This is a collection of folk tales originating in Canada, some from aboriginal oral tradition and others due to early French, Scottish, Irish and British colonists. They are presented as "fables" though many are without obvious moral.

This is the book of a soldier-student. Captain Macmillan interrupted his teaching work in Montreal to go overseas with one of our McGill 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.

Book Details