Russian and Bulgarian Folk-Lore Stories

Translated from Karel Erben’s One Hundred Popular Slavonic Folk-Lore Stories, with Notes, Essays, etc.

By: Karel Erben

Narrated by: Russell Stamets

Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

This small volume completes the translation of Karel Erben’s A Hundred Genuine Popular Slavonie Fairy Stories. The first volume, Segnius Irritant, maps out, so to say, the primitive folklore weather myth of which nearly the whole of the succeeding 92 stories are wholly or in part reproductions. In reperusing Grimm’s Home Fairy Stories, I observed that in them, as well as in practically the whole of Bernoni’s excellent collection of Venetian popular tales, the primitive type is traceable. Even stories which are due almost wholly to popular wit and fancy, and may be indeed records of fact, generally bear some slight impressions of the old-world myths about them, much as the butchers of Liguria to this day adorn the front and horns of the beasts’ heads in their shops with gold leaf.

A good instance of such a story is the one in Grimm about the little boy who, seeing his parents maltreat his grandfather, makes a little pig-trough, and on being asked what it is for by his parents, replies that it is for them when they are old and superannuated. The fact is, the popular mind of Central and Northern Continental Europe has for centuries been so saturated with the ancient saws or sagas, that when it attempts to invent on its own account, either for amusement or to prevent its brats from playing truant and getting burnt or drowned, it seldom or never is capable of doing more than reproducing consciously or unconsciously what has been previously dinned into its own childish ears. Perhaps the anti-climax of “The Three Citrons” has produced the largest crop of stories, amplifications, or abridgments, as the case may be.

©1907 Russell Stamets (P)2020 Russell Stamets

The real deal, including Baba Yaga

These are amazing. Not sanitized, and sometimes bloody. But here are the roots of Grimm and many Disney retells. I like how the narrator has handled this one.

Great stories, but mechanical narration; hard to listen to…

I love the stories, but the narration is mechanical and monotonous. I found it difficult and somewhat painful to listen to. Not a good storyteller. I had to take breaks between stories in order to listen to them all. Don’t the authors listen to the people that they have narrate their stories? What a shame.