Golden Maiden and Other Folk Tales and Fairy Stories Told in Armenia-A. G. Seklemian
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What does the storyteller say in the preface and why does he begin with his childhood?
PREFACE TO THE GOLDEN MAIDEN The Golden Maiden and Other Folk Tales and Fairy Stories Told in Armenia by A. G. Seklimian The Storyteller to His Audience If I were telling my stories to an audience composed of Armenians, as I told them years ago, I would begin without any preliminary remarks or introduction. but since the audience is made up of people who are comparatively unacquainted with my native land and its traditions, naturally they would like to know who the storyteller is, where he got his narratives, and by whom and how his tales were first told. About twenty years ago I was a boy living in a village on the heights of the Taurus Mountains in Cilicia, or Lesser Armenia, not far from the Mediterranean Sea.
Like boys and girls all over the world, I was very fond of stories, but there were no story-books or other reading matter with which I and other children of my age could gratify our eager desire for stories. But better than these were the aged folks who told us all the interesting stories which our inquisitive childhood required. I had two grandmothers and half a dozen aunts, all unlettered country people, who took great delight in a rich store of folklore and fairy tales, and who told me the most entertaining and delightful stories that I have ever heard. In every village home there were one or two such old people who entertained the youth of their respective homes. During the long winter evenings we boys and girls gathered together around the village hearth to listen to the old man or aged woman rehearsing tales of fairies, giants, genii, dragons, knights, winged beauties, captive maidens and other thousand and one mysterious beings.
I need not say how, with utmost interest, our youthful minds used to follow the detail of these vivid and picturesque stories, drinking in every word with the greatest avidity. This was true not only of children, but of grown-up people also, whose principal pastime during the long and tedious winter nights was the rehearsing of folk-tales and fairy stories, or listening to others as they told them. These circumstances gave me opportunity and power to commit to memory a great number of tales, and rehearse them whenever there was a favourable occasion. By this means I improved and increased my store of tales so much that I became quite a noted storyteller in our village, at a time when I was but a mere lad.
Subsequently, both during my college course in Eintab, Cilicia, and during the period when I was a teacher in Erzrum, of Armenia proper, I had the opportunity to travel a great deal and to study the life and manners of the Armenians in their primitive homes. i found the same fairy stories and folk-tales current everywhere with such slight differences only as the people made when appropriating the tale to their own surroundings and to their fund of knowledge at that time it occurred to my mind that it would be a good plan to make a collection of these tales in order to make use of them some day and so i kept notes of the tales just as they were told by the common unlettered country people bishop serwantziance an armenian clergyman also made a collection of armenian folk tales taking them from the mouth of the people just as they were told he published his collection in two separate books
The first, Manana, Manna, was printed in Constantinople in 1876 by the Dindessian printing press, since closed, and the second, Hamov, Hodov, delicious and fragrant, was printed in Constantinople in 1884 by the Baghdadlian printing press. My personal notes of Armenian tales and these two books of Bishop Serwantzian's have furnished the material of the present volume. as the bishop and myself made our collections independently in different districts of armenia our texts naturally differed from each other in some points but the two being substantially the same in putting the stories into english i have followed the one which i thought to be the most original taking all the circumstances into consideration
Let me here emphasize the point again, that all the stories that appear in the present volume were taken down directly from the lips of the ignorant, unlettered peasantry of Armenia, literally, without any embellishment or addition whatever, except in the case of rude and unbecoming expressions which had to undergo some slight change.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What does the storyteller say in the preface and why does he begin with his childhood?
0:01–1:56:38
2
How does the tale of the Golden Maiden unfold, from the wicked step‑mother to the magical transformations?
1:56:38–3:34:49
3
How does the magical ring grant wishes and change the hero’s fate?
3:34:49–4:51:09
4
What bargain does the boy make with the invulnerable giant and how does it lead to a deadly quest?
4:51:09–6:10:34
5
Why does the foolish man become the target of the magician’s curse?
6:10:34–6:51:32
6
How do the poor widow’s son and his clever wife outwit their enemies?
6:51:32–7:03:56