There are no chronicles extant that can be called purely Armenian. The oldest chronicles that we have of Armenia--and there are many--wander off into the histories of other people--of the Byzantines, for instance, and even of the Crusaders. The passages that deal with Armenia are devoted almost entirely to narrating the sufferings of the Armenians under the successive invasions of pagans and Mahometans, and the efforts made to keep the early Christian faith--forming almost a national book of martyrs, and setting forth a tragic romance of perpetual struggle. These records cannot be called Armenian literature in a real sense, for in many cases they were not written by Armenians, but they picture in vivid fashion the trials suffered by Armenians at the hands of invading nations, and the sacrifices made to preserve a national existence. They picture, in pages bristling with horrible detail, the sacrifices and sufferings of a desperate people, and in them we see Armenia as the prophet saw Judea, "naked, lying by the wayside, trodden under foot by all nations." These chronicles have an interest all their own, but they lack literary beauty, and not being, in themselves, Armenian literature, have not been included in the selections made as being purely representative of the race and land. The examples of Armenian proverbs and folk-lore included in this volume show, as is usual, the ethnological relationship that is so easily traced between the fables of _Aesop_, of Bidpai, of Vartan, and of Loqman. It may be said with truth that in the folk-lore and fables of all nations can be traced kinship of imagination, with a variety of application that differs with the customs and climate of the people. But the Armenian is especially rich in a variety of elements. We meet enchantments, faculties, superstitions, and abstract ideas personified, which are supposed to attach miraculous meanings to the most ordinary events. Dreams, riddles, and the like--all are there. The one strange personification is the Dew. The Dew is a monster, half demon, half human; sometimes harmless, sometimes malevolent; mortal, indeed, but reaching a good or, shall we say, an evil old age. The Dew figures in nearly all Armenian fairy-tales. The Armenian proverbs exhibit the persistent capacity of the Armenians during a time of _Sturm und Drang_ to embody, in pithy, wise, and sometimes cynical form, the wisdom drawn from their own experience and from that of the ages. It is possible that the cynical vein discernible in some of these proverbs is a result of the intense and continued national trials. Take, for instance, this proverb, "If a brother were a good thing, God would have provided himself with one." Can anything be more cynical?