Russia | Folk Tales: Foreword

SurLaLune offers over 40 eBooks, including fairy tale and folklore anthologies, critical texts, poetry and fiction. A master list is available to the right. The index below is divided by subject matter and region with fiction and poetry at the bottom.




Foreword

TO MY LITTLE FRIEND, EDITH EVANS AND ALL AMERICAN CHILDREN

IN Russia, as elsewhere in the world, folklore is rapidly scatteringbefore the practical spirit of modern progress. The traveling peasant bard or story teller, and the devoted "nyanya", the beloved nurse of many a generation, are rapidly dying out, and with them the tales and legends, the last echoes of the nation's early joys and sufferings, hopes and fears, are passing away. The student of folk-lore knows that the time has come when haste is needed to catch these vanishing songs of the nation's youth and to preserve them for the delight of future generations. In sending forth the stories in the present volume, all of which are here set down in print for the first time, it is my hope that they may enable American children to share with the children of Russia the pleasure of glancing into the magic world of the old Slavic nation.

THE AUTHOR.

Blumenthal, Verra Xenophontovna Kalamatiano deFolk Tales from the Russian. New York: Rand McNally & Co., 1903.



 








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