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    A RUSSIAN GRANDMOTHER’S WONDER TALES - 50 Children's Bedtime Stories: More folklore from Mother Russia
    A RUSSIAN GRANDMOTHER’S WONDER TALES - 50 Children's Bedtime Stories: More folklore from Mother Russia
    A RUSSIAN GRANDMOTHER’S WONDER TALES - 50 Children's Bedtime Stories: More folklore from Mother Russia
    Ebook275 pages3 hours

    A RUSSIAN GRANDMOTHER’S WONDER TALES - 50 Children's Bedtime Stories: More folklore from Mother Russia

    By Anon E. Mouse and Retold by L Seymour Houghton

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    About this ebook

    An ancient Hopi parable states “He who tells stories, rules the world.” The stories which this Russian grandmother tells can be found, with many others, in a collection of “Tales and Legends of South Slavonia.” Here they have been sketched with the background of Russian peasant village life as it existed in some parts of Southern Russia. Because of this, the narrator has been careful to clothe them as nearly as possible in the simple language in which they are retold to-day by many a village fireside in South Slavonia.

    The 50 children’s stories in this volume are arranged into 24 chapters. Here you will find stories like: The Little Boy and the Grandmother, The Wolf as a Roman, The Sick Lion, Saturday Afternoon, The Fire of Shavings, The Man, the Hare, the Fox, and the Bear, The Bird, the Fox, and the Dog, A Pleasant Surprise, The Patient Little Boy, The Seven Stars, The Wonderful Story, The Bridge, The Korowai, The Basil-Plant, Steelpacha and many, many more.

    Just as the Hopi’s of North America told their children stories to teach morals and the lessons of life, so did the Russians, the Vikings, the Greeks, the ancient Egyptians as well as the Chinese, Japanese and Zulus. In fact you will find folklore and fairytales in every nation on earth. Without exception, all have a simple message, good always wins and the evil protagonist will lose and be, at least exiled, or worse.
    So download this book and make yourself comfortable with a mug full of something hot and steaming and be prepared to be entertained for hours.

    10% of the profit from the sale of this book will be donated to charities.
    YESTERDAYS BOOKS raising funds for TODAYS CHARITIES
    ==========
    KEYWORDS: fairy tales, folklore, myths, legends, children’s stories, children’s stories, bygone era, fairydom, fairy land, classic stories, children’s bedtime stories, fables, Adventures, Russian, Grandmother, Wonder Stories, Little Boy, Grandmother, Wolf as a Roman, Mother, Fête-Day, Sick Lion, Saturday Afternoon, Whiteling’s War, Isegrim, Fire of Shavings, Bear, Boar, Fox, frost Bite, Toes, Man, Hare, Fox, Bear, After Supper, Reinecke, Revenge, Isegrim, Snowy Day, Bird, Dog, Dove, Election Meeting, Hedgehog, Gockeling, Cock, Disappoint, Cat, Mouse, Pleasant Surprise, Badger, Stag, Patient, Little Boy, Hen, Sheep-Play, Beg, Seven Stars, the Vila, Muhlenberg, Homesick, Short Story, Golden, Apple Tree, Nine Peahens, Peacock, wonderful story, Youth, Sleepless, Golden Castle, Home Again, Prince, Princess, King, Queen, Betrothal, Deserter, Fields, Hunter, Watch Tower, Earth, Heaven, Bridge, Trinity Monday, Born, Die, Enchanted Lambs, Knot-Grass, Threshing, Three Eels, Korowai, Morning, Dew, Wedding, Neverfull, Basil-Plant, Wedding, Steelpacha
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAbela Publishing
    Release dateApr 8, 2018
    ISBN9788828302759
    A RUSSIAN GRANDMOTHER’S WONDER TALES - 50 Children's Bedtime Stories: More folklore from Mother Russia

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      Book preview

      A RUSSIAN GRANDMOTHER’S WONDER TALES - 50 Children's Bedtime Stories - Anon E. Mouse

      A Russian Grandmother’s

      Wonder Tales

      By

      Louise Seymour Houghton

      Illustrated By

      W. T. Benda

      Originally Published by

      Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York

      [1906]

      Resurrected by

      Abela Publishing, London

      [2018]

      A Russian Grandmother’s Wonder Tales

      Typographical arrangement of this edition

      © Abela Publishing 2018

      This book may not be reproduced in its current format in any manner in any media, or transmitted by any means whatsoever, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, or mechanical

      ( including photocopy, file or video recording, internet web sites, blogs, wikis, or any other information storage and retrieval system)

      except as permitted by law without the prior written permission of the publisher.

      Abela Publishing

      London

      United Kingdom

      [2018]

      ISBN-: 978-X-XXXXXX-XX-X

      Email:

      Books@AbelaPublishing.com

      Website:

      AbelaPublishing

      The old woman stole out to the tree,

      crept under the bed, and there hid herself

      Dedication

      TO

      THE FIVE GRANDCHILDREN

      PHILLIPS, SHERRILL, MARGARET, RUSSELL, AND CAROLINE

      Acknowledgements

      Abela Publishing

      Acknowledges the work that

      Louise Seymour Houghton

      and

      Władysław T. Benda

      did in compiling, illustrating and publishing

      A Russian Grandmother’s Wonder Tales

      in a time well before electronic and digital media

      were in use.

      Preface

      The stories which the Russian grandmother told will be found, with many others, in a German collection of Tales and Legends of South Slavonia, put forth in Vienna some twenty years ago by Dr. Friedrich Kraus, an ardent student of folk-lore. I have sketched in a slight background of peasant village life as it still exists in some parts of Southern Russia, because this is the proper setting of these stories; and I have been careful to clothe them as nearly as I might in the simple language in which they are told to-day by many a village fireside in South Slavonia.

      I frankly confess to having received from Mr. Joel Chandler Harris the suggestion which I have thus carried out. It was an unerring literary instinct which impelled him to put upon the lips of Uncle Remus and in the environment of a Southern country home of half a century ago the stories which he had found among the colored people of the South. Folk-tales, of whatever character, speak the more directly home to the hearts of children, whatever their own intellectual environment, in proportion as their setting is most nearly that which naturally belongs to them. Just as the highest value of the Homeric poems is their revelation of the heart of man, showing that in all ages and under all conditions heart answers to heart as face answers to face in water, so the folk-tales of all peoples in their native form have a higher function than simply to amuse, a higher than mere literary value; they are the child’s best introduction to the study of human nature.

      The children will not be the less interested in the stories which the Russian grandmother told to the little peasant boy if they discover in her wonder-tales some analogies with stories that they already know. The adventures of Master Reinecke and Mrs. Petz, of Isegrim and Lampe, will surely remind them of the Uncle Remus tales; they will find some suggestion of Kamer-es-zaman and the Princess Budoor in the story of The Beg and the Fox, a hint of the City of Brass, in that of The Vila in Muhlenberg, a faint reflection of the Arabian Nights story of the Fisherman in the tale of the Three Eels, and they will be especially pleased to recognize their old friend—and Sindbad the Sailor’s—the roc, in the bird Kumrikusha. The transformations which are so enchanting a feature of the Arabian Nights are here suggested in the story of Steelpacha, while the dress of feathers, most universal of folk-fancies, found among every people in the world, and most perfectly developed in the Arabian Story of Hassan of Bassora, here appears in the tale of The Golden Apple-tree and the Nine Pea-hens.

      That these stories originated in that fountain-head of wonder-tales, the East, is very evident. They give more than a few suggestions of biblical story: the servant sent to announce the readiness of the feast (a courtesy of which I was myself the recipient in Syria last winter), the Delilah-like importunities by which the youngest sister lures from Steelpacha the secret of his strength, are perhaps the most striking instances.

      Although this preface is not written for the children, yet as there are children who occasionally dip into prefaces, let me call the attention of such to the difference, both in style and point of view, between these stories and those which they have received from the brothers Grimm, from Hans Andersen, and from a host of later writers. All of these drew their material from the same sources as those of the Russian grandmother; but their cultivated minds have worked this material into exquisite literary forms. Not so your own nurses, or even your mothers, who told you wonder-tales before you were old enough to read. Not so the village story-tellers in far-away parts of the world, who, like the Russian grandmother, still hand down to the children the stories they received from parents and grandparents. These sometimes lose the connection; they add little local touches—sweet wine from Zagorjé, going home to Varazdin, and the like—they give to certain incidents the setting with which they are themselves familiar; most artlessly they interweave such results of modern invention and discovery as are familiar to them, with such blank ignorance of physical facts as is shown by bringing in the sun, the moon, the winds, as persons. Many of you know how beautifully George Macdonald did this sort of thing in his story At the Back of the North Wind, and you perfectly well perceive the difference between that story and such a tale as, for instance, So Born, So Die, in this book. When you are older you will recognize that it is precisely the difference between literature and folk-lore.

      That many of these wonder-tales passed through Mohammedan minds on their way to the Russian grandmother, or her great-grandmother, is evident. The Beg and the Fox is a striking case in point; it almost seems as if the story ought, like the stories of the Arabian Nights, to close with the exclamation, There is no God but God, the High, the Great!

      The humor of these stories, however, is unmistakably Slavonic. There is a fine pungency—not Oriental, though Oriental humor is very pungent—in certain of the endings, I have heard a lie, I have told a lie, and God give you joy! or after a peculiarly impossible story, Whoever believes it will be blessed! The underlying pathos of the story of the Basil-plant suggests the exquisite sentiment of Hans Andersen’s Steadfast Tin Soldier; but its excessive simplicity, its dropped threads of thought, forbid the idea

      that it has been worked over by any more sophisticated mind than that of the Russian grandmother.

      In this simple-hearted story-teller I have tried to reproduce some lineaments of the peasant mother to whom, he tells us, Dr. Kraus owes his first impulse to folk-lore research. She was one of nine children of a poor pedler, brought up in a village of charcoal burners, deep in a Slavonian forest. She was illiterate, like our Russian grandmother, but like her intelligent and learned in the wonder-lore of her people. Her son pays her a lovely tribute in the preface to the first volume of his collection:

      She grew up like a flower in the hedge-row, among the simple peasant folk whose manners and spirit she made entirely her own. The villagers, who had a little education, therefore called her, contemptuously, baba vracana (the little old sorceress), but the illiterate peasants lovingly named her nasá baba Eva (our little mother Eve). But for once the villagers were right, my mother is a sorceress; else, how comes it that I so constantly fall under the spell of her enchantments ... I solemnly declare that if there is a true word in metempsychosis, and it is left to our choice to return to the present state of existence, nothing would so sorely tempt me back, no crown, not even that of learning—as the simple assurance of the All-Father that he would give me

      again the same dear mother, though I were to go begging with her through the world.

      L. S. H.

      New York, September 1, 1906.

      Contents

      CHAPTER

      I.      The Little Boy and the Grandmother

      The Wolf as a Roman

      II.      The Mother’s Fête-Day

      The Sick Lion

      III.      Saturday Afternoon

      Whiteling’s War with Isegrim

      IV.      The Fire of Shavings

      The Bear, the Boar, and the Fox

      V.      Frost-Bitten Toes

      The Man, the Hare, the Fox, and the Bear

      VI.      After Supper

      Reinecke’s Revenge on Isegrim

      VII.      The Snowy Day

      The Bird, the Fox, and the Dog

      The Fox and the Dove

      VIII.      The Election Meeting

      The Fox and the Hedgehog

      Master Reinecke and Gockeling, the Cock

      The Disappointed Bear

      IX.      Cat and Dog

      Why the Dog Cannot Endure the Cat, nor the Cat the

      Mouse

      X.      A Pleasant Surprise

      The Fox and the Badger

      The Stag and the Hedgehog

      XI.      The Patient Little Boy

      The Cock and the Hen

      XII.      The Sheep-Play

      The Beg and the Fox

      XIII.      Getting Ready

      The Seven Stars

      XIV.      Mother’s-Mother

      The Vila of Muhlenberg

      XV.      The Little Boy Homesick

      A Short Story

      The Golden Apple-Tree and the Nine Peahens

      The Wonderful Story

      The Youth and the Vila

      XVI.      The Little Boy Sleepless

      The Vila in the Golden Castle

      XVII.      Home Again

      Prince Hedgehog

      XVIII.      The Betrothal

      The Deserter

      XIX.      In the Fields

      The Hunter

      The Watch-Tower between Earth and Heaven

      The Bridge

      XX.      Trinity-Monday

      So Born, So Die

      The Enchanted Lambs

      The Knot-Grass

      XXI.      Threshing-Time

      The Three Eels

      XXII.      The Korowai

      Morning-Dew

      XXIII.      The Wedding

      Young Neverfull

      The Basil-Plant

      XXIV.      After the Wedding

      Steelpacha

      Illustrations

      • The old woman stole out to the tree, crept under the bed, and there hid herself - Frontispiece

      • Took his place in the middle of the field, with his mouth wide open

      • Step into this sack, ... and I will carry you around the field

      • A shower of golden ducats fell, and lay upon the plates in three great heaps

      • The third hoop dropped off; the cask fell asunder, and a dragon flew out

      • Then the youth clambered down and took the Vila home

      • Drive the sheep slowly, one by one, to the other side

      • When he beheld the basil-plant he felt an extraordinary love for it

      A Russian Grandmother’s Wonder-Tales

      Chapter I

      The Little Boy And The Grandmother

      The little boy’s father was starosta, that is, Elder of the village, and the house the little boy lived in was grander than any other, on whichever side of the long street you might look. For it had two rooms opening into the court, and all the other houses, even that of the pop, who said Mass in the church on Sunday, had only one. And this grand house was not crowded like the other houses, where the grandparents and the parents and all the married sons and their wives and children lived in the one room. The starosta was not a bolshak, or head of a family, of the old-fashioned sort. He did not consider that he had a right to rule his children like a despot and make them work for him, however old they might be, as many of the fathers in the village did. He even approved of young people setting up housekeeping by themselves. Therefore, though some of the older bolshaks shook their heads and said harm would come of it, when the little boy’s elder brother married he permitted him to have a house of his own. It was at the far end of the village.

      Thus, in the little boy’s house there were only the grandmother, the father and mother, the three daughters, the half-grown son, and the little boy. They were not at all crowded, you see, for they had two rooms. The cowherd woman and the two moujiks who helped the starosta on the land, slept, of course, in the stalls with the cattle under the shed that went around three sides of the court. In their warm sheepskin coats, made with the wool outside, they would not have been at all cold, even if the cows beside which they slept had not kept them warm.

      The family always slept warm, too, for father, mother, and all the children slept on the great tile stove which occupied the centre of the larger room, and in this stove the fire never went entirely out. The grandmother did not sleep on this stove, however. The starosta greatly honored his old mother, and to her he gave the second room in the house for herself alone. She had a stove all to herself, and slept on it all alone, except when the little boy ran away from the great room and cuddled down beside his grandmother for the night.

      She did not tell him stories then, for night is the time for sleeping, and grandmother was tired after a long day in the fields. But on rainy days, when the starosta would not permit his old mother to do field work, grandmother would sit at home and spin, and then for happy times!

      It was growing cold weather; the harvests were all in, the rains had begun, and grandmother was sitting by the stove, with her distaff and spindle and a basket of wool by her side. In came the little boy, settled himself in a snug place on the stove-top, and said, very coaxingly:

      Tell me a story, little grandmamma!

      The grandmother ceased the song she had been singing, and answered:

      Shall I tell you about the Wolf that wanted to be a Roman?

      Oh, yes, yes! exclaimed the little boy. Tell me about the wolf!

      So the grandmother began.

      THE WOLF AS A ROMAN

      Once upon a time, Isegrim, the Wolf, sat in the forest and thought to himself, Why should I be a wolf and go around devouring the other beasts? It would be much better for me to go out into the world. What if I should go to Rome? Yes, that’s it, I will be a Roman!

      Off he set in the best of spirits, and on the way he met a Sow. The Sow bristled up in terror, but Isegrim cried out, Don’t be frightened, Gruntelind! I am done with Gruntelinds forever. I am going to be a Roman.

      Not long after he met a He-goat. The He-goat was greatly frightened when he saw Isegrim, but the Wolf cried out, Don’t be frightened, Longbeard! I’m not bothering myself with Longbeards. I am going to be a Roman.

      Next he met an old Mare. She was horribly frightened, but he quieted her, saying, Don’t be frightened, Skinny-bones! I don’t waste my time with old jades like you. I am going to be a Roman.

      On went the Wolf for two whole days, when he began to feel a mighty hunger. So he turned back, and presently he came to the pasture where he had met the old Mare. Now was the Mare terrified. She quaked with fear, and well she might, for the Wolf said to her, Mare, I am going to devour you!

      How dare you say so! exclaimed the Mare. You told me you were a Roman.

      Roman here or Roman there, snarled Isegrim, I am going to gnaw your bones.

      Very well, returned the Mare; if there is no help for it, come again by and by, when I am plumper and juicier.

      So the Wolf went on his way. Presently he met the He-goat. Ho, Longbeard, cried he, your time has come!

      I dare you to touch me! replied the He-goat. You are not a Wolf; you are a Roman.

      Roman here or Roman there, retorted the Wolf, I shall dine on you to-day.

      What must be, must, replied the He-goat; but since you are bound to eat me, just grant me life till the woods are green again.

      The Wolf was beguiled, and on he went till he met the Sow. Listen to me, Gruntelind, said he; I am going to make short work with you now.

      You daren’t do it, replied the Sow. You are no Wolf; you are a noble Roman.

      "Roman here

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