THE YOUNG AND FIELD LITERARY READERS Book Three BY ELLA FLAGG YOUNG Formerly Superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools AND WALTER TAYLOR FIELD Author of "Fingerposts to Children's Reading," "Rome," Etc. Educt 759.23.982 HARVARD COLLEGE 31 JAN 17 LIBRARY Mrs. J. C. Dentile COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY ELLA FLAGG YOUNG AND WALTER TAYLOR FIELD ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 623.7 The Athenæum Press GINN AND COMPANY. PRO- A SHORT TALK WITH THE CHILDREN In this book we shall read some of the old stories that children, for hundreds of years, have loved to hear. We call them folk tales. There are some that fathers and mothers in Europe have told to their children as they gathered around the fireplace, at bedtime, in their homes beyond the sea. There are some that have been told to little Indian boys and girls as they sat before their wigwams, at night, and looked up at the stars twinkling over the tops of the dark pine trees. There are some from the Northland - Norse stories, they are called that tell of giants and monsters and wonderful beings who never lived at all, but whom the people of the Northland believed in many hundreds of years ago. These stories were told by Norse mothers to their children, up among the forests of Norway, while the fathers were away upon the sea. Then we shall have some Greek stories, that are older still. Boys and girls who lived in the sunny land of Greece heard them at their mothers' knees, and learned to repeat them, ages and ages ago. |