Note 86 — NORG MYTHS. (continued 5)

Zovanin was a bold boy, and never seemed to be afraid of any thing. When other children were afraid lest Orco86 should play them some of his malicious tricks, when people cried out to him, “Take care, and don’t walk in those footprints, they may be those of Orco!” he would only laugh, and say, “Let Orco come; I should like to see him!” When he was sent out upon the mountains with the herds, and had to be alone with them through the dark nights, and his mother bid him not be afraid, he used to stare at her with his great round eyes as if he wondered what she meant. If a lamb or a goat strayed over a difficult precipice, and the neighbours cried out to him, “Let be; it is not safe to go after it down that steep place,” he would seem to think they were making game of him, and would swing himself over the steep as firmly and as steadily as if he were merely bestriding a hedge. He saw people shun passing through the churchyards by dark, and so he used to make it his habit to sleep every night on the graves; and as they said they were afraid of being struck blind if they slept in the moonlight, he would always choose to lie where the moonbeams fell. Nor thunder, nor avalanche, nor fire, nor flood, nor storm seemed to have any terror for him; so that at last people set him to do every kind of thing they were afraid to do themselves, and he got so much wondered at, that he said, “I will go abroad over the world, and see if I can find any where this same Fear that I hear people talk of.”