Russian Fairy Tales.

Preface.

The existence of the Russian Skazki or Märchen was first made generally known to the British Public some twenty years ago by Mr. W. R. S. Ralston in his Russian Folk Tales. That excellent and most engrossing volume was, primarily, a treatise on Slavonic Folk-Lore, illustrated with admirable skill and judgment, by stories, mainly selected from the vast collection of Afanasiev, who did for the Russian what Asbjörnsen has done for the Norwegian Folk-Tale. A year after the appearance of Mr. Ralston’s book, the eminent Russian historian and archæologist, Peter Nikolaevich Polevoi (well known, too, as an able and ardent Shaksperian scholar), selected from the inexhaustible stores of Afanasiev some three dozen of the Skazki most suitable for children, and worked them up into a fairy tale book which was published at St. Petersburg in 1874, under the title of Narodnuiya Russkiya Skazki (Popular Russian Märchen). To manipulate these quaintly vigorous old-world stories for nursery purposes was, as may well be imagined, no easy task, but, on the whole, M. Polevoi did his work excellently well, and while softening the crudities and smoothing out the occasional roughness of these charming stories, neither injured their simple texture nor overlaid the original pattern.

It is from the first Russian edition of M. Polevoi’s book that the following selection has been made. With the single exception of “Morozko,” a variant of which will be familiar to those who know Mr. Ralston’s volume, none of these tales has seen the light in an English dress before; for though both Ralston and Polevoi drew, for the most part, from the same copious stock, their purposes were so different that their selections naturally proved to be different also.

As to the merits of these Skazki, they must be left to speak for themselves. It is a significant fact, however, that all those scholars who are equally familiar with the Russian Skazki and the German Märchen, unhesitatingly give the palm, both for fun and fancy, to the former.

R. N. B.

Contents.

•      Page
• The Golden Mountain      1
• Morozko      8
• The Flying Ship      13
• The Muzhichek-As-Big-As-Your-Thumb-with-Moustaches-Seven-Versts-Long      22
• The Story of the Tsarevich Ivan, and of the Harp that Harped Without a Harper      34
• The Story of Gore-Gorinskoe      56
• Go I Know Not Whither—Fetch I Know Not What      64
• Kuz’ma Skorobogaty      85
• The Tsarevna Loveliness-Inexhaustible      94
• Verlioka      111
• The Frog-Tsarevna      118
• The Two Sons of Ivan the Soldier      127
• The Woman-Accuser      143
• Thomas Berennikov      150
• The White Duck      159
• The Tale of Little Fool Ivan      165
• The Little Feather of Fenist the Bright Falcon      188
• The Tale of the Peasant Demyan      200
• The Enchanted Ring      202
• The Brave Labourer      220
• The Sage Damsel      222
• The Prophetic Dream      229
• Two Out of the Knapsack      245
• The Story of Marko the Rich and Vasily the Luckless      252

List of Illustrations.

• The Golden Mountain      Frontispiece.
• Morosko      To face page 9
• The Tsarevna Loveliness-Inexhaustible      To face page 103
• The Princess and the Cunning Witch      To face page 160
• The Damsel Went on Further, and the Road Grew Lighter and Lighter      To face page 198
• The Sage Damsel      To face page 224