Jugoslavia.
Moreover in this case it would be particularly difficult to make the
literary boundaries conform strictly to the political boundaries since
much the same stories and folk tales are current among all these Slav
peoples of the Balkan Peninsula. The special student taking the variants
of the same story might discover special differences that would mark
each variant as the product of some one locality. The work of such a
student would have philological and ethnological value but not a very
strong appeal to the general reader. My appeal is first of all to the
general reader--to the child who loves fairy tales and to the adult who
loves them. I hope they will both find these stories entertaining and
amusing quite aside from any interest in their source.

Yet these tales as presented do give the reader a true idea of the
amazing vigor and the artistic inventiveness of the Jugoslav
imagination, and also of the various influences, Oriental and Northern
as well as Slavic, which have made that imagination what it is to-day.
Here are gay picaresque tales of adventure--how they go on and on and
on!--charming little stories of sentiment, a few folk tales of stark
simplicity and grim humor, one story showing a superficial Turkish
influence, and one spiritual allegory as deep and moving as anything in
the Russian.

The renderings in every case are my own and are not in any sense
translations. I have taken the old stories and retold them in a new
language. To do them justice in this new language I have found it
necessary to present them with a new selection of detail and with an
occasional shifting of emphasis. I do not mean by this that I have
invented detail in any unwarranted fashion. I haven't had to for any
folk tale, however bald, contains all sorts of things by implication.
The true story teller, it seems to me, is he who is able to grasp these
implications and turn them to his own use.

I must confess that the setting in which I have placed the famous old
Serbian nonsense story, _In my young days when I was an old, old man_,
is my own invention. The nonsense story needs a setting and as it
chanced I had one ready as I have long wanted to tell the world what was
back of the determination of that princess who refused to eat until some
one had made her laugh.

So far as I know most of these stories are not familiar to English
readers--certainly not in this form. Madame Mijatovich uses one of them
in her _Serbian Fa