Georgian fairytales were first recorded by the Italian catholic missionary Bernarde from Napoli who travelled Georgia between 1670 and 1680. Among the papers in his archive at Torre del Greco twelve Georgian fairytales were discovered and subsequently published in Georgia in 1964. Between these twelve texts there are, for example, the type ATU 567 - the magic bird heart, and the tale about a man who searched immortality.
Among Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani’s collected fables in sibrdzne sitsruisa (“the wisdom of the lie”) are some Georgian folktales such as ATU 56 - the fox and the bird, ATU 61 - the fox as confessor, ATU 667 - the foster-son of the forest ghost, ATU 670 - knowing of animal language etc.
Some Georgian fairytales were published in the Russian periodical press of the nineteenth century: Tiflisskie vedomosti (“Tbilisi news”) sqq. 1828, and Kavkaz(“Caucasus”) sqq. 1846.
The systematic collecting of Georgian folklore started in the 1860s.
In 1860-ies, Georgian writers like Ilia Tchavtchavadze (1837-1907) and Akaki Tsereteli (1840-1915) played the most important role in initiatives to protect Georgian cultural Heritage, with the support of the “Society for the Popularization of Reading and Writing in Georgia” and the “Society for History and Ethnography of Georgia”.
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