RUSSIAN FAIRY TALES FROM THE SKAZKI OF POLEVOI - 24 Russian Fairy Tales

Anon E. Mouse

Sep 2018 · Abela Publishing Ltd

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The existence of the Russian Skazki or Märchen (Stories, Folklore or Fairy Tales) was first made generally known to the British Public in about 1880 by William Ralston in his Russian Folk Tales. A year after the appearance of Ralston's book, the eminent Russian historian and archæologist, Peter Nikolaevich Polevoi selected, from the inexhaustible stores of Afanasiev, some three dozen of the Skazki (stories) most suitable for children, and worked them up into a fairy tale book which was published at St. Petersburg in 1874, under the title of Narodnuiya Russkiya Skazki (Popular Russian Stories).

To manipulate these quaintly vigorous old world stories for nursery purposes was, no easy task, but, on the whole, M. Polevoi did his work excellently well, softening the crudities and smoothing out the occasional roughness, turning these charming stories into entirely readable stories for children.

It is from the first Russian edition of M. Polevoi's book that the following selection of 24 Russian stories has been made. With the single exception of "Morozko," a variant of which may be familiar to those who know Mr. Ralston's volume. Some of the stories in this volume are:
The Golden Mountain
Morozko
The Flying Ship
The Story of the Tsarevich Ivan, and of The Harp that Harped Without A Harper
The Story of Gore-Gorinskoe
Go I Know Not Whither—Fetch I Know Not What
Kuz’ma Skorobogaty
The Tsarevna Loveliness-Inexhaustible
Verlioka; and many more.

As to the merits of these Skazki, they must be left to speak for themselves. So, we invite you to down this book of 24 unique Russian Fairy Tales and curl up in a comfy chair with a mug for of steaming hot chocolate and be whisked away to a country that is still as mysterious as it is large.

10% of the profit from the sale of this eBook will be donated to charities.
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KEYWORDS/TAGS: Russian, Russia, Skazki, Folklore, fairy tales, myths, legends, folk tales, story, children’s stories, bedtime, fables, culture, cultural, golden mountain, morozko, flying ship, muzhichek, big as your thumb, moustaches, seven versts, long, tsarevich ivan, harp gore gorinskoe, go, fetch, kuz’ma, Kuzma,  skorobogaty, tsarevna, loveliness, inexhaustible, verlioka, frog, tsarevna, two sons, ivan, soldier, woman, accuser, Thomas, berennikov, white duck, little fool, little feather, fenist, bright falcon, peasant, demyan, enchanted, ring, brave, labourer, sage, damsel, prophetic, dream, two out, knapsack, marko the rich, vasily the luckless, R, Nisbet Bain, C. M. Gere

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Robert Nisbet Bain (1854–1909) was a British historian and linguist who worked for the British Museum.

 

Bain was a fluent linguist who could use over twenty languages. Besides translating a number of books he also used his skills to write learned books on foreign people and folklore. Bain was a frequent contributor to the Encyclopædia Britannica. His contributions were biographies and varied from Andrew Aagensen to Aleksander Wielopolski. He taught himself Hungarian in order that he could read Mór Jókai in the original after first reading him in German. He translated from Finnish, Danish and Russian and also tackled Turkish authors via Hungarian. He was the most prolific translator into English from Hungarian in the nineteenth century. He married late and died young after publishing a wide range of literature from or about Europe.

 

He is buried in Brookwood Cemetery, Woking, Surrey, England