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THE MARY FRANCES STORY BOOK contains 37 Illustrated Stories from among the Story People of Story Island
All the stories in this book tell a story but they also contain lessons; they teach something about cooking and sewing, gardening and first-aid. In fact the Mary Frances Story Book is all story, and contains 37 exquisitely illustrated stories drawn from many sources.
One summer afternoon Mary Frances took a holiday and sailed away across the blue water to an island—an island formed by the top of a coral mountain resting in a sea of blue—a brighter blue than the water or sky anywhere in the world.
The island itself and the roofs of the houses were coral white, with palm, banana and mahogany trees encased in green. The breezes that blew are the warm, soft breezes of the southern sun. This island is the “enchanted island” of the good story-tellers which Mary Frances, and now all children, are allowed to visit through the stories in this book. The story people who live there believe in truth and beauty, courage and kindness, and these are the theme of all their stories.
As may be imagined, when Mary Frances came home she had not only one, but many new stories to tell; and they are now written in this book for you.
Some of the stories in this volume are:
On the Shore
The Good Ferry Puts Out to Sea
Diamonds and Toads
Tiny’s Adventures in Tinytown
Gloomy Gus and the Christmas Cat
The Wedding Feast
The Midnight Music – and many many more
This volume is sure to keep you and your young ones enchanted for hours, if not because of the quantity, then their quality. They will have you coming back for more time and again.
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ISBN: 9788828376248
FORMATS: Kindle/Mobi, ePub, PDF
DOWNLOAD LINK: https://folklore-fairy-tales-myths-legends-and-other-stories.stores.streetlib.com/en/anon-e-mouse/the-mary-frances-story-book-37-illustrated-stories-among-the-story-people/
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Today we head back to the west coast of the USA. But first a stopover in New Zealand, also known as the land of the long white cloud, or Aotearoa (ay-oh-tee-ah-roh-ah) in the Maori language.
Our tale today hails from Maori folklore and is titled “The Art of Netting Learned by Kahukura from the Fairies”. It translates into Maori as “Ko Te Korero Mo Nga Patupaiarehe”
ONCE upon a time, a man of the name of Kahukura wished to pay a visit to Rangiaowhia, a place lying far to the northward, near the country of the tribe called Te Rarawa. Whilst he lived at his own village, he was continually haunted by a desire to visit that place. At length he started on his journey, and reached Rangiaowhia, and as he was on his road, be passed a place where some people had been cleaning mackerel, and he saw the inside of the fish lying all about the sand on the sea-shore: surprised at this, he looked about at the marks, and said to himself: ‘Oh, this must have been done by some of the people of the district.’ But when he came to look a little more narrowly at the footmarks, he saw that the people who had been fishing had made them in the night-time, not that morning, nor in the day; and he said to himself: ‘These are no mortals who have been fishing here–spirits must have done this; had they been men, some of the reeds and grass which they sat on in their canoe would have been lying about.’ He felt quite sure from several circumstances, that spirits or fairies had been there; and after observing everything well, he returned to the house where he was stopping. He, however, held fast in his heart what he had seen, as something very striking to tell all his friends in every direction, and as likely to be the means of gaining knowledge which might enable him to find out something new.
So that night he returned to the place where he had observed all these things, and just as he reached the spot, back had come the fairies too, to haul their net for mackerel; and some of them were shouting out: ‘The net here! the net here!’ Then a canoe paddled off to fetch the other in which the net was laid, and as they dropped the net into the water, they began to cry out: ‘Drop the net in the sea at Rangiaowhia, and haul it at Mamaku.’ These words were sung out by the fairies, as an encouragement in their work and from the joy of their hearts at their sport in fishing.
As the fairies were dragging the net to the shore, Kahukura managed to mix amongst them, and hauled away at the rope; he happened to be a very fair man, so that his skin was almost as white as that of these fairies, and from that cause he was not observed by them. As the net came close in to the shore, the fairies began to cheer and shout: ‘Go out into the sea some of you, in front of the rocks, lest the nets should be entangled at Tawatawauia by Teweteweuia’, for that was the name of a rugged rock standing out from the sandy shore; the main body of the fairies kept hauling at the net, and Kahukura pulled away in the midst of them.
When the first fish reached the shore, thrown up in the ripple driven before the net as they hauled it in, the fairies had not yet remarked Kahukura, for he was almost as fair as they were. It was just at the very first peep of dawn that the fish were all landed, and the fairies ran hastily to pick them up from the sand, and to haul the net up on the beach. They did not act with their fish as men do, dividing them into separate loads for each, but everyone took up what fish he liked, and ran a twig through their gills, and as they strung the fish, they continued calling out: ‘Make haste, run here, all of you, and finish the work before the sun rises.’
Kahukura kept on stringing his fish with the rest of them. He had only a very short string, and, making a slip-knot at the end of it, when he had covered the string with fish, he lifted them up, but had hardly raised them from the ground when the slip-knot gave way from the weight of the fish, and off they fell; then some of the fairies ran good-naturedly to help him to string his fish again, and one of them tied the knot at the end of the string for him, but the fairy had hardly gone after knotting it, before Kahukura had unfastened it, and again tied a slip-knot at the end; then he began stringing his fish again, and when he had got a great many on, up he lifted them, and off they slipped as before. This trick he repeated several times, and delayed the fairies in their work by getting them to knot his string for him, and put his fish on it. At last full daylight broke, so that there was light enough to distinguish a man’s face, and the fairies saw that Kahukura was a man; then they dispersed in confusion, leaving their fish and their net, and abandoning their canoes, which were nothing but stems of the flax. In a moment the fairies started for their own abodes; in their hurry, as has just been said, they abandoned their net, which was made of rushes; and off the good people fled as fast as they could go. Now was first discovered the stitch for netting a net, for they left theirs with Kahukura, and it became a pattern for him. He thus taught his children to make nets, and by them the Maori race were made acquainted with that art, which they have now known from very remote times.
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From “Polynesian Mythology Ancient Traditional History Of The New Zealanders” (Maori Folklore and Legends) by Sir George Grey
ISBN: 978-1-907256-31-8
URL: http://www.abelapublishing.com/cg_pmath.html
Folklore and Fairytales - Free Stories for Children 