In the _Popular Narrations_, Trueba works up themes already popular among the people, but clothes them in his own words and varies them to suit his own taste. He says in the preface: "The task which I undertook some time ago, and still continue, consists in collecting the narrations, tales or anecdotes that circulate among the people and are the work of the popular invention, which sometimes creates and at others imitates, if it does not plagiarize, trying when it imitates to give to the imitation the form of the original. Some of the writers or collectors abroad, and especially in Germany, who have devoted themselves to a similar task, have followed a method different from mine; since, like the Brothers Grimm, they reproduce the popular tales almost as they have collected them from the lips of the people. This system is not to my taste, because almost all popular tales, although they have a precious base, have an absurd form, and in order to enter worthily into the products of the literary art they need to be perfected by art, and have a moral or philosophical end, which nothing in the sphere of art should be without." The subjects of some of these stories are well known out of Spain. "St. Peter's Doubts" (_Las Dudas de San Pedro_) is as old as the _Gesta Romanorum_ (cap. 80), and is familiar to English readers from Parnell's _Hermit_. Another, "A Century in a Moment" (_Un Siglo en un Momento_), is the story of the woman allowed after death to come back to the earth and see her lover, whom she finds faithless. Still another, _Tragaldabas_, is familiar to the readers of Grimm's _Household Tales_, where it figures as "Godfather Death." The volume of _Popular Tales_ contains nineteen stories of the most varying description. Some are popular in the broadest sense, as "The Three Counsels" (_Los Consejos_), in which a soldier whose time of service has expired buys from his captain with his pay three pieces of advice: Always take the short cut on a road, Do not inquire into what does not concern you, and Do nothing without reflection. The soldier on his way home has occasion to put in practice all three counsels, and thereby saves his life and property. Others, are legendary, as _Ofero_, the legend of St. Christopher, and _Casilda_, the story of the Moorish king's daughter converted to the Christian religion by a physician from Judea, who proves to be Our Lord. One, "The Wife of the Architect" (_La Mujer del Arquitecto_), is a local tradition of Toledo, and another, "The Prince without a Memory" (_El Principe Desmemoriado_), is taken from Gracian Dantisco's _Galateo Espanol_.