Read Ebook: Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore by Ralston William Ralston Shedden Translator

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INTRODUCTORY. PAGE. The Folk-tale in general, and the Skazka in particular--Relation of Russian Popular Tales to Russian Life--Stories about Courtship, Death, Burial and Wailings for the Dead--Warnings against Drink, Jokes about Women, Tales of Simpletons--A rhymed Skazka and a Legend 15

MYTHOLOGICAL.

On the "Mythical Skazkas"--Male embodiments of Evil: 1. The Snake as the Stealer of Daylight; 2. Norka the Beast, Lord of the Lower World; 3. Koshchei the Deathless, The Stealer of Fair Princesses--his connexion with Punchkin and "the Giant who had no Heart in his Body"--Excursus on Bluebeard's Chamber; 4. The Water King or Subaqueous Demon--Female Embodiments of Evil: 1. The Baba Yaga or Hag, and 2. The Witch, feminine counterparts of the Snake 75

MYTHOLOGICAL.

One-eyed Likho, a story of the Polyphemus Cycle--Woe, the Poor Man's Companion--Friday, Wednesday, and Sunday personified as Female Spirits--The L?shy or Wood-Demon--Legends about Rivers--Frost as a Wooer of Maidens--The Whirlwind personified as a species of Snake or Demon--Morfei and Oh, two supernatural beings 186

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

The Waters of Life and Death, and of Strength and Weakness--Aid given to Children by Dead Parents--Magic Horses, Fish, &c.--Stories about Brides won by a Leap, &c.--Stories about Wizards and Witches--The Headless Princess--Midnight Watchings over Corpses--The Fire Bird, its connexion with the Golden Bird and the Phoenix 237

GHOST STORIES.

Slavonic Ideas about the Dead--On Heaven and Hell--On the Jack and the Beanstalk Story--Harmless Ghosts--The Rip van Winkle Story--the attachment of Ghosts to their Shrouds and Coffin-Lids--Murderous Ghosts--Stories about Vampires--on the name Vampire, and the belief in Vampirism 295

LEGENDS.

Legends connected with the Dog, the Izba, the Creation of Man, the Rye, the Snake, Ox, Sole, &c.; with Birds, the Peewit, Sparrow, Swallow, &c.--Legends about SS. Nicholas, Andrew, George, Kasian, &c. 329

Part played by Demons in the Skazkas--On "Hasty Words," and Parental Curses; their power to subject persons to demoniacal possession--The dulness of Demons; Stories about Tricks played upon them--Their Gratitude to those who treat them with Kindness and their General Behavior--Various Legends about Devils--Moral Tale of the Gossip's Bedstead 361

STORY-LIST.

PAGE.

XL. THE FOX-PHYSICIAN 296

L. THE PRIEST WITH THE GREEDY EYES 355

RUSSIAN FOLK-TALES.

INTRODUCTORY.

There are but few among those inhabitants of Fairy-land of whom "Popular Tales" tell, who are better known to the outer world than Cinderella--the despised and flouted younger sister, who long sits unnoticed beside the hearth, then furtively visits the glittering halls of the great and gay, and at last is transferred from her obscure nook to the place of honor justly due to her tardily acknowledged merits. Somewhat like the fortunes of Cinderella have been those of the popular tale itself. Long did it dwell beside the hearths of the common people, utterly ignored by their superiors in social rank. Then came a period during which the cultured world recognized its existence, but accorded to it no higher rank than that allotted to "nursery stories" and "old wives' tales"--except, indeed, on those rare occasions when the charity of a condescending scholar had invested it with such a garb as was supposed to enable it to make a respectable appearance in polite society. At length there arrived the season of its final change, when, transferred from the dusk of the peasant's hut into the full light of the outer day, and freed from the unbecoming garments by which it had been disfigured, it was recognized as the scion of a family so truly royal that some of its members deduce their origin from the olden gods themselves.

In our days the folk-tale, instead of being left to the careless guardianship of youth and ignorance, is sedulously tended and held in high honor by the ripest of scholars. Their views with regard to its origin may differ widely. But whether it be considered in one of its phases as a distorted "nature-myth," or in another as a demoralized apologue or parable--whether it be regarded at one time as a relic of primeval wisdom, or at another as a blurred transcript of a page of mediaeval history--its critics agree in declaring it to be no mere creation of the popular fancy, no chance expression of the uncultured thought of the rude tiller of this or that soil. Rather is it believed of most folk-tales that they, in their original forms, were framed centuries upon centuries ago; while of some of them it is supposed that they may be traced back through successive ages to those myths in which, during a prehistoric period, the oldest of philosophers expressed their ideas relative to the material or the spiritual world.

On the questions to which these two conflicting hypotheses give rise we will not now dwell. For the present, we will deal with the Russian folk-tale as we find it, attempting to become acquainted with its principal characteristics to see in what respects it chiefly differs from the stories of the same class which are current among ourselves, or in those foreign lands with which we are more familiar than we are with Russia, rather than to explore its birthplace or to divine its original meaning.

We often hear it said, that from the songs and stories of a country we may learn much about the inner life of its people, inasmuch as popular utterances of this kind always bear the stamp of the national character, offer a reflex of the national mind. So far as folk-songs are concerned, this statement appears to be well founded, but it can be applied to the folk-tales of Europe only within very narrow limits. Each country possesses certain stories which have special reference to its own manners and customs, and by collecting such tales as these, something approximating to a picture of its national life may be laboriously pieced together. But the stories of this class are often nothing more than comparatively modern adaptations of old and foreign themes; nor are they sufficiently numerous, so far as we can judge from existing collections, to render by any means complete the national portrait for which they are expected to supply the materials. In order to fill up the gaps they leave, it is necessary to bring together a number of fragments taken from stories which evidently refer to another clime--fragments which may be looked upon as excrescences or developments due to the novel influences to which the foreign slip, or seedling, or even full-grown plant, has been subjected since its transportation.

The great bulk of the Russian folk-tales, and, indeed, of those of all the Indo-European nations, is devoted to the adventures of such fairy princes and princesses, such snakes and giants and demons, as are quite out of keeping with ordinary men and women--at all events with the inhabitants of modern Europe since the termination of those internecine struggles between aboriginals and invaders, which some commentators see typified in the combats between the heroes of our popular tales and the whole race of giants, trolls, ogres, snakes, dragons, and other monsters. The air we breathe in them is that of Fairy-land; the conditions of existence, the relations between the human race and the spiritual world on the one hand, the material world on the other, are totally inconsistent with those to which we are now restricted. There is boundless freedom of intercourse between mortals and immortals, between mankind and the brute creation, and, although there are certain conventional rules which must always be observed, they are not those which are enforced by any people known to anthropologists. The stories which are common to all Europe differ, no doubt, in different countries, but their variations, so far as their matter is concerned, seem to be due less to the moral character than to the geographical distribution of their reciters. The manner in which these tales are told, however, may often be taken as a test of the intellectual capacity of their tellers. For in style the folk-tale changes greatly as it travels. A story which we find narrated in one country with terseness and precision may be rendered almost unintelligible in another by vagueness or verbiage; by one race it may be elevated into poetic life, by another it may be degraded into the most prosaic dulness.

Now, so far as style is concerned, the Skazkas or Russian folk-tales, may justly be said to be characteristic of the Russian people. There are numerous points on which the "lower classes" of all the Aryan peoples in Europe closely resemble each other, but the Russian peasant has--in common with all his Slavonic brethren--a genuine talent for narrative which distinguishes him from some of his more distant cousins. And the stories which are current among the Russian peasantry are for the most part exceedingly well narrated. Their language is simple and pleasantly quaint, their humor is natural and unobtrusive, and their descriptions, whether of persons or of events, are often excellent. A taste for acting is widely spread in Russia, and the Russian folk-tales are full of dramatic positions which offer a wide scope for a display of their reciter's mimetic talents. Every here and there, indeed, a tag of genuine comedy has evidently been attached by the story-teller to a narrative which in its original form was probably devoid of the comic element.

From among the stories which contain the most graphic descriptions of Russian village life, or which may be regarded as specially illustrative of Russian sentiment and humor those which the present chapter contains have been selected. Any information they may convey will necessarily be of a most fragmentary nature, but for all that it may be capable of producing a correct impression. A painter's rough notes and jottings are often more true to nature than the most finished picture into which they may be developed.

THE FIEND.

"Hail, fair maidens!" says he.

"Hail, good youth!" say they.

"You're merry-making?"

"Be so good as to join us."

Thereupon he pulled out of his pocket a purse full of gold, ordered liquor, nuts and gingerbread. All was ready in a trice, and he began treating the lads and lasses, giving each a share. Then he took to dancing. Why, it was a treat to look at him! Marusia struck his fancy more than anyone else; so he stuck close to her. The time came for going home.

"Marusia," says he, "come and see me off."

She went to see him off.

"Marusia, sweetheart!" says he, "would you like me to marry you?"

"If you like to marry me, I will gladly marry you. But where do you come from?"

"From such and such a place. I'm clerk at a merchant's."

Then they bade each other farewell and separated. When Marusia got home, her mother asked her:

"Well, daughter! have you enjoyed yourself?"

"Yes, mother. But I've something pleasant to tell you besides. There was a lad there from the neighborhood, good-looking and with lots of money, and he promised to marry me."

"Harkye Marusia! When you go to where the girls are to-morrow, take a ball of thread with you, make a noose in it, and, when you are going to see him off, throw it over one of his buttons, and quietly unroll the ball; then, by means of the thread, you will be able to find out where he lives."

Next day Marusia went to the gathering, and took a ball of thread with her. The youth came again.

"Good evening, Marusia!" said he.

"Good evening!" said she.

Games began and dances. Even more than before did he stick to Marusia, not a step would he budge from her. The time came for going home.

"Come and see me off, Marusia!" says the stranger.

She went out into the street, and while she was taking leave of him she quietly dropped the noose over one of his buttons. He went his way, but she remained where she was, unrolling the ball. When she had unrolled the whole of it, she ran after the thread to find out where her betrothed lived. At first the thread followed the road, then it stretched across hedges and ditches, and led Marusia towards the church and right up to the porch. Marusia tried the door; it was locked. She went round the church, found a ladder, set it against a window, and climbed up it to see what was going on inside. Having got into the church, she looked--and saw her betrothed standing beside a grave and devouring a dead body--for a corpse had been left for that night in the church.

She wanted to get down the ladder quietly, but her fright prevented her from taking proper heed, and she made a little noise. Then she ran home--almost beside herself, fancying all the time she was being pursued. She was all but dead before she got in. Next morning her mother asked her:

"Well, Marusia! did you see the youth?"

"I saw him, mother," she replied. But what else she had seen she did not tell.

In the morning Marusia was sitting, considering whether she would go to the gathering or not.

"Go," said her mother. "Amuse yourself while you're young!"

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