Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore

The present chapter is devoted to specimens of those skazkas which most Russian critics assert to be distinctly mythical. The stories of this class are so numerous, that the tas...

Most of the magical "properties" of the "skazka-drama," closely resemble those which have already been rendered familiar to us by well-known folk-tales. Of such as these--of "ca...

As besides the songs or _pyesni_ there are current among the people a number of _stikhi_ or poems on sacred subjects, so together with the _skazki_ there have been retained in t...

There are but few among those inhabitants of Fairy-land of whom "Popular Tales" tell, who are better known to the outer world than Cinderella--the despised and flouted younger s...

Somewhat resembling the picture usually drawn of the supernatural Witch in the Skazkas, is that which some of them offer of a personification of evil called Likho.[224] The foll...

The Russian peasants have very confused ideas about the local habitation of the disembodied spirit, after its former tenement has been laid in the grave. They seem, from the lan...

decked with jewels, weeping outside the city in which dwells his royal master Sudraka, and asks her who she is, and why she weeps. To which (in Mr. Johnson's translation) she re...

Legends connected with the Dog, the Izba, the Creation of Man, the Rye, the Snake, Ox, Sole, &c.; with Birds, the Peewit, Sparrow, Swallow, &c.--Legends about SS. Nicholas, Andr...

On the "Mythical Skazkas"--Male embodiments of Evil: 1. The Snake as the Stealer of Daylight; 2. Norka the Beast, Lord of the Lower World; 3. Koshchei the Deathless, The Stealer...

The Waters of Life and Death, and of Strength and Weakness--Aid given to Children by Dead Parents--Magic Horses, Fish, &c.--Stories about Brides won by a Leap, &c.--Stories abou...

One-eyed Likho, a story of the Polyphemus Cycle--Woe, the Poor Man's Companion--Friday, Wednesday, and Sunday personified as Female Spirits--The Léshy or Wood-Demon--Legends abo...

INTRODUCTORY. PAGE. The Folk-tale in general, and the Skazka in particular--Relation of Russian Popular Tales to Russian Life--Stories about Courtship, Death, Burial and Wailing...

Slavonic Ideas about the Dead--On Heaven and Hell--On the Jack and the Beanstalk Story--Harmless Ghosts--The Rip van Winkle Story--the attachment of Ghosts to their Shrouds and...