Russian Fairy Tales

INTRODUCTORY.There are but few among those inhabitants of Fairy-land of whom "Popu-lar Tales" tell, who are better known to the outer world than Cinderella-the despised and flouted younger sister, who long sits unnoticed beside thehearth, then furtively visits the glittering halls of the great and gay, and at lastis transferred from her obscure nook to the place of honor justly due to hertardily acknowledged merits. Somewhat like the fortunes of Cinderella havebeen those of the popular tale itself. Long did it dwell beside the hearths ofthe common people, utterly ignored by their superiors in social rank. Thencame a period during which the cultured world recognized its existence, butaccorded to it no higher rank than that allotted to "nursery stories" and "oldwives' tales"-except, indeed, on those rare occasions when the charity of acondescending scholar had invested it with such a garb as was supposed toenable it to make a respectable appearance in polite society. At length therearrived the season of its final change, when, transferred from the dusk of thepeasant's hut into the full light of the outer day, and freed from the unbe-coming garments by which it had been disfigured, it was recognized as the3 UNKNOWNscion of a family so truly royal that some of its members deduce their originfrom the olden gods themselves.In our days the folk-tale, instead of being left to the careless guardianshipof youth and ignorance, is sedulously tended and held in high honor by theripest of scholars. Their views with regard to its origin may differ widely.But whether it be considered in one of its phases as a distorted "nature-myth," or in another as a demoralized apologue or parable-whether it beregarded at one time as a relic of primeval wisdom, or at another as a blurredtranscript of a page of mediaeval history-its critics agree in declaring it tobe no mere creation of the popular fancy, no chance expression of the un-cultured thought of the rude tiller of this or that soil. Rather is it believedof most folk-tales that they, in their original forms, were framed centuriesupon centuries ago; while of some of them it is supposed that they may betraced back through successive ages to those myths in which, during a pre-historic period, the oldest of philosophers expressed their ideas relative tothe material or the spiritual world.But it is not every popular tale which can boast of so noble a lineage, andone of the great difficulties which beset the mythologist who attempts to dis-cover the original meaning of folk-tales in general is to decide which of themare really antique, and worthy, therefore, of being submitted to critical anal-ysis. Nor is it less difficult, when dealing with the stories of