Great Russian Animal Tales

Extract

The Russians proper who constitute three fourths of the whole population of European Russia are divided into the Great Russians, the Little Russians and the White Russians, numbering about forty-five, twenty and five millions respectively. The Great Russians occupy the central provinces around Moscow and the greater part of the North and the East, the Little Russians extend from the river Don to Eastern Galicia, the White Russians live in the territory between Poland and the central provinces. Each of these three divisions of the Russian people possesses a rich treasure of folklore much of which has been published during the last thirty years. The animal tales have not been gathered separately, but form part of the various collections of folk tales, or Skazkas, among which that of Afanasiev is by far the largest and most important. It comprises eight volumes, draws its material from all sections of the country, and presents the principal animal tales in the three dialects, in the edition of 1860-63 running through several volumes, in that of 1873 united in the beginning of the first The work of Afanasiev has been supplemented by others. To mention only the leading collections Romanov has edited White-Russian folk tales; Rud¸nko, Cubinskij and Dragomanov Little-Russian; Chudjakov, Cudinskij and Sadovnikov Great-Russian. To the public and the students of foreign countries, the Russian tales have been introduced by the collections of Ralston, Leger, Dietrich, Vogl and others; through the notes on tales of other countries; through numerous publications and discussions in magazines and periodicals, and by de Gubernatis ‘Zoological Mythology.’ As the collections contain but a few animal tales, and as the stray publications are only accessible to specialists, de Gubernatis' work, which has been published in English. Italian, French and German, is comparatively the most useful. Unfortunately, however, the Italian scholar does not give his summaries of Great-Russian animal tales connectedly and for their own sake, but interspersed with tales from other peoples and in support of a theory which resolves them into myths of the sun, the moon or the atmosphere.