Creation Myths of Primitive America Part 81

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 scholars.h.i.+p. 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 pa.s.sed 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 nave 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 superst.i.tions, will revel in these freaks of fact and fancy, which Mr.

Curtin translates, and dedicates appropriately to Prof. F. J.

Child.--_The Critic._