Russian Fairy Tales [antikvár]

FOREWORD The Russian skazki {skazatz = to tell) are the mass of folktales distributed widely throughout all the Russias. Handed down by constant repetition from generation to generation, a possession common to peasant's hut and Prince's palace from a time when history did not exist, they are to-day, from Archangel to the Black Sea and from Siberia to the Baltic, almost as much a part of the life of the people as the language itself. Their adventures are linked to a hundred phrases in common parlance; their heroes peer from every page of Slavonic literature ; and the delver in historic debris finds each stratum sown thick with skazka shards to the very bed-rock of legend. To the casual eye the skazki, aside from their unfamiliar nomenclature, do not seem to differ greatly from the tales of other peoples. The wild and wonderful machinery has all the artifices which belong to the mass of folk-lore owned in common by the Indo-European group of nations. Here, however, the superficial resemblance in great measure ceases. It is seen that the true " fairy " element does not predominate. Not only are the relations between man and the spiritual world different, but that spiritual world itself is less familiar. The field of the skazki is not so much fairy-land as a natural wonderland, approaching in its variety and gorgeousness of surprise the Empire of the " Thousand Nights and a Night.'" vii