(All rights reserved)
Grimm Library
No. 1
GEORGIAN FOLK TALES
‘I quite understand, my good friend,’ saidI, ‘the contempt you bestow upon the nursery tales with which theHajee and I have been entertaining each other; but, believe me, he whodesires to be well acquainted with a people will not reject theirpopular stories or local superstitions. Depend upon it, that man is toofar advanced into an artificial state of society who is a stranger tothe effects which tales and stories like these have upon the feelingsof a nation....’
Sir John Malcolm’s Sketches of Persia,ch. xvi.
in the Strand, London
1894
TO
DR. EDWARD B. TYLOR
AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF
ADMIRATION FOR HIS GREAT TALENTS
THESE TRANSLATIONS ARE
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED [vii]
PREFACE
As the first attempt to translate into English anypart of the varied and interesting secular literature of the Georgianpeople, this little book may perhaps claim some attention from thepublic. A volume of sermons by Bishop Gabriel of Kutaïs waspublished by the Rev. S. C. Malan in 1867, but, with this singleexception, I do not know of any other work in the Iberian tongue whichhas been offered to English readers. The state of comparative neglectinto which Oriental studies in general have fallen of late among us,the rulers of the East, accounts, to some extent, for this fact; it isto be hoped