MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AT MUNICH. LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1875. 3983 7394 PREFACE. THE POPULAR TALES AND TRADITIONS, a translation of which is now offered to the Public, are not the fruits of modern imagination, but, as their several collectors and editors inform us, are genuine ancient productions, not a few of them traceable to very remote ages and to the far-distant lands of the East, and the greater number of a date not later than the fifteenth or sixteenth century *. Of the two classes-The POPULAR TALES and the POPULAR TRADITIONS-contained in this volume, the Tales are undoubtedly the more ancient, and in their nature bear a near resemblance to the Fairy Tales of the Celtic nations, both probably having claim to the same remote origin. They may, therefore, be regarded as property common alike to the European nations, however modelled during the middle ages to harmonize with the superstitions and modes of thinking of the several people among whom they have been naturalized. Thus, while the ground of the texture is the same, the pattern wrought on it alone differs. For the Fairies, the Drakes, the Cluricauns of the Bretons, Welsh, and Irish, we have the Elves, Dwarfs, and Nisser of Scandinavian and North German fiction. These tales are, from their nature, without a definite locality, without date and names of persons. Many of them possess considerable poetic merit, and their moral is invariably excellent. Of the Swedish Tales, forming the first portion of the collection, the editors thus speak: "We have," say they, * Some information on this subject, with reference to the Swedish Tales, may be derived from the Table of Contents, prefixed to the volume, but which is almost equally applicable to the others. |