E-text prepared by Sam W.
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(https://archive.org)
| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/cu31924029889833 |
Transcriber’s Note
Discrepancies between titles in the Table of Contents and in the main body of the text arepreserved as printed. These are as follows (Table of Contents title first):
The Wondrous Lads and The Wonderful Boys.
The Miraculous Lock and The Wonder-Working Lock.
A Vila as a Friend and the Months as Friends and The Friendship of a Vila and ofthe Months.
SIXTY FOLK-TALES
FROM
EXCLUSIVELY SLAVONIC SOURCES.
Translated,
with Brief Introductions and Notes,
LONDON:
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
1889.
PREFACE.
So much interest has lately been awakened in, and centredround, Folklore, that it needs no apology to lay before theBritish reader additional information upon the subject.Interesting enough in itself, it has been rendered doublyinteresting by the rise and progress of the new science ofComparative Mythology, which has already yielded considerableresults, and promises to yield results of still greatermagnitude, when all the data requisite for a full and completeinduction have been brought under the ken of theinquirer. The stories of most European races have beenlaid under contribution, but those of the Slavonians have,as yet, been only partially examined. Circumstances haveenabled me to make a considerable addition to what is asyet known of Slavonic Folklore, although I cannot makeany pretence to having exhausted the mine, or, rather, themany mines, which the various Slavonic races and tribespossess, and which still, more or less, await the advent ofcompetent explorers.
In offering to the public a selection of sixty folklorestories translated from exclusively Slavonic sources, it is but[Pg iv]fitting to give some account of the work from which I havederived them. In 1865, the late K. J. Erben, the celebratedArchivarius of the old town of Prague, published a ‘Citanka,’or reading-book, intended to enable Bohemians to commencethe