Zoological Mythology Volume I Part 13

The red cow and the black cow; what they prognosticate.--The red hue of evening.--The bull that drinks.--The bull corrupts the water.--The bull's hoofs.--The cow in the bartering of animals.--The hero ascends into heaven.--The bull sold to the tree; the tree, split open, yields gold.--The fool sells the bull.--Two bulls conduct the poor brother to riches.--The bull carries the fugitive home.--The bull is split in two, and is useful even after death.--Ivan and Helen, followed by the bear, flee upon the bull with their faces turned to the part whence the bear is likely to come.--The dwarf comes out of the bull's bones; the dwarf dies amid the flames.--The beasts of prey help the hero.--John and Mary, sun and aurora of the Christians.--The saviour-bull again.--From the dead bull an apple-tree springs up.--Ivan delivers Mary.--Mary, the step-daughter, and persecuted.--The cow that spins, the good fairy, the Madonna, the moon.--The maiden who combs the hair is the same as the purifier.--The demoniacal cow obliges men to kiss her under her tail.--The witch who sucks the beautiful girl's breast whilst the latter combs her hair.--The hide of the demoniacal cow taken off.--The eye which does not sleep and plays the spy.--From the cow, the apple-tree; from the apple-tree, the branches which wound the wicked sisters, and let the good one pluck their fruit; from the apple, the husband.--The maiden bows to the right foot of the beneficent cow; a tree springs up again from the killed cow.--The red apples which cause horns to grow, and the white ones which give beauty and youth.--Ivan, the sun, persecuted by the witch his sister, is saved by the sister of the sun, the aurora.--The mythical scales; the scales of St Michael.--The cows with golden horns and tails.--The black demoniacal bull strikes the ground with his horns, in order to prevent a wedding from taking place.--The hare and the crow put obstacles in the way of nuptials.--The demon blinded whilst drinking.--The third son of the peasant throws down the bull.--The avaricious merchant.--The epidemic among the animals, and the bull killed because he has stolen some hay from a priest.--The bull in the forest.--The robber of cows and of oxen.--The black bull led away by Ivan, by means of a c.o.c.k.--The hero comes out of the cow.--The intestines of the calf eaten by the fox.--Out of the calf come birds.--The son of the cow, the strongest brother.--The three brothers reduced to one with the qualities of the three.--The third brother mounts into heaven by means of the cow's hide.--He who ascends does not come down again.--Dreams.--The wife of the old man, carried to heaven in a sack, is let fall to the ground and dies.--The ascent into heaven by means of vegetables.--Turn-little-Pea, the third brother, the killer of monsters; Turn-little-Pea and Ivan identified.--Ivan followed by the serpent-witches.--The female serpent tries to file the iron gate with her tongue, which is caught by the pincers and burned.--The three brothers, the evening one, the midnight one, and the clearly-seeing one; the third is the victorious hero; he delivers three princesses out of three castles of copper, of silver, and of gold, and receives from them three eggs of copper, of silver, and of gold, new forms corresponding to those of the three brothers; the third brother, abandoned by his elders, after various vicissitudes, finds his bride again; explanation of this beautiful myth.--Ivan identified with Svetazor.--The mother of the birds, in grat.i.tude, delivers the hero.--The third brother, the cunning one, despoils his two elder brothers of their precious objects.--Ivan of the dog is equivalent to Svetazor; the story of the goldsmith.--Ivan the great drinker.--Ivan the prince, Ivan the fool; Ivan and Emilius, foolish and lazy, are one and the same person.--The red shoes in the legend.--The sister kills her little brother to take his red shoes; a magical flute discovers the crime.--The slippers attract the bridegroom; corresponding nuptial usages.--The slipper tried on; the toe cut off.--The change of wives.--The ugly one becomes beautiful.--The grateful pike.--The barrel full of water, which walks of its own accord.--The forest which is cut down and walks of itself, the chariot which goes on by itself, the stove that moves and carries Emilius where he wishes, the cask in which the hero and heroine are shut up and thrown into the sea, all forms of the cloud and of the gloom of night; the ugly becomes beautiful; the poor, rich and pleasing.--The wine allowed to run out of the barrel, _i.e._, the cloud which dissolves itself in rain.--Ivan, thought to be stupid, makes his fortune out of having watched by his father's grave.--Ivan, thought to be stupid, speculates upon his dead mother; his brothers try to do the same by their wives, and are punished.--The law of atavism in tradition.--The foolish mother and the cunning son.--The funereal storks.--The thief cheats the gentleman in several ways, and finally places him to guard his hat.--Ivan without fear; a little fish terrifies him.--Various heroical forms of Ivan in Russian tradition: Alessino, the son of the priest, invokes the rain against the monster-serpent; Baldak spits in the Sultan's face--the star under his heel; Basil and Plavacek, who demand a gift from the monster; the fortunate fict.i.tious hero; the cunning little Thomas; the third brother, who does not allow himself to be put to sleep; the thief Klimka, who terrifies the other thieves in order to rob them; the Cossack who delivers the maiden from the flames, and receives precious gifts; Ilia Muromietz and his companions; the merchant's son educated by the devil; the boy who understands the language of birds; the virtuous workman, who prefers good advice to a large reward.--The flying s.h.i.+p; the protector of the unfortunate rewarded; eating and drinking.--The girl who solves the riddle of the prince, who comes with the hare and the quail, and obtains her husband.--The dwarf Allwis obtains the bride by answering the questions of his father-in-law.--The wonderful puppet (the moon), that sews for the priest's daughter (the aurora) the s.h.i.+rt destined for the prince.--The girl-heroine, protectress of her brother, helper of the young hero in dangers and trials of heroism.--The cow-herd's daughter, who never says anything displeasing to her husband the king, whatever the latter does.--By contact with the monster, the heroine is perverted, and also becomes a persecutor of the hero, her brother or husband; a.n.a.logous types of the perfidious woman.--Dangerous trials imposed on the hero.--The sister bound to the tree.--The wife subdued, and the magical belt.--The tooth of a dead man thrust into Ivan's head; the animals deliver him; the fox knows better than the rest how to manage it.--The towel which causes a bridge to spring up across the water; the hero's sister steals the towel, and unites herself to the monster-serpent; she demands from her brother Ivan wild beasts' milk, and the flour or powder of gold which is under a mill guarded by twelve gates.--The monster burned, and the hero's sister condemned to weep and to eat hay.--The exchange of the hero.--The crow brings the water of death and of life.--The stepmother who persecutes Ivan.--Ivan resuscitated by his two sons.--Ivan chaunts his death-song; the liberating animals appear to help him.--Ivan and his preceptor persecuted by his wife Anna.--The blind man, the lame man, and the beautiful girl whose breast is sucked by the witch.--The witch is forced to find the fountain of life and of health; the blind man sees, the lame walks, and the girl recovers her good health.--The maiden blinded; the wife changed; the dew which gives eyesight; the girl finds her husband; a Russian variety of the legend of Berta.

Having drawn so far the general outline of the Turanian boundaries of Slavonian tradition, it is now time to begin to study the tradition of the Slaves itself, as far as it concerns the myth and the legend of the bull and the cow.

The Russian peasants and shepherds are accustomed to remark that the weather will be fine when a red cow places herself at the head of the herd, and that it will rain or be bad weather when, on the contrary, the first of the cows to re-enter the stable at evening is a black one. We already know what the black and the red cow signify in the language of the Vedas. The aurora of morning and evening, that is, the red cows promise fine weather; the cloud (or black cow) announces wet weather. In Piedmont, when a beautiful evening aurora is observed, it is the custom to say--

"Rosso di sera, Buon tempo si spera."

(Red at eve, we hope for fine weather.)

Let us now follow the Russian tradition relating to the cow and the bull in two of the many invaluable collections of popular stories already printed in Russia, as well as in the celebrated fables of Kriloff.[348]

We shall begin with those stories and fables in which the cow or the bull is explicitly mentioned. They show us the bull who protects the hero and the heroine, the bull who enriches the hero, the bull that is sold, the grateful bull, the bull who sacrifices himself, the persecuted bull, the demoniacal bull; the cow who spins, the beneficent cow, the son of the cow, the birds that come out from the cow, the cow's hide which becomes a rope to mount up to heaven, the cow exchanged, the demoniacal cow, the cow's horns. Here, again, therefore, we have the double aspect of the Vedic cow; the dark-coloured one (cloud and darkness), generally monstrous, the luminous one (moon and aurora), usually divine and beneficent.

One of the special characteristics of the bull and of the cow is their capacity of drinking. We have already seen how much the bull Indras (the sun in the cloud) drank. In the third story of the first book of _Afana.s.sieff_, when the good maiden, persecuted by the witch, stretches out a towel, and thus causes a river to arise, in order that the witch may not overtake her, the latter leads forward the bull to drink up the river (a form of the Hindoo Agastyas, who, in the _Mahabharatam_,[349]

absorbs the sea). But the bull, who could dry up the river, refuses to do so on account of a debt of grat.i.tude he owes to the good maiden. The water where this bull, or cow, belonging to the witch, drinks, has the property of transforming into a calf the man who drinks of it;[350] nay, to drink out of the hoof of the bull itself is enough to turn him into a calf.[351] The water which comes out of the hoof of the demoniacal bull is the opposite of the water of Hippokrene, which flows from the hoofs of the divine horse of the h.e.l.lenes, the Pegasos.

In the second book of _Afana.s.sieff_, there is a story which speaks of the exchange of animals in the very same order as in the _aitareya-brahma?am_, _i.e._, the gold for a horse, the horse for a cow, the cow for a goat or sheep. The Russian peasant goes on with his unfortunate exchanges; he barters the sheep for a young pig, the young pig for a goose, the goose for a duck, the duck for a little stick with which he sees some children playing; he takes the stick home to his wife, and she beats him with it. In the twelfth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, an old man also begins to barter the golden stockings and silver garters received in heaven from G.o.d for a horse, the horse for a bull, the bull for a lamb; his last exchange is for a little needle, which he loses. In the second story of the sixth book, the same foolish liberality is attributed to the third brother, the stupid one (who, in another Russian variation of the same story, is the cunning one), who, having learned that in heaven cows are cheap, gives his cow for a fly, his ox for a horse-fly, and mounts up to heaven.

But, generally speaking, the bull and the cow are the beginning of good luck for the heroes of popular tales.

In the fifty-second story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the third brother, the truthful and fortunate fool, has, for his inheritance from his father, one bull alone; he goes to sell it, and pa.s.ses a dry old tree, which rattles; thinking that the tree wishes to buy his bull, he gives it, promising to come back for the money. On his return the bull is gone; he asks the tree for the money, and, receiving no answer, proceeds to cut it down with his hatchet, when from the tree there drops out a treasure which some robbers had hidden in it;[352] the young man then takes it up and carries it home. In a variation of the same story, in the collection of _Erlenwein_,[353] the third son of the miller, before going to sell his bull, or ox, seeing the second son milking the cow, endeavours to milk the bull too; finding that his efforts are in vain, he resolves upon selling an animal which appears to him to be so utterly useless.

In the thirty-fourth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, we meet again the two brothers, one rich and miserly, the other poor; the poor one borrows from a neighbour two bulls, and is conducted by Misery (gory) to a stone, under which he finds a cavity full of gold. The poor man fills his waggon, and, on coming out, tells Misery that there is plenty more inside. Misery turns in to see; the ex-pauper thereupon closes up the entrance with the stone, and returns home.[354]

But the bull and the cow do not only provide the hero with riches, they help him in danger. In the eleventh story of _Erlenwein_,[355]

Ivan Tzarevic, or the Prince John,--the name of the favourite hero of Slavonian popular tradition (he is the third brother, the strongest, the most fortunate, the victorious, the most intelligent, after having been the most foolish)--wishes to flee from the serpent, and, not knowing how, sits down on the trunk of a tree and weeps. The hare comes to carry him away, but is killed by the serpent; the wolf comes, but is killed too. At last the ox or bull comes, and carries him off. Ivan having arrived at his dwelling, the ox has himself divided in two; one part must be placed under the sacred images, which ornament a corner of every room in Russian houses, the other part under the window; Ivan must then look out sharp till two dogs and two bears appear, who will serve him in the chase, and be his strength.

In the twenty-seventh story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, Ivan Tzarevic and the beautiful Helen are pursued by a monstrous bear with iron bristles; they escape upon a bull (the moon), and Ivan, by the bull's advice, rides him with his face turned towards the place whence the pursuing bear is likely to come, in order that he may not take them by surprise. When Ivan sees that the bear is coming, the bull turns round and tears his eyes out; the blind bear follows them still, but the fugitives pa.s.s a river on the bull's back, in which the bear is drowned. Ivan and Helen feel hungry; the bull tells them to cut him to pieces and eat him, but to preserve his bones, and to strike them together; from the bones of the bull, when struck, a dwarf, the height of a finger-nail, but with a beard a cubit long, comes out; he a.s.sists Ivan in finding the milk of a wolf, a she-bear, and a lioness, until he is swallowed by the burning bird, whose eggs he wished to steal.

(The bear is the night; the bull is the sun's steed in the night, the moon; the bull-moon is sacrificed; then comes forth a little sun with long rays, the dwarf with a long beard, an _alter ego_ of Ivan, who ends his life in the burning furnace of the ph?nix, or of the evening aurora.) Ivan is threatened with death when the dwarf dies, but he is at that moment helped by the wild beasts he had tamed and fed, who save him from danger. These were, as we have seen before, given to him after the death of the bull, his deliverer, being born of the bull himself, cut in pieces (the wild animals of the forest of night are born as soon as the evening sun is sacrificed).

The same subject occurs again, with some variations, in the twenty-eighth story, which follows; only instead of John and Helen, we have John and Mary, the sun and the aurora of the Christians. Near the abode of Ivan and Mary a funeral pile arises, on which the bull sacrifices himself. The bull's bones are sown in three furrows; from the first furrow a horse comes forth, from the second a dog, and in the third an apple-tree grows up. Ivan mounts upon the horse, followed by the dog, and hunts wolves' whelps and young bears, which he afterwards tames and uses to kill the serpent, who has shut up his dog in a cavern, and carried off his sister; he forces the entrance of the place where the dog is hidden, by striking the bolt of the door with three small branches of the apple-tree; the bolt breaks into pieces, the door bursts open, and the dog is delivered; dog, wolf, and young bear then worry the serpent, and Ivan liberates the Princess Mary.

In the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_,[356] the young Mary, being persecuted, is miraculously a.s.sisted by a cow. An old woman has three daughters of her own (of whom one has one eye, another two, and the third three), and a step-daughter called Mary; her own three do nothing, and eat much; the step-daughter must work hard and eat little. Her step-mother gives her for one night alone, while she takes the cow to pasture, to spin, make into skeins, weave, and bleach, the weight of five pounds. The maiden goes to the pasture-ground, embraces her variegated cow, leans on her neck and bewails her fate. The cow says to her, "Beautiful girl, enter one of my ears, and come out by the other, and all will be done."--In the Italian variety of this story,[357] the cow spins with her horns for the good maiden, whilst she combs the head of the old woman or the Madonna. I think I have already said that I recognise in this good old woman, fairy, or Madonna, the moon. The moon, like the sun, is considered as in relation with the aurora, and especially the evening aurora, which she accompanies; she is the hostess, the guide, and the protectress of the hero and heroine of evening, lost and pursued in the night; after the evening aurora, the white moon comes out, in the same way as after the morning aurora the sun comes out in effulgence. We have seen that the name of purifier, cleanser, is given to the Vedic aurora; from this expression to the image of comber or cleanser of the head of the old Madonna the transition is easy;[358] from, _i.e._, after, the aurora, the moon comes out s.h.i.+ning and clean, in a beautiful and serene sky; and on this account pearls fall from the Madonna's head; but when, on the other hand, the beautiful maiden, the aurora, does not come, when the step-mother sends to the pasture-ground, near the old woman, one of her own daughters, foul lice fall from the head of the old fairy or Madonna, inasmuch as the moon cannot show herself in her splendour amid the shadows of the cloudy and black night. The Russian story shows us how the beneficent cow of the good maiden, who caresses her and serves her well, and the Madonna or good old woman grateful for the careful combing of her hair of Italian tradition, are one and the same thing. In the thirty-fifth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, on the contrary, where the cow appears in a demoniacal aspect, whom the hero Ivan, condemned from a prince to become a cowherd, must kiss under her tail, which she lifts with this intent, we meet with an old witch who sucks the white b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the beautiful girl, while the latter is obliged to hunt the vermin in her head; in the witch, as well as in the cow who insolently lifts up her tail, we can recognise the gloomy night, an explanation which is justified by the fact that the hero-shepherd Katoma, the adorned one, the agile-footed, ends by flaying the shameless cow (the morning sun, shepherd of the luminous cows, takes off the skin of the dark-coloured cow of the gloomy night). But, to return to the fifty-fourth story.--When the stepmother sees that the girl has done all the work a.s.signed her, she begins to suspect that there is some one who helps her, and so sends next night her first daughter, who has but one eye, to watch the daughter-in-law, who goes to the pasture-ground. The young Mary then says to her, "Eye, sleep;" and immediately her step-sister falls asleep, thus allowing the cow to a.s.sist her without any one perceiving it. The second night, the second daughter, who has two eyes, is sent; Mary says twice to her, "Eye, sleep," and obtains, without being seen, the same favours from the cow. The third night, the third sister, who has three eyes, is sent; Mary does not remember the third eye, and only says twice, "Eye, sleep:" and so the third sister sees with her remaining eye[359] what the cow does with Mary, and in the morning tells everything to her mother, who gives orders that the cow be killed. Mary warns the cow; and the cow recommends her to eat none of her flesh, to keep the bones, sow them in the garden, and water them. The maiden does so; every day, however hungry she may be, she eats none of the meat, only collects the bones together. From the bones sown in the garden arises a marvellous apple-tree, with leaves of gold, and branches of silver, which p.r.i.c.k and wound the three daughters of the stepmother, whilst, on the other hand, they offer apples to the beautiful maiden, in order that she may present one to the young and rich lord who is to make her his wife. In the following story, the fifty-fifth, which is a variation of the preceding one, the girl is named Mary, and her husband Ivan Tzarevic; when she goes to the pasture, and when she returns, she is accustomed to make obeisance to the right foot of the cow. When the cow, being killed, revives again in the shape of a tree, it swarms with birds, which sing songs for kings and peasants alike, and make the sweet fruits fall upon Mary's plate.

The apples that cause horns to grow, and those which beautify and make young, mentioned in the thirty-sixth story of the fifth book, and again in the last book of the collection of _Afana.s.sieff_, as well as in other European variations of the same subject, are connected, in my opinion, with the myth of the evening sky, and of the lunar night, in the shape of an apple-tree. In the fifteenth story of the collection of _Erlenwein_, the third brother, the usual Ivan, comes to an apple-tree which has red apples, and eats four of them, upon which four horns grow on his head, to such a height that he cannot enter the forest; he goes to an apple-tree that bears white fruit, eats four apples, and the four horns disappear. (The solar hero at evening approaches the tree with the red apples, the evening aurora, and immediately becomes deformed; horns grow on his head; he loses himself in the shades of night; in the moonlight and the alba, he approaches the tree with the white apples, loses his horns, and becomes young and beautiful again.)

In the fifty-seventh story of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff's_ collection, Ivan Tzarevic is presented with the apples which restore youth to him who eats them, by the sister of the sun, to whose abode he is lifted in the following manner: Ivan (the sun) has for his sister (no doubt half-sister) a serpent-witch (night), who has already devoured his father and mother (the sun and the aurora of evening, which create the night, and are destroyed by it); the witch persecutes her little brother Ivan, and endeavours to eat him; he flees, and she overtakes him in the vicinity of the dwelling of the sister of the sun (the aurora, the true sister of Ivan). The witch makes a proposal to Ivan, that they be weighed together in the scales. Ivan accepts this proposal, upon which the one enters the one scale, and the other the other; no sooner does the witch put her foot on the scale than, as she weighs so much more than Ivan, he is lifted up to heaven, the dwelling of the sister of the sun, where he is welcomed and admitted. (A beautiful myth, of which the meaning is evident. Ivan is the sun, the aurora is his sister; at morning, near the abode of the aurora, that is, in the east, the shades of night go underground, and the sun arises to the heavens; this is the mythical pair of scales. Thus, in the Christian belief, St Michael weighs human souls: those who weigh much sink down into h.e.l.l, and those who are light arise to the heavenly paradise.)

By means of the sister of the sun, Ivan saves himself from the witch.

In another story in _Afana.s.sieff_,[360] by means of the sister of the hero Nikanore, the same Ivan, running after the cows, causes them to have golden horns and tails, with sides formed of stars; and afterwards, with the a.s.sistance of the hero Nikanore in person (of the sun, that is, of himself), he kills the serpent.

We have already seen the cloudy and the gloomy sky represented in the Vedic poems, now as a black cow, now as a stable which encloses the bulls and cows. The black bull or cow of night is considered to be demoniacal. In a story given in _Afana.s.sieff_,[361] we find the devil in the shape of a bull, which bellows, and throws up the earth with its horns, arresting a nuptial procession. From a bull he turns into a bear, then a hare, and then a crow, to put obstacles in the way of the marriage, until, having presented himself in the form of a devil, a soldier-hero blinds him while he is drinking. A variation of this soldier is the third son of the peasant,[362] who is so strong that with a snap of his fingers he makes the bull and the bear fall dead, and then by a single pinch strips off their skins. The same hero hires himself to a merchant, whom he engages to serve for two years, on condition of receiving as his reward, at the end of them, the permission to give him a snap with the fingers and a pinch. The merchant thinks he is getting the man's service for nothing, but pays for it with his life. The merchant seldom plays a good part in popular stories. He and the miser are synonymous,--the miser is the monster which keeps treasures hidden; and on this account, as we have already seen in the Vedic hymns themselves, the enemies of the G.o.ds, the monsters that ravish and conceal the treasures, are represented as pa?ayas or merchants, cheats, robbers, or misers. The currency of this epithet as a term of infamy must have been owing in part to the dislike with which the priestly sacrificers of the last Vedic period regarded the merchants, in whom they saw only a pack of misers, because, on account of their wandering life, they had neither cows nor bulls to give them for sacrifice, but carried with them all their fortune, and did not require the fertilising rain of the G.o.d Indras to multiply their gold and their silver.

The celestial bull comes out of the night or the nocturnal stables either, as we have seen, to help the hero, to be sacrificed, to flee from persecution, or because he has been stolen by a skilful thief.

In one of Kriloff's fables, G.o.d sends a terrible plague among the animals, of which they perish in great numbers. They are so terrified by it that they forsake their habits, and begin to wander aimlessly hither and thither. The wolf no longer eats the sheep; the fox leaves the hens unmolested; the turtle-doves no longer make love to each other. Then the lion holds a council of the animals, and exhorts them all to confess their faults. The cunning fox essays to quiet the lion-judge by a.s.suring him that though he stole some sheep, he did not thereby commit a fault; and so he justifies his own ravages; as also do the bear, the tiger, the wolf, and all the most wicked of the animals. Then the simple bull comes forward, and, in his turn, confesses that he stole a little hay from the priest. This crime appears so heinous that the council of animals sentences the bull to be offered in sacrifice.[363]

Sometimes, on the contrary, the bull, either because he cannot bear the bad treatment that he receives from his masters, or in order to avoid the danger of being killed or sold by the stupid son, who is in need of money that he may marry a wife, a danger of which he has a presentiment, abandons the stable with other animals, constructs a hut or isba and shuts himself up in it.[364] He has with him the lamb, the goose, the c.o.c.k, or else some other tame animals. The fox pa.s.ses by, hears the crowing of the c.o.c.k, and goes to call his friends the bear and the wolf to help him. The bear opens the door, the fox enters, and the bull by goring him with his horns, the lamb by b.u.t.ting against his sides, and the c.o.c.k by pecking his eyes out, put an end to the unwelcome intruder. The wolf, who goes in, curious to see what is going on, has the same fate, and the bear, who comes last, only succeeds with great difficulty, and after having been severely maltreated, in effecting his escape. In another variation of the same story, the bear dies of fear, and the stupid son takes his skin, sells it and makes money; then, the danger of being sold having pa.s.sed by, the bull and his company return home. The battle between the tame and the savage animals, won by the former, is an expression in zoological form of the victory of the heroes (the sun and the moon) over the monsters of darkness.

The story of the hero-thief is generally connected with the carrying off of his master's horse; but not unfrequently the hero, like the monster, becomes a robber of cows and oxen.

The thief Ivan[365] is required to steal from his master a black bull or ox tied to the plough; if he succeeds, he is to have a hundred roubles for his reward; but if he does not, he is to receive instead a hundred bastinadoes. In order to steal it, Ivan adopts the following device: he takes a c.o.c.k, plucks it, and puts it alive under a clod of earth. The ploughmen come with the oxen; while they are ploughing, the c.o.c.k starts up; they leave the plough to run after it, upon which Ivan, who was hidden behind a bush, comes out. He cuts off one ox's tail and puts it in another ox's mouth, and then leads away the black ox. The ploughmen, not having been able to overtake the c.o.c.k, come back, and when they see only two animals instead of three, conclude that one ox has eaten the black ox and is beginning to eat the tail of the other, the variegated ox. In the twenty-first story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the boy-dwarf steals an ox from the priest and eats its tripe.[366]

From the cow the hero is born; under a putrid cow thrown into a ditch lies Ivan Tzarevic; a bird takes the water off and Ivan Tzarevic comes forth.[367] In another story of _Afana.s.sieff_, the fox-heroine, companion of the wolf, whilst the wolf is absent, eats the intestines of the calf, their common property (which they had received from cowherds in exchange for a certain cake contaminated by their excrement, the usual excrement which is the beginning of riches); she then fills the calf or cow with straw and sparrows, and departs. The wolf returns, is astonished that the calf should have eaten so much straw that it comes out, and draws out the straw. The birds fly away, the calf falls, and the wolf flees away terrified.[368] With these two myths are connected two more, that of the son of the cow and that of the ascent into heaven by means of the cow's hide.

The king has no sons; he catches a pike, which the cook washes, giving thereafter the dirty water to the cow to drink; the fish they give to the black girl to carry to the queen; the black girl eats a piece of it on the way, and the queen eats what remains. At the expiration of nine months, the cow, the maid, and the queen, give each birth to a son. The three sons resemble each other completely; but the son of the cow, the hero-tempest, is the strongest of the three brothers, and accomplishes the most difficult enterprises. In another variation of the same story, in _Afana.s.sieff_,[369] instead of the cow we have the b.i.t.c.h giving birth to the strongest of the three brothers.[370] In the nineteenth story of _Erlenwein_, instead of the cow and the b.i.t.c.h, we have the mare; the strongest brother is here the son of the black girl, Burghraver or the hero-tempest (Burya-Bagatir). In the third story of _Erlenwein_, Ivan Tzarevic appears as the son of the black girl. As in numerous other Russian stories, Ivan Tzarevic, usually the third brother, appears not only (as) the most skilful, but the strongest of the brothers, we are driven to recognise in the three brothers, the son of the black girl, the son of the cow, and the queen's son, who alternately accomplish the same heroic undertakings, the same solar personage, whose mother, Night, is represented now as a queen, now as a cow (we have just seen Ivan Tzarevic come out of the putrid cow), now as a black slave (the negro washerwoman, the Saracen woman of Italian stories [Holda]; the cleaned fish which is carried by the black girl may perhaps be a link connecting the imagery of Russian tradition with that of Italian legend).

In the second story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the third brother, the cunning one, by means of the hides of his cows and oxen converted into thongs, ascends into heaven; thus, in a variation of the same story, the third brother thinks to let himself down by the cow's hide, cut into pieces and made into thongs, being fastened to the confines of heaven; but he perceives on the way that the thong is not long enough. Some peasants are thres.h.i.+ng corn, and the chaff rises into the air; he tries to make a rope with this chaff, but the rope breaks and he falls to the ground. This successful ascent into heaven, followed by an unlucky descent, is often referred to, with curious details, in Russian popular legend; to which a play of words in the language must have not a little contributed. It is as follows, "He who mounts does not descend,"[371] _i.e._, when one is doing one thing he cannot be doing the contrary. This elementary truth was afterwards altered by changing the tenses. "He who has been able to ascend will not be able to come down again;" which is only partly true, and means that while in dreams we require only a thin thread to mount up high, when we wish to come down from the world of dreams to that of reality, the fall is heavy; we come down with leaden wings, with that difficulty in breathing which oppresses us in dreams when we seem to fall from a height with painful slowness. And as at the end of the dream, after the painful fall from the sky, we awaken alive, so the story does not say of the hero who fell from heaven that he is dead, only that his dreams are dead. He is only unlucky when, the second time, he attempts the descent with a greater weight.

While reasonings such as these may have helped to diffuse the myths, I believe that the myths, at their formation, pleased more as images of nature than of reason, and as the images of mythology are almost all celestial, so in the third brother, or old man of other varieties of the story, who mounts up to heaven and comes down again by means of the cow's hide, I always recognise the sun. The old man who ascends into heaven, after the cow is dead, does so also by means of a vegetable of funereal omen which grows up in a marvellous manner.

An old man and an old woman have one daughter; she eats some beans and lets one fall to the ground; a plant (the moon) grows up till it reaches the sky. The old man mounts up and then comes back again. He tries to take his wife up in a sack, but unable to bear the weight, he lets her fall to the ground, when she dies.[372]

A cabbage grows up near an old man's dwelling, till in like manner it rises up to the sky. The old man climbs up, makes a hole in the sky, and eats and drinks to satiety. He then returns and narrates everything to his wife. She wishes to go up too; when they are half way, the old man lets the sack drop, the old woman dies, and her husband prepares her funeral, calling in the fox[373] as a mourner.

Other variations of the same story offer us, instead of the cow's hide, the cabbage, and the beanstalk, the pea-plant, and even the oak-tree, which grows up to heaven.[374]

From the vegetable or funereal plant,--a symbol, as we have already remarked, at once of abundance and resurrection,--by which the hero ascends to heaven, where he finds riches and abundance of food, the transition was very natural to the pea which turns round, of which the hero Turn-little-Pea (the son of the king of the peas) is born.

In the second story of the third book of _Afana.s.sieff_,[375]

Turn-little-Pea appears as the third of the brothers, as the youngest brother, who delivers his sister and his two brothers from the monster. But the ungrateful brothers (perhaps covetous of the maiden, here called a sister, but, who is virtually the same, the bride delivered and disputed for by the three brothers in numerous Indo-European legends), tie him to an oak-tree and go home alone.

Turn-little-Pea unroots the whole oak and goes off. He afterwards kills three more monster-serpents, and the she-serpents their wives.

In the thirtieth story of the second book of _Afana.s.sieff_, this enterprise against the serpents, male and female, is attributed to the usual Ivan. He goes with his brothers against the serpent with twelve heads, and with his iron stick alone kills nine of them, and the three remaining ones by the help of his two brothers. Then the she-serpent and her three daughters persecute the three brothers, and Ivan in particular. She causes them to find a beautiful cus.h.i.+on upon the ground; Ivan, who is suspicious of some trick, first beats the cus.h.i.+on, upon which blood gushes out of it (in the story of _Turn-little-Pea_, the young hero averts the danger by making the sign of the cross with his sword, when blood comes out). The serpent then tempts them by an apple-tree with gold and silver apples. The brothers wish to pluck some; Ivan, however, first strikes the tree, and blood flows from it. They then come to a beautiful fountain, where the brothers would like to drink; Ivan strikes the fountain, and again blood comes from it. The cus.h.i.+on, the apple-tree, and the fountain were the three daughters of the serpent. Then the serpent, having failed to deceive them, rushes upon Ivan; the latter escapes with his brothers into a forge shut by twelve iron gates; the serpent licks the doors with her tongue to force a pa.s.sage, and her tongue is caught with red-hot pincers.

In the fourth story of _Erlenwein_, the three brothers occur again with interesting mythical names. A woman bears three sons; one at evening, who is on this account called Vecernik, or the evening one; the second at midnight, whence he is named Polunocnik, or the midnight one; the third at the aurora, who is named Svetazor, or the clearly-seeing. The three brothers become adults in a few hours. The most valiant of the three is Svetazor, the last one. To prove his strength, he goes to the blacksmith and orders an iron club that weighs twelve puds (480 pounds); he throws it into the air and catches it on the palm of his hand, the club breaks. He orders one of twenty puds (800 pounds), throws it up, catches it on his knee, and it breaks. Finally he orders one of thirty puds (1200 pounds), throws it up, and catches it on his forehead; it bends but does not break. Svetazor has it straightened and takes it with him, as he goes with his two brothers to deliver the three daughters of the Tzar, carried off by three magicians into the three castles of copper, silver, and gold. Svetazor, after having drunk the water of strength, and received from the first princess an egg of copper, from the second one of silver, and from the third a golden one, delivers the three princesses and brings them out. The two brothers, seeing that the third princess is more beautiful than the others, think that the youngest brother is reserving her for himself, and throw him into the water. Svetazor wanders about the subterranean world, and delivers the daughter of another Tzar by killing a monster and burying him under a rock. A soldier boasts before the Tzar of having accomplished this heroic act. Svetazor invites the soldier to prove his strength, and so the truth of his boast, by lifting the rock up. He does not succeed, and Svetazor wins the trial of strength, upon which the soldier is executed by order of the Tzar. After this, Svetazor, for having once spared the life of a crow, is carried by it into the world of the living, on condition that he gives it something to eat by the way. Svetazor has at length to feed the crow with his own flesh, yet is in the end set down again safe and sound, with all his flesh, in the world above, where, with the eggs of copper, silver, and gold, he causes the castles formed of these metals to arise, in which are found the ring, the slipper, and the robe demanded from their bridegrooms by the three princesses, who hoped by this expedient to see again their lost Svetazor. Then Svetazor begins to sweep out the terrace of the golden castle. The third princess expresses her intention to take him for her husband. The nuptials are celebrated, Svetazor pardoning his two elder brothers and giving them the two elder sisters of his bride. (The princess of the copper is the evening aurora, the princess of the silver is the silvery moon, and that of the gold is the morning aurora, to whom Svetazor, the clearly-seeing, the illumined, the sun, is married.)

In the sixth story of the first book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the same undertaking is accomplished by the third brother, Ivan. The monster which carries off the three sisters is an aquatic one, an otter.

Abandoned by his brothers in the nether world, Ivan is overtaken by a great tempest; he takes pity upon some young birds that are bathing, and saves them under his dress, upon which the grateful mother of the birds brings him back to the upper world. In the fifteenth story of _Erlenwein_, the third brother is the cunning one, who, by a stratagem, and by means of his purse, which is self-replenis.h.i.+ng, steals from his two brothers the snuff-box out of which issue as many armies as are wished for, and the cloth which makes the wearer invisible (both figures to represent the cloud from which come forth riches, solar rays, thunderbolts, and weapons, and which hides the hero, that is, renders him invisible). In the fifty-fourth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, Ivan of the dog, the hero sacrificed by his brothers, is the strong one, he who delivers the three princesses, who possesses the three rings, and gives them to the goldsmith from whom they were ordered, and who is not able to make them, by which means he is recognised.

Ivan Tzarevic, inasmuch as he was born of a cow, as we have also seen above, was necessarily represented as a bull; the bull displays part of his strength by drinking; Ivan Tzarevic drinks, at a gulp, whole barrels of wine of marvellous strength. In this capacity he resembles Indras, the great drinker of somas, and the drinker Bhimas, the second brother of the Pa??avas.

The third brother is now Prince Ivan (Ivan Tzarevic, Ivan Karolievic, Ivan Kralievic), now the stupid Ivan (Ivan durak), Ivan the little fool (Ivan Duraciok). But, as I have already remarked, the fool generally makes his fortune, either because the kingdom of heaven is for the poor in spirit, or because the stupidity of Ivan is feigned, or else because the fool becomes wise. In a story given in _Afana.s.sieff_,[376] the fool is also lazy, and takes the name of Emilius.

Emilius is sent with a barrel to draw water; he only goes on account of the promise made him by his sister, that he will receive as a reward a pair of red boots.--This desire of the boy-hero, and of the girl-heroine, is spoken of in many popular songs, and among others, in a Piedmontese one, as yet unpublished. In the seventeenth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_,[377] the sister kills her brother, Little John, to possess herself of his red strawberries (as in the Esthonian tale), and his red little shoes. Upon his grave a fine cane grows; a shepherd makes a flute of it, and the flute, pressed to the lips, begins to emit the following lamentation:--

"Gently, gently, little shepherd, play; Do not wound my heart!

My little sister, the traitress, For the red little strawberries, for the red little shoes!"

When the flute is pressed to the sister's lips, instead of the word "little shepherd," it says, "Little sister, thou hast betrayed me,"[378] and her crime is thus discovered. These little red shoes are simply a variation of the slippers which are lost by the fugitive aurora, and found again by the sun, and which both wish to wear. (I refer to this myth the origin of the nuptial custom in Europe of maidens, towards the new year, throwing the slipper to know whether, during the next year, they will be married, and who is to be their husband.)[379] The slipper lost by the maiden, Little Mary (Masha, the Marion of Piedmontese and French legends), and found by the prince, also occurs in the Russian tales. In the thirtieth of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, Little Mary's elder sister begins by trying on the slipper; but it is too small; the foot will not go in. Seeing this, Little Mary's step-mother advises her daughter to cut off her great toe, which would not enter; then the foot goes in, and the messengers of the prince lead the eldest sister away; but two doves fly after them and cry out, "Blood on her foot, blood on her foot." The deceit is discovered, and the eldest sister sent back; the prince causes his true and predestined bride, Little Mary, to be carried off. (This is the usual exchange of wives, upon which I have remarked in my "Essay on the Comparative History of Nuptial Usages," and of which the legend of Queen Berta is one of the most popular examples. The Russian Little Mary, like Cinderella, is at first of ugly aspect, and then beautiful. In the Russian story, the maiden becomes beautiful by mounting upon the stove. Sita comes forth, beautiful in her innocence, pa.s.sing through the fire; the morning aurora only seems beautiful when it pa.s.ses through the flames of the Eastern sky. The stove brings us back to the interrupted story of the foolish and lazy Emilius (or Ivan).--On account, therefore, of the promise made to him of the red boots, he goes to the fountain with the barrel to draw water. In the fountain he catches a pike, who beseeches him to set him at liberty, and promises in return to make him fortunate. Being lazy, the greatest favour that he wishes for at this moment is that he may be helped to carry the barrel; the grateful pike performs the miracle of the barrel full of water which walks of its own accord. (I have already endeavoured to explain this myth: the cloud is represented as a barrel in the Vedic hymns; it moves on of its own accord; the barrel does the same; the hero, as long as he is shut up in the cloud, remains foolish; the barrel of the fool walks of itself.) Emilius is then sent to cut wood; by favour of the grateful pike, it is enough for him to send his hatchet, which cuts the wood of itself; the wood piles itself upon the waggon, and the waggon, without being drawn by any one, advances, pa.s.sing or crus.h.i.+ng whatever it meets; they endeavour to arrest its progress, when the trunk of an oak-tree detaches itself from the waggon, and, like a stick, beating on every side, sweeps the road (these are all curious variations of the walking forest or cloud). The Tzar then sends to invite him to court, and knowing his weak penchant for things of a red colour, he promises him a red robe, a red hat, and red boots. When the Tzar's envoys arrive, Emilius, like his _alter ego_ Ivan Durak (Ivan the fool), is warming himself at the stove; grudging all trouble, he obtains from the pike the favour of being carried by the stove itself to the Tzar at court. The Tzar's daughter falls in love with him; the Tzar shuts the young couple up in a cask (the usual cloud-barrel, which occurs in the form of a little chest in other stories, a variation of the wooden dress), and has them thrown into the sea. Emilius, who was drunk in the cask, sleeps; the princess wakens him, and beseeches him to save her; by means of the pike, the cask comes to a beautiful island, where it breaks open; Emilius becomes handsome, rich, and happy in a beautiful palace with the young princess. (The aurora and the sun of evening are thrown together into the ocean of night, until they land on the happy isle of the east, where they reappear again together in all their splendour.) One of the most popular stupidities of the fool is that of letting the wine contained in the barrel flow out upon the ground, when he is left alone at home; in the Russian story, too, Ivan the fool leaves the beer that is fermenting in the barrel open (Indras with his lightning makes a hole in the cloud-barrel, and the rain comes out).[380]

The fool Ivan takes his good luck from the living, but he also does so from the dead. On account of having watched three nights by the tomb of his father, his luck begins,[381] the shade of his father having blessed him; but, as the dead bring good luck (a belief which, at any rate, has always been entertained by the heirs of rich men deceased), the third brother speculates on the body of his own mother. We do not know whether he does so out of pure simplicity, or with some hidden and far-seeing design, presumable from the ease with which he exchanges the character of a fool for that of a cunning schemer (the first Brutus of popular tradition). In the seventeenth story of _Erlenwein_, after he has carried a treasure home, by selling his ox to the tree, and then cutting down the tree, which contains money, he always guards his money, and sleeps upon it. His brothers know this, and resolve to go and kill him. But that very night, the third, the foolish brother, leaves his mother in charge of the treasure; the brothers come and kill his mother by mistake, instead of him. He turns up, and threatens to give them up to justice; they bribe him with a hundred roubles to keep silence. Then the third brother takes his mother's body and carries it into the middle of the road, in order that a merchant's waggon may crush it; when this happens, he accuses the merchant of murder, until the latter gives him a hundred more roubles to say nothing about it. He then comes to a village by night with his mother's corpse; he places it against a peasant's door, and knocks at the window; the peasant opens the door, the body falls, and the peasant treads upon it, upon which the so-called stupid son cries out that he has killed his mother, and receives another hundred roubles, on promise of silence. Then the two elder brothers, finding that it is possible to speculate upon corpses, and make one's fortune, kill their wives, and go to town with their bodies; they are immediately arrested and put into prison.

The law of atavism evolves itself in the generation of the heroes of mythical legends, no less than in that of simple mortals upon earth.

Of a stupid father is born a wise son, and then the wise son in turn has a foolish one. I do not as yet know how to explain this singular fact of natural history; its appearance in mythology, however, is not difficult to understand. To the luminous day succeeds the gloomy night, and then again to the dark night the luminous day; to summer succeeds winter, and to winter summer; to white black, and to black white; to heat cold, and to cold heat.

On this account, in legends, when the mother is intelligent, the son, generally speaking, is silly; whereas, when the mother is silly,[382]

the son is usually intelligent.

In the fifth story of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, a soldier enters the house of a woman, while her son is travelling, and induces her to believe that he has just returned from h.e.l.l, where he had seen her son employed in taking the storks to pasture, and greatly in want of money; the soldier says that he is about to return to h.e.l.l, and will be happy to take with him whatever the woman wishes to send to her son. The credulous woman gives him some money, directing him to take it immediately to h.e.l.l, and give it to her poor child. The soldier disappears, and shortly afterwards the woman's son returns home; his mother is greatly astonished at his appearance, and tells him how she has been deceived; he gets angry and leaves the house again, swearing never to return till he finds some one more foolish than his mother. He is a skilful thief; he steals from a lady, whilst her husband is absent, a hog with its little pigs, and puts them in safe concealment; the husband returns, hears what has taken place, and follows the thief with a carriage and horses. The robber hears him coming; squats down on the ground, takes off his hat, and pretends to be covering with it a bird or a falcon, which wishes to escape. The husband comes and asks him if he has seen the robber; the latter answers that he has seen him, but that he is a long way off, and that the roads by which he can be overtaken are many and winding. The husband, who, perhaps, does not know the proverb which says, "Who wishes, let him go; who wishes not, let him send," asks the robber to overtake the fugitive; the thief demurs, saying that he has under his hat a falcon, which cost his master three hundred roubles, and that it may escape. The gentleman promises to take care of it, and if the falcon escapes, to pay the three hundred roubles.