The Lore of Andrew Lang

I don’t know if it’s true that, as they say, the Scots are gifted with the Second Sight, but they are definitely lovers of the lore informing us that such things exist in the world. I know, because I’m one! A Scot that is, not a medium. Robert Burns,Sir James Frazer, and George MacDonald have been among the many who devoted their lives to recording and preserving the whimsical and other-worldly Scots culture. Andrew Lang (1844-1912) was another.

No! Not Andrew Yang! Andrew Lang.

For years I only knew about Lang’s fairy books (or rather the books he compiled, wrote and edited in collaboration with his uncredited wife, Leonora Blanche Alleyne [1851-1933]). The series began with The Blue Fairy Book in 1889, and went through The Strange Story Book in 1913. There were 25 volumes in all, containing about 800 stories and 150 poems, all drawn from native fairy stories. (The key dozen are often called the Colored Fairy Books, for each one is named after a hue, so that your shelf of them makes a sort of rainbow).

My wife has about a half dozen of the series in Dover reprints, plus an older hardback of the Blue Fairy Book. It’s one of the things that made me fall for her. You know that someone is serious about stories if the Lang books are on their radar, for they are obviously not as well known as the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen (not in America, at any rate). Like most books of myths and fairy tales going all the way back to Ovid, while charming, the stories quickly seem repetitive. If you want them to stick to your ribs, you kind of need to consume them one tale at a time — say, oh, bedtime, as indicated by the doctor who wrote the prescription! Otherwise…there is something to be said for abridgement. But every so often I pick one up and read a tale at random strictly for pleasure.

A native of Selkirk, Lang was an Oxford Fellow. While he wrote volumes of verse, novels, and translations, he is mostly thought of as a scholar, with reputations in several different fields. He wrote not scores but hundreds of published works during his lifetime. His books include Custom and Myth (1884); Myth, Ritual and Religion (1887); and Modern Mythology (1897). He wrote several books about Homer, as well as translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey. He also produced several books about the history of Scotland and important historical figures like Mary Queen of Scots, Mary Stuart, Charles I, and John Knox. He edited works by other major writers, like Burns. He wrote humor, parodies, and children’s books. He collaborated on several adventure books with H. Rider Haggard (he even parodied Rider’s She with a book entitled He).

To return to our initial observation, Lang was also a pioneer of what is called psychical research, penning such volumes as The Book of Dreams and Ghosts (1897), Magic and Religion (1901) and The Secret of the Totem (1905). In 1911, he served as President of the Society for Psychical Research, which in his time at least was an honored distinction. Others who’d served in that post included eminent scholars like William James,Gilbert Murray, and Henri Bergson.

Lang was also a journalist who wrote articles for periodicals. This authoritative website is an excellent gateway to all of his writings. Have all your Andrew Lang needs met here. Or, just, ya know, get a medium to channel him.