"The legendary ballads and national songs of Roumania are almost unknown in Europe; they are scarcely more familiar to the higher classes of their native country; but the old superstitions and weird fantastic creeds—many of them of pagan origin—have been perpetuated and kept alive amongst the peasantry of the mountain districts, from whom they were, with long and patient research, at length collected in a chaplet of exquisite little poems by the native poet Alecsandri, who also published, a few years later, an admirable French translation."