From 1925. till 1937 “Latviesu
pasakas un teikas” ('Latvian Folk-Tales and Legends) in 15
volumes werer published, edited by Prof. Peteris Smits.The first
12 volumes contain folk-tales arranged according
the system
of A. Aarne, which
was published as FFC No. 3, which is still a renowned classification
system (it was later developed further by Stith Thompson,
therefore it is known under the name of Aarne-Thompsona classification
system; it was used also in the Latvian Folk-Tale Type Index edited
by K. Arajs and A. Medne. (Latviesu pasaku tipu raditajs, 1977).
Volume 1 is opened by a 134
pages long theoretical article on folk-tales by P. Smits. It is
one of the most significant articles of the type in Latvian folkloristics.
There are following chapters in it:
The Volume 1 proper starts
with folk-tales about animals. Beginning with Volume 2 one will
find "proper folk-tales" like: wonder tales, noveletta
tales, tales of dumb devils. Volumes 11 and 12 contain joke tales,
which are quite close to anecdotes.
Volumes 13 through 15 contain legends, mainly the
mythological ones, beginning with the legends about Dievs (God).
There are more than 3500 texts (some legends can be found in other
volumes as well). Different variants of each folk-tale type has
been published, quite often - numerous, there also are texts in
Latvian dialects. Each volume and chapter opens with a short commentary
on the distribution of the type, by which other nations it is
also known (as far as it could be established then). Somewhere
P. Smits indicates similar Chinese folk-tales (Smits was a sinologist,
had spent many years in Far East, he was a renowned for his knowledge
of Chinese and other Asian languages). Part of the
published texts had been sent firectly to P. Smits, a few were
collected by him – written by narrative or from memory (marked,
e.g. “from father's father in Rauna”). Most of the texts
come from LFK's collections, unfortunately P. Smits has not indicated
the manuscript numbers. Also the most significant earlier editions
have been included, e.g. that editied by A. Lerhis-Puskaitis.
The last page of the edition says: “This edition contains
7895 folk-tales and legends, of which 4655 are newly collected.”
This number does not include texts merely retold or mentioned
in remarks
. The manuscripts of virtually all
these volumes are kept at the archive of LFK.
In 1962– 1970 in the USA a second edition of “Latviesu pasakas
un teikas” was
published, with the addition of an introduction by Haralds Biezais
and a motif index prepared by Lena Neuland (by Thompson's example,
also published as FFC 229).
All of the P. Smits edition is available online, thanks to efforts
of Laboratory
of Artificial Intelligence.
In the German town of Goettingen, where “Enzyklopädie des Märchens” is being published (A folk-tale
encyclopedia in 12 volumes, currently the largest encyclopedia
on comparative historical research of folk-tales) there is an
exact German translation of all those 15 volumes. The history
of this translation is rather complicated, it was started at the
beginning of the 20th century, finished in 1973. gadâ. Dr.
G. Pakalns has initiated a project aimed at online publishing
of the translation.