Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore

Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore

The stories contained in the following pages are taken from the collections published by Afanasief, Khudyakof, Erlenvein, and Chudinsky. The South-Russian collections of Kulish and Rudchenko I have been able to use but little, there being no complete dictionary available of the dialect, or rather the language, in which they are written. Of these works that of Afanasief is by far the most important, extending to nearly 3,000 pages, and containing 332 distinct storiesof many of which several variants are given, sometimes as many as five. Khudyakofs collection contains 122 skazkasas the Russian folk-tales are calledErlenveins 41, and Chudinskys 31. Afanasief has also published a separate volume, containing 33 legends, and he has inserted a great number of stories of various kinds in his Poetic views of the Old Slavonians about Nature, a work to which I have had constant recourse. From the stories contained in what may be called the chap-book literature of Russia, I have made but few extracts. It may, however, be as well to say a few words about them. There is a Russian word lub, diminutive lubok, meaning the soft bark of the lime [Pg6] tree, which at one time was used instead of paper. The popular tales which were current in former days were at first printed on sheets or strips of this substance, whence the term lubochnuiya came to be given to all such productions of the cheap press, even after paper had taken the place of bark.[1] The stories which have thus been preserved have no small interest of their own, but they cannot be considered as fair illustrations of Russian folk-lore, for their compilers in many cases took them from any sources to which they had access, whether eastern or western, merely adapting what they borrowed to Russian forms of thought and speech. Through some such process, for instance, seem to have passed the very popular Russian stories of Eruslan Lazarevich and of Bova Korolevich. They have often been quoted as creations of the Slavonic mind, but there seems to be no reason for doubting that they are merely Russian adaptations, the first of the adventures of the Persian Rustem, the second of those of the Italian Buovo di Antona, our Sir Bevis of Hampton. The editors of these chap-book skazkas belonged to the pre-scientific period, and had a purely commercial object in view. Their stories were intended simply to sell. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 22373
Author: Ralston, William Ralston Shedden
Release Date: Aug 22, 2007
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publication Date: 1872
Publisher Country: New York

Contributors

Translator: Ralston, William Ralston Shedden, 1828-1889