Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales: 27 Uniquely Slavic Tales of the Imagination

“The comparative isolation and primitiveness of the Cossacks, and their remoteness from the great theatres of historical events, would seem to be favourable conditions both for the safe preservation of old myths and the easy development of new ones. It is for professional students of folk-lore to study the original documents for themselves.” -R. N. B.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Oh: The Tsar of the Forest

The Story of the Wind

The Voices at the Window

The Story of Little Tsar

Novishny, the False Sister, and the Faithful Beasts

The Vampire and St Michael

The Story of Tremsin, the Bird Zhar, and Nastasia, the Lovely Maid of the Sea

The Serpent-Wife

The Story of Unlucky Daniel

The Sparrow and the Bush

The Old Dog

The Fox and the Cat

The Straw Ox

The Golden Slipper

The Iron Wolf The Three Brothers

The Tsar and the Angel

The Story of Ivan and the Daughter of the Sun

The Cat, the Cock, and the Fox

The Serpent-Tsarevich and His Two Wives

The Origin of the Mole

The Two Princes

The Ungrateful Children and the Old Father Who Went to School Again

Ivan the Fool and St Peter's Fife

The Magic Egg

The Story of the Forty-First Brother

The Story of the Unlucky Days

The Wondrous Story of Ivan Golik and the Serpents

“The favourable reception given to my volume of Russian Fairy Tales has encouraged me to follow it up with a sister volume of stories selected from another Slavonic dialect extraordinarily rich in folk-tales--I mean Ruthenian, the language of the Cossacks. “The present attempt to popularize these Cossack stories is, I believe, the first translation ever made from Ruthenian into English. The selection, though naturally restricted, is fairly representative; every variety of folk-tale has a place in it, and it should never be forgotten that the Ruthenian kazka (Märchen), owing to favourable circumstances, has managed to preserve far more of the fresh spontaneity and naïve simplicity of the primitive folk-tale than her more sophisticated sister, the Russian skazka. It is maintained, moreover, by Slavonic scholars that there are peculiar and original elements in these stories not to be found in the folk-lore of other European peoples; such data, for instance, as the magic handkerchiefs (generally beneficial, but sometimes, as in the story of Ivan Golik, terribly baleful), the demon-expelling hemp-and-tar whips, and the magic cattle-teeming egg, so mischievous a possession to the unwary.” -R. N. B.