Czechoslovak Fairy Tales

Fifteen Czech and Slovak tales: Longshanks, Girth and Keen; the three golden hairs of Grandfather Know-All; the flaming horse; Prince Bayaya; Katcha, who talked the Devil into carrying her off and regretted nothing; the golden spinning wheel; and a story about sheep that never ends. Parker Fillmore retold them in 1919, the year after Czechoslovakia came into being, from the Czech, Moravian and Slovak collections. The stories are drier and funnier than the German ones, and the devils usually come off worst. Forty-seven plates of forest encounters, anglers and mountain dairymaids by painters including Corot and Spitzweg carry the tales' woodland and village settings across four centuries of European art.