About the book

The appearance of the first collection of Kračmanove pravljice (Didakta, 2002), the famous legacy of the Slovenian collector of folk material, linguist, and, in his day, popular epic poet Matija Valjavec, has truly caught the readers’ interest. Therefore, Ilja Popit began gathering and documenting the rest of the sources from Valjavec’s legacy soon after the publication of the first part. This has resulted in the second and last part of Kračman’s tales. Both parts combined consist of 1070 notes by Matija Valjavec and represent a valuable testimony of the old Slovenian beliefs. The second part is a collection of tales, stories, old customs and riddles as were published by Matija Valjavec Kračmanov in newspapers in the years from 1866 to 1874, namely arranged by content, not by region. The value of the second part is mainly in the rich, in a way geographical and cultural tradition and diverse material that attest to the close historical and linguistic relation between the regions of Matija Valjavec’s activity.