Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/8

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
vi
Preface

been made. In it the translator has trodden in the path laid down in the first series of "Tales from the Norse," and tried to turn his Norse original into mother English, which any one that runs may read.

This plan has met with favour abroad as well as at home, and it is grateful to him to find that in Norway, the cradle of these beautiful stories, his efforts have been warmly appreciated by Messrs. Asbjörnsen and Moe, who in their preface to the third edition, Christiania, 1866, speak in the following terms of his version:—"In France and England collections have appeared in which our Tales have not only been correctly and faultlessly translated, but even rendered with exemplary truth and care nay,—with thorough mastery. The English translation, by George Webbe Dasent, is the best and happiest rendering of our Tales that has appeared, and it has in England been more successful, and become far more widely known, than the originals here at home." Then, speaking of the Introduction, Messrs. Asbjörnsen and Moe go on to say, "We have here added the end of this Introduction to show how the translator has understood and grasped the relation in which these Tales stand to Norse nature and the life of the people, and how they have sprung out of both."

The title of this volume, "Tales from the Fjeld," arose out of the form in which they were published in Once a Week. The translator began by setting