Slovenian tales is the denomination given to the tales collected from Slovenia.
History[]
19th Century[]
Slovenian authors started to publish folk tales in serialized publications as early as the 1840s. In 1886 Bogomil Krek gathered some of those previously published tales and reprinted them together in the collection Slovenske Narodne Pravljice In Pripovedke. Among the tales from that collection the most remarkable is Wheat, the most beautiful flower, a story about how elders can still contribute to society despite their age. After the publication of Krek's collection several new collections followed, all of them specialized in different regions of Slovenia. Among those collections we should mention Narodne pripovedke v Soških planinah by Andrej Gabršček (1864-1938) published in 1894. Gabršček collected tales from the valley of the Isonzo river, that flowed through western Slovenia, and his collection includes versions of Beauty and the Beast (The Enchanted Castle and the Bear), Cinderella and Aladdin.
20th Century[]
In this century Slovenia experienced a revitalized interest in their folk tales, with new tales being published, while the ones from the past century have new ways to reach the public. One of the decisive factors is the creation of the publishing house Mladinska knjiga in 1945, that helped Slovenian authors publish their works. The most important figure in regards to Slovenian folk tales could it be Alojzij Bolhar (1899-1984), who in 1952 published the collection Slovenskih narodnih pravljic, that quickly becomes a new classic among Slovenian readeras, that indludes among others a version of The Six Swans where the brothers are turned into wolves instead of swans (The Six Wolves) and a version of The Golden Bird where the prince is helped by a bear instead of a fox or a wolf (The Golden Bird). Andrej Šavli (1905-1999) also published several tales during that time, the most well known being The Tale of the Waterman, a story with a clearly anti-materialist message, in which the titualr waterman learns a hard lesson after a boy refuses to stay with him in his luxurious underwater castle because he misses his family. Milko Matičetov (1919-2014) published in the 1970s several collections of folktales from the Slovenian-speaking population in Italy and Hungary, specially animal tales, like Little Animals from Resia, a collection of tales from the Resia lake in northern Italy published in 1973.
Picture book adaptations became a popular way to publish tales. In 1974 Kristina Brenk (1911-2009) published an adaptation of Wheat, the most beautiful flower, illustrated by Ančka Gošnik Godec, one of the most important Slovenian children books' illustrator, who was even nominated for a Hans Christian Andersen award in the year 2000. Besides Wheat, the most beautiful flower Godec has illustrated many tales of his native Slovenia, like the already mentioned The Tale of the Waterman.
Despite this situation, outside Slovenia its folktales have remained really obscure, despite some attempts to change the situation. In 1958 Else Byhan published Wunderbaum und goldener Vogel: slowenische Volksmärchen, a selection of Bolhar's tales translated to German. Orsolya Gállos published in 1987 A Kígyómenyasszony: Slovén népmesék, a selection of Slovenian tales translated to Hungarian. Ethnologist Marija Stanonik published in 1999 God created Slovenia last: Past and Comtemporary Slovenian Folk-Tales, a bilingual collection of 53 tales in Slovenian and English.