Tale
Old Czech Legends
Staré pověsti české
Alois Jirásek · 1894
Synopsis
The first ancestor leads his people to a mountain from which he discovers an empty land, and leaves it his name. Then come Krok and his daughters, Libuše who judges and prophesies, the ploughman Přemysl called to the throne, the war of the women, then the legends of Christian times, those of Prague, with the clock of the old town and the house of Doctor Faust, those of Žižka, of the miners of Kutná Hora or of Janošík, and finally the prophecies and the knights who sleep under Mount Blaník.
Context
The book draws mainly on the chronicles of Cosmas, Dalimil and Václav Hájek z Libočan. The tales first appeared in instalments with the Prague publisher J. R. Vilímek in 1893, then in volume in 1894, the eleventh volume of a series for young readers, with illustrations by Věnceslav Černý, who sometimes intervened in the text. In 1953, Jiří Trnka made a feature-length puppet film from it, distributed in France under the title Les Vieilles Légendes tchèques.
Who it is for
Five parts of short tales: the origins, the Christian times, Prague, the other places of the country, the prophecies. The language is deliberately archaizing. No French translation.
Prizes and reception
It became a national book, read at school by generations; probably the best known of the narrative retellings of the Czech past.