LEGENDS FROMRIVER AND MOUNTAIN
FROM “THE CAVE OF JALOMITZA.”—p. 146.
But thereupon the horse was changed into a hawk, that shot down from agiddy height, and bore her away in his talons.
Legends from * * * * *
River & Mountain
By Carmen Sylva (H.M. the
Queen of Roumania) and Alma
Strettell. With Illustrations
by T. H. Robinson
London: George Allen
156 Charing Cross Road
1896
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press
INTRODUCTION
The first ten of these stories are taken from the Germanof Carmen Sylva, who has kindly given the translatorher special permission to add them to the following collectionof legends. The originals are to be found in her charmingvolumes of Roumanian tales: “Pelesch Märchen” and“Durch die Jahrhunderte.”
Many of them are associated with the mountains whichsurround her home among the pine-woods of Sinaia; othersbelong to the districts traversed by the Pelesch river, themerry stream that dashes through the ravine at the foot ofher garden, “whispering all sorts of wonders and secrets tothose who have ears to hear.”
The remaining tales in the volume are collected from differentparts of Germany. “The Little Glass-man,” a legendof the Black Forest, is taken from “Hauff’s Märchen”; theother stories are all compiled from, or founded upon, legendsto be met with in various German collections, such asZiehnert’s, Pröhle’s, &c.[1] Most of them, however, are thereset forth in so condensed a form, and with such scantydetail, that they could hardly prove of interest as stories,and therefore, they have in sundry cases been somewhat[Pg vi]amplified and developed; or, where there was a resemblancebetween several legends belonging to different districts,indicating that they had a common source, their varyingincidents have been worked into one tale.
It will be seen that the latter part, at least, of this volumemakes no claim to be considered as an addition to the seriousliterature of Folk-lore. Its endeavour is rather to furnish theyounger readers of the present generation with a fresh supplyof stories—half legend, half fairy-tale—of a kind with whichthe children of an earlier day were familiar, but which arenow less often to be met with; stories which came to themalso from foreign lands, and were invested with a charm whichit has been vainly sought, as the compiler fears, to impart tothe present series.
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