Island historian and folklorist Georges Arsenault has been collecting songs and stories from Acadian Prince Edward Island since his student days in the 1970s: words gathered by lamplight in the early part of the 20th century, when the local men and women would pass on what they'd learned from elders long gone. His 17 informants were mostly hard-working parents of very large families, some well-educated and some not. Included in this collection are 8 stories, 13 legends and 23 songs with lyrics and musical notation, mainly reproduced from taped interviews. Originally published as Contes, legendes et chansons de l'Île-du-Prince-Edouard, this English translation by Sally Ross includes footnotes and a bibliography, as well as photos of his informants.

Georges Arsenault is a prominent Acadian historian and folklorist who has been writing about the Acadians of Prince Edward Island since the early 1980s. His landmark book, Les Acadiens de l’Île, 1720-1980, won both the Champlain and France-Acadie prizes. In 2002, he wrote Acadian Legends, Folktales and Songs from Prince Edward Island, and with the publication of Acadian Christmas Traditions in 2007, he expanded his research to include Acadian traditions throughout Eastern Canada. The original French version of this book, La Mi-Carême en Acadie (published by La Grand Marée), received the 2008 Prince Edward Island Book Award. Sally Ross is an historian and translator from Nova Scotia. She has translated three other books by Georges Arsenault: The Island Acadians, 1720-1980 (Ragweed Press, 1989); Acadian Legends, Folktales, and Songs from Prince Edward Island (Acorn Press, 2002); and Acadian Christmas Traditions (Acorn Press, 2007).

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