Folk-Tales of Bengal
SynopsisPlot
The narratives were collated by the Reverend Lal Behari Day (1824 - 1892); a Bengali Indian journalist, who converted to Christianity, and became a Christian missionary himself. He was a well-respected folklorist, and immersed himself in Bengali culture. The twenty-two stories of 'Folk Tales of Bengal' include: 'The Indignant Brahman', 'The Evil-Eye of Sani', 'The Story of Swet-Basanta', 'A Ghostly Wife', 'The Origin of Rubies', 'The Match-Making Jackal', and many more. Warwick Goble (1862 - 1943) was an illustrator of children's books, who specialised in Japanese and Indian themes.
Story
About this book
Folk-Tales of Bengal is a collection of twenty-two traditional stories gathered by Lal Behari Day (1824-1892), a Bengali journalist, folklorist, and Christian missionary. Day was born in Bengal and spent years absorbing the oral traditions of the region before setting them down in written form. The stories cover a wide range of subjects familiar to Bengali storytelling: encounters with spirits, transformations, clever animals, moral puzzles, and the doings of figures such as Brahmans and jackals. Titles like The Evil-Eye of Sani, A Ghostly Wife, The Origin of Rubies, and The Match-Making Jackal suggest the variety of tone and subject matter across the collection.
The edition referenced here includes thirty-two colour illustrations by Warwick Goble (1862-1943), a British illustrator known for his work on books with Japanese and Indian themes. Goble's images accompany the tales with detailed compositions that reflect the settings and characters Day described. The pairing of a Bengali folklorist's gathered narratives with an English illustrator's visual interpretations places this volume at a particular intersection of colonial-era cultural exchange, where oral traditions from Bengal were recorded and published for English-reading audiences.
