POPULAR BASQUE LEGENDS AND TALES - 13 Children's illustrated Basque tales

Book excerpt: In this volume you will find 13 illustrated Popular Tales from the Basque region of Spain. Here you will find tales like Aquelarre, Arguiduna, The Song of Lamia, the Prophecy of Lara, the Virgin of the Five Towns in which mermaids, heroes, magical horns and ghosts abound. If you have ever travelled through the province of Galicia in North Western Spain, you can’t fail to notice the Celtic influences in the region’s art and culture. So it is therefore not surprising to also find the story of Jaun-Zuria - A Prince Of Erin included in this volume. So take some time out and travel back to a period before television, or even radio for that matter, to a time when families would gather around a crackling and spitting hearth and granddad or grandma, or an uncle or aunt, would delight and captivate their audience with stories passed on to them from their parents and grandparents. This collection of Basque legends, fairy tales, ballads, and popular stories having their origin in the ancient traditions which formed a portion of the sacred inheritance bequeathed to the Basque people by their forefathers, and handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. These tales constitute the archives of the Basque people, the treasures of their science and of their beliefs; they are the records of the lives of their forefathers, the landmarks of the grandeur of their past history. In the midst of the great revolutions which have agitated the whole of Europe, causing radical changes, levelling to the ground or converting into ruins great empires, powerful nationalities, monuments; sweeping away languages, and even the very races themselves--the Basques have somehow passed unscathed through the many storms of devastation, preserving intact their nationality, institutions, laws, language, and customs. YESTERDAY'S BOOKS FOR TODAY'S CHARITIES 10% of the net sale from this book will be donated to Charities. ================ KEYWORDS/TAGS: folklore, fairy, Tales, children, stories, bedtime, fables, illustrated, myths, legends, heroes, ghost, magical horn, aquelarre, Galicia, arguiduna, maitagarri, roldan's bugle-horn, jaun-zuria, prince of erin, branch of white lilies, song of lamia, virgin of the five towns, kurucificatuaren canta, raids, holy war, prophecy of lara, hurca-mendi, iturrioz, witch of zaldin, the avowal, the duel, maitagarri, the pilgrim,