University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

So much interest has lately been awakened in, and centred
round, Folk-lore, that it needs no apology to lay before the
British reader additional information upon the subject.
Interesting enough in itself, it has been rendered doubly
interesting by the rise and progress of the new science of
Comparative Mythology, which has already yielded considerable
results, and promises to yield results of still greater
magnitude, when all the data requisite for a full and complete
induction have been brought under the ken of the
inquirer. The stories of most European races have been
laid under contribution, but those of the Slavonians have,
as yet, been only partially examined. Circumstances have
enabled me to make a considerable addition to what is as
yet known of Slavonic Folk-lore, although I cannot make
any pretence to having exhausted the mine, or, rather, the
many mines, which the various Slavonic races and tribes
possess, and which still, more or less, await the advent of
competent explorers.

In offering to the public a selection of sixty folk-lore
stories translated from exclusively Slavonic sources, it is but

fitting to give some account of the work from which I have
derived them. In 1865, the late K. J. Erben, the celebrated
Archivarius of the old town of Prague, published a `Citanka,'
or reading-book, intended to enable Bohemians to commence
the study of all the numerous Slavonic dialects,
containing `one hundred simple national tales and stories,
in their original dialects.' To this he appended a vocabulary,
with explanations of words and forms strange to, or
divergent from, the Bohemian, briefly given in the Bohemian
language. This vocabulary is divided into two parts, one
illustrating the tales of those Slavonians who make use of
the Cyrillic characters, and belong to the Orthodox Greek
Church; and the other, those of the Catholic and Protestant
Slavonians, who employ alphabets founded on the Latin
characters of the West of Europe. Pan Erben paid special
attention to the preservation of the simple national forms
of speech, as taken down from the lips of the people;
and, besides laying printed collections under contribution,
obtained several previously unpublished stories.

Beginning with his native tongue, the Bohemian language,
he passes on to the closely-allied Moravian and Hungarian-Slovenish
(Slovak) dialects, and then takes the Upper and
Lower Lusatian, the former of which is related to the old
Bohemian, while the latter inclines rather to the Polish
language. He next goes on to the Kashubian, a rapidly-perishing
sub-dialect of Polish, and then to the Polish
tongue itself.

Next comes the White Russian, forming a transition from
Polish to Great Russian, whereas the Little Russian in Galicia,

the Ukraine, and South Russia, is more nearly allied to the
Bohemian than to the White Russian. The ancient Russian
language, which was also much allied to the Old Bohemian,
is the basis of the present written Russian, and presents a
transition to the Bulgarian, which, in the north-west, melts
into the Serbian, which again, in its Croatian branch, near
Varazdin, approaches most nearly to the Bohemian. The
Illyrian-Slovenish of Carinthia, though, in locality, least
distant from Bohemia, exhibits forms most removed from
the Bohemian language, just as the Upper Lusatian is less
allied to the Bohemian than is the locally-distant Kashubian.

I took up the book, originally, for the purpose for which
it was compiled, viz., that of obtaining an acquaintance
with the main features of all the Slavonic dialects, but found
myself tempted, by the extreme beauty of some of the stories,
to translate the major portion of them. That I do not
present a still larger selection to the reader is due to the fact
that so many of the Great Russian skazkas have been so
admirably translated, edited, and illustrated by my friend
—alas! that I must now term him my late friend—Mr. W.
R. S. Ralston, that I have scarcely considered them as
coming within the sphere of the present work.

For an essay on the singular mythical being, Kurent,
occurring only in the Serbian tales from Carniola, and as
yet unnoticed in any work on Slavonic mythology, I am
indebted to Professor Gregor Krek, of Grätz, in Styria.
This will be found prefixed to the stories which it illustrates.

I have also prefixed a short introduction, containing
various matters of interest, to each set of tales, as they
follow each other, according to their different languages,
dialects, or sub-dialects.

The table of contents immediately following will give a
general view of the stories and their respective sources,
arranged under the three heads of: (a) The Western
Slavonians, (b) the Eastern Slavonians, and (c) the Southern
Slavonians.