Australian Legendary Tales: folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies

One of the best available collections of Australian Aboriginal folklore. Australian Legendary Tales was written for a popular audience, yet these stories were written with artistic integrity, and not filtered, as was the case with many books from this period. That said, the style of this book reflects a Victorian sentimentality and an occasional tinge of racism that may not sit well with some modern readers.

Katie Langloh Parker lived in the Australian outback most of her life, close to the Eulayhi people. The texts, with their sentient animals and mythic transformations, have a sonambulistic and chaotic narrative that mark them as authentic dreamtime lore. The mere fact that she cared to write down these stories places her far ahead of her contemporaries, who barely regarded native Australians as human.

This was the first book Parker wrote. She write four books, three of native folklore and one an ethnography of the Eulayhi tribe.

Parker has some odd connections with modern popular culture. She was rescued from drowning by an aborigine at an early age. This incident was portrayed in the film 'Picnic at Hanging Rock', directed by Peter Weir. The song "They Call the Wind Mariah" was based on a story from this book.