The Gold Of Fairnilee

By Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang was a Scottish writer best known for collecting folklore, legends, and fairy tales and making a compendium of them to celebrate ethnic heritage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Krill Press
• Release date: Feb 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781531200718

Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang (March, 31, 1844 – July 20, 1912) was a Scottish writer and literary critic who is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. Lang’s academic interests extended beyond the literary and he was a noted contributor to the fields of anthropology, folklore, psychical research, history, and classic scholarship, as well as the inspiration for the University of St. Andrew’s Andrew Lang Lectures. A prolific author, Lang published more than 100 works during his career, including twelve fairy books, in which he compiled folk and fairy tales from around the world. Lang’s Lilac Fairy and Red Fairy books are credited with influencing J. R. R. Tolkien, who commented on the importance of fairy stories in the modern world in his 1939 Andrew Lang Lecture “On Fairy-Stories.”

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THE GOLD OF FAIRNILEE

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Andrew Lang

MYTHIK PRESS

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Copyright © 2016 by Andrew Lang

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.—The Old House

CHAPTER II.—How Randal’s Father Came Home

CHAPTER III.—How Jean was brought to Fairnlee

CHAPTER IV.—Randal and Jean.

CHAPTER V.—The Good Folk

CHAPTER VI.—The Wishing Well

CHAPTER VII.—Where is Randal?

CHAPTER VIII.—The Ill Years

CHAPTER IX.—The White Roses

CHAPTER X.—Out of fairyland

CHAPTER XI.—The Fairy Bottle

CHAPTER XII.—At the Catrail

The Gold Of Fairnilee

By

Andrew Lang

The Gold Of Fairnilee

Published by Mythik Press

New York City, NY

First published circa 1912

Copyright © Mythik Press, 2015

All rights reserved

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

About Mythik Press

From the moment people first began practicing rituals, they have been creating folk tales and legends to celebrate their past and create a unique cultural identity. Mythik Press carries these legacies forward by publishing the greatest stories ever concocted, from King Arthur to the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm.

CHAPTER I.—THE OLD HOUSE

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YOU MAY STILL SEE THE old Scotch house where Randal was born, so long ago. Nobody lives there now. Most of the roof has fallen in, there is no glass in the windows, and all the doors are open. They were open in the days of Randal’s father—nearly four hundred years have passed since then—and everyone who came was welcome to his share of beef and broth and ale. But now the doors are not only open, they are quite gone, and there is nobody within to give you a welcome.

So there is nothing but emptiness in the old house where Randal lived with Jean, three hundred and sixty years or so before you were born. It is a high old house, and wide, with the broken slates still on the roof. At the corner there are little round towers, like pepperboxes, with sharp peaks. The stems of the ivy that covers the walls are as thick as trees. There are many trees crowding all round, and there are hills round it too; and far below you hear the Tweed whispering all day. The house is called Fairnilee, which means the Fairies’ Field; for people believed in fairies, as you shall hear, when Randal was a boy, and even when my father was a boy.

Randal was all alone in the house when he was a little fellow—alone with his mother, and Nancy the old nurse, and Simon Grieve the butler, who wore a black velvet coat and a big silver chain. Then there were the maids, and the grooms, and the farm folk, who were all friends of Randal’s. He was not lonely, and he did not feel unhappy, even before Jean came, as you shall be told. But the grown-up people were sad and silent at Fairnilee. Randal had no father; his mother, Lady Ker, was a widow. She was still quite young, and Randal thought her the most beautiful person in the world. Children think these things about their mothers, and Randal had seen no ladies but his mother only. She had brown hair and brown eyes and red lips, and a grave kind face, which looked serious under her great white widow’s cap with the black hood over it. Randal never saw his mother cry; but when he was