Australian Legendary Tales

Australian Legendary Tales is a translated collection of stories told to K. Langloh Parker by Australian Aboriginal people.

The book was immediately popular, being revised or reissued several times since its first publication in 1896, and noted as the first substantial representation of cultural works by colonised Australians.

The 1953 edition for children received the Children's Book Council of Australia's Children's Book of the Year Award for Older Readers.

The first edition of Australian Legendary Tales: Folk-lore of the Noongahburrahs as Told to the Piccaninnies was published in 1896, being printed at London and Melbourne. The contents includes over 30 tales, with supplements that include a glossary and the first tale transliterated from the original language. The stories are set in a 'no-time' where animal spirits, supernatural beings and humans interact, often alluding to ideas of creation. Several references are made to an "All Father" Baiame, to a man Wurrunnah, a culture hero, and animal beings who engage with people and each other. Parker's prefatory remarks give acknowledgement to the "Noongahburrah" people and names some individuals who assisted her, the dedication is to man she describes as their king, Peter Hippi. The introduction by Andrew Lang also notes his inclusion of the illustrations, supplied by his brother at Corowa, by an "untaught Australian native"; the artist was later identified as Tommy McRae by the inscription on the original drawings amongst Lang's papers. This edition was popular so the sequel, More Australian Legendary Tales (1898), was commissioned, once again with the imprimatur of Lang as supervising scholar. Following on from the publication of these two volumes was Parker's factual work, The Euahlayi Tribe (1905), also issued at Lang's behest, though Parker herself seems to regard Lang's authority with increasing scepticism, making an aside in her own prefatory remarks that seem to target the severe views in Lang's introductions. Some years later more of her collection of Aboriginal legends appeared in The Walkabouts of Wurrunnah (1918) and Woggheeguy (1930).

The book was prepared and marketed as part of a series overseen by Lang, similar to many other publications presented as scholarly works of folklore or fairy tales made English. These works often used the collections, made by English colonists and travellers, of spoken and written cultural materials appropriated from peoples of the British Empire and elsewhere. Lang used this work to promulgate and reiterate his previously published ideas within the overlapping or merging fields of anthropology, ethnology, and philology, incorporating the work of a people he had never encountered or studied in support of a position that was no longer favoured. Many contemporary and favourable reviews in British periodicals approached the book as a work of Lang's folklore scholarship. His introduction compares some of the tales to a primitive Metamorphoses and the early animal stories of Kipling. His opinion of McRae's drawings, "not ill-done" or worse, and the tales themselves is that they are the product of savage inferiors.

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