re listed at the end of the e-text.

The five stories are:

Piatra Arsa
Die Jipi
Die Hexenburg
Der Tschachlau
Riul Doamnei]

[Illustration: "Carmen Sylva."]

Heath's Modern Language Series

~AUS MEINEM KOeNIGREICH~

Tales From The Carpathian Mountains

by

"CARMEN SYLVA"

(Queen Elisabeth of Roumania)

_Selected and Edited for Early Reading
with Introduction, Notes and Vocabulary_

by

Dr. WILHELM BERNHARDT

BOSTON, U.S.A.
D. C. HEATH & CO., Publishers
1900

INTRODUCTION

I

THE ROUMANIANS AND THEIR LANGUAGE

Not many years ago, the Roumanians, _i.e._, the inhabitants of the two
principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, were hardly known by name,
and it was only through the grave events of which the Lower Danube has
been the scene, since the middle of the XIX. century that they are
prominently brought to the fore. We know now that they constitute one of
the most important elements of the population of Eastern Europe--that
they differ essentially from their neighbors, be they Slav, Turk, or
Magyar--and that in some way they are descendants of the old Romans,
though they live detached from the other nations of the Graeco-Latin
family.

The origin of this Latin-speaking nation is still shrouded in mystery.
Are they the descendants of the Getae and Latinised Dacians? Or does the
blood of Italian colonists brought thither by Emperor Trajan (98-117
A.D.) predominate among them?

The Roumanians of to-day are anxious to purge their language of all
Servian, Greek, and Turkish words introduced during the long dominion of
the Turks. They endeavor to polish their tongue so that it may rank with
Italian, to which it is closely related. About one half of the words of
the Roumanian language--as spoken between the Lower Danube and the
Carpathian Mountains--are Latin, while the roots of the other
constituent elements must be looked for in Slavic, Albanesian, Greek,
Hungarian, Turk, and German. There remain, however, several hundred
words not traceable to any known tongue, and these are supposed to be a
remnant of the ancient Dacian spoken on either bank of the Lower Danube
at the period of the Roman invasion, in the beginning of the second
century after Christ.

II

"CARMEN SYLVA," ROUMANIA'S POET-QUEEN

In the opening lines of her collection of poems, Carmen Sylva,
Roumania's poet-queen, describes to us whence she derived her eup