Australian Legendary Tales

Catherine (Katie) Langloh Parker is best known for recording the stories of the Aboriginal people around her. She published Australian Legendary Tales with an introduction by Andrew Lang in 1896. While it is unclear whether the book was intended for children, it is accepted as such. The tales were well received and went into a second edition. More Australian Legendary Tales was published in 1898.

Langloh Parker dedicates the collection of stories to Peter Hippi, 'probably the last King of the Noongahburrahs', a friend and employee of her family, and writes that she hopes the sale of the book will enable her to offer gifts to the local Aboriginal people at Christmas.

She was born Catherine Eliza Somerville Field in 1856 at Encounter Bay, in South Australia, to Henry Field, pastoralist, and his wife Sophia (nee Newland). She grew up on her father's property at Marra Station in northern New South Wales. She was saved from drowning in the Darling River by an Aboriginal girl when two of her sisters were lost. The family moved to Adelaide, South Australia in 1872, and Sophia died, following childbirth, in April of that year. When she was 18, Katie married 35-year-old pastoralist Langloh Parker at St Peter's Church in Glenelg, and in 1879 moved to his property, Bangate Station in New South Wales.

Katie observed her surroundings, taking a particular interest in the Aboriginal people. She gained their trust through her respect for their culture and traditions and began to record the stories of the Euahlayi [Ualarai] people of the Narran River region. As so many aspects of Aboriginal culture were threatened by European colonisation, her accounts are considered to be valuable evidence of the beliefs and myths of the Aboriginal people of North-West New South Wales at that time.

Her accounts reflect the language and the European prejudices of the time, however this aspect needs to be balanced against the culture the stories preserve. The book also includes a comprehensive glossary of Aboriginal terms, perhaps one of the first in such a format, and an invaluable resource in the preservation of Aboriginal language.

Langloh Parker also wrote for the The Bulletin, Lone Hand, Pastoralists' Review and other journals. In 1905 she published an anthropological study of the Narran River Aboriginal people, The Euahlayi Tribe: A study of Aboriginal life in Australia (1905), for which Andrew Lang also wrote an introduction.

After her husband died in Sydney in 1903, she met and married Percival Randolph Stow, and she lived with him in Adelaide until her death in 1940, aged 85. She is buried in St Jude's Anglican cemetery, Brighton, SA.

Australian legendary tales was re-released in 1953, edited by H. Drake-Brockman and illustrated by Elizabeth Durack (link to the Durack template). In this format it won the Children's Book Council of Australia award for 1954 for the best Australian children's book of the year.

A small collection of her papers is held by the State Library of South Australia under the group number PRG 770.

Permission to use this item for any purpose, including publishing, is not required from the State Library under these conditions of use.

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