Gypsy folk-tales

Chapter 36: Dr. Kopernicki.

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About This Book

A collection of traditional Romani tales assembled with ethnographic and philological commentary, featuring wonder-tales, origin myths, animal fables, trickster episodes, and stories of magic, curses, and divination. The editor provides a substantial introduction on sources and language, comparative folklore parallels, and notes on variant readings, and annotates individual narratives with cultural and textual observations. The work records regional versions and storytelling forms while linking the material to broader folk traditions and discussing linguistic and ethnological details.

[Contents]

Dr. Kopernicki.

Isidore Kopernicki, M.D. (1825–91), published in 1872 a German monograph on Gypsy craniology, and, called from Bucharest to Cracow in 1870, collected thirty Polish-Gypsy folk-tales in 1875–77. A year or two before his death he [lv]put out a prospectus of a projected work on Rómani stories and songs, with a French translation; but the work never found a publisher. Six, however, of his stories appeared in the Gypsy Lore Journal, and are reproduced here, Nos. 45–50. They are one and all so admirable as stories and valuable as folklore that I cannot but hope some folklore society or some individual folklorist may purchase and publish the entire collection—Madame Kopernicki, I believe, is still a resident of Cracow.