W.W. Sttrickland

Karel Erben

The présent small volume completes the translation of Karel Erben’s“A Hundred Genuine Popular Slavonie Fairy Stories.” The first volume, “Segnius Irritant,” maps out, so lo say, the primitive folk-lore weather myth, of which nearly the whole of the succeeding ninety-two stories are wholly or in part reproductions. In reperusing Grimm’s Home Fairy Stories, I observed that in them, as well as in practically the whole of Bernoni’s excellent collection of Venetian popular tales, the primitive type is traceable. Even stories which are due almost wholly to popular wit and fancy, and may be indeed records of fact, generally bear some slight impressions of the old-world myths about them, much as the butchers of Liguria to this day adorn the front and horns of the beasts’ heads in their shops with gold leaf. A good instance of such a story is the one in Grimm about the little boy who, seeing his parents maltreat his grandfather, makes a little pig-trough, and on being asked what it is for by his parents, replies that it is for them when they are old and superannuated, The fact is, the popular mind of Central and Northern Continental Europe has for centuries been so saturated with the ancient saws or sagas, that when it attempts to invent on its own acconnt, either for amusement or to prevent its brats from playing truant and getting burnt or drowned, it seldom or never is capable of doing more than reproduce consciously or unconsciously what has been previously dinned into its own childish ears. Perhaps the anti-climax of “ The Three Citrons ” has produced the largest crop of stories, amplifications, or abridgments, as the case may be.

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