The SelectIons from Turkic World Tales: Türk Dünyası Masallarından Seçmeler (Türk Dünyası Vakfı Yayınları)

Tales are the stories of extraordinary events. (Özön, 1967:671). In other words, tales are the stories which are beneficial for the nurture and morality.  (Devellioğlu: 1993:625). In Great Turkish dictionary, the word “tale” is described as follows: an extraordinary event, an adventure, giving place to the heroes and usually being told to the children.(the great Turkish dictionary: 1990:745).

Tales are folk stories which give place to imaginary events and heroes. They are a type of oral anonymous folk literature. These stories are short types of narratives which are told in prose, totally products of imagination, have nothing to do with reality and not claiming any persuasiveness. (Boratav: 1992:75). In tales, sometimes the hero’s would be animals or supernatural creatures. The events occurring in the world of the tale, are products of mere creativity, a tradition of oral narration (Sakaoğlu: 2002:5).

A tale is usually something that consists of fictional material having nothing to do with reality, starting with a cliché beginning (Şimşek: 1991:3).