Epics, historical songs, ballads have an amazing property - they take us to the distant past, where Ilya Muromets and Dobrynya Nikitich live and perform feats and good deeds, where from the whistle of the insidious Nightingale the Robber, “the dark woods all bow to the ground,” where the evil forces of Tugarin are defeated by the Russian army, where the soldiers complain about the hardships of the sovereign's service and about the tsar himself, and the wife burns her unloved husband. People's memory carefully preserves these epic treasures, passes them on from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation, giving descendants the charm and beauty of the best examples of Russian folklore. In addition to epics, historical songs of the 12th–19th centuries and ballads, the book also includes skomoroshins - funny satirical and comic parodies that can make any reader laugh.