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

[190]Chernushka, a sort of wild pea.

[191]Krasnoe solnuischko, red (or fair) dear-sun.

[192] Equivalent to saying “she liked to wash her dirty linen at home.”

[193] I break off the narrative at this point, because what follows is inferior in dramatic interest, and I am afraid of diminishing the reader’s admiration for one of the best folk-tales I know. But I give an epitome of the remainder within brackets and in small type.

[194] From the Poltava Government. Afanasief, vi. No. 28 b.

[195] Grimm, No. 65. The Wallachian and Lithuanian forms resemble the German (Schott, No. 3. Schleicher, No. 7). In all of them, the heroine is a princess, who runs away from an unnatural father. In one of the Modern Greek versions (Hahn, No. 27), she sinks into the earth. For references to seven other forms of the story, see Grimm, KM., iii. p. 116. In one Russian variant (Khudyakof, No. 54), she hides in a secret drawer, constructed for the purpose in a bedstead; in another (Afanasief, vi. No. 28 a), her father, not recognising her in the pig-skin dress, spits at her, and turns her out of the house. In a third, which is of a very repulsive character (ibid. vii. No. 29), the father kills his daughter.

[196] Afanasief, vi. No. 18.

[197] The Russian word is zakukovali, i.e., “They began to cuckoo.” The resemblance between the word kukla, a puppet, and the name and cry of the cuckoo (Kukushka) may be merely accidental, but that bird has a marked mythological character. See the account of the rite called “the Christening of the Cuckoos,” in “Songs of the Russian people,” p. 215.

[198] Very like these puppets are the images which reply for the sleeping prince in the opening scene of “De beiden Künigeskinner” (Grimm, No. 113). A doll plays an important part in one of Straparola’s stories (Night v. Fable 2). Professor de Gubernatis identifies the Russian puppet with “the moon, the Vedic Râkâ, very small, but very intelligent, enclosed in the wooden dress, in the forest of night,” “Zoological Mythology,” i. 207-8.

[199] Afanasief, ii. No. 31.

[200] Khudyakof, No. 55.

[201] Ibid., No. 83.

[202] Wojcicki’s “Polnische Volkssagen,” &c. Lewestam’s translation, iii. No. 8.

[203] The germ of all these repulsive stories about incestuous unions, proposed but not carried out, was probably a nature myth akin to that alluded to in the passage of the Rigveda containing the dialogue between Yama and Yami—“where she (the night) implores her brother (the day) to make her his wife, and where he declines her offer because, as he says, ‘they have called it sin that a brother should marry his sister.’” Max Müller, “Lectures,” sixth edition, ii. 557.

[204]Afanasief, vii. No. 18.

[205] Her name Vyed’ma comes from a Slavonic root véd, answering to the Sanskrit vid—from which springs an immense family of words having reference to knowledge. Vyed’ma and witch are in fact cousins who, though very distantly related, closely resemble each other both in appearance and in character.

[206] Afanasief, i. No. 4 a. From the Voroneje Government.

[207] Ivashko and Ivashechko, are caressing diminutives of Ivan.

[208] “Some storytellers,” says Afanasief, “substitute the word snake (zmei) in the Skazka for that of witch (vyed’ma).”

[209] Diminutive of Elena.

[210]Gusi—lebedi, geese—swans.

[211] Afanasief, i. No. 4.

[212] Kulish, ii. 17.

[213] Khudyakof, No. 53.

[214]Ibid. No. 52.

[215] The demonism of Ceylon “represents demons as having human fathers and mothers, and as being born in the ordinary course of nature. Though born of human parents, all their qualities are different from those of men. They leave their parents sometime after their birth, but before doing so, they generally take care to try their demoniac powers on them.” “Demonology and Witchcraft in Ceylon,” by Dandris de Silva Gooneratne Modliar. “Journal of Ceylon Branch of Royal Asiatic Society,” 1865-6, p. 17.

[216] Afanasief, vi. No. 57. From the Ukraine.

[217] “Whither [his] eyes look.”

[218] Vertodub, the Tree-extractor (vertyet’ = to twirl, dub = tree or oak) is the German Baumdreher or Holzkrummacher; Vertogor the Mountain leveller (gora = mountain) answers to the Steinzerreiber or Felsenkripperer.

[219] Why are you just now so zaplakannoi or blubbered. (Zalplakat’, or plakat’ = to cry.)

[220]Otkuda ni vzyalis.

[221]Vidimo—nevidimo, visibly—invisibly.

[222]Zashumyeli, they began to produce a shum or noise.

[223] Afanasief, P.V.S., i. 80-84. In the Albanian story of “The Serpent Child,” (Hahn, No. 100), the heroine, the wife of the man whom forty snake-sloughs encase, is assisted in her troubles by two subterranean beings whom she finds employed in baking. They use their hands instead of shovels, and clean out the oven with their breasts. They are called “Sisters of the Sun.”