In the third Esthonian story, a woman, called mother-of-gold, bears, by the favour of a dwarf, three dwarf-sons at the same time, who become three heroes. The first is the seer (the wise brother), the second has a ready arm (the strong brother), the third runs swiftly in the race (a quality distinctive of the third brother, Arǵunas, in the Mahâbhâratam, and which is applicable to the victorious sun of morning, who wins the race, together with the aurora).

A variation of the story relating to the youngest sister and the dwarf is that of the girl seven years old, the wise girl (the aurora), in the fourth Esthonian tale, who, being persecuted by her step-mother, retires into the forest (the night). While there, it seems to her that she is in heaven, where, in a house of crystal and pearls, she is received by a well-dressed woman of gold (the fair-haired moon). The girl asks the golden woman to be allowed to take care of the cattle, like the cowmaid aurora. In the history of Ardshi Bordshi we have seen the wise puppet. This form of the wise girl, the dressed girl of wood, occurs again in the Esthonian story; in which she is made of wood from the forest, of three anchovies, of bread, of a black serpent, and of the blood of the girl herself, to whom the image has a great likeness, and which may be beaten by the old step-mother without being hurt. From the forest-tree, wood, or wooden box of the night, with the juice of the black serpent of night and the blood of the girl aurora of evening, comes forth the maiden aurora of morning, the wise, the speaking puppet, the puppet who guesses the riddles. The girl who comes out of wood is represented as a wooden puppet; more frequently the puppet is the moon, the wise fairy who comes out of the forest. In the same story we have the magic rod which produces a cock upon the mountain, beside which a tablecloth spreads itself out, while the chairs range themselves in their places, and the dishes are filled of their own accord. The story ends with the usual marriage between the beautiful maiden, and a king's son returning from the chase (or the son who comes out of the forest of night, viewed as infested by ferocious animals).

In the sixth Esthonian tale, the poor girl finds a woman in a white robe (the moon), adorned with gold, upon a rock near a fountain, who announces her approaching marriage with a youth as poor as herself; but the good fairy godmother—for in the legends the godmother is represented as good, as the stepmother is wicked—promises to make them both rich and happy. She calls herself the lady of the waters, secret wife of the wind, and she judges the criminals who present themselves at her tribunal (Proserpina or Persephonê).

In the seventh tale, a boy nine years of age, the third son of two poor people, goes out to be a cowherd; his master treats him well, but his mistress gives him more floggings than bread. One day the young cowherd is unfortunate enough to lose a cow; he searches for it all through the forest, but in vain. He re-enters the house with the cattle, after the sun has set some time. The observant eye of his mistress perceives at once that there is a cow missing; she beats the boy without pity, and sends him out to look for it, threatening to kill him if he returns without it. He wanders through the forest; but when the sun arises from out the bosom of the dawn, he resolves to stay out of the house, and not to return to his persecutor (the young morning sun flees from the old and perverse night). In the evening, the boy finds an old dwarf, who is his host during the night (the moon), and who says to him, "When the sun rises to-morrow, carefully observe the spot in which he rises. Thou must go in that direction, so that every morning thou may'st have the sun before thee, and every evening the sun behind thee. Thus thy strength will increase more and more every day." How can one indicate better the apparent course of the solar hero, or of the sun in the night? The hero, in order to go towards the morning sun, must necessarily have the sun of evening behind him. The old dwarf also gives him a sack and a little barrel, in which he will always find the food and drink he requires; but he recommends him never to eat or drink more than is necessary, that he may have to give to a hungry bird or a thirsty wild beast. He also leaves him a rolled-up leaf of burdock, upon which, by rolling it out, he will always be able to cross water (a new form of the cup). We know how the Hindoos represented their god as floating upon a lotus-leaf in the midst of the waters, and how Padmaǵas (born of the lotus-flower, or the rose of the waters, which shuts during the night) was one of the names of Brâhman; here we have the god or hero shutting himself up in the flower, from which he afterwards comes out. In the chapters on the Serpent and the Frog we shall again see how the god sometimes shuts himself up in a monstrous form in this flower, the rose, on account of a curse from which he is to be freed by a beautiful maiden. We have seen how the Esthonian girl, who was by the curse of the old woman thrown into the water, was transformed into a water-rose or lotus-flower, and delivered by the young prince. The Esthonian boy finds himself before a small lake; he throws the leaf in, and it becomes a magical boat, which carries him over. Meanwhile he has become strong. Upon the mountain he sees a serpent, a tortoise, and an eagle, all three of enormous dimensions, approaching to attack him, with a man upon a black horse, which has wings on its feet, in the rear of them. He kills the serpent and the tortoise, but the eagle flies away. The man with the black horse takes the boy into his house, and appoints him to look after the dogs, that they may not get loose from their chains, a danger against which the man provides by making twelve colossal oxen fetch rocks upon rocks, to repair the damage done by the dogs. The rocks, touched by a magical rod, arrange themselves upon the car drawn by the oxen. At last, by the advice of the eagle, he steals his master's horse, and departs to sojourn among mankind, taking a wife with him.

In the eighth Esthonian story too, the third brother is the cunning one. His two elder brothers, after the death of their father, despoil him of his share of the inheritance, and he is reduced to wander alone and impoverished about the world in quest of good fortune. He falls in with a woman who complains to him that her husband regularly beats her when she is unable to procure for him the things he wants, which he asks for in the form of a riddle. The third brother solves the enigma for the woman (the moon), who, in gratitude, gives him provisions for his travels. He then comes to a palace, where the king is engaged in celebrating a summer festival, and he undertakes to provide and prepare the feast. A magician presents himself at the festival in the shape of an old man, and asks to taste the food. The young man suspects him, but, seeing a ring upon his finger, he consents to allow him if he gives him a pledge. The magician vows that he has nothing to give. The youth asks for his ring, and the old man in his gluttony at once gives it up; upon which the youth, who, along with the ring, has taken all the magician's strength away, first binds and derides him, and then has him beaten by seven strong men. The old man breaks the ropes and disappears; however, the young man, having the ring in his hands, possesses the means of tracking his footsteps and making him his. (This is the usual disc, lasso, or bridle which is now in the hands of the hero, now in those of the monster.) The youth follows the magician underground. The latter, it appears, is served by three maidens, who, when they perceive that the sorcerer has lost his ring, and that they have a young man for companion, enjoy themselves with him while the magician is asleep. The youth learns from them that the old wizard also possesses a sword which can destroy armies, and a magical rod which can create a bridge to span the sea; these, therefore, he steals, and departs, returning by a wonderful bridge thrown over the sea to the palace whence he had started. It seems to him as if his journey had lasted only two nights, instead of which a year has passed.[344] He finds on his arrival his two brothers in the king's service, one as coachman and the other as a valet, both enriched because they have received the pay due to their younger brother for having prepared the great feast. The young man now engages himself in another capacity, in a species of service especially dear to the young hero, next to those of stable-boy and cowherd; that is to say, he becomes under-cook of the king. (In the Vîrâṭa-Parvam of the Mahâbhâratam, it is the second of the brothers who disguises himself as a cook, in order to prepare good sauces and substantial food for the king whose guest he is; the elder brother is disguised as a Brâhmanas, a wise adviser; the third brother, Arǵunas, the agile, the swift one, pretends to be a eunuch, is given in exchange for a woman, and teaches dancing, music, and singing in the gynecium. Of the two sons of the Açvinâu, one becomes a groom, the other a cowherd.) His brothers continue to dislike him, and because he boasts to them that he had seen in hell golden birds, they induce the king to send him to hell in order to procure them. He accomplishes this undertaking with great difficulty, and brings the birds in a sack made of spiders' webs, which is so strong that the birds enclosed in it cannot extricate themselves. In the same sack, during another expedition, the young man brings from hell many precious objects of gold and silver. In compensation, he only asks of the king to send the princess, his daughter, to listen for one evening to the conversation of his two brothers the coachman and the valet. Both boast of having enjoyed to satiety the favours of the princess. The latter, indignant and full of shame, runs to tell the king everything, upon which he arraigns them before him and has them judged. The third brother is named Counsellor; with his enchanted sword he destroys an entire army of enemies, and obtains in reward for his services and his valour the king's daughter to wife.

The ninth Esthonian story presents to us the son of the thunder, who sells his soul to the devil, on condition that the latter serves him for seven years. The time agreed upon is nearly come to an end, and the son of the thunder wishes to escape from him, and profits by an opportunity which has chanced. The devil sees a black cloud, which is a sign of an approaching tempest; he is afraid, hides himself under a stone, and asks the son of the thunder to keep him company. The latter consents; but seeing that the devil is afraid, at each thunderclap he presses his ears and eyes in such a manner as to make him perspire and shiver all over. The devil, believing this to be the effect of the thunder, promises the son of the thunder that he will not only leave him his soul, but give him three other souls, if he will deliver him from the evils which he suffers on account of the thunder, by taking from the thundering god, the father of the clouds, his weapon (which is also a musical instrument). This weapon, having been ravished from the god, is taken by the devil into hell, into a chamber of iron, shut up within seven castles. A great drought coming upon the earth, the son of the thunder repents of having rendered such a service to the devil; he finds means, however, of informing the thunder-god where his weapon is concealed. The thunder-god then becomes a child, and engages himself in the service of a fisherman, near a lake which the devil is accustomed to visit to steal the fishes. He surprises him in the act of robbery, and by the help of a magician takes him prisoner, and has him beaten without pity, until he promises to pay a heavy ransom in money to be let free, the fisherman and his child to accompany him to hell itself to receive the sum of money. Arrived in hell, the devil entertains them like a gentleman. The child tells the fisherman to ask the devil to show them the musical instrument which he keeps enclosed in the iron room. The devil kindly consents, but cannot draw from the instrument anything more musical than the mewing of a cat or the grunting of a pig. The fisherman then laughs at the devil, and says that his boy can play better. The devil does not believe it, and laughingly gives the instrument, which he calls bagpipes, to the boy. The latter blows into them and makes such a noise that all hell resounds with it, and the devils fall to the earth as if dead. The child then becomes the god of thunder again, and returns to heaven, where by the noise of his instrument he opens the celestial reservoirs and lets out the beneficent rain. The description of the tempest which occurs in many Vedic hymns is the germ of this interesting myth. The drum or kettledrum thunder is a familiar image in Hindoo poetry, and the Gandharvâs, the musician-warriors of the Hindoo Olympus, have no other instrument than the thunder. The conch of the warrior Pâṇḍavâs in the Mahâbhâratam, and the famous horn of Orlando (which comes from the golden horn of Odin), are epical reminiscences of thunder. Orpheus, who in hell plays on his lyre and tames the animals, is a more lucid and more perfect form of this Esthonian thunder-god who plays the bagpipes in hell. It is also remarkable how, in harmony with the pastoral bagpipes, in the tenth Esthonian story, which is a variation of the preceding one, the god transformed into a powerful boy is called a little shepherd or cowherd—another interesting fact, which completes his identification with Orpheus.[345] The magic flute is a variation of the same celestial musical instrument. The magic flute, the bagpipes or wonderful pipe, occurs again in the twenty-third Esthonian story, in which the good Tiidu, by means of it and of his virtue, obtains riches. The magical harp of Gunnar in the Edda has the same marvellous effects.

Evidently the monster-dwarf is a favourite subject of Esthonian tradition, and it often occurs in the Hindoo and in the German traditions, as well as in the Franco-Latin tradition of Charlemagne. The eleventh story introduces us to three dwarf-brothers who contend for the inheritance left by their father, consisting of a miraculous hat, which enables its wearer to see everything, whilst he can himself be visible or invisible at pleasure (this hat is made of pieces of men's nails cut up);[346] of a pair of slippers which transport the owner in an instant wherever he wishes (we must not forget that Cinderella, when she loses the slipper, is overtaken by the prince bridegroom); and of a stick which strikes of itself, and destroys everything, even stronger than the thunderbolt (the thunderbolt itself). The three brothers maintain that these three articles, to be really useful, must be the property of one; but who is to enjoy this privilege? A man comes up to put an end to the dispute, and feigns disbelief in the virtue of these three things, unless he proves it himself. The three simpletons give them to him that he may prove them. The man takes them off, and the three dwarfs are left to meditate upon the truth of the above-quoted proverb, "Between two disputers the third profits," or at least that variation of it which their own case suggests "Between three that dispute, the fourth profits."

In the thirteenth Esthonian story, the privileged character of the third brother is explained, as we are told that he is the son of a king, but was exchanged by a witch during his infancy for the child of a peasant. The latter died in the palace, whilst the king's son grew in the hut, showing in every action his royal pedigree. Here we have the story of the hero who is exposed on the mountains intimately connected with that of the third brother. To this third brother, who alone shows himself to be devoted to his father, and who alone makes a vow to watch by his grave, is also attributed the merit of having delivered, upon a high mountain of crystal, from a seven years' sleep, a princess, who then becomes his wife. We have seen the aurora-awakener in the Vedic hymns—the sun and the aurora arouse each other: the sun sends forth the aurora; the aurora draws out the sun. The myth reproduces itself every day, and expresses in its entirety a daily phenomenon of light in the heavens. In Northern countries, where the contrast is great between winter and spring, and therefore the impression is striking which is caused by the cessation of vegetation in autumn, the earth also assumed the aspect of a dead young princess; but an omniscient magician having said, Non est mortua puella, sed dormit, the third brother, predestined to the enterprise, lays down his poor robes, and dresses himself, on the first occasion, in the colour of bronze; on the second, the colour of silver; on the third, the colour of gold, and ascends the mountain of crystal, or ice, whence he brings forth the beautiful spring. The sky, grey in autumn, snowy in winter, and golden in spring, corresponds to the grey sky of evening, the silver one of night, and the golden one of morning. Spring is the dawn of the year; the primitive myth is but amplified; the last hour of the day awakens the aurora; the last month of the solar year awakens the spring. The application of the myth of the day to the year is one of the greatest simplicity.

In the fourteenth story, the king of the golden country loses himself in the forest full of ferocious animals, and cannot find his way out. A stranger (no doubt the devil) conducts him out, on condition that he will give him whatever first comes to meet him. The king promises. The first thing he sees on his return is his royal child, who, carried by his nurse, stretches out his arms to his father. The king exchanges him for a peasant's girl, whom he gives up to the stranger, allowing his own son to be brought up among the peasant's herds. The king's son, having grown to manhood, determines to go and deliver the poor girl. He disguises himself as a poor man, puts a sack of peas on his shoulders, and goes into the forest where his father was lost eighteen years before. He also loses himself, and meets the stranger, who promises to direct him if he will give him the peas which are in the sack, as they will serve, he alleges, to recompense the assistants at the funeral of his aunt, who died in poverty during the night.—This pulse in funeral ceremonies refers to a very ancient custom. The Vedic ceremonials already mention them in connection with funerals; and in the Greek belief, the dead carried vegetables with them to hell, either for the right of passage or as provisions for travelling. In Piedmont, it is still the custom on the second of November (All Soul's Day) to make a great distribution of kidney-beans to the poor, who pray for the souls of the dead. Vegetables, peas, vetches, and kidney-beans are symbols of abundance, and to this belief may be traced the numerous Indo-European stories in which mention is made of beans which multiply themselves in the pipkin, or of peas which grow up to the sky, and up the stalk of which the hero climbs to heaven. The vegetables necessary for being introduced into the kingdom of the dead, and the pea by means of which the hero enters heaven, are variations of the same mythical subject. In Hindoo tradition, besides the pea or kidney-bean, we have the pumpkin as a symbol of abundance, which is multiplied infinitely, or which mounts up to heaven. The wife of the hero Sagaras gives birth to a pumpkin, from which afterwards come forth sixty thousand sons. The kidney-bean, the pea, the vetch, the common bean, and the pumpkin are also symbols of generation, not only on account of the facility with which they multiply, but also on account of their form. We have seen in the Vedic ceremonials what organs are represented by the two kidney-beans; we shall also see, in the chapter on the Ass, how the names given to the organs of generation are also used to designate fools. Now, it is worthy of notice that the Sanskrit word mâshas (or kidney-bean) also signified the foolish, the stolid one, in the same way as in Piedmont a bonus vir is called a kidney-bean. Thus, too, the pumpkin, which expresses fecundity, also means, in Italian, idiocy or stupidity. As to beans, I have already remarked, in my work upon "Nuptial Usages," upon their symbolical meaning, and cited the Russian and Piedmontese custom of putting a black and a white bean into the cake eaten at Epiphany, one of which represents the male and the other the female, one the king and the other the queen. The two who find the beans kiss each other with joyful auguries. As all these vegetables personify the moon, which we know to be considered as a giver of abundance, and which, by its form of a turning ball, can well be represented by the turning pea, in this personification we must search for the solution of the principal myths relating to vegetables.—The young prince of the Esthonian story, having obtained the stranger's favour in the gloomy forest by means of the peas, engages himself in his service, with intent to deliver the girl who had freed him by taking his place with the stranger during eighteen years. He therefore follows him; but on the way he lets a pea fall to the ground from time to time, in order to know the way back. He is conducted by a strange and wild subterranean passage, where silence as of the tomb reigns—it is, in fact, the kingdom of the dead—where birds have the appearance of wishing to sing, dogs to bark, and oxen to low, but cannot, and where the water flows without a murmur. The young prince feels in his heart a kind of anguish; the universal stillness in the midst of animated beings oppresses him. Having passed the region of silence, they come to that of deafening noise. The young prince thinks he hears the excruciating din of twenty-four saws at work; but the old stranger tells him that it is only his grandmother who has fallen asleep, and is snoring. At last they come to the stranger's dwelling, where the prince finds the beautiful maiden, but the old stranger will not let him speak. He sees in the stable a white horse and a black cow, with a white or luminous-headed calf. This cow the young prince is ordered to milk until there is not a drop of milk in its breast; instead of milking it with his fingers, he, by the advice of the girl, uses for that purpose red-hot pincers. Another time the youth is told to lead away the enchanted calf with the white or luminous head. In order that it may not escape, the girl gives him a magic thread, of which one end is to be tied to the left leg of the calf, and the other to the little toe of the prince's left foot.—The little finger, although the smallest, is the most privileged of the five. It is the one that knows everything; and in Piedmont, when the mothers wish to make their children believe that they are in communication with a mysterious spy, who sees everything that they do, they are accustomed to awe them by the words, "My little finger tells me everything."—At last the two young people resolve to flee. Before starting, the prince splits open the forehead of the white-headed calf; from its skull comes forth an enchanted little red ball, which shines like a small sun. He wraps it up, leaving part of it uncovered to light the way, and flees away with the girl. Being followed by malignant spirits, who are sent by the old man to follow them, the two fugitives, by means of the enchanted little ball (or pearl), turned round three times, become, first the one a pond and the other a fish, then the one a rose-bush and the other a rose, then again the one a breeze and the other a gnat, until the stone which covers the entrance to the subterranean world having been lifted up, they arrive again safe and happy upon the earth; and by means of the little red ball, they show themselves to mankind in splendid and princely robes. I scarcely think it necessary to explain to the reader the sense of this lucid mythical story. The black cow which produces the calf with the white or luminous head is a Vedic antithesis which we have already seen;[347] the cow (night) produces the calf (the moon). The prince takes the little red ball out of the calf; by means of this ball, the girl is delivered from the regions of gloom. The little ball moves the stone; the sun and the aurora come out together from the mountain, after having travelled together in the kingdom of shadows; the sun delivers the aurora. This story unites together and puts in order several myths of an analogous character, but born separately.

The three next stories describe other voyages made by the solar hero to heaven, or in hell, and end by meaning the same thing. In the eighteenth story we again find the enchanted ring, called Solomon's ring, which the young hero goes to search for; when he finds it, by taking it from the daughter of hell, and puts it on his finger, he is of a sudden endowed with such strength that he can split a rock with one blow of his fist. The little red ball of the story just described, which lifts up the rock, and this ring which splits the stone, represent the same mythical object, i.e., the sun, the sun's ball or disc.

The twenty-first story shows us the fearless hero who frees a castle from the presence of the demons, and who thus gains a treasure; riches are the reward of valour. The twentieth Esthonian story is a variation of the exceedingly popular tale of Blue Beard, the killer of his wives. The Esthonian monster-husband has already killed eleven, and is about to murder the twelfth, by way of punishing her for having, against his express prohibition, visited the secret room opened by the golden key (perhaps the moon), when a youth who takes care of the goslings, the friend of her childhood, comes to deliver her. From the subject itself, and the expressions used in this story, we can discover the origin of the terrible charivari in the nuptials of widowers or widows. This savage custom is intended not only to deride the lust of the old man or woman who marries again, but to warn the girl who marries the one, or the youth who marries the other, of the possibility of a fate similar to the first wife or husband. When, therefore, the wife apatighnî (who does not kill her husband) is praised to the Vedic husband, we must understand that the patighnî (or killer of her husband) is a widow, whom no one must marry, as being suspected of murder. Hence, to free herself from this suspicion, an honest Hindoo wife (like Gudrun in the Edda) was to throw herself into the fire after the death of her husband; the evening aurora, after the death of the sun, dies too.

In the twenty-second story we have once more the myth of the young pastoral hero; he is the son of a king. By the order of his step-mother, a witch, who carries off shepherds, steals him from the palace during his infancy, and abandons him in a solitary place, where he is brought up by cowherds, and becomes himself an excellent cowherd. An old man finds him and says, looking at him and at the cattle, "Thou dost not seem to me born to remain a cowherd." The boy answers that he knows he was born to command, and adds, "Here I learn the duties of a commander by anticipation. If things go well with the quadrupeds, I shall also prosper with bipeds." The shepherd is therefore a little king; a good shepherd will become a good king. The boy goes through several adventures, in which he displays his valour. A wicked German lady wishes to take from him the strawberries which he has plucked. He defends himself bravely; his mistress persecutes him; and he takes twelve wolves, shuts them up in a cavern, and each day gives them a lamb to eat, in order to avenge himself upon his wicked mistress, to whom he simply says that the wolves have devoured them. At last he causes her to be devoured herself by the wolves, who eat her all up, leaving only the heart (the sun) and the tongue, which are too full of venom for the wolves of the night, because they burn their mouths. At the age of eighteen, the youth has several other adventures. He becomes enamoured of a gardener's daughter, and is found again by the king his father, who, before allowing him to marry the beautiful gardener's daughter, wishes to prove that they are predestined to each other. He cuts a ring in two with his sword, and gives one part to the young prince and the other to the maiden; the two halves must be preserved by both, and one day they will meet of themselves and form again the whole ring, in such a manner that it will be impossible to find the place where it was broken.—In a Tuscan story, the beautiful maiden gives half her necklace to the third brother. The young couple lose each other; their meeting again and mutual recognition take place when the two parts of the necklace join each other. The use of the wedding-ring has a mythical origin. The solar (and sometimes the lunar disc) is the ring which unites the heavenly husband and wife.—When, after other adventures, the two young people of the Esthonian story join together the two halves of their ring, their misfortunes come to an end; they marry and live together happily, whilst the cruel step-mother, who meanwhile has become a widow, is expelled from the kingdom.

The last Esthonian story tells of the extraordinary births, in the same day, of a handsome prince and a beautiful princess. The princess is born in a bird's egg, laid like a pearl in the bosom of the queen; she has at first the form of a living puppet, and afterwards, when warmed in wool, she becomes a real girl. Whilst she undergoes this transformation, the queen also gives birth to a beautiful boy. The two children are considered as twins, and baptized together. To the baptism of the girl there comes as godmother, in a splendid chariot drawn by six horses, a young woman dressed in rose-coloured and golden robes, who shines like the sun, and who, as she lets her veil drop, like the beautiful Argive Helen, fills the bystanders with admiration. [The aurora, who, before appearing in the form of a beautiful girl, is enclosed in the wood of the forest, is a wooden puppet, and becomes a wooden puppet once more when, fleeing from the sun, she hides herself in a creeping-plant, like the Hindoo Urvaçî (the first of the dawns), or in a laurel-plant, like the Hellenic Daphne (the Vedic Dahanâ-aurora). The aurora is born together with the sun; the beautiful doll-maiden is born with the little prince. The mother and the beneficent godmother seem to be the moon, or a more ancient aurora.] The mother, dying, leaves her daughter, putting it upon her breast, a gem which is to bring her happiness; that is, the little basket which contained the bird's egg, with the eggshell itself. By means of the magical little basket, and by pronouncing some magic words, the maiden can find all that she searches or wishes for. The young man and woman end by marrying each other, having discovered that, although both born of a king, they are children of different fathers; they marry, and the little basket of happiness mysteriously disappears.

SECTION IV.

The Bull and the Cow in Slavonic Tradition.

SUMMARY.

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 cock.—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 Svetazór.—The mother of the birds, in gratitude, 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 Svetazór; 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 Plavaćek, who demand a gift from the monster; the fortunate fictitious 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 ship; 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 shirt 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; analogous 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 Vedâs. 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—

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 Afanassieff, 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 Mahâbhâratam,[349] absorbs the sea). But the bull, who could dry up the river, refuses to do so on account of a debt of gratitude 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 Hellenes, the Pêgasos.

In the second book of Afanassieff, there is a story which speaks of the exchange of animals in the very same order as in the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam, 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 Afanassieff, an old man also begins to barter the golden stockings and silver garters received in heaven from God 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 Afanassieff, the third brother, the truthful and fortunate fool, has, for his inheritance from his father, one bull alone; he goes to sell it, and passes 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 Afanassieff, 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 Tzarević, 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 Afanassieff, Ivan Tzarević 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 pass 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 assists 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 phœnix, 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 Afanassieff,[356] the young Mary, being persecuted, is miraculously assisted 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 shining 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 Afanassieff, 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 breasts 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 assigned 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 assist 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 prick 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 Tzarević; 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 Afanassieff, 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 Afanassieff's collection, Ivan Tzarević 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 hell, 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 Afanassieff,[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 assistance 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 Afanassieff,[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 gods, the monsters that ravish and conceal the treasures, are represented as paṇayas 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 god 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, God 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 assuring 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 isbà and shuts himself up in it.[364] He has with him the lamb, the goose, the cock, or else some other tame animals. The fox passes by, hears the crowing of the cock, 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 butting against his sides, and the cock 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 passed 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 cock, plucks it, and puts it alive under a clod of earth. The ploughmen come with the oxen; while they are ploughing, the cock 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 cock, 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 Afanassieff, 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 Tzarević; a bird takes the water off and Ivan Tzarević comes forth.[367] In another story of Afanassieff, 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 Afanassieff,[369] instead of the cow we have the bitch giving birth to the strongest of the three brothers.[370] In the nineteenth story of Erlenwein, instead of the cow and the bitch, we have the mare; the strongest brother is here the son of the black girl, Burghraver or the hero-tempest (Burya-Bagatír). In the third story of Erlenwein, Ivan Tzarević appears as the son of the black girl. As in numerous other Russian stories, Ivan Tzarević, 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 Tzarević 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 Afanassieff, 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 threshing 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 Afanassieff,[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 Afanassieff, 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 cushion upon the ground; Ivan, who is suspicious of some trick, first beats the cushion, 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 cushion, 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 passage, 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 Većernik, or the evening one; the second at midnight, whence he is named Polunoćnik, or the midnight one; the third at the aurora, who is named Svetazór, or the clearly-seeing. The three brothers become adults in a few hours. The most valiant of the three is Svetazór, 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. Svetazór 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. Svetazór, 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. Svetazór 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. Svetazór invites the soldier to prove his strength, and so the truth of his boast, by lifting the rock up. He does not succeed, and Svetazór wins the trial of strength, upon which the soldier is executed by order of the Tzar. After this, Svetazór, 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. Svetazór 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 Svetazór. Then Svetazór 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, Svetazór 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 Svetazór, the clearly-seeing, the illumined, the sun, is married.)