A Book of Dragons

By Ruth Manning-Sanders and Robin Jacques

A fairy tale collection featuring dragons from around the world. The stories were collected and retold by Ruth Manning-Sanders. Each fairy tale is illustrated by Robin Jacques.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MAB Media
• Release date: Dec 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9780997294781

Book preview

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A Book of dragons

by Ruth Manning-Sanders

Illustrated by Robin Jacques

MAB Media

Copyright @ 1965 by Ruth Manning-Sanders

Copyright @ 1965 illustrations by Robin Jacques

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

MAB Media

Houston, Texas

www.mabmedia.net

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author"s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

ISBN 978-0-9972947-6-7

More Books by Ruth Manning-Sanders and Robin Jacques

A Book of Mermaids

A Book of Witches

A Book of Ghosts and Goblins

A Book of Princes and Princesses

A Book of Devils and Demons

A Book of Kings and Queens

Table of Contents

Constantes and the Dragon page 1

Chien Tang page 13

Stan Bolovan page 19

My Lord Bag of Rice page 33

The Nine Doves page 39

The Yellow Dragon page 53

Pepito page 61

Yanni page 76

The Dragon and his Grandmother page 81

The Thirteenth Son of the King of Erin page 91

Baskets in a Little Cart page 99

The Prince with the Golden Hand page 107

The Three Dogs page 119

The Dragon of the Well page 129

To Lu, Laurie, Heather and Jamie - who all agree that every book is made better with dragons. Thank you for your friendship and support.

And thank you to my family, near and far. I love you.

Introduction

Ruth Vernon Manning-Sanders, the brilliant storyteller whose work graces these pages, was surrounded by magic as a child. And it seemingly never left her.

Ruth Manning was born in Swansea, Wales, on August 21, 1888. She was raised in a home filled with books and was said to be a voracious reader.

In 1911, she met and married George Sanders, who was about seven years her senior, and they hyphenated their last names. Forever more, she would be Ruth Manning-Sanders.

They spent their early married years touring Britain and traveling with a circus (more whimsy that would influence her writings). Eventually they settled in tiny Sennen Cove, Cornwall.

Their daughter, Joan Manning-Sanders, was born in 1913 and a son, David, followed two years later. The married couple, living the artistic life, painted and wrote poetry and novels. Ruth Manning-Sanders published numerous novels in the 1920s and 1930s. Many of them are aimed at adult audiences, but many also contain allusions to folklore and fairy tales, which were clearly never far from her mind.

Double tragedy struck in the early 1950s. First, George Manning-Sanders died of injuries sustained in a road accident in November 1953. Only a short time later, Ruth's son, David, died of peritonitis.

These sad events then set the stage for what would become Ruth Manning-Sanders’ amazing final act — and the reason she is remembered and beloved today.

In 1958 — the year she turned 70 — Manning-Sanders published Peter and the Piskies, a book of Cornish folk tales. In the author’s note for that book, she describes an unidentified widow woman who lived in a cottage by the sea and was friends with the magical Small People — the piskies. It was the piskies who told the old widow woman the stories in this book, and she told them to me, and now I am telling them to you, Manning-Sanders wrote.

That book was the start of a remarkable three-decade run for an author who published more than sixty folk and fairy tale anthologies while in her 70s, 80s and into her late 90s. (She died in 1988.) It was in 1962 that Manning-Sanders published the first book — A Book of Giants — in the series she is known best for. It was also the start of a long collaboration with British illustrator Robin Jacques (¹⁹²⁰-¹⁹⁹⁵), whose stippling-technique covers and illustrations for Manning-Sanders' books are utterly inseparable from what we love about them.

The A Book of... series are iconic to generations of children. There are twenty-two titles in the series, published 1962 -1984, which featured tales from all over the world. They introduced readers not just to magical adventures, but to different cultures as well.

Ruth Manning-Sanders had another important collaborator on these volumes in addition to the illustrator Robin Jacques. Her daughter, Joan Manning-Sanders, helped to research the stories that her mother then retold in her witty conversational style. Family members say that Joan learned to read French, German, Russian and several other languages in order to discover new source material for her mother.

I first discovered Ruth Manning-Sanders’ books in the town library in Montoursville, Pennsylvania, in the early 1980s. I was utterly captivated by stories that were so unlike those in traditional (and bland) children’s fairy tale books. I checked them out over and over. And then I grew up and forgot about them for a long while. It was about twenty years later, in the early 2000s, when a childhood memory and some internet searches led me down the path to reuniting with those wonderful books. My shelves are filled with them now.

But these books are getting more difficult (and more expensive) to track down.

I am thrilled that these new editions of Ruth Manning-Sanders’ timeless books, complete with Jacques’ illustrations, are now available. It will make it easier for new generations of children to discover the magic within them. And for those who are already familiar with the author to share her books with friends and family.

Christopher A. Otto

Dover, Pennsylvania

August 2020

Not all dragons want to gobble up princesses. Some of them are kindly beasts, like the dragon in Pepito , and The Dragon of the Well - two stories which come from Greece. And some dragons are proud beings who serve the Supreme Ruler of Heaven, and control the weather - you can see them sometimes in the sky on a cloudy day. Such are the Chinese dragons in the stories Chien Tang , and The Yellow Dragon , and Baskets in a Tittle Cart . And such is the Japanese dragon in My Lord Bag of Rice .

But there are also, of course, bad and savage dragons, who have to be either killed or outwitted. These you will find in the Macedonian story, Yanni; in the Irish story, The Thirteenth Son; in the Rumanian story, Stan Bolovan; in the two Greek stories, The Nine Doves, and Constantes; in the two German stories, The Three Dogs, and The Dragon and his Grandmother; and in the Slav story, The Prince with the Golden Hand.

Probably the one dragon that everybody has heard of is the dragon that St. George conquered. The legend tells that this dragon lived in a pond outside the town of Silene in Libya; and unless he was given plenty of sheep to eat, he would come out of his pond, prance up to the town walls, and kill the townsfolk with his poisonous breath. When the people of Silene ran out of sheep, they took to offering their daughters to the dragon. The girls were chosen by lot, and one day the lot fell to the king’s daughter. The dragon was just scrambling out of his pond to devour her, when Christian knight called George came riding by. Making the sign of the cross, he charged the dragon with his lance, and it fell to the ground. George then told the princess to tie her girdle round this much disheartened dragon, and lead it to the town, which she did.

By this miracle the king and all the citizens were converted to Christianity. But, later, George was tortured and put to death by the emperor, Diocletian. So he became Saint George the Martyr, and was idolized in many eastern countries. And when the Crusaders returned from the East, they brought back with them such glowing stories of St. George’s valour and piety, that he was chosen as the patron saint of England.

But you will not find St. George and the Dragon among the stories in this book; because this is a book of fairy tales, and the story of St. George belongs more properly to legend.

Ruth Manning-Sanders

¹⁹⁶⁵

Constantes and the Dragon

There were three brothers, and the youngest was called Constantes. And these brothers went to look for work. Soon they came near to a mountain, and under the mountain was a cornfield. The corn was ripe, and ready for cutting.

Said Constantes, Let us reap this corn; and when the owner comes, he will pay us.

So they began to reap the corn.

And, as they were reaping, the mountain trembled, and out from it leaped a dragon.

Said Constantes, Here comes the owner of the cornfield!

The dragon had only small wings, but he was moving very fast, half hopping and half flying. He gave a jump down into the cornfield, and said, What are you doing?

Said Constantes, We are reaping your corn, in the hope that you will pay us.

Said the dragon, Reap on.

So they reaped on. And when the corn was half of it reaped, the dragon said to Constantes, Go to that mountain and give this letter to my wife.

Constantes took the letter, and went to the mountain. And when he was out of sight of the dragon, he opened the letter and read it. The letter said:

The man I am sending to you, kill him and put him in the oven and cook him. And have him ready for my supper when I come home.

But Constantes tore the letter into little pieces, and hid the pieces under a stone. And he wrote another letter. And this was what he wrote:

My dear Dragoness,

When the bearer of this letter arrives, I beg you to kill the best turkey, and stuff it and roast it. Also fill a basket full of loaves, and send him back here with food for my labourers.

So the dragoness did all that. And Constantes carried the loaves and the roast turkey to the cornfield.

When the dragon saw him, he thought, Ah, that lad is a cleverer rogue than I!

And when the three lads had finished the reaping, the dragon said, Come home with me now, for your supper and your pay. And they went with the dragon, and he gave them their supper, but not their pay. He said, Stay the night here. You shall have your pay in the morning.

So the lads went to bed.