The Grateful Beasts, Andrew Lang
The Grateful Beasts, Andrew Lang
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The Grateful Beasts

Author: Andrew Lang

Narrator: Tavia Gilbert

Unabridged: 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 05/07/2013


Synopsis

Ferko, a handsome young man, was born into a very poor family with very wicked brothers. Because the family is so poor, the parents have to send the three brothers away, with only a loaf of bread each. The brothers gang up on Ferko while he is sleeping, stealing his bread and convincing him he consumed it in his sleep. Taking advantage of his starvation, they trick him into allowing them to blind him and break his legs. They leave him to die, but Ferko stumbles across a magical healing lake and is able to save himself. He also takes the time to save three wounded creatures - a wolf, a mouse, and a bee. Ferko, well and healed, arrives at a kingdom where he plans on asking the King to take him in. To his dismay, he sees his brothers have already been taken in to the King's service. The brothers fear that Ferko will tell the King what they have done, and immediately go to the King and tell him that Ferko is an evil magician who will steal his daughter. But when Ferko's brothers go after him again, with the help of the King, Ferko is able to turn to the three creatures whose lives he had once saved.
Andrew Lang (1844-1912) was a Scottish writer who collected fairy and folk tales from various cultures and put them together in twelve volumes of tales. He was noted for taking the tales from as many original sources as possible, keeping the fairy tales close to their intended meanings.

About Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang (1844–1912), Scottish man of letters educated at the Edinburgh Academy, St. Andrews, and Balliol College, Oxford, became a prolific and versatile London journalist. He took a leading part in the controversy with Max Müller and his school about the interpretation of mythology and folk tales. He published several volumes of verse and several solid contributions to the study of the philosophy and religion of primitive man. He also wrote the four-volume History of Scotland, A History of English Literature, and many fairy-tale collections, as well as works on Homer, Joan of Arc, Scott, Lockhart, Mary Stuart, John Knox, Prince Charlie, Tennyson, and others.


Reviews

Goodreads review by M.M. Strawberry on September 24, 2024

(Included in the Yellow Fairy Book) What the fuck, really? The story starts out with two brothers blinding and crippling their younger brother out of jealousy. Then they abandon him. The plucky youth manages to overhear two crows having a conversation, that water from a lake and water from dew would......more

Goodreads review by Mary on August 05, 2018

One of my favorite fairy tales.......more

Goodreads review by Robbie on July 26, 2020

sense of nostalgia is here in the story that ive never really read. and I appreciate the narrator.......more