The stories and articles collected in the book “The Fabulous Were” have all already been published in various periodicals of the last five years and are reproduced here without change or with the most minor editorial changes. Regarding the series of articles “Old in the New”, previously published in "St. Petersburg Gazette" (with the exception of the article "Willows in the West", published in "New Time"), I must warn that these essays are of a compilative nature and represent preparatory material for the book "Ghosts of Paganism", about which I mentioned in the preface to his “Yuletide Book” for 1902. Therefore, I ask you to see in them nothing more than an eclectic attempt to present in a simple form some ancient folk beliefs and, in part, the most famous mythological views on them. These articles, in their present form, have no further claims. Of the rest of the book’s contents, the stories “Napoleonder” and “Siberian Legend” were originally published in “SPB. Vedomosti", "Earthquake" in the "Historical Bulletin", "Sea Tale" and "The Story of One Madness" in "Russia", "Don't Sorry for Everyone" in the "Azov Region".