Parker Hoysted Fillmore

“ All these stories appear in many versions in the different folklore collections made by such native writers as Erben, Nemcova, Dobsinsky, Rimavsky, Benes-Trebizsky, Kulda. They represent the folk-tale in all stages of its development from the bald narrative of The Bird with the Golden Gizzard which Kulda reports with phonographic exactness, to Nemcova’s more elaborate tale, Prince Bayaya, which is really a mosaic of two or three simpler stories. I have included Katcha and the Devil for the sake of its keen humor, which is particularly Czech in character ”

“ The Betrothal Gifts to show how a story common to other countries is made most charmingly local by giving it a local background; The Three Golden Hairs to contrast it with a famous German variant which it seems to me is much inferior to the Slavic version ”