The Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Peter's Russian Tales, by Arthur Ransome
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Old Peter's Russian Tales
Author: Arthur Ransome
Illustrator: Dmitri Mitrokhin
Release Date: November 2, 2005 [EBook #16981]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD PETER'S RUSSIAN TALES ***
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: They sailed away once more over the blue sea.]
OLD PETER'S
RUSSIAN TALES
BY
ARTHUR RANSOME
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS, COVER
DESIGN, AND DECORATIONS
BY DMITRI MITROKHIN
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
TO
MISS BARBARA COLLINGWOOD
NOTE
The stories in this book are those that Russian peasants tell their
children and each other. In Russia hardly anybody is too old for
fairy stories, and I have even heard soldiers on their way to the war
talking of very wise and very beautiful princesses as they drank their
tea by the side of the road. I think there must be more fairy stories
told in Russia than anywhere else in the world. In this book are a few
of 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 to
be 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. This
is a book written far away in Russia, for English children who play in
deep lanes with wild roses above them in the high hedges, or by the
small singing becks that dance down the gray fells at home. Russian
fairyland is quite different. Under my windows the wavelets of the
Volkhov (which has its pa
|