The Project Gutenberg EBook of Czechoslovak Fairy Tales, by Parker Fillmore

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Title: Czechoslovak Fairy Tales

Author: Parker Fillmore

Illustrator: Jan Matulka

Release Date: May 2, 2010 [EBook #32217]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CZECHOSLOVAK FAIRY TALES ***

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Transcriber's Note

Illustration captions in braces {like this} have been added by the
transcriber for the convenience of the reader.

CZECHOSLOVAK
FAIRY TALES

RETOLD BY
PARKER FILLMORE

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND DECORATIONS BY
JAN MATULKA

[Illustration: {Two birds}]

NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
PARKER FILLMORE

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY, N. J.

[Illustration: _Zloboha in Dobrunka's Clothes_
Page 192]

To
MISS MARJORIE RAHLSON

NOTE

This rendering of some of the old Czechoslovak tales is not offered as
a literal translation or a scholarly translation. I have retold the
stories in a way that I hope will please American children. I have
tried hard to keep the flavor of the originals but have taken the
liberty of a short cut here and an elaboration there wherever these
have seemed to me to make the English version clearer and more
interesting.

I have gone to Czech, Slovakian, and Moravian sources. All these
stories appear in many versions in the different folklore collections
made by such native writers as Erben, Nemcova, Dobsinsky, Rimavsky,
Benes-Trebizsky, Kulda. They represent the folk-tale in all stages of
its development from the bald narrative of _The Bird with the Golden
Gizzard_ which Kulda reports with phonographic exactness, to Nemcova's
more elaborate tale, _Prince Bayaya_, which is really a