TALES FROM TIMBUKTU

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22350, 22 February 1936, Page 35 (Supplement)

TALES FROM TIMBUKTU

AN ENTRANCING COLLECTION This is one of those books bought for the children which grown-ups are apt to look into and find themselves entranced. " Tales from Timbukto " is really a collection of folk-tales taken from the ageless shore of many peoples and retold with simple charm. Miss Constance Smedley has drawn on the legends and fairy stories of many countries —of Japan, China, Malay, Tibet, Persia, Egypt and Sahara and even of the more primitive peoples of Nigeria, Congo and South Africa. This shining chain is joined up easily by the fiction that each and every tale was told before the Crown Prince of Persia at the feast he gave in that great meeting-place of nations, the market of Timbuktu. If the reader should fail in making the true mental picture, he is greatly helped by Mr. Maxwell Armfield's skilfully drawn portraits of the various narrators and the atmosphere conveyed bv Miss Smedley's opening verses, of which two may be quoted: Oh the faraway awayness of the town

of Timbuktu 1 The dream-like silver whiteness of Sahara's sandy hue; The four great desert roads that lie North, south, east, west, beneath the sky That overspreads the palaces and towers of Timbuktu! Oh, the far-fetched so-they-sayness of the town of Timbuktu! The have-we-heard-arightness of the things its people do; The wonders known to wandering men Who bring their treasure tales, and then Depart with sacks of jewels from the marts of Timbuktu! As Miss Smedley remarks, we all love colour and the coloured peoples bring a great splash of brilliance and interest into life. Also they still move and speak with the dignity and calm of noble races, and so it is not surprising that wisdom walks with beauty through these their stories. They " are filled with caravan-loads of those who seek this tret sure-trove —' the Tales of Timbuktu.''"

" Tales from Timbuktu," by Constance Smedley. (J. M. Dent and Sons).