The Imp of the Well

"Turkish Fairy Tales And Folk Tales" were collected from the mouths of the Turkish peasantry by the Hungarian savant Dr. Ignatius Kunos, during his travels through Anatolia,1 and published for the first time in 1889 by the well-known Hungarian Literary Society," A Kisfaludy Tarsasag," under the Title of Torok Nepmesek ("Turkish Folk Tales"), with an introduction by Professor Vambery. That distinguished Orientalist, certainly the greatest living authority on the primitive culture of the Turko-Tartaric peoples, who is as familiar with Uzbeg epics and Uiguric didactics as with the poetical masterpieces of Western Europe, is enthusiastic in his praises of these folk-tales...
Turkish fairy tales are as crystal, reflecting the sun's rays in a thousand dazzling colours; clear as a cloudless sky; and transparent like the dew upon a budding rose. In short, Turkish fairy tales are not the stories of the Thousand and One Nights, but of the Thousand and One Days.