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 Rh had been told her by her own grandmother when she was a child; and she told me the story of 'Punchkin;' which was subsequently followed by the others that are here recorded.

Whilst narrating them she usually sat cross-legged on the floor, looking into space, and repeating what she said as by an effort of memory.

If any one came into the room whilst she was speaking, or she were otherwise interrupted during the narration, it was apparently impossible for her to gather up the thread of the narration where it had been dropped, and she had to begin afresh at the beginning of her story as at the commencement of some long-forgotten melody. She had not, I believe, heard any of the stories after she was eleven years old, when her grandmother had died.

As she told me a story I made notes of what she said, and then wrote it down and read it to her, to be certain that I had correctly given every detail. In this manner all the stories that she could recollect were one by one recorded.

This book has been translated into the German, Hungarian, and portions of it into the Danish language, and has been retranslated, I am told, into Mahratti, Hindoostani, and Guzerati. It is strange that, owing to accident, though two excellent French translations have been suggested, neither has yet been published. Professor Max Müller told me not long ago that he had come upon the Sanskrit original (which he had not previously seen) of one of these stories, and that after the lapse of the many intervening centuries, the version of it, as recorded from Anna's narration, read like a direct translation from the native Sanskrit.

MARY FRERE

November 1881.