Dr. Barbu Constantinescu

Gypsy Folk Tales, by Francis Hindes Groome, [1899], at sacred-texts.com

Dr. Barbu Constantinescu.

Probe de Limba si Literatura Taganilor din România, by Dr. Barbu Constantinescu (Bucharest, 1878; 112 pp.), is an admirable

p. liii

collection of seventy-five Roumanian-Gypsy songs and thirteen folk-tales, in the original Rómani, with a Roumanian translation. The thirteen tales were got from thirteen different Gypsies, and naturally they vary in merit, the best to my thinking being 'The Red King and the Witch,' 'The Vampire,' and 'The Prince and the Wizard.' I have given eleven of them, with full annotations; of 'The Stolen Ox' and 'The Prince who ate Men' there are summaries on pp. 66 and 219. Dr. Barbu Constantinescu, who was latterly a professor at Crajova, is, I learn, dead; he must have known Rómani thoroughly, and may have left large collections.

Footnotes

lii:1 Cf. the Indian story of 'Prince Lionheart and his Three Friends' (F. A. Steel's Wide-awake Stories, p. 59):--'In front of the horse lies a heap of bones, and in front of the dog a heap of grass,' etc.