Page:Russian Wonder Tales.djvu/24

xvi localized in different versions, each of which retained or discarded detail at its provincial pleasure, the result being an incredible reduplication of variants of the same fundamental tale. An opposite process went on at the same time: similar fragments coalesced and grouped themselves about a single axis of incident, infinitely increasing the multiplication. So that the skazki, as they appear to-day, are less a cluster of individual tales than an elaborate mosaic, with whose fragments of color and incident the modern adaptor (such as Pushkin or Ershoff) produces variant and highly-tinted designs, on the kaleidoscopic principle.

Such, in brief, is the genealogy of the Russian skazki, from the poetic symbolism of a primitive religion to the despised Cinderellas of fiction, from a revered drama of the high gods to a group of peasant "Old Wives' Tales."

It is a matter of regret that the English-speaking world has had little opportunity of acquaintance with these naïve, old-world stories, although they by no means suffer in comparison with the German Märchen, upon which there exists such a formidable literature in English. Mr. W. R. S. Ralston's "Russian Folk-Tales," published in 1873, was primarily less of a collection than a treatise on Slavonic folk-lore, and perhaps for this reason its