by A. N. Afanasyev · 1855
Fantasy · Classics
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A collection of folk and fairy tales gathered by the folklorist Alexander Afanasyev from across the Russian-speaking and Slavic lands, full of witches, firebirds, wolves and clever fools.
Content note: These traditional tales include violence and frightening scenes.
Any editor of Slav folktales starts with great advantages. Russia is a country where artistic development began very late; where popular lore was conserved with little alteration owing to the immensities of the country, the primitiveness of the people, and the punctiliousness of the compilers.
The principal source for Russian folktales is the great collection of Afanasyev, a coeval of Rybnikov, Kirěyevski, Sakharov, Bezsónov, and others who all from about 1850 to 1870 laboriously took down from the lips of the peasants of all parts of Russia what they could of the endless store of traditional song, ballad, and folktale. These great collectors were actuated only by the desire for accuracy; they appended laboriously erudite notes; but they were not literary men and did not sophisticate, or improve on their material.
But, before venturing on a brief account of the tales, something must be premised as to the position occupied by folktales in the cultural development of a people. In Pagan times, there always existed a double religion, the ceremonial worship of the gods of nature and the tribal deities—a realm of thought in which all current philosophy and idealism entered into a set form that symbolized the State—and also local cults and superstitions, the adoration of the spirits of streams, wells, hills, etc.
