[Nart sagas in Latin-script Digor Ossetic] Monuments of the Folk Art of the Ossetians. Issue 2: Digor Folk Art. First edition. Vladikavkaz, 1927. In Digor Ossetic (Latin script) and Russian.

Памятники народного творчества осетин. Выпуск 2 : Дигорское народное творчество / в записи Михала Гарданти ; предисловие, перевод на русский язык и примечания Гр. А. Дзагурова (Губади Дзагурти) ; директор института Д. А. Дзагуров.
Владикавказ : Осетинский научно-исследовательский институт краеведения, 1927. XV, 188, 158 страниц, с портретами ; 26 сантиметров.
Дигорский текст латинским шрифтом, русский перевод отдельной пагинацией. Тираж 1 050 экземпляров.
Владельческий твердый переплет с наклеенной на переднюю крышку оригинальной издательской обложкой.
На титульном листе - три библиотечных штампа.
Переплет хорошее: потертость углов и кромок, издательская обложка потемневшая, с надрывами и утратой бумаги в верхнем левом углу. Блок хорошее: бумага равномерно потемневшая, кромки местами ломкие, единичные пятна, текст полностью сохранен и читается свободно.
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Monuments of the Folk Art of the Ossetians. Issue 2 : Digor Folk Art / recorded by Mikhal Gardanti ; preface, Russian translation and notes by Gr. A. Dzagurov (Gubadi Dzagurti) ; institute director D. A. Dzagurov. First edition.
Vladikavkaz : Ossetian Scientific Research Institute of Regional Studies, 1927. XV, 188, 158 pp., with portraits ; 26 cm.
Digor Ossetic text in Latin script, Russian translation separately paginated. Print run of 1,050 copies.
Owner's hardcover binding with the original publisher's wrapper laid down on the front board.
Title page with three library stamps and pencil shelfmarks.
Binding good: corners and edges rubbed, laid-down wrapper toned, with tears and paper loss at the upper left corner. Text block good: paper evenly toned, edges brittle in places, occasional spotting, text fully preserved and legible throughout.

A foundational and genuinely scarce primary source for the Nart saga cycle, the heroic epic of the North Caucasus whose Ossetian recensions preserve the oldest and most fully Iranian layer of the tradition, transmitted from the Alans and central to the comparative mythology of Georges Dumézil. This second issue of the Institute's series publishes for the first time the corpus of oral texts collected by Mikhal Gardanti (Mikhail Gardanov, born 1870), a village schoolmaster from Christianskoe and one of the principal native enlighteners of Digoria, who taught for over a decade in the mountain school at Makhchesk, was arrested in 1906 and again in 1908 and exiled from the Terek province for revolutionary activity, and who recorded the material of this volume from the living speech of his own community. Digor is the western branch of the Ossetian language, spoken at the time of publication by roughly fifty thousand people and, as the preface notes, markedly more archaic in its forms than Iron; before this volume only three collections of Digor oral literature had ever appeared in print, by Vsevolod Miller in 1891 and 1902 and by Makharbek Tuganov in 1911. The contents run to a hundred and six numbered texts: twenty-five Nart sagas including the birth of Soslan and Syrdon, the death of Soslan and the Wheel of Oynon, the birth of Batraz and the Boriatae-Æxsærtægkatæ feud; the Aksak-Temur cycle; folk tales; historical and ritual songs to Uastyrdzhi, Uatsilla and Mada Mayran; lullabies, laments, the mærdæhdau funerary dedication, charms against the evil eye, and children's counting games. The Digor text is set in Latin characters, a direct artifact of the Soviet latinisation campaign of the 1920s that was reversed a decade later, making the volume a document of Soviet language policy as well as of folklore. The translation, preface and philological notes are by Grigory Alekseevich Dzagurov (Gubadi Dzagurti, 1868-1951), the leading Ossetian folklorist of his generation. Issued in only 1,050 copies by a regional institute and almost never encountered outside specialist library holdings.