Folk-Tales of Bengal — Inside the Classic

A Collector's Quest for a Storyteller

Day's preface reveals the difficulty of finding a living source for these tales. He recalls an old woman named Sambhu's mother, who had told him hundreds of stories in his childhood, but she had died long ago. After much searching, he found a Bengali Christian woman who, though not as old as the famous Frau Viehmännin of Hesse-Cassel, could recite the tales. This detail grounds the collection in a specific, personal history.

The preface also shows Day's awareness of European folklore collections—the Brothers Grimm, Dasent's Norse Tales, Arnason's Icelandic stories—and his belief that these Bengali tales prove a kinship between the "swarthy and half-naked peasant on the banks of the Ganges" and the "fair-skinned and well-dressed Englishman on the banks of the Thames." This comparative approach shapes how the reader might view the stories.

Frame Stories and Embedded Morals

The excerpt from "The Story of the Poppy Tree" includes a frame: the tale is not Day's own but was recited by a storyteller who calls himself "An Inmate of the Calcutta Lunatic Asylum." This adds a layer of distance and a hint of the narrator's character. The story itself ends with a formulaic closing, "Thus my story endeth, The Natiya-thorn withereth, etc.," a common device in oral traditions.

The tale also contains an explicit moral: the opium user will inherit qualities from each animal the queen was transformed into—mischievous like a mouse, fond of milk like a cat, quarrelsome like a dog, and so on. This direct lesson-giving is a feature of some folk tales, and readers may encounter similar endings in other stories.

A Serpent, a Drop of Blood, and a Misunderstood Prince

The second excerpt, from a tale titled "Strike but Hear," presents a more complex narrative. A youngest prince patrols the city and meets Rajlakshmi, the guardian goddess of the palace, who says the king will be killed that night. The prince persuades her to stay if he can prevent the murder. He then finds a cobra circling his father's bed, kills it, and cuts it into pieces. But a drop of blood falls on his stepmother's breast, and in trying to remove it, he is seen by her and misunderstood.

This sequence introduces themes of loyalty, misinterpretation, and the supernatural. The prince's actions are heroic but lead to a compromising situation. The story's title, "Strike but Hear," suggests a plea for understanding, and readers will likely follow how the prince clears his name.

Illustrations and the 1912 Edition

This Project Gutenberg edition is based on the 1912 Macmillan printing, which included 32 colour illustrations by Warwick Goble. The frontispiece shows a woman rushing out of a palace, captioned with a line from the text. Goble's illustrations, in the style of early 20th-century book art, provide a visual interpretation of the tales.

Readers should note that the illustrations are not described in the text excerpts, but they form an integral part of this edition. The original 1883 edition had no such illustrations; they were added for the 1912 reissue. The presence of these images may influence how readers imagine the characters and settings, offering a specific artistic lens on the folk material.

As you read these tales, pay attention to the recurring patterns: animal transformations, divine interventions, and moral conclusions. The stories often explain natural phenomena or human traits, as in the poppy tree's origin. Notice also the frame narratives and the voices of the storytellers, which Day preserves. This collection offers a glimpse into Bengali oral tradition as it was recorded in the late 19th century, filtered through Day's editorial choices and Goble's illustrations.

I remember Folk-Tales of Bengal—those shape-shifting spirits, the patient storyteller at dusk. It whispers of a world where animals speak and justice unfolds quietly. That same soft hush lingers in Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria — Reading Notes, as if both shelves share one long, slow breath of wonder between distant lands.