by A. G. Seklemian · 1898
Fantasy · Classics
Armenian folk tales and fairy stories set down in English by A. G. Seklemian, with an introduction by Alice Stone Blackwell. They include The Golden Maiden, The Fairy Nightingale, The Bride of the Fountain and Dragon-Child and Sun-Child.
Content note: Retold in the 1890s for American readers. Some tales include violence and magic.
If I were telling my stories to an audience composed of Armenians, as I told them years ago, I would begin without any preliminary remarks or introduction. But since the audience is made up of people who are comparatively unacquainted with my native land and its traditions, naturally they will like to know who the story-teller is, where he got his narratives, and by whom and how his tales were first told.
About twenty years ago I was a boy living in a village on the heights of the Taurus Mountains in Cilicia, or Lesser Armenia, not far from the Mediterranean Sea. Like boys and girls all over the world, I was very fond of stories; but there were no story-books or other reading matter with which I and other children of my age could gratify our eager desire for stories. But better than these were the aged folks who told us all the interesting stories which our inquisitive childhood required. I had two grandmothers and half a dozen aunts, all unlettered country people, who took great delight in a rich store of folk-lore and fairy tales, and who told me the most entertaining and delightful stories that I have ever heard.
