Folk-Lore of Modern Greece: The Tales of the People (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

Excerpt from Folk-Lore of Modern Greece: The Tales of the People

Judged by Von Hahn's translation. Great as his merit is in having first drawn the attention of his countrymen to the rich treasure of fairy legends (in a prose form) to be found in Greece, he was rather a mythologist than a linguist, and his German version is not only free, but in some instances either demonstrably inaccurate or founded on a different reading to that followed by Pio. In regard to the choice I have made within the limits assigned, and resisting the te1nptation,to enlarge the.,present volume either from those portions of Von Hahn's of which the Greek text is not published, or from the charming French collection'of Emile legrandz-rgmez'l d'e Calztes Popzz/az're; Grew, Paris, 1881, of which also the original is not yet accessible, I have to say that I was still further restr1cted in the matter of selection, by the character of the legends themselves, many of which exhibit all that naive unconsciousness of the proprieties of civilized life, which belongs to popular thought and speech, and which, while wholly innocent in itself, renders the narratives 11n presentable in polite society, except at the cost of such mutilation as would deprive them of scientific value. For this scientific value consists essentially, as it seems to me. In the faithful and rigorous preservation both of the matter and the form of the original, so far as this is possible and compatible with translation. I have therefore not sought nor desned to remove the uncouth abruptness of the narrative,~or to make it in any sense conform to the demands of literary elegance; I have rather endeavoured to retain, so far as the English idiom at all admits, even the rapid transition from the past tense to the historic present, and r'z'w t'aryd, which is so specially characteristic of popular oral narration, and have left intact, as far as I could, the somewhat confusing inter calation of comment, and often far-fetched proverbial allusion and illustration, which is another strongly marked trait of these vernacular recitals. The main interest for the student attaching to these tales centres around the problmgration of.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Folk-Lore of Modern Greece: The Tales of the People

The following Fairy Tales are translated, with the exception of the first three, the originals of which are contained in the Parnasses, a journal published by the Philological Society of that name in Athens, from the Greek text, edited by J. Pio at Copenhagen, under the title: Contes Populaires Grecs publiés d'après les Manuscrits du Dr. J. G. de Hahn, 1879. Von Hahn himself, the author of Albanesische Studien, Jena, 1854, and Griechische and albanesische Märchen Leipzig, 1864, having lived from his youth in various parts of Greece, had employed native amanuenses to write down, by word of mouth, the several stories which formed the basis of his German version, as they fell from the lips of their narrators. Some of these were subsequently revised by Professor Mavrophrydes, of Athens, the rest after his death by M. Pio, the editor of the Greek text already mentioned. Of many of the tales the latter found duplicate versions among, the posthumous Mss. of Von Hahn, and, by the collation of these, he succeeded in producing a text which, while it leaves, much to be desired from a purely philological point of view, is evidently, as the mere style of the recital sufficiently attests, a far closer approximation to genuine oral tradition than is mostly the case with collections of popular legends.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.