The Curious Book of Birds

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Curious Book of Birds, The

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Title: The Curious Book of Birds
Author: Abbie Farwell Brown
Illustrator: E. Boyd Smith
Release Date: June 27, 2005 [EBook #16140]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration: _Mr. Stork and Miss Heron (page 178)_]

The Curious Book of Birds
By Abbie Farwell Brown
With Illustrations _By E. Boyd Smith_
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1903

_Published October, 1903._

_There are many books written nowadays which will tell you about birds as folk of the twentieth century see them. They describe carefully the singer's house, his habits, the number of his little wife's eggs, and the color of every tiny feather on her pretty wings. But these books tell you nothing at all about bird-history; about what birds have meant to all the generations of men, women, and children since the world began. You would think, to read the words of the bird-book men, that they were the very first folk to see any bird, and that what they think they have seen is the only matter worth the knowing._
_Now the interesting facts about birds we have always with us. We can find them out for ourselves, which is a very pleasant thing to do, or we can take the word of others, of which there is no lack. But it is the quaint fancies about birds which are in danger of being lost. The long-time fancies which the world's children in all lands have been taught are quite as important as the every-day facts. They show what the little feathered brothers have been to the children of men; how we have come to like some and to dislike others as we do; why the poets have called them by certain nicknames which we ought to know; and why a great many strange things are so, in the minds of childlike people._
_Facts are not what one looks for in a Curious Book. Yet it may be that some facts have crept in among the ancient fancies of this volume, just as bookworms will crawl into the nicest books; but they do not belong there, and it is for these that the Book apologizes to the children. It has no apology to offer those grown folks who insist that facts, never fancies, are what children need._

CONTENTS
PAGE
THE DISOBEDIENT WOODPECKER 1 (_French_)
MOTHER MAGPIE'S KINDERGARTEN 6 (_Isle of Wight_)
THE GORGEOUS GOLDFINCH 14 (_Roumanian_)
KING OF THE BIRDS 18 (_Gascon_)
HALCYONE 27 (_Greek_)
THE FORGETFUL KINGFISHER 33 (_German_)
THE WREN WHO BROUGHT FIRE 39 (_French_)
HOW THE BLUEBIRD CROSSED 45 (_Samoan_)
THE PEACOCK'S COUSIN 49 (_Arabic, Malay_)
THE MASQUERADING CROW 59 (_Russian_)
KING SOLOMON AND THE BIRDS 69 (_Arabic_)
THE PIOUS ROBIN 81 (_Breton, Basque, Greek_)
THE ROBIN WHO WAS AN INDIAN 87 (_Ojibway_)
THE INQUISITIVE WOMAN 94 (_Roumanian_)
WHY THE NIGHTINGALE WAKES 98 (_French_)
MRS. PARTRIDGE'S BABIES 105 (_Greek_)
THE EARLY GIRL 109 (_Roumanian_)
HOW THE BLACKBIRD SPOILED HIS COAT 114 (_French_)
THE BLACKBIRD AND THE FOX 124 (_French_)
THE DOVE WHO SPOKE TRUTH 127 (_Welsh_)
THE FOWLS ON PILGRIMAGE 132 (_Greek_)
THE GROUND-PIGEON 138 (_Malay_)
SISTER HEN AND THE CROCODILE 145 (_Congo Negro_)
THE THRUSH AND THE CUCKOO 153 (_Roumanian, German_)
THE OWL AND THE MOON 157 (_Malay_)
THE TUFTED CAP 164 (_Ainu, Japanese Islands_)
THE GOOD HUNTER 168 (_Iroquois_)
THE COURTSHIP OF MR. STORK AND MISS HERON 176 (_Russian_)
THE PHOENIX 184 (_Egyptian_)
Seven of these tales appeared originally in The Churchman and two in The Congregationalist. They are reprinted by the courteous permission of the publishers of those magazines.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE MR. STORK AND MISS HERON (page 178) Frontispiece
"NEXT YOU MUST LAY A FEATHER" 10
SUCH A GORGEOUS COAT! 16
"BLESS ME!" HE EXCLAIMED, "WHOM HAVE WE HERE?" 64
HERE ARE SOME NICE FAT WIGGLY WORMS 106
HE MANAGED TO FLUTTER OUT OF REACH 126
"O BROTHER, DON'T!" 148
PUTRI BALAN BEGAN TO LAUGH 160

The Curious Book of Birds

"Not you alone, proud truths of the world, Not you alone, ye facts of modern science, But myths and fables of eld, Asia's, Africa's fables."
_Whitman._

The Curious Book of Birds

THE DISOBEDIENT WOODPECKER
Long, long ago, at the beginning of things, they say that the Lord made the world smooth and round like an apple. There were no hills nor mountains: nor were there any hollows or valleys to hold the seas and rivers, fountains and pools, which the world of men would need. It must, indeed, have been a stupid and ugly earth in those days, with no chance for swimming or sailing, rowing or fishing. But as yet there was no one to think anything about it, no one