Project Gutenberg's The Talking Thrush, by William Crooke and W. H. D. Rouse

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Title: The Talking Thrush
and Other Tales from India

Author: William Crooke
W. H. D. Rouse

Illustrator: W. Heath Robinson

Release Date: December 9, 2009 [EBook #30635]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The Talking Thrush

And Other Tales from India

[Illustration: "A Crow is a Crow for ever."]

The Talking Thrush

And Other Tales from India Collected by W.CROOKE And Retold by
W.H.DROUSE

Illustrated by W.H.Robinson.

[Illustration]

New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

1922

FIRST PUBLISHED _October 1899_
REPRINTED _July 1902; October 1922_

_All rights reserved_

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

[Illustration]

Preface

THE stories contained in this little book are only a small part of a
large collection of Indian folk-tales, made by Mr. Crooke in the course
of the Ethnological Survey of the North-West Provinces and Oudh. Some
were recorded by the collector from the lips of the jungle-folk of
Mirzapur; others by his native assistant, Pandit Ramgharib Chaube.
Besides these, a large number were received from all parts of the
Provinces in response to a circular issued by Mr. J. C. Nesfield, the
Director of Public Instruction, to all teachers of village schools.

The present selection is confined to the Beast Stories, which are
particularly interesting as being mostly indigenous and little affected
by so-called Aryan influence. Most of them are new, or have been
published only in the _North Indian Notes and Queries_ (referred to as
_N.I.N.Q._).

In the re-telling, for which Mr. Rouse is responsible, a number of
changes have been made. The text of the book is meant for children, and
consequently the first aim has been to make an intere