POPULAR STORIES WITH MUSICAL TRADITIONS.
The intelligent reader need hardly be reminded that an insight into the peculiar notions respecting the beauty and power of music current among different nations may be of valuable assistance in the study of national music, inasmuch as it tends to throw light upon questions which appear obscure and inexplicable.
The following popular stories, like those which have previously been given in this work, are told exactly as they are heard from the mouth of the people. It is necessary that this should be mentioned by way of introduction to the stories, because the degree of interest which they may possess depends almost entirely upon the faithfulness with which they are recorded. For the same reason it must be stated that, although additions have been carefully avoided, it is otherwise with omissions, since it appeared desirable to abridge several of the stories by excluding passages which do not touch upon the subject of music. Should the reader find among the stories an old acquaintance with a somewhat different face than is familiar to him, he will, it is hoped, bear in mind that, just as there are varieties of a popular tune to be found in different districts of a country, so there are also different readings of a popular tale. Even the degree of education attained by the narrator, his personal character, and his peculiar views, will tend in some measure to modify the features of a story, although nothing extraneous may have been admitted into the incidents recorded.