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

[11] Dasent’s “Popular Tales from the Norse,” p. xl.

[12] Max Müller, “Chips,” vol. ii. p. 226.

[13] Take as an illustration of these remarks the close of the story of “Helena the Fair” (No. 34, Chap. IV.). See how light and bright it is (or at least was, before it was translated).

[14] I speak only of what I have seen. In some districts of Russia, if one may judge from pictures, the peasants occupy ornamented and ornamental dwellings.

[15] Khudyakof, vol. ii. p. 65.

[16] Khudyakof, vol. ii. p. 115.

[17] For a description of such social gatherings see the “Songs of the Russian People,” pp. 32-38.

[18] Afanasief, vi. No. 66.

[19] Cakes of unleavened flour flavored with garlic.

[20] The Nechistol, or unclean. (Chisty = clean, pure, &c.)

[21] Literally, “on thee no face is to be seen.”

[22] I do not propose to comment at any length upon the stories quoted in the present chapter. Some of them will be referred to farther on. Marusia’s demon lover will be recognized as akin to Arabian Ghouls, or the Rákshasas of Indian mythology. (See the story of Sidi Norman in the “Thousand and One Nights,” also Lane’s translation, vol. i., p. 32; and the story of Asokadatta and Vijayadatta in the fifth book of the “Kathásaritságara,” Brockhaus’s translation, 1843, vol. ii. pp. 142-159.) For transformations of a maiden into a flower or tree, see Grimm, No. 76, “Die Nelke,” and the notes to that story in vol. iii., p. 125—Hahn, No. 21, “Das Lorbeerkind,” etc. “The Water of Life,” will meet with due consideration in the fourth chapter. The Holy Water which destroys the Fiend is merely a Christian form of the “Water of Death,” viewed in its negative aspect.

[23] Chudinsky, No. 3.

[24] Afanasief, vi. p. 325. Wolfs “Niederlandische Sagen,” No. 326, quoted in Thorpe’s “Northern Mythology,” i. 292. Note 4.

[25] A number of ghost stories, and some remarks about the ideas of the Russian peasants with respect to the dead, will be found in Chap. V. Scott mentions a story in “The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,” vol. ii. p. 223, of a widower who believed he was haunted by his dead wife. On one occasion the ghost, to prove her identity, gave suck to her surviving infant.

[26] Afanasief, viii. p. 165.

[27] In West-European stories the devil frequently carries off a witch’s soul after death. Here the fiend enters the corpse, or rather its skin, probably intending to reappear as a vampire. Compare Bleek’s “Reynard the Fox in South Africa,” No. 24, in which a lion squeezes itself into the skin of a girl it has killed. I have generally rendered by “demon,” instead of “devil,” the word chort when it occurs in stories of this class, as the spirits to which they refer are manifestly akin to those of oriental demonology.

[28] For an account of which, see the “Songs of the Russian People,” pp. 333-334. The best Russian work on the subject is Barsof’s “Prichitaniya Syevernago Kraya,” Moscow, 1872.

[29] Afanasief, iv. No. 9.

[30] Professor de Gubernatis justly remarks that this “howling” is more in keeping with the nature of the eastern jackal than with that of its western counterpart, the fox. “Zoological Mythology,” ii. 130.

[31] Afanasief, vii. No. 45.

[32]Pope is the ordinary but disrespectful term for a priest (Svyashchennik), as popovich is for a priest’s son.

[33] “Father dear,” or “reverend father.”

[34] A phrase often used by the peasants, when frightened by anything of supernatural appearance.

[35] Afanasief, Skazki, vii. No. 49.

[36] The Russian expression is gol kak sokòl, “bare as a hawk.”

[37] In another story St. Nicolas’s picture is the surety.

[38] Another variant of this story, under the title of “Norka,” will be quoted in full in the next chapter.

[39] Afanasief, vii. p. 107.

[40] Afanasief, vii. p. 146.

[41] Or “The Seven-year-old.” Khudyakof, No. 6. See Grimm, No. 94, “Die kluge Bauerntochter,” and iii. 170-2.

[42]Voevoda, now a general, formerly meant a civil governor, etc.

[43] Afanasief. “Legendui,” No. 29.

[44] Diminutive of Peter.

[45] The word employed here is not chort, but diavol.

[46] Some remarks on the stories of this class, will be found in Chap. VI. The Russian peasants still believe that all people who drink themselves to death are used as carriers of wood and water in the infernal regions.

[47] In the sixty-fourth story of Asbjörnsen’s “Norske Folke-Eventyr,” (Ny Samling, 1871) the dispute between the husband and wife is about a cornfield—as to whether it should be reaped or shorn—and she tumbles into a pool while she is making clipping gestures “under her husband’s nose.” In the old fabliau of “Le Pré Tondu” (Le Grand d’Aussy, Fabliaux, 1829, iii. 185), the husband cuts out the tongue of his wife, to prevent her from repeating that his meadow has been clipped, whereupon she makes a clipping sign with her fingers. In Poggio’s “Facetiæ,” the wife is doubly aggravating. For copious information with respect to the use made of this story by the romance-writers, see Liebrecht’s translations of Basile’s “Pentamerone,” ii. 264, and of Dunlop’s “History of Literature,” p. 516.

[48] Afanasief, v. p. 16.

[49] Ibid., iii. p. 87.

[50] Chudinsky, No. 8. The proverb is dear to the Tartars also.