resented but with a difference in spirit and in
background that instantly marks one variant Teutonic and its fellow
Slavic. Moreover, as stories, the German versions of these particular
tales are neither as interesting nor as important as the Slavic
versions.

Both German and Slavic versions go back, in most cases, to some early
common source. Take _Clever Manka_, for instance, and its German
variant, _The Farmer's Shrewd Daughter_. _Clever Manka_ is very popular
among the Czechs and Slovaks and is considered by them especially
typical of their own folk wisdom and folk humor. And they are right: it
is. But it would be rash to say just how early or how late this story
began to be told among the peoples of the earth. The catch at the end
appears in a story in the Talmud and at that time it has all the marks
of a long and honorable career. The story of the devil marrying a scold,
another great favorite with the Slavs, also has its Talmudic parallel in
the story of Azrael, the Angel of Death, marrying a woman. The Azrael
story contains many of the incidents which are used in different
combinations in some half-dozen of the folk tales in the present
collection. And yet when comparative folklore has said all that it has
to say about variants and versions the fact remains that every people
puts its own mark upon the stories that it retells. The story that, in
the Talmud, is told of Azrael is Hebrew. The same story passed on down
the centuries from people to people appears finally as _Gentle Dora_ or
_Katcha and the Devil_ or _The Candles of Life_ and then it is
essentially Slavic in background, humor, and imagination.

Besides its fairy tales and folk tales the present volume contains a
cluster of charming little nursery tales and a group of rollicking
devil tales. It is intended as a companion volume to my earlier
collection, _Czechoslovak Fairy Tales_. Together these two books present
in English a selection of tales that are fairly representative of the
folk genius of a small but highly gifted branch of the great Slav
people.

P. F.

_May, 1920._

[Illustration]

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE TWELVE MONTHS: The Story of Marushka and the Wicked
Holena 1

ZLATOVLASKA THE GOLDEN-HAIRED: The Story of Yirik and the