On the Beliefs, Superstitions and Prejudices of the Russian People

Today, Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl (1801–1872) is rightly known as the compiler of the ‘Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language’. Remarkably, he was primarily a doctor by profession, and turned to the study of the Russian language and culture in response to his soul's calling, like many educated compatriots of the first half of the 19th century.
In this collection, Vladimir Dahl is presented as a researcher and popularizer of folk culture. The essays that later formed the book ‘On the Beliefs, Superstitions and Prejudices of the Russian People’ were written based on field materials accumulated during the work on the future ‘Dictionary’. This is why Dahl's work indeed resonated – albeit slightly smoothed over for the sake of ‘decency’ – with the ‘voice of the people’. This value of Dahl's ethnographic essays still holds true today.
The collection also includes thematically similar articles from different years: articles sobre homeopathy, the fashionable medical theory of that time, ‘medicinal’ prejudices, as well as proverbs, spells, and epic tales. The text is printed based on the edition of 1880 and earlier publications of the articles.