The thief does not believe his promise, and desires the three hundred roubles in pledge of his good faith; the gentleman gives them, and the thief goes off with the carriage, the horses, and the three hundred roubles. The gentleman stays till evening looking at the hat, waiting for his friend to return; at last he loses patience, wants to see what there is under the hat, and finds nothing--but a proof of his own stupidity.[383]
Ivan (John), and oftener still Vaniusha (Little John, the Giovannino of Italian legends), distinguishes himself, not only by his thieving accomplishments, but also by his courage. In order to play the part of a thief, as Little John does in all the Indo-Europeans legends, not only industry, but courage must be called into requisition; hence he acquires, like the Chevalier Bayard, the good reputation of a hero without fear and without reproach. The hero Ivan is now the son of a king, now of a merchant, and now of a peasant; the merchants wished, no less than the peasants, to appropriate to themselves the most popular hero of tradition. In the forty-sixth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, neither the shades of night, nor brigands, nor death, can make the hero afraid; but he is terrified and dies, falling into the water, when the little _iersh_ (the perch) leaps upon his stomach, whilst he is asleep in his fishing-boat. In the Tuscan story,[384] the fearless hero Giovannino, after having confronted every kind of danger, dies from the terror the sight of his own shadow inspires him with. In the same way, in the _?igvedas_, the G.o.d Indras, terrified at his own shadow, or, probably, that of his dead enemy, takes to flight after the killing of the serpent Ahis.[385]
The following heroes are also variations of Prince Ivan, Ivan the son of the cow, Ivan the peasant"s son, Ivan the merchant"s son, and the cunning Ivan:--1st, Alessino Papovic, the son of the priest (it is well known that the Russian priests are not bound to celibacy), who kills Tugarin, the son of the serpent, by prayer, that is, by praying to the Holy Mother of G.o.d, to order the black cloud to cause drops of rain to fall on the monster"s wings, upon which the son of the serpent, like the Vedic Ahis, when Indras opens a way for the rivers to come out, instantly falls to the ground;[386] 2d, Baldak, son of Boris, the boy seven years old, who succeeds in spitting in the Sultan"s face--(I have already remarked, in the preface to this work, that the king of the Turks is, in the Slavonic tradition, as well as in that of Persia, the representative of the devil; the demon, when the hero approaches, smells the odour of human flesh in India, of Christian flesh in Western stories,[387] and of Russian flesh in Russian fairy tales)--but who afterwards becomes the Sultan"s prisoner, because he appears to the third daughter of the latter with a star under his heel, or shows his heel (which is the vulnerable part of both hero and monster); 3d, Basil Bes-ciastnoi, who goes, by his father-in-law"s order, into the kingdom of the serpent, in order to receive a gift from him, with adventures similar to those of the young Plavacek in Bohemian stories, when he goes to seek the three golden hairs of the old Vsieveda (the all-seeing, the Vedic sun Vicvavedas);[388] 4th, The third brother who exchanges two sacks of flies and gnats he has caught for good cattle.[389] The same hero takes the name of Little Thomas Berennikoff; being blind of one eye, he kills an army of flies, and boasts of having killed an army of heroes; he thus dishonestly gains the reputation of being a hero, and is fortunate in having an opportunity offered him of proving his bravery by killing a monster-serpent, who, out of foolhardiness, shuts both eyes when he sees that Thomas has but one; he afterwards destroys an army of Chinese with the trunk of a tree, rooted up by his indomitable horse, which a real hero had bound to the tree;[390] 5th, The cunning rogue, Little Thomas (Thomka; the quacks in Piedmont are accustomed to give the name of Tommasino to the little devil which they conjure out of a phial), who, by means of disguises, cheats and robs the priest;[391] 6th, The third brother who does not suffer himself to be put to sleep by the witch (as we have seen above the third sister who keeps one of her three eyes open);[392] 7th, The famous robber, Klimka,[393] who, by means of a drum (in Indian tales a trumpet), terrifies his accomplices, the robbers, and takes their money, and then steals from a gentleman his horse, his casket of jewels, and even his wife; 8th, The Cossack who delivers the maiden from the flames, and carries her to his golden house, where there are two other maidens (be it understood, the one in the silver house, and the other in that of copper); from which three maidens the Cossack receives a shirt which renders him invulnerable, a sword which produces the most marvellous effects in slaughtering men, and a purse which, when shaken, drops money;[394] 9th, The celebrated Ilia Muromietz (Elias of Murom), round whom, as also around Svetazor and Svyatogor (holy mount), Dobrynia Nikitic, and the heroes of Vladimir, is grouped an entire heroic Russian epic poem.[395]
Other variations of the same hero are the son of the merchant given up to be educated by the devil, who teaches him every kind of craft; the boy Basil, who understands the language of birds, and who makes his parents serve him;[396] the merchant or son of a peasant,[397]
who, because he prefers good advice to money, acquires a fortune; the virtuous workman, who receives by way of pay for his labour only three kapeika, which, spent in good works, enables him at last to marry the king"s daughter, or the princess who did not laugh.[398]
The legend of the hero Ivan has yet other interesting forms, reflective of the beautiful Vedic myth of the Acvinau, who into their flying chariot-vessel also take up the unhappy. In _Afana.s.sieff_,[399]
the third brother, thought to be foolish, is ill-treated by his parents, who dress and feed him badly. The king issues a proclamation, that whoever can make a flying vessel will obtain his daughter to wife. The mother sends forth her three sons in quest of the necessary enchantment; to her third son she gives a little brown bread and water, whilst the two eldest go provided with good white loaves and some brandy. The fool meets on the way a poor old man, salutes him, and begins to share with him his scanty store of food; the old man trans.m.u.tes his brown bread into white, and his water into brandy, and then advises him to enter the forest, to make the sign of the cross upon the first tree he finds, and to strike it with his axe; then to throw himself on the ground and stay there until he wakens; he will see a vessel ready before him: "Sit down in it," added the old man, "and fly whither your behest requires you; and by the way take up beside you as many as you meet."[400] This chariot is freighted with abundance, both to eat and to drink; the young man overtakes several needy beggars, and invites them up into the chariot; he receives only poor people, not a single rich man.[401] But these poor men afterwards show their grat.i.tude to the hero, and help him in other adventures imposed upon him by the Tzar, who hopes by this means to get rid of a son-in-law of such vulgar origin. One of the new tasks imposed requires him to eat twelve oxen, and to drink at one gulp forty barrels of wine; in this he is helped by Eating (Abiedalo) and by Drinking (Apivalo), whom he had entertained in his chariot-ship, and who eat and drink instead of him.[402] At last he comes to claim and marry the young princess. (The hero-sun, taken up into the chariot of the Acvinau, by the grace of the Acvinau, invoked by him in danger, is delivered, and espouses the aurora.)
In a variation of this legend, a prince, fifteen years of age, who has been lost by his parents, is found again by means of a riddle which they propose, and which he alone can solve.[403] In the Vedic hymns it is now the aurora, the beautiful maiden, who delivers the hero-sun, and now the hero-sun who delivers the beautiful maiden, the aurora.
In the forty-first story of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, a little girl, seven years old (semilietka), presents herself to the Tzar, who must marry her, inasmuch as she solves the riddle proposed by him, by arriving riding on a hare (an animal which represents the moon), with a quail (an animal which seems to represent the sun) tied to her hand.[404] She too, like the aurora, knows all; she too protects the poor against the rich, and the innocent against the guilty. The dwarf Allwis is a form of this child. Allwis is the omniscient man of the Edda, who solves all the questions put to him by the G.o.d Thor, in order to obtain his daughter; when he is done with answering these questions, day breaks, and the sun shines.
The wondrous girl of seven years of age (the aurora), brings us back to the marvellous puppet (generally, the moon). It is three puppets (the wooden chest of Marion d"bosch, or wooden little Mary of the Piedmontese story, the dark forest of night, the tree that hides the splendid treasures of the evening aurora; another variety of the same myth in relation to the sun) that hide the three splendid dresses of the stars, the moon and the sun, which belong to the beautiful maiden, the daughter of the priest (a variation of the Vedic aurora, duhitar divas, or daughter of the sky). It is the three puppets which enable the beautiful girl to descend through the ground, and so escape from the persecutions of her father and seducer (in other versions, of her brother), and which go down with her, dressed as old women, and enter a forest, where, near an oak-tree, there is the house of a princess, who has a young and handsome son.[405] In a variation of this story,[406] the girl is persecuted, not by her father, but the well-known cruel stepmother, for whom she divides the wheat from the barley, and draws water at the fountain (like the Vedic maiden Apala); she goes three times splendidly dressed to church (which takes the place of the ball-room of other stories), where she is seen three times by a handsome prince; she is twice followed, and twice disappears; the third time the prince has gum (pitch, in other variations) put on the ground; the fugitive loses her golden slipper in consequence, which the prince picks up, and tries on all the maidens till he finds his bride. In another story,[407] where the relation of the aurora with the two Acvinau comes out in wonderful distinctness,[408] it is by means of her marvellous speaking puppet (_i.e._, the moon, the Vedic Raka, very small, but very intelligent, enclosed in the wooden dress, in the forest of night) that the girl, persecuted by her step-mother, weaves a cloth so fine that it can pa.s.s like a thread through the eye of a needle (just as the girl"s feet are very small, so also are the puppet"s hands). The marvellous cloth is brought to the Tzar, but no one is found who is able to sew it into a shirt for the Tzar.[409] The maiden alone, by the help of her puppet, succeeds; the Tzar wishes to see the girl who prepared his extraordinary shirt, and goes to find her; he is astonished at her beauty, and marries her. In the _?igvedas_, the aurora weaves a robe for her husband the sun.
The same girl (the aurora) whom we have here only as a good, beautiful, intelligent, and skilful maiden, appears in other stories given in _Afana.s.sieff_ as a heroic damsel. In the seventh story of the first book she disguises herself as a man, and mocks the Tzar three times. In the fourteenth story of the first book, the same girl, under the name of Anastasia the beautiful, vanquishes and binds the serpent, and discovers the secret of how he can be killed. Under the name of Helen, or Little Helen, she is the protectress of her little brother, Iva.n.u.sca (Little John),[410] and his guide through the world; and when the boy, by the incantation of a witch, is transformed into a lamb or kid (in a story of the Canavese, in Piedmont, the seven monks, brothers of the courageous girl, are transformed into seven hogs), she recommends him to the care of the prince, her husband, in order that he may destroy the evil work of the witch. The same maiden is found again as the very wise Basilia (Vasilisa Premudraia), who succours the young hero, because, after stealing her dress while she was bathing in the sea, he restores it to her, agreeably to her prayer. For this favour she gratefully accomplishes for him the labours imposed upon him by the king of the waters, and ends, after many vicissitudes, by marrying him.[411] She appears once more as the royal maiden (Tzar-dievitza), who comes three times with her ships by sea to lead away the young Ivan, beloved by her;[412] and I also place among the girl-heroines the daughter of the shepherd in the twenty-ninth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, of which this is an abridgment.
There was once a king who could not find a maiden beautiful enough to suit his taste. One day, returning from the chase (the solar hero always meets the aurora, his bride, when returning from the hunt in the forest of night), he meets a shepherd"s daughter, who is leading out the flock to pasture, so beautiful that her like would be sought for in vain over the world. He becomes enamoured of her, and promises to make her his wife, but only on condition that she will never say anything displeasing to him, whatever he may do; the poor enamoured maiden consents, the nuptials are celebrated, and the couple live together happily for a year. A boy is born to them; then the king says roughly to his wife that the boy must be killed, that it may never be said the heir to the throne is the son of a shepherdess. The poor woman resigns herself to her fate, remarking, "The will of the king must be done." Another year pa.s.ses, and a daughter is born. The king informs his wife that she too must be killed, as she can never become a princess, but will always remain a peasant girl. The unhappy mother once more bows her head to the will of the king, who, however, consigns his son and daughter, not to an executioner, but to his sister, that they may receive all the attentions due to their royal pedigree and standing. Years pa.s.s away; the little prince and princess grow up beautiful, healthy, good, and happy, and pa.s.s adolescence.
Then the king puts his wife to the last proof. He sends her back to her house in the dress of a shepherdess, signifying at the same time that she has lived with him long enough. Then he orders her to return, to put the rooms in order, and to wait upon the new bride whom he intends to take her place; the shepherd"s daughter obeys again without a murmur. The new bride arrives, and is set down at the table; they eat, drink, and are merry; the shepherd"s daughter is obliged to see and hear all, and to serve in silence; at last the king asks her, "Well, is not my bride beautiful?" To which the unhappy woman responds with a heroic effort, "If she seem beautiful to thee, still more does she seem so to me." Then the king, at the summit of his felicity, exclaims, "Dress thyself again in thy royal robes, and place thyself by my side; thou hast been, and shalt always be, my wife, my only wife; this, my supposed bride, is thy daughter, and this handsome youth is thy son." The poor heroine had undergone the last proof of her virtue, and triumphed.
But the virtue of the legendary heroine is not always so sound. Often the good wife, sister, maiden, or woman is corrupted by contact with the wicked. We have already seen how the beautiful aurora, the pitying and beneficent maiden, becomes, in the Vedic hymns themselves, the evil-doer, whom the G.o.d Indras overthrows and destroys. The h.e.l.lenic Amazons, the beautiful and proud warrior-women, were also pursued, fought with, and vanquished by the h.e.l.lenic heroes. Thus the Scandinavian warrior, Walkiries, has a double aspect, a good and a bad.
The Russian stories also supply numerous instances of the ease with which the good degenerates into the demon, the hero into the monster, and the beautiful heroine into the powerful and mischief-working witch.
This good sister Helen or Little Helen, so careful a guardian of her brother John, ends, when she conceives a pa.s.sion for the monster, with becoming his perfidious persecutor. (The evening aurora is represented as a friend of the monster of night, who conspires with him against her brother the sun; and whoever observes the sinister aspect often a.s.sumed by the reddish sky of evening, will find this fiction a very natural one. I have said above that a Piedmontese proverb predicts bad weather for the morrow from a red evening; but in Piedmont the belief is also widely diffused that the red of evening signifies blood, and that this b.l.o.o.d.y redness signifies war. It certainly does mean war, but a mythical war--the war in which the hero, fighting against the monster, succ.u.mbs and sheds blood. It is a woman that is the hero"s destruction. A counter-type of the biblical Delilah is found in all the popular Indo-European traditions; the Vedic aurora, the sister of Rava?as in the _Ramaya?am_, the sister of Hidimbas in the _Mahabharatam_, the h.e.l.lenic Dejanira, Ariadne, Medea, the Amazons, Helen, the Slavonic Helen, and Anna the Sabine woman, the Scandinavian Walkiries, Freya, Idun, Brunhilt, Gudrun, the Germanic Krimhilt, are all forms of one and the same heroine, conceived now in the light of a saint, and now in that of a witch.
In the Russian story,[413] after the bull has saved from the bear the fugitive brother and sister, Ivan Tzarevic and Helen the exceedingly beautiful (Prekracna), they enter a brigand"s house. Their bull, having become a dwarf, kills all the brigands, and shuts their bodies up in a room, which he forbids Helen to enter; the latter, not attending to the prohibition, enters, and seeing the head of the brigand chief, falls in love with him, resuscitates him by means of the water of life, and then conspires with him to destroy her brother Ivan, by requiring him to accomplish enterprises in which death seemed inevitable, or else by ordering him to bring her, first, the milk of a wolf, then that of a she-bear, and then that of a lioness. Ivan, by the help of his dwarf (or the sun grown small during the night, and perhaps also the moon), accomplishes all these undertakings. We have already seen how white comes from black; the milk of the wolf, the bear, and the lioness is the _alba luna_, or the white morning sky brought back by the solar hero. Ivan is then sent to fetch the eggs of the burning bird (Szar-pt.i.tza). Ivan goes with his dwarf (that is to say, the moon, or he makes himself a dwarf, in other words, renders himself invisible); the bird is enraged, and swallows the dwarf (_i.e._, the red sky of evening, the burning bird, or ph?nix, absorbs the moon or the sun in its flames.[414]) Ivan goes back to his sister without the eggs, upon which she threatens to burn him in the bath.
Ivan, with the help of the wolf"s, the bear"s, and the lion"s whelps, or Ivan, with the young wolf, bear, or lion (the moon), or Ivan the son of the wolf, Ivan the son of the bear, Ivan the son of the lion (Ivan born of the she-wolf Night, the she-bear Night, or the lioness Night), tears the brigand to pieces, and binds his sister (as the Vedic cow) to a tree (the aurora almost always loses herself in a tree or the water). Then Ivan wishes to marry a heroine. [Two myths are here united in the story, originating in one and the same phenomenon, which seems twofold, because observed at different, almost literally succeeding, instants. The morning sun comes and puts to flight his sister the aurora, driving her back into the forest of night, and binding her to the tree; the morning sun pa.s.ses safe and sound through the flames (like Sifrit in the _Nibelungen_), vanquishes and subdues the aurora, makes her his, and espouses her.] He fights with her first, and succeeds in throwing her with his lance from her horse, and subduing her. The first night--that is, when evening comes, she embraces and presses him so tightly, and with such strength, that he cannot succeed in extricating himself (the evening aurora envelops and surrounds the sun; it is the famous nuptial belt, the belt of strength of the G.o.d Thor, the shirt of Nessus). At last, however, towards morning, Ivan vanquishes, subdues, and throws down (like Sifrit in the _Nibelungen_) the girl-heroine (the morning sun, as Indras, throws down the aurora). He then thinks of liberating his sister Helen, who is bound to the tree, in order to take her with him; but she, under the pretext of combing his hair, thrusts a dead man"s tooth into his head. Ivan is about to die. Here the primary myth of the sun and aurora, as brother and sister, reappears, and the secondary one of the husband and wife is forgotten. The lion"s whelp comes forward and extracts the tooth; the lion is on the point of dying, when the young bear runs up and extracts it again. He is also about to die; the fox then comes up, who a.s.sumes towards the end of the story the part played in the middle by the young wolf (in the same way as in Indian tales the jackal is subst.i.tuted for the fox), and, with more cunning, throws the dead man"s tooth into the fire, and thus saves himself--_i.e._, the solar hero, pa.s.sing through the flames, comes out of the shadows which enveloped him during the night. Helen is attached to the tail of a horse (of Ivan"s solar horse itself), and is thus made to perish (when the sun comes forth in the morning the aurora loses herself behind him).
The same story of Ivan"s perfidious sister, of which the mythical sense appears to me more than usually evident, occurs again in other forms in Russian tales.
Whilst Ivan is travelling with his sister towards the kingdom where all the people die[415] (that is, towards the night), a fairy gives him a towel, by shaking which a bridge may be thrown across a river--(is this bridge the milky way, the bridge or road to be taken by the souls in the Persian and Porphyrian belief, as well as in the German?)--but advises him never to let his sister see him shake it.
Ivan arrives with his sister in the kingdom of the dead; they come upon a river on the further bank of which there is a serpent, who has the power of transforming himself into a handsome youth; Ivan"s sister becomes enamoured of him, and he induces her to steal the towel from her brother and shake it. The sister, under the pretext of washing the dirty linen, takes off the fairy"s towel and shakes it; a bridge rises, upon which the serpent crosses the river, and then conspires with the girl with intent to work Ivan"s ruin. They demand the usual milk, which Ivan brings; then the flour which is shut up within twelve doors. Ivan goes thither with his beasts of prey, takes the flour and brings it away, but his beasts remain shut up inside; then his strength diminishes, and the serpent, boasting that he fears him no longer, prepares to devour him. Ivan, by the advice of a crow, prays for time, and procrastinates till his beasts of prey, gnawing the twelve doors through, come to his help, and tear the serpent in pieces. The serpent"s bones are burned in the fire, its ashes are dispersed to the four winds, and the sister is bound to a stone pillar (to the rock or mountain upon which the aurora arises, fading away afterwards when the sun appears). Ivan places near her some hay and a vessel full of water, that she may have whereof to eat and drink, and another empty vessel, which she is to fill with her tears: when she has eaten the hay, drunk the water, and filled the vessel with her tears, it will be a sign that G.o.d has forgiven her; when Ivan too will forgive her. Meanwhile, Ivan goes into a kingdom where there is nothing but mourning, because a twelve-headed serpent is ma.s.sacring all the people (the usual nocturnal sky, where it is now the hero-sun, now the heroine aurora that sacrifices itself), and the king"s daughter is the next victim. Ivan, by the help of his hunting animals, cuts the serpent to pieces, and then goes to sleep on the knees of the king"s daughter. While he sleeps, a water-carrier pa.s.ses towards morning, cuts off his head, and presents himself to the king as the deliverer of the princess, whom he demands for his wife. The beasts of prey come up, descry the crow upon Ivan"s corpse, and prepare to eat it, when the crow begs for its life; they consent, and in return require it to search for the water of life and death, by means of which Ivan is resuscitated; the water-carrier"s deceit is found out, and Ivan marries the princess whom he had delivered from the monster.
Then he goes to look for his sister, and finds she has eaten the hay, drunk the water, and filled half the vessel with tears; upon this he pardons her, and takes her away with him.
In another story,[416] instead of the perfidious sister, we have the perfidious mother (probably step-mother), who, to please her demon lover, feigns illness, and demands from Ivan the heart, first of the three-headed, then of the six-headed, and finally of the twelve-headed monster. Ivan accomplishes these undertakings. He is then sent to a hot bath, to weaken his strength. Ivan goes, and his head is cut off by the monster. But Ivan"s two sons resuscitate him by rubbing a root upon his body; the demon lover of Ivan"s mother dies as soon as the hero revives again. In the two sons of Ivan we recognise again the myth of the Acvinau, the celestial physicians who resuscitate the solar hero.
In another story, Ivan Karolievic (king"s son) is threatened with death by his own wife,[417] who, feigning illness, demands the usual milk of a she-wolf, a she-bear, and a lioness, and then the enchanted powder (powder of gold or flour), which is under the devils mill, barred behind twelve doors. Ivan comes out, but his beasts remain inside. He returns and finds his wife with the serpent, the son of the serpent; he chaunts the song of death--he sings it three times;[418]
on hearing which the serpent is thrown down, and the beasts, regaining strength to deliver themselves, come out and tear the serpent, and with him the perfidious wife is put to death.
Ivan"s perfidious wife occurs again in the thirty-fifth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, under the name of Anna the very beautiful (Prekracnaia). She has married Ivan Tzarevic against her will, because she could not solve a riddle which he proposed to her; she does not love him, and endeavours to destroy him by requiring an extraordinary proof of his valour,[419] in which, by the help of his tutor, Katoma, Ivan is victorious, so that Anna falls into his hands. But, understanding that Ivan"s strength is not in himself, but his tutor, she induces Ivan to send him away, after depriving him of his feet. Anna then sends Ivan to take the cows to pasture. The lame Katoma finds in the forest a blind man, also made so by Anna;[420] they become friends and consociate together, and carry off a beautiful maiden to be their sister; but a witch comes and makes the maiden comb her hair, whilst she sucks her breast (we must remember that in the Indian story the girl has three b.r.e.a.s.t.s, or is defective in her breast, in the same way as the witch makes the Russian girl so by sucking her breast). The poor girl grows thin and ugly, until the old witch is surprised in her evil doings by the two heroes, fallen upon by them like a mountain of stone, and pressed so tightly that she cries for mercy. Then they demand to be shown where the fountain of life and healing can be found. The old woman conducts them into a dense forest, and shows them a fountain. They first throw a dry twig in, which immediately takes fire; they threaten to kill the old witch, and force her to lead them to another fountain, into which they throw another dry twig; it becomes green again. Then one rubs his eyes, and the other his feet, with the water, and both become healthy and strong again. They throw the witch into the fountain of fire. Katoma, in a shepherd"s dress, goes to deliver the hero Ivan from the demon cow, which lifts up its tail and gives him back his strength and splendour. This is again the Vedic myth of the Acvinau united to the aurora, who cure the blind and the lame, _i.e._, themselves, and save the multiform solar hero.
Finally, such as we have found the blind girl in the Vedic hymns, so we meet her again in Russian tradition.[421] A servant-maid takes out the eyes of the maiden her mistress, after having put her to sleep by means of a herb, and marries the king in her stead. The girl awakens, hears but does not see; an old shepherd receives her into his house; during the night she, although blind, sews a crown for the Tzar and sends the old man to court to sell it for an eye (this is a variation of Queen Berta in the forest). The servant-maid, now become queen, tempted by the beauty of this crown, takes one of the girls eyes out of her pocket and gives it to the old man. The maiden arises at the aurora, washes her eye in her own saliva (_i.e._, the dew. In Tuscany, the peasants believe that whoever washes his face in the dew before the sun rises on St John"s Day, will have no illness all the year following), puts it in the socket and sees. She then sews another crown, and, in the same manner, recovers her other eye at the next aurora. Then the servant-queen learns that she is alive, and makes hired murderers cut her to pieces. Where the maiden is buried, a garden arises and a boy shows himself. The boy goes to the palace and runs after the queen, making such a din that she is obliged, in order to silence him, to give him the girl"s heart, which she had kept hidden. The boy then runs off contented; the king follows him, and finds himself before the resuscitated maiden. He marries her, and the servant-girl is blinded, and then torn to pieces by being fastened to the tails of horses. Like the German Genevieve and the Hindoo cakuntala, the Russian wife is recognised by her husband by means of a boy. This is the young sun, who enables the old one to be born again, to arise again and be young once more; this is the son who, in the Hindoo legend, gives his father his eyesight back, and by doing so, naturally imparts to him the means of recognising his wife, whom he had forgotten, or rejected, or lost, according to the various forms a.s.sumed by the celestial myth of the separation of husband and wife.
I might now carry on this comparison by entering the mythical field of the more Western Slavonic nations;[422] but it is not my intention to convert this modest volume into an entire library of legends; neither is it necessary for my purpose, as by so doing I should not add much more evidence to that which I have thus far attempted to collect, in order to prove how zoological mythology is the same in existing Slavonic tradition as it was in Hindoo antiquity. I have, moreover, gone rather minutely into the contents of Russian tradition in particular, because, on account of our ignorance of the language, which is beautiful and worthy of study, it is little known, and because it is of especial importance in our present inquiry. I believe, if I do not deceive myself, that I have, up to this point, given an account of all the more essential legends developed in the Eastern Aryan world relating to the myth of the cow and the bull; and now, in moving towards the West, I think I may venture to proceed with greater expedition, because we shall find ourselves in a region already familiar to us. It seemed to me that it was especially necessary, for a just comparison, to determine and fix the character of Oriental tradition, in order that it may be easy for the student to cla.s.sify the interminable stories and traditions which have already been collected in Western Europe, and which are published in languages which are, certainly, different from each other, but all, comparatively speaking, readily accessible. If I have succeeded in imparting to the reader an understanding of the more authentic sources of legendary traditions and their most probable meanings, I shall go on with more courage and a greater confidence to the investigations that follow.
FOOTNOTES:
[348] These last have already been translated into English, and ill.u.s.trated, by W. R. S. Ralston, M.A. The _Narodnija Skaski_ sabrannija selskimi uciteliami, isdanie A. A. Erlenwein (Moskva 1863), and the more voluminous N. Aphanasieva, _Narodnija ruskija skaski_, Isd. 2 (Moskva 1860, 1861), have not thus far been translated into other European languages. I have therefore thought fit to make copious quotations from them as well for the use of Western readers, as on account of the real importance of their mythical contents, whilst awaiting the publication of the competent work which Mr Ralston is expressly preparing upon Russian songs.
[349] iii. 8805, and following.
[350] _Afana.s.sieff_, ii. 29.
[351] iv. 45.
[352] This subject is already given in _aesop"s Fables_, in the twenty-first fable (ed. Del Furia, Florence, 1809): the man prays to a wooden idol (xulinon theon) that it may make him rich; the statue does not answer; he breaks it to pieces, and gold comes out of it.
[353] Seventeenth story.
[354] Cfr. also in _Afana.s.sieff_, the story, v. 19.
[355] Cfr. also, for the variations, the twenty-second of _Erlenwein_, and iii. 24, of _Afana.s.sieff_.
[356] Story 54.
[357] Cfr. the first story of my collection of the _Novelline di Santo Stefano di Calcinaia_, Torino, A. F. Negro, 1869. I am also acquainted with a Piedmontese variation, differing but little from this Tuscan story.
[358] In the story, ii. 27, of the collection of _Afana.s.sieff_, the beautiful princess, near the sea, combs the youngest son of the Tzar, who goes to sleep.
[359] Cfr. the chapter on the Goat.
[360] v. 37.
[361] v. 50.
[362] v. 9.
[363] In Lafontaine, _Fables_, vii. 1, the animal sacrificed is the a.s.s.
[364] _Afana.s.sieff_, iv. 20-22.--In a Lithuanian song, which describes the nuptials of animals, the bull appears as a woodcutter or woodman.--Cfr. Uhland"s _Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung und Sage_, iii. 75.
[365] _Afana.s.sieff_, v. 6.
[366] Cfr. the chapter which treats of the Wolf.
[367] _Afana.s.sieff_, v. 41.
[368] _Afana.s.sieff_, iv. 1.--In another variation of the same myth, which we have already referred to in the Vedic hymns, the birds come, on the contrary, out of a horse.
[369] v. 54.
[370] Cfr. _Afana.s.sieff_, v. 54, and the chapters on the Fish and the Eel.
[371] I read in the travels of Olearius in Persia during the year 1638, French translation: "Les Persans disent que la montagne de Kilissim a une telle propriete que tous ceux qui y montent n"en descendent point; que le schach Abas obligea un jour un de ses cha.s.seurs, en lui promettant une grosse somme d"argent, a monter sur cette montagne, et qu"il y monta effectivement, l"ayant fait connoitre par le feu qu"il alluma; mais qu"il n"en descendit point, et que l"on ne scait point ce qu"il devint avec son chien, qu"il menait avec lui."
[372] _Afana.s.sieff_, iv. 9.--In the well-known English story of _Jack and the Bean-stalk_, it is the giant who is killed by the fall from heaven, when Jack cuts the bean-stalk close to the ground.
[373] _Afana.s.sieff_, iv. 7.--Cfr. the chapter on the Fox.