The Penguin Book Of English Folktales

With more than 100 memorable tales, this extensive collection brings together stirring stories from all parts of Scotland--from the vibrant Gaelic traditional Highlands and Islands to the enduring legends handed down by the Lowland Scots.

This collection of more than 100 tales from Scotland's vibrant heritage records the form in which they were first collected in the 19th century. Neil Philip's annotations elaborate on variations in the stories.

With more than 100 memorable tales, this extensive collection brings together stirring stories from all parts of Scotland--from the vibrant Gaelic traditional Highlands and Islands to the enduring legends handed down by the Lowland Scots.

This is a golden treasury of over one hundred English folktales captured in the form they were first collected in past centuries. Read these classic tales as they would have been told when storytelling was a living art – when the audience believed in boggarts and hobgoblins, local witches and will-o’-the-wisps, ghosts and giants, cunning foxes and royal frogs. Find “Jack the Giantkiller”, “Tom Tit Tot” and other quintessentially English favourites, alongside interesting borrowings, such as an English version of the Grimms’ “Little Snow White” – as well as bedtime frighteners, including “Captain Murderer”, as told to Charles Dickens by his childhood nurse. Neil Philip has provided a full introduction and source notes on each story that illustrate each tale’s journey from mouth to page, and what has happened to them on the way. These tales rank among the finest English short stories of all time in their richness of metaphor and plot and their great verbal dash and daring.