



Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net/ for Project
Gutenberg (This file was produced from images generously
made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)








                    RUMANIAN BIRD AND BEAST STORIES
                         RENDERED INTO ENGLISH

                                   BY

                            M. GASTER, Ph.D.

     VICE-PRESIDENT AND SOMETIME PRESIDENT OF THE FOLK-LORE SOCIETY
              VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY
 VICE-PRESIDENT AND SOMETIME PRESIDENT OF THE JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY
                               ETC., ETC.



                 "But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee;
                And the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee."

                                                             Job xii. 7.


                                 LONDON
                 Published for the Folk-Lore Society by
          SIDGWICK & JACKSON, LTD., 3 ADAM ST., ADELPHI, W.C.
                                  1915








                                   To
                 HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELISABETH OF RUMANIA
                             "Carmen Sylva"
       To Whom the Soul of the Rumanian People is as an Open Book
                          A Page of that Book
                                   Is
                         By Gracious Permission
                               Dedicated








PREFACE.


"Neither can men hear the voice of the cattle; both the fowl of the
heavens and the beast are fled, they are gone." The forests are silent,
over hill and dale hangs a black pall; beast and bird are in hiding;
the voices are hushed. But before they have disappeared, following
in the track of others, I have endeavoured to catch the hum of the
bee, the twitter of the bird, the chirp of the cricket, the song of
the dying swan, and all the tales which beasts and birds and little
beetles tell their young before they go to sleep ere the flash of
the glow-worm flits across the darkness of the forest.

I have followed up to their lairs the ferocious wolf, the cantankerous
dog, the sly fox and the wise hedgehog, have listened to the lark and
to the nightingale, and paid homage to little king wren. Who knows how
much longer they will disport themselves in the fields and forests of
Rumania, where the hoofs of the horses, the feet of the marching men,
the shout of battle and the thunder of the guns have silenced--let
us hope only for a while--the voice of the dumb creatures, who still
speak so eloquently to him who knows their language and understands
the cunning spell of their hidden wisdom. It is as if I had gathered
flowers from the field of the Rumanian popular imagination. They are
fresh from the field, and the dew still hangs upon them like so many
diamonds, flashing in the light of popular poetry; nay, sometimes a
few specks of the original soil are still clinging to the roots. I
have not pressed them between the leaves of this book. I have handled
them tenderly. It has been a work of love, the dreamy fancies of youth,
the solace of maturer age. Peradventure one or the other may be taken
out and planted anew in the nurseries of the West, where they may
blossom and grow afresh. They might bring with them the breath of the
open field, the perfume of the forest. They might conjure up the time
when the nations were still young and lived in the great Nursery of
Nature. If one could only bring to the nations of the West for awhile
a glimpse of the time of their youth! In my wanderings through these
enchanted fields I have tried to find whence the seeds have come,
whose hands have sown them, and what spiritual wind and weather have
fostered their growth, whether the rain of heaven or the fountains
of the deep have watered the roots, what sun has shone upon them,
what fiery blast has made these flowers wither and die.

Such as they are, then, they are offered in love to the English people.

I have to thank Mr. S. L. Bensusan, who in true friendship, with
admirable skill and with untiring zeal has helped me to remove the
boulders, to level the ground, to plan the beds and to trim the edges;
Miss C. S. Burne, whose keen sympathy, unerring eye and deft hand have
helped to weed the tares and group the flowers; my son Vivian, who
with loving