Legends for Lionel : in pen and pencil
BY
WALTER CRANE
CASSELL & COMPY LIMITED
LONDON; PARIS; NEW YORK
& MELBOURNE
1887
Legends for Lionel
Whole book · 2 sections
PREFACE
ALL Lions have tails: some—like the one here—remarkably long ones. Some Lionels I know have “Legends” instead. The Lionel for which these were made is a great devourer of them, and he also has an appetite for pictures to paint. This book of sketches, the offspring of the odd half hours of winter evenings, was originally intended strictly for home consumption. One thing, however, leads to another, just as the sketches did, following one by one as fancy led, till they filled the book, and this book falling under the eye of Messrs Cassell (through the voluntary offices of a sympathetic and enthusiastic friend) “Legends for Lionel” may become legends for legions of Lionels.
That both Lionels and others may get as much fun out of the book as did its own father—and Lionel’s—is the wish of both, at any rate
Walter Crane.
Aug: 1887
Jack Frost sends his Herald
without their leaves,
and just as the World is thinking of skating—
comes Thaw;
followed by Fog, in which Lionel begins to look out for Xmas.
He sees dim and cloudy outlines,
across a white expanse, dotted with sugar-plums,
which led him to a little house in a garden of Xmas-Trees.
The door was opened by a stately Turkey,
supported by attendant sausages
and followed by Plum pudding
Mince-pies,
and a regiment of Crackers
and a rain of Bon-bons,
also a Snap-dragon
St George after him.
but Lionel gets through them all at last, and is invited by Jack Horner
to a seat in the chimney corner,
and a share of the celebrated pie,
and when the pie was opened
it stood and flapped its wings!
A pretty dish to set before two hungry things
King Frost was in his Freezing House:
Nipping toes and noses!
Green Spring was in her sleeping car,
Tying up her posies
The spade was in the garden talking to the hose,
About a little London-black that settled on the rose.
But Lionel takes to another branch of the black business,
and, followed by his tinker’s dog, he trundles his workshop.
On the common he meets a pot and a kettle in hot dispute:
having mended their little difference with a bit of cracked looking
glass,
further on he meets with some keen customers,
and a whole population of pots and pans,
besides sets of fire-irons waiting to be set on their legs.
Fire-dogs, too, left the chimney corner,
to follow the Tinker’s dog:
Good Luck flings her old horse shoe after him,
and so, getting hold of all the old iron of the village, the Tinker
turns Magician, transmutes it into gold and retires from business.
