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                 THE RUSSIAN GRANDMOTHER'S WONDER TALES


                                   BY
                        Louise Seymour Houghton

                             ILLUSTRATED BY
                              W. T. BENDA



                        CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
                                NEW YORK







                                   TO

                         THE FIVE GRANDCHILDREN

                     PHILLIPS, SHERRILL, MARGARET,
                         RUSSELL, AND CAROLINE







PREFACE


The stories which the Russian grandmother told will be found, with
many others, in a German collection of "Tales and Legends of South
Slavonia," put forth in Vienna some twenty years ago by Dr. Friedrich
Kraus, an ardent student of folk-lore. I have sketched in a slight
background of peasant village life as it still exists in some parts of
Southern Russia, because this is the proper setting of these stories;
and I have been careful to clothe them as nearly as I might in the
simple language in which they are told to-day by many a village
fireside in South Slavonia.

I frankly confess to having received from Mr. Joel Chandler Harris
the suggestion which I have thus carried out. It was an unerring
literary instinct which impelled him to put upon the lips of Uncle
Remus and in the environment of a Southern country home of half
a century ago the stories which he had found among the <DW52>
people of the South. Folk-tales, of whatever character, speak the
more directly home to the hearts of children, whatever their own
intellectual environment, in proportion as their setting is most
nearly that which naturally belongs to them. Just as the highest
value of the Homeric poems is their revelation of the heart of man,
showing that in all ages and under all conditions heart answers to
heart as face answers to face in water, so the folk-tales of all
peoples in their native form have a higher function than simply to
amuse, a higher than mere literary value; they are the child's best
introduction to the study of human nature.

The children will not be the less interested in the stories which
the Russian grandmother told to the little peasant boy if they
discover in her wonder-tales some analogies with stories that they
already know. The adventures of Master Reinecke and Mrs. Petz, of
Isegrim and Lampe, will surely remind them of the Uncle Remus tales;
they will find some suggestion of Kamer-es-zaman and the Princess
Budoor in the story of "The Beg and the Fox," a hint of the "City
of Brass," in that of "The Vila in Muhlenberg," a faint reflection
of the "Arabian Nights" story of the Fisherman in the tale of the
"Three Eels," and they will be especially pleased to recognize
their old friend--and Sindbad the Sailor's--the roc, in the bird
Kumrikusha. The transformations which are so enchanting a feature of
the "Arabian Nights" are here suggested in the story of "Steelpacha,"
while the dress of feathers, most universal of folk-fancies, found
among every people in the world, and most perfectly developed in the
Arabian "Story of Hassan of Bassora," here appears in the tale of
"The Golden Apple-tree and the Nine Pea-hens."

That these stories originated in that fountain-head of wonder-tales,
the East, is very evident. They give more than a few suggestions of
biblical story: the servant sent to announce the readiness of the
feast (a courtesy of which I was myself the recipient in Syria last
winter), the Delilah-like importunities by which the youngest sister
lures from Steelpacha the secret of his strength, are perhaps the
most striking instances.

Although this preface is not written for the children, yet as there are
children who occasionally dip into prefaces, let me call the attention
of such to the difference, both in style and point of view, between
these stories and those which they have received from the brothers
Grimm, from Hans Andersen, and from a host of later writers. All of
these drew their material from the same sources as those of the Russian
grandmother; but their cultivated minds have worked this material into
exquisite literary forms. Not so your own nurses, or even your mothers,
who told you wonder-tales before you were old enough to read. Not so
the village story-tellers in far-away parts of the world, who, like
the Russian grandmother, still hand down to the children the stories
they received