Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite...

So he laid the mill-stones on their backs, and made them go on in front of him. They all had to pass along a bridge over a deep river; the moujik managed to give the Zluidni a shove, and over they went, mill-stones and all, and sank straight to the bottom.[242]

So the poor man wanders away in search of her. One day he sees a grey-haired old woman asleep under an oak in a great forest, who proves to be his Luck. He asks who it is that has given him such a poor Luck, and is told that it is Fate. So he goes in search of Fate. When he finds her, she is living at ease in a large house, but day by day her riches wane and her house contracts. She explains to her visitor that her condition at any given hour affects the whole lives of all children born at that time, and that he had come into the world at a most unpropitious moment; and she advises him to take his niece Militsa (who had been born at a lucky time) to live in his house, and to call all he might acquire her property. This advice he follows, and all goes well with him. One day, as he is gazing at a splendid field of corn, a stranger asks him to whom it belongs. In a forgetful moment he replies, “It is mine,” and immediately the whole crop begins to burn. He runs after the stranger and cries, “Stop, brother! that field isn’t mine, but my niece Militsa’s,” whereupon the fire goes out and the crop is saved.[243]

On this idea of a personal Fortune is founded the quaint opening of one of the Russian stories. A certain peasant, known as Ivan the Unlucky, in despair at his constant want of success, goes to the king for advice. The king lays the matter before “his nobles and generals,” but they can make nothing of it. At last the king’s daughter enters the council chamber and says, “This is my opinion, my father. If he were to be married, the Lord might allot him another sort of Fortune.” The king flies into a passion and exclaims:

Similar references to a man’s good or bad luck frequently occur in the skazkas. Thus in one of them (from the Grodno Government) a poor man meets “two ladies (pannui), and those ladies are—the one Fortune and the other Misfortune.”[245] He tells them how poor he is, and they agree that it will be well to bestow something on him. “Since he is one of yours,” says Luck, “do you make him a present.” At length they take out ten roubles and give them to him. He hides the money in a pot, and his wife gives it away to a neighbor. Again they assist him, giving him twenty roubles, and again his wife gives them away unwittingly. Then the ladies bestow on him two farthings (groshi), telling him to give them to fishermen, and bid them make a cast “for his luck.” He obeys, and the result is the capture of a fish which brings him in wealth.[246]

In another story[247] a young man, the son of a wealthy merchant, is so unlucky that nothing will prosper with him. Having lost all that his father has left him, he hires himself out, first as a laborer, then as a herdsman. But as, in each capacity, he involves his masters in heavy losses, he soon finds himself without employment. Then he tries another country, in which the king gives him a post as a sort of stoker in the royal distillery, which he soon all but burns down. The king is at first bent upon punishing him, but pardons him after hearing his sad tale. “He bestowed on him the name of Luckless,[248] and gave orders that a stamp should be set on his forehead, that no tolls or taxes should be demanded from him, and that wherever he appeared he should be given free board and lodging, but that he should never be allowed to stop more than twenty-four hours in any one place.” These orders are obeyed, and wherever Luckless goes, “nobody ever asks him for his billet or his passport, but they give him food to eat, and liquor to drink, and a place to spend the night in; and next morning they take him by the scruff of the neck and turn him out of doors.”[249]

We will now turn from the forms under which popular fiction has embodied some of the ideas connected with Fortune and Misfortune, to another strange group of figures—the personifications of certain days of the week. Of these, by far the most important is that of Friday.

The Russian name for that day, Pyatnitsa,[250] has no such mythological significance as have our own Friday and the French Vendredi. But the day was undoubtedly consecrated by the old Slavonians to some goddess akin to Venus or Freyja, and her worship in ancient times accounts for the superstitions now connected with the name of Friday. According to Afanasief,[251] the Carinthian name for the day, Sibne dan, is a clear proof that it was once holy to Siva, the Lithuanian Seewa, the Slavonic goddess answering to Ceres. In Christian times the personality of the goddess (by whatever name she may have been known) to whom Friday was consecrated became merged in that of St. Prascovia, and she is now frequently addressed by the compound name of “Mother Pyatnitsa-Prascovia.” As she is supposed to wander about the houses of the peasants on her holy day, and to be offended if she finds certain kinds of work going on, they are (or at least they used to be) frequently suspended on Fridays. It is a sin, says a time-honored tradition, for a woman to sew, or spin, or weave, or buck linen on a Friday, and similarly for a man to plait bast shoes, twine cord, and the like. Spinning and weaving are especially obnoxious to “Mother Friday,” for the dust and refuse thus produced injure her eyes. When this takes place, she revenges herself by plagues of sore-eyes, whitlows and agnails. In some places the villagers go to bed early on Friday evening, believing that “St. Pyatinka” will punish all whom she finds awake when she roams through the cottage.

In others they sweep their floors every Thursday evening, that she may not be annoyed by dust or the like when she comes next day. Sometimes, however, she has been seen, says the popular voice, “all pricked with the needles and pierced by the spindles” of the careless woman who sewed and spun on the day they ought to have kept holy in her honor. As for any work begun on a Friday, it is sure to go wrong.[252]