Загадки русского народа

The collection of D.N.Sadovnikov has a number of major historical and ethnographic artistic merits. Among all existing collections, this is the largest collection of Russian folk riddles.
In this new edition of Sadovnikov's work, the order of the texts has been changed. The riddles that he included in the Supplements due to typographical difficulties are united in the main body of the book.
New comments are attached at the end of the book, which, however, everywhere take into account what the collector wrote about the riddles.
Much in the collection is outdated. Not everything in it has a truly folk character. These are some riddles on religious themes. All of them are omitted, only those of them that expressed the free-thinking of the people, a critical attitude towards religion, were preserved. A number of texts are distinguished by the "mischief" of thought, which is not afraid of ambiguity.
You forget about the shortcomings of the collection, getting acquainted with the wonderful world of folk riddles. A wonderful invention in a riddle is clever. Violating the real proportions of phenomena and objects, the riddle immediately destroys the whim. Having tempered the imagination, it turns into a guess as a real fact, a reality, a thing. The riddle reveals the beauty of the visible, felt, perceived by all senses of the real world. It teaches us to understand the poetry of a thousand wonderful things made by human hands and the world around us.
A riddle is poetry par excellence. She can teach everyone a lot, especially the modern poet, who often lacks that healthy, clear and wonderful view of the world, which is highly characteristic of a person who transforms reality with his work.