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Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales: 27 Uniquely Slavic Tales of the Imagination
COSSACK FAIRY TALES AND FOLK TALES 27 Uniquely Slavic Tales of the Imagination SELECTED EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY R. NISBET BAIN CONTENTS Introduction Oh: The Tsar of the Forest The Story of the Wind The Voices at the Window The Story of Little Tsar Novishny, the False Sister, and the Faithful Beasts The Vampire and St Michael The Story of Tremsin, the Bird Zhar, and Nastasia, the Lovely Maid of the Sea The Serpent-Wife The Story of Unlucky Daniel The Sparrow and the Bush The Old Dog The Fox and the Cat The Straw Ox The Golden Slipper The Iron Wolf The Three Brothers The Tsar and the Angel The Story of Ivan and the Daughter of the Sun The Cat, the Cock, and the Fox The Serpent-Tsarevich and His Two Wives The Origin of the Mole The Two Princes The Ungrateful Children and the Old Father Who Went to School Again Ivan the Fool and St Peter's Fife The Magic Egg The Story of the Forty-First Brother The Story of the Unlucky Days The Wondrous Story of Ivan Golik and the Serpents
204 pages, Paperback
First published April 11, 1916
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About the author
Robert Nisbet Bain
132 books9 followersR. Nisbet Bain was a British historian, folklorist, and translator. He wrote extensively on early modern Slavic and Scandinavian history, and translated collections of folk and fairy tales from Cossack, Finnish, Hungarian, and Russian into English. His important collections include Russian Fairy Tales (1892), Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales (1894), Turkish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales (1896), Tales from Tolstoi (1901), and Tales from Gorky (1902).
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 9, 2024
I looked up this book at the break of the Ukrainian War and needed to ask my brother (who lived in Ukraine and Moldova for 2 years) for some context about the Cossacks. I actually started with an online resource, then found the primary source by Nisbet and Bain. This version follows the primary source word for word.
February 21, 2016
I believe I got the original link to this volume through StumbleUpon. The link was to archive.com, which had a digitized version of the original 1916 edition of this book. While it had a number of very detailed and intriguing illustrations, by Noel L. Nisbet, the text was a bit difficult to read as the “paper” was more light gray than white. I subsequently found out that there was a free Kindle edition, so I also got that (the type is crisper and larger, for my old eyes). Thus, I went back and forth between the versions, reading the Kindle and going to the illustrations from the archive.com one.
The editor/translator, R. Nisbet Bain, who had also edited a previous book of Russian folk tales, explains in the Introduction that the Cossacks lived in a remote area of what is now the Ukraine and spoke Ruthenian. Most were hardscrapple farmers. As the Cossacks were persecuted by the Russian government, who tried to ban the use of Ruthenian, they but did not succeed. Mr. Bain’s collection is culled from three other collections, each reflecting a different dialect of Ruthenian, most from the mid-1800s.
As for the stories themselves, they are replete with Tsars (I believe they were regional rulers then) and Tsarvinas (their wives), woodland sprites, flying serpents, multiple farmers’ daughters, seductive witches, rich and poor sons, and beneath it all, LOTS of magic. There are certainly similarities between these and other fairy tales (the Cinderella tale is almost identical), and there are themes of dire consequences for not using one’s judgment when warned about NOT kissing your wife for a certain amount of time or killing a steer or some other such proscription; more than one of these protagonists has forfeited their wealth/marriage/farmlands by doing so! Other characteristics relate to a serpent/Tsar/saint/evil lord giving the protagonist a number of impossible tasks to complete before the dawn, with our hero being saved by a fairy or other similar being in repayment for a kindness. Most of the human characters are either farmers (as, I would surmise, were most of the Cossacks of the time) or Tsars.
There are also some themes which our 21st-century enlightened minds would tend to cringe at; for example, Jews are stereotyped as evil, manipulative and only concerned about money; and somehow mistreating and beating one’s wife is considered de rigeur. Nonetheless, they were, I suppose, reflective of the culture at the time.
All in all, I greatly enjoyed this collection, and would recommend it for anyone interested in folk tales or historical literature.
The editor/translator, R. Nisbet Bain, who had also edited a previous book of Russian folk tales, explains in the Introduction that the Cossacks lived in a remote area of what is now the Ukraine and spoke Ruthenian. Most were hardscrapple farmers. As the Cossacks were persecuted by the Russian government, who tried to ban the use of Ruthenian, they but did not succeed. Mr. Bain’s collection is culled from three other collections, each reflecting a different dialect of Ruthenian, most from the mid-1800s.
As for the stories themselves, they are replete with Tsars (I believe they were regional rulers then) and Tsarvinas (their wives), woodland sprites, flying serpents, multiple farmers’ daughters, seductive witches, rich and poor sons, and beneath it all, LOTS of magic. There are certainly similarities between these and other fairy tales (the Cinderella tale is almost identical), and there are themes of dire consequences for not using one’s judgment when warned about NOT kissing your wife for a certain amount of time or killing a steer or some other such proscription; more than one of these protagonists has forfeited their wealth/marriage/farmlands by doing so! Other characteristics relate to a serpent/Tsar/saint/evil lord giving the protagonist a number of impossible tasks to complete before the dawn, with our hero being saved by a fairy or other similar being in repayment for a kindness. Most of the human characters are either farmers (as, I would surmise, were most of the Cossacks of the time) or Tsars.
There are also some themes which our 21st-century enlightened minds would tend to cringe at; for example, Jews are stereotyped as evil, manipulative and only concerned about money; and somehow mistreating and beating one’s wife is considered de rigeur. Nonetheless, they were, I suppose, reflective of the culture at the time.
All in all, I greatly enjoyed this collection, and would recommend it for anyone interested in folk tales or historical literature.
November 27, 2020
These are excellent, right up there with other great old-school fairy tales such as those retold by the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault. One warning: a couple of these stories feature some historical prejudices in a prominent manner.
April 1, 2016
Folktale motif (Three Sons)
Nesbit Bain, Robert translator, Cossack Fairy Tales and Folktales. The Three Brothers is a Ukrainian folktale. The father gives them the task of guarding the golden apple trees from a hog who has been digging them up. The oldest brother stands guard and falls asleep while the hog digs up a tree. Next the second brother does the same. The youngest is labeled the fool and the father tells him not to bother but he takes a gun goes to guard the trees. He succeeds and kills the hog. The two brothers hear the shoots and find the fool brother with the dead hog. The oldest decides to kill the brother and bury him in a ditch so he can claim the hog himself. He doesn't get away with the crime because a singing flute tells the story to the father and the father kills the oldest son. The language is a little hard to understand and there are no illustrations to help with the story. The story is a good example of how folktales were used to convey the message that the truth always comes out. The story would not be appropriate for younger children. The target audience 15-18 years old.
Nesbit Bain, Robert translator, Cossack Fairy Tales and Folktales. The Three Brothers is a Ukrainian folktale. The father gives them the task of guarding the golden apple trees from a hog who has been digging them up. The oldest brother stands guard and falls asleep while the hog digs up a tree. Next the second brother does the same. The youngest is labeled the fool and the father tells him not to bother but he takes a gun goes to guard the trees. He succeeds and kills the hog. The two brothers hear the shoots and find the fool brother with the dead hog. The oldest decides to kill the brother and bury him in a ditch so he can claim the hog himself. He doesn't get away with the crime because a singing flute tells the story to the father and the father kills the oldest son. The language is a little hard to understand and there are no illustrations to help with the story. The story is a good example of how folktales were used to convey the message that the truth always comes out. The story would not be appropriate for younger children. The target audience 15-18 years old.
April 26, 2016
Very, very peculiar tales. I spent most of my time thinking, Is this really what they taught their children??
Most of the characters don't deserve their happy endings / good fortunes. But who am I to disagree. Perhaps that's the biggest moral of this collection of tales: life is almost never fair.
Most of the characters don't deserve their happy endings / good fortunes. But who am I to disagree. Perhaps that's the biggest moral of this collection of tales: life is almost never fair.
March 28, 2016
Not homogenized
These are definitely Cossack fairy tales, not Anglicized like the Andrew Lang fairy books. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE Andrew Lang; but it's nice to read English translation with out the English stereotypes.
These are definitely Cossack fairy tales, not Anglicized like the Andrew Lang fairy books. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE Andrew Lang; but it's nice to read English translation with out the English stereotypes.
March 27, 2015
a lot of the people in the stories were really selfish and ended up living good lives while still being selfish
January 16, 2020
Unfortunately this work is explicitly anti-Semitic.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews