The aim of this series of stories which, through the medium of Firdusi,
mirrors so fascinatingly the legendary history of Persia, has been, not
only to provide for the story-teller a treasure-house wherein may be
found pure gold, refined for ready use, every coin of which may be
stamped with the narrator’s own individuality for the inspiration and
entertainment of any group of children, but also, indirectly, to present
to older boys and girls, in attractive form, the story of the Shah-Nameh
in miniature.
When the material for the stories was originally collected, the author’s
idea was simply to work out for her own use in story-telling to children
a picture presentation of a delightful series of tales little known to
the young. Accordingly, like the fabled busy bee, she scrupled not to
enter the most exclusive Persian gardens, dipping into the cup of each
bright posy containing the least mite of the sweets for which she was
delving—her desire being to give to this particular jar of honey not the
Atkinson, or the Mohl, or the Arnold flavor alone, but a composite which
should be all of these, and yet distinctly individual and unique, the
point of view being not the usual one of the translator, the
paraphraser, or the raconteur working upon the lines of the epitomist,
but rather that of the moving picture artist and the story-teller
combined.
The debt of the author, consequently, is large, and acknowledgment
difficult. For while original translators of the great epic, as Mohl, in
French, and Atkinson and Helen Zimmern, in English—and Arnold in his
noble poem “Sohrab and Rustem”—have contributed most liberally to this
series of word-pictures, yet many additional treasures also have been
discovered and secured, even from general works such as, for example,
Benjamin’s “History of Persia,” and altogether from sources too varied
and fugitive, and too thoroughly woven into the fibre of her own text,
to be individually acknowledged. The debt, however, is none the less
great.
It only remains to be said that if, when started upon their mission,
these stories give to children at large as much pleasure as they gave to
the particular group of “heroes” for whom they were worked out, they
will not only justify their right of being, but also their method of
preparation, which, though without scholarly pretensions, may yet serve
to make better known and loved one of the masterpieces of literature,
alas, too little familiar to-day even to grown-ups well versed in
European classics.