Introductory Notes

British folk tales. Translating a British folk tale we should not forget that recording of the tales usually gives only a pale shadow of the original narration. Beyond the recorded text are the voices, tone modulations, mimics and gestures of a storyteller, as well as the reaction of the audience: we should not forget that a folk tale is a rich performance based on an ages-old tradition; besides, the story was usually accompanied by music. In addition, it should be taken into consideration that most such stories, recorded in English, were originally narrated in one of the Celtic languages, and in a colloquial variant at that, as they were mostly told among the rural popu­lation.

The great bulk of village dwellers could neither read nor write, yet their memories were very keen and their imagina­tions vivid, and when they heard a story they often remem­bered it almost word for word to be reproduced for the rest of their lives. Those with an especial gift of memory could keep and perform hundreds of such folk tales in the old days. They were true storytellers. In this way folk tales were passed down for hundreds of years, the main points of the tale remaining unaltered, though some colourful details might migrate from tale to tale and even be borrowed from other traditions.

The world of folk tales is rich and vivid. They may be sad and jolly, fearsome and funny, full of supernatural beings and absolutely true to life. Alongside fairies, goblins and bog­garts, peasants, soldiers, fishermen, hunters, kings and shep-

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herds live and act. The other world that appears in the folk tale, however fantastic, bears some resemblance to the land­scape, climate and mood of the country that produced it by vir­tue of folk imagination and humour. This national flavour is one of the most important features of the folk tale.

To translate a folk tale not only into another language but also into another culture, sometimes, as, in our case, very far from the source one, requires some additional knowledge about the very idea of a folk or fairy tale. The roots of a fairy tale are very deep; some of its contents and personages may go back to a myth, but unlike myth, a fairy tale is pure fiction, poetic or humorous, it usually retains some very ancient con­tent structures, types of plots, relationships and world view. Most of historians date the heyday of the folk tale to medieval times when ritual features and sacred images of gods, spirits and ancestors were slowly changed into stories where people became the main heroes, be they kings or shepherds.

The British tradition of folk tales is very rich and com­plicated as consisting of many sub-traditions, Scottish, Welsh, English, Irish and many others. Of the two tales included here one comes from the North of England, the other from Wales. The northern story {Tops or Butts?) is typical for many Euro­pean traditions; we may find its counterpart in the Russian tale Мужик и медведь. In a way, it is easier to translate than the other, though we should always keep in mind that the story belongs to a different tradition, and the very name Boggard is less definite in its imagery than Медведь. When dealing with English folklore tradition, we must bear in mind that this tra­dition is closely connected with various kinds of apparitions, phantoms, ghosts and bogies, that is, with figures alien to the mortal world. Thus, a boggard, or goblin is closer to the Rus­sian idea of нежить, нелюдь, which means that in a translat­ed English story we should not replace a boggard by a bear but by something like a Russian леший, боровой, полевик,

степовой. ___

Imagery in Translation

A typical framing formula begining an English folk tale will include once and there as tokens of the other world's space and time. It is more or less easily translated by the similar Russian forms жил-был, однажды, когда-то. But a special feature of English folk tales is the exact naming of a place, like a small farm near Kentchurch in Herefordshire, the elements of which may be purely imaginary (not in this case, though: Kentchurch is situated about halfway between Hereford, county town of Herefordshire, and Abergavenny) but sound very much like real ones. The Russian folklore tradition avoids any exact naming of places, it is always uncertain or may include such marks as на краю деревни, у леса, в одной деревне, etc. Thus, when transliterated into Russian, imaginary toponyms sound very much like real places, which makes such a story sound less like a fairy tale and more like a legend or even a true story of obscure date.

The border between this and that world, that is, between cosmos and chaos, often takes the form of the hedge, a feature well-known in England but not in Russia. When a boggart (bog­gard) seeks to cross a hedge, he has to overcome a real obstacle, whereas in Russia the role of the hedge is played by a simple boundary-strip, межа, which is most often merely a mark on the surface of the land, or a stone on the border. If we-translate the hedge as живая изгородь, in Russian it sounds too descriptive; загородка, забор, изгородь would be rather strange for a field, being more appropriate to a vegetable-garden. This cultural gap creates a certain shift in the comprehension of a story in transla­tion.

Welsh folk tales are usually more romantic and include very ancient features, like spirits of lakes and mountains, fami­ly myths and relationship between human and supernatural be­ings. Their style is more lofty and elevated, and includes rhymes and poetic diction. To balance this, a story is well supplied with "precise" geography: every imaginary lake, mountain, village, county, let alone hero, has its own name that sounds even more

Welsh than a normal one. Abundant use is made of double con-

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sonants and unusual letters (11, dd and ff are separate letters in Welsh), which make such names sound very old, strange and mythical. To match this in Russian, we may use variants; for example, in the parish of Treveglwys in Russian may become в округе Тревеглис, while a cot commonly called Twty Cwm- rws will give хижина, известная под названием Тут-и-Кумрус. The main hero of the Welsh tale (see Task for Trans­lation) Gronw may be translated in different forms: Гроно, Грону, Грон or some other way.

Task for comparison:

Tops or Butts? — Вершки или корешки?