A volume as fascinating as any fairy book that was ever published; and
simply for their wealth of imagination and rare simplicity of diction
these stories will be widely read.... The volume, taken for all in
all, is a distinct addition to literature, a priceless boon to
scientific investigation, and a credit to American scholarship. The
educated people of this country will do well to buy and read this
truly remarkable book.--_The Beacon._
Will be welcome to many readers, not only to students, but to children,
who find inexhaustible interest in just such folk-tales.--_Public
Opinion._
At once thoroughly admirable and thoroughly delightful, ... there is a
surprising freshness and individuality of flavor in them.--_Boston
Courier._
Stories of unique character, full of grotesque and marvellous
adventures, told with a beautiful simplicity of style which speaks
well for the faithfulness of the translator's work.--_Milwaukee
Sentinel._
Prof. Jeremiah Curtin gives us a large collection of these tales, many
of which are very interesting, many beautiful, and all strikingly
curious.--_Boston Advertiser._
Mr. Curtin spares no pains in his researches into the early literature
of the chief primitive races of the earth. Less than a year has passed
since the publication of his admirable work on "Irish Folk-Lore." The
present volume adds his discoveries among three other important
nations.--_The Dial._
Mythology has not yet come to a science. Its tales for the most part
continue to be curious bits of literature merely, highly imaginative
and entertaining, but only slightly, if at all, connected with truth
and reason so far as we can discover. Still there comes to us out of
the mythologic sky an occasional ray of meaning which seems to the
hopeful a promise that the history of credibility and of fact shall
ultimately be extended far backward, perhaps into the remotest ages of
mankind, through illumination from this source. Mr. Jeremiah Curtin
has written a most interesting essay bearing upon this idea in an
introduction to his new volume, "Myths and Folk-Tales of the Russians,
Western Slavs, and Magyars" (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.). It is an
essay notable for its evidence of scholarly insight and investigation,
its curious and surprising information and suggestion, its perfect
lucidity, and its rare literary charm.--_New York Sun._
No one else could have so delightfully rendered in English the "Myths
and Folk-Tales of the Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars." One of
the brightest men in Boston--poet, novelist, critic, and wit all in
one--told me that he had read this book through three times already,
and he suspected that it was his doom to read it a good many times
more. After all, is there anything quite so perennially fascinating as
folk-lore, unless it be the old ballads which turn folk-lore into
music?... Turn to the book itself and read about the "Fire Bird" and
the "Gray Wolf," and "The Ring with Twelve Screws" and "The King of
the Toads" and "The Reed Maiden," and you will forget as you read the
slow procession of mortal years, and dream yourself into Elfin Land,
where, I believe, they never grow old. And then if you want to come
back into active human life again, read that vigorous and thrilling
tale of love and war, "With Fire and Sword."--_Louise Chandler
Moulton, in the Boston Herald._
The literary charm of the translation is high, and the tone struck in
rendering the tales from the Slav and the Magyar languages is naïve
without being silly, natural without being monotonous.... The
collection opens with a varied miscellany of Russian stories about the
metal and animal kingdoms; enchanted princesses; pigs with golden
bristles; the waters of youth, life, and death; and the deathless
youth. The marvellous imagination of the Russ peoples plays sportively
through these creations, and exhibits wanton delight in hugeness, in
physical strength and beauty, in comic situations of its mighty
myth-tsars, and queer adventures for its king's sons and tsarins....
Grown-up children, as well as hunters after folk-lore and
superstitions, will revel in these freaks of fact and fancy, which Mr.
Curtin translates, and dedicates appropriately to Prof. F. J.
Child.--_The Critic._
[Decoration]