They sailed away once more over the blue sea.
They sailed away once more over the blue sea.

OLD PETER'S
RUSSIAN TALES

 

 

BY

ARTHUR RANSOME

Decorative Image

 

 

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS, COVER
DESIGN, AND DECORATIONS
BY DMITRI MITROKHIN

 

 

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

 

 

 

 


TO

MISS BARBARA COLLINGWOOD


 

 

 

 

Decorative Image

[v]

NOTE

The stories in this book are those that Russian peasants tell theirchildren and each other. In Russia hardly anybody is too old forfairy stories, and I have even heard soldiers on their way to the wartalking of very wise and very beautiful princesses as they drank theirtea by the side of the road. I think there must be more fairy storiestold in Russia than anywhere else in the world. In this book are a fewof those I like best. I have taken my own way with them more or less,writing them mostly from memory. They, or versions like them, are tobe found in the coloured chap-books, in Afanasiev's great collection,or in solemn, serious volumes of folklorists writing for the learned.My book is not for the learned, or indeed for grown-up people at all.No people who really like fairy stories ever grow up altogether. Thisis a book written far away in Russia, for English children who play indeep lanes with wild roses above them in the high hedges, or by the[vi]small singing becks that dance down the gray fells at home. Russianfairyland is quite different. Under my windows the wavelets of theVolkhov (which has its part in one of the stories) are beating quietlyin the dusk. A gold light burns on a timber raft floating down theriver. Beyond the river in the blue midsummer twilight are the broadRussian plain and the distant forest. Somewhere in that forest ofgreat trees—a forest so big that the forests of England are littlewoods beside it—is the hut where old Peter sits at night and tellsthese stories to his grandchildren.

A.R.

Vergezha.


CONTENTS

The Hut in the Forest  11
The Tale of the Silver Saucer and theTransparent Apple  18
Sadko  ...

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