INTRODUCTION. xi

second volume, published in the following year, he
added other stories gleaned from various minor MS.
collections of great rarity. In 1876 the Imperial
Russian Geographical Society published at Kiev,
under the title of Malorusskiya Narodnuiya Pre-
donyia t Razkazw (Little-Russian Popular Traditions
and Tales), an edition of as many MS. collections
of Ruthenian Folk-Lore (including poems, proverbs,
riddles, and rites) as it could lay its hands upon.
This collection, though far less rich in variants than
Rudechenko’s, contained many original tales which
had escaped him, and was ably edited by Michael
Dragomanov, by whose name indeed it is generally
known. -

The present attempt to popularize these Cossack
stories is, I believe, the first translation ever made from
Ruthenian into English. The selection, though natur-
ally restricted, is fairly representative; every variety
of folk-tale has a place in it, and it should never be
forgotten that the Ruthenian Kazka (miirchen), owing
to favourable circumstances, has managed to preserve
far more of the fresh spontaneity and naive simplicity
of the primitive folk-tale than her more sophisticated
sister, the Russian Skazka. It is maintained, more-
over, by Slavonic scholars that there are peculiar
and original elements in these stories not to be found
in the folk-lore of other European peoples; such data,