
Digging the imprisoned Sheep out of the Snow	175
Stegosaurus	189
Pterodactyl	193
Le Vaillant and Fees out limiting	217
The Baboon who looked after the Goats	221
The Snakes found in the Lame Man’s Bed	235
Oswell’s narrow Escape	245
How the Hippopotamus attacked the Boat	259
The New Arrival	262
Kanny frightens the Carpenters	264
The Faithful Messenger	267
Finding the Necklace	283
The Lion in the Camp	301
Cumming’s Cap frightens the Tiger	305
The Elephant tried to gore the Tiger with his Tusks	308
The Summons to the Hunt	313
Vomhammel in Danger	325
A Portrait of Greedy Squouncer	341
Hunting the Bison	367

1. From Longman’s Magazine.