Jeremiah Curtin (1835–1906)

Fairy tales, or rather fairy stories, if that's a distinction meaningful outside of my own head, about sons and daughters and Fionn, who is a son, and the things they do, fighting giants, playing games of chance and always losing the third, stealing clothes from magician's daughters who change into swans, fighting the armies of the king of Spain, outwitting hags, getting a hell of a lot of wise and/or magical help to see them through their adventures, marrying up and making out like bandits. show more The repetitions and similarities grate at first, but soon the tales work their magic and you feel the rhythm and the cadences, the comfort of the familiar patterns and things that aren't so much repeated as shared. Alien to a modern audience, not really prose and certainly not poetry, artifacts of a different time and yet the very stuff our dreams are made of. show less

Originally published in 1908 by the ethnographer Jeremiah Curtin (a proponent of Native American interests) with a foreword by Theodore Roosevelt, this book restricts itself to mostly the military history of Mongolia from Chinggis Khaan’s great-grandfather Khabul Khaan (c. 1100-1148) to the expulsion of the Mongols from China in 1368. Up until the death of Chinggis Khaan, the book is mostly a retelling of information from ‘The Secret History of the Mongols’ as there isn’t a lot of show more additional material. After his death until the end of the book, the author focuses on the line of succession, court intrigues, and gory details regarding all the ways Mongols could put their enemies to death; there are a few chapters that get into the weeds of a summary of the Assassins (Syria and adjacent territory).

There is very little real ethnographic material, specific discussion regarding military technique details, mention of historical visitors / envoys to Mongolia (not even William of Rubruck at Kharakhorum) or insights offered. It is not a scholastic work given that there is no analysis and it can be poorly cited. Curtin does state an important position that the Mongol empire had a much greater impact on Europe than the Crusades, which would probably have been a surprise to readers in the early 1900s. It is clear the author had tremendous admiration for what Chinggis Khaan achieved.

It is more of a ‘once upon a time there lived a great chieftain’ kind of storytelling endeavor; as one of the first books about Mongolia written in English for a general public it has to be given a certain respect but it would be best used as an introduction to the subject, skimming over some parts and making note of those areas of interest which can be looked into afterwards. One could probably do as well reading Wikipedia. show less

The particular ebook I have is very badly OCR'd, which makes the names even harder to parse than usual. The first half of this book is mostly fairy tales in the traditional sense, albeit with more single combat and cutting off of heads than you're used to from Grimm; the second half is Fin MacCumhail stories (topped off with Oisin, of course), which I enjoyed much more.

This is NOT written as a children's book. The language in this book is written in Old English and reads more like a Shakepearean sonnet. I bought this to add to my young son's library, but it is not appropriate for that. I'm sure however that adults who can read Old English with ease would find this book entertaining.