THE SHOEMAKER'SAPRON
CZECHOSLOVAK FOLKand FAIRY TALES
PARKER FILLMORE
$3.50
A collection of twenty stories, drawnfrom original sources, and chosen for theirvariety of subject and range of interest.Here are fairy tales conceived with all thegorgeousness of the Slavic imagination;charming little nursery tales that might betold in nurseries the world over; folk talesillustrative of the wit of a canny people;and rollicking devil tales as surprising tothe Anglo-Saxon imagination as they areentertaining.
They are not in any sense academictranslations, but vivid renditions by a manwho, besides being a student of folklore,was an accomplished story-teller in his ownright.
THE SHOEMAKER'SAPRON
A Second Book of Czechoslovak
Fairy Tales and Folk Tales
RETOLD BY
PARKER FILLMORE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
AND DECORATIONS BY
JAN MATULKA
NOTE
The stories in this volume are all of Czech,Moravian, and Slovak origin, and are to befound in many versions in the books of folk talescollected by Erben, Nemcova, Kulda, Dobsinsky,Rimavsky, Benes-Trebizsky, Miksicek. I got them firstby word of mouth and afterwards hunted them out inthe old books. My work has been that of retelling ratherthan translating since in most cases I have put myselfin the place of a storyteller who knows several forms ofthe same story, equally authentic, and from them allfashions a version of his own. It is of course always[vi]the same story although told in one form to a groupof children and in another form to a group of soldiers.The audience that I hope particularly to interest is theEnglish-speaking child.
Some few of the stories—such as Nemcova's verybeautiful Twelve Months and Erben's spirited Zlatovlaskaand to a less degree Nemcova's hero tale, Vitazko—arealready in such definitive form that it would beprofanation to "edit" them. They—especially thefirst two—have been told once an