JAN 7 - 1933 Rasmus B. Anderson (Sub. for worn vol.) BU 48 768 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. "endeavoured to obtain every tale as original and genuine as possible. For this object we have undertaken long journeys through the several provinces, and committed to writing a very considerable number of Popular Stories from the lips of the people. What we have thus collected we have arranged and published free from all arbitrary additions and alterations. That which alone belongs to our province is the external form of the narrative, which, depending on the various ages and degrees of culture of the narrators, naturally called for some remodelling." To some of these tales those variations are appended that are met with in the several provinces where they are current. With regard to these Swedish Popular Tales, it will not fail to strike every one familiar with those of Germany, how much more elaborately the Swedish story is told than its German counterpart, as given in the collections of the Brothers Grimm, Bechstein, and others. This circumstance is very remarkable, as involving a degree of mystery not to be solved; for of all those parts of Europe where such tales are extant among the people, Sweden seems to be that in which least of all we should expect to find them so worked out. This observation seems applicable to the Swedish Tales, in all their provincial varieties. Many of these tales bear evident signs of an origin anterior to the introduction of Christianity into the North, notwithstanding the allusions to the Christian faith occasionally to be found in them, but which are, no doubt, the work of times when heathenism was superseded by the purer faith of the Gospel. Another, and even greater, mystery, is their dissemination among the several nations of Europe, and at a time when communication between countries was beset by obstacles. To solve it we feel ourselves wholly incompetent, and after all, it seems a proposition appertaining to the province of the ethnographer rather than to that of the editor of a series of stories gathered together for the recreation chiefly of juvenile readers at Christmas, or, as our forefathers would have called it, MERRY YULE-TIDE." 66 The foregoing observations are to a certain degree applicable to all the Scandinavian Tales, and partially to those also of Germany. The POPULAR TRADITIONS, however fabulous their matter, generally refer to persons who are known to have existed, and also to some place, therein differing from the POPULAR TALE. Such Traditions are far from being so worthless as at first sight they may appear. To the inquirer they are important, as affording an insight into the manners, customs, modes of thought, and superstitions of bygone days, points on which history strictly so called is but too generally silent. With the exception of the Tales from the Swedish, the editor's task has been chiefly limited to the correction of the sheets as they issued from the press. As many Swedish and Danish names of persons and places occur in the volume, it may be well to observe that the Swedish Å, å and its Danish equivalent Aa, aa, are pronounced as our a in war, or oa in broad; g is always hard before e and i, as in the English words get, give, and j is pronounced as y; the other vowels and the consonants are sounded as in almost every European tongue, and the e final is pronounced as in Mètté, Aasé, etc. B. T. |