Chapter II · (continued 3)
William Ralston Shedden Ralston translation
From among the numerous stories relating to the Vyed’ma we may select the following, which bears her name.
The Witch.[206]
There once lived an old couple who had one son called Ivashko;[207] no one can tell how fond they were of him!
Well, one day, Ivashko said to his father and mother:
“I’ll go out fishing if you’ll let me.”
“What are you thinking about! you’re still very small; suppose you get drowned, what good will there be in that?”
“No, no, I shan’t get drowned. I’ll catch you some fish; do let me go!”
So his mother put a white shirt on him, tied a red girdle round him, and let him go. Out in a boat he sat and said:
Canoe, canoe, float a little farther, Canoe, canoe, float a little farther!
Then the canoe floated on farther and farther, and Ivashko began to fish. When some little time had passed by, the old woman hobbled down to the river side and called to her son:
Ivashechko, Ivashechko, my boy, Float up, float up, unto the waterside; I bring thee food and drink.
And Ivashko said:
Canoe, canoe, float to the waterside; That is my mother calling me.
The boat floated to the shore: the woman took the fish, gave her boy food and drink, changed his shirt for him and his girdle, and sent him back to his fishing. Again he sat in his boat and said:
Canoe, canoe, float a little farther, Canoe, canoe, float a little farther.
Then the canoe floated on farther and farther, and Ivashko began to fish. After a little time had passed by, the old man also hobbled down to the bank and called to his son:
Ivashechko, Ivashechko, my boy, Float up, float up, unto the waterside; I bring thee food and drink.
And Ivashko replied:
Canoe, canoe, float to the waterside; That is my father calling me.
The canoe floated to the shore. The old man took the fish, gave his boy food and drink, changed his shirt for him and his girdle, and sent him back to his fishing.
Now a certain witch[208] had heard what Ivashko’s parents had cried aloud to him, and she longed to get hold of the boy. So she went down to the bank and cried with a hoarse voice:
Ivashechko, Ivashechko, my boy, Float up, float up, unto the waterside; I bring thee food and drink.
Ivashko perceived that the voice was not his mother’s, but was that of a witch, and he sang:
Canoe, canoe, float a little farther, Canoe, canoe, float a little farther; That is not my mother, but a witch who calls me.
The witch saw that she must call Ivashko with just such a voice as his mother had.
So she hastened to a smith and said to him:
“Smith, smith! make me just such a thin little voice as Ivashko’s mother has: if you don’t, I’ll eat you.” So the smith forged her a little voice just like Ivashko’s mother’s. Then the witch went down by night to the shore and sang:
Ivashechko, Ivashechko, my boy, Float up, float up, unto the waterside; I bring thee food and drink.
Ivashko came, and she took the fish, and seized the boy and carried him home with her. When she arrived she said to her daughter Alenka,[209] “Heat the stove as hot as you can, and bake Ivashko well, while I go and collect my friends for the feast.” So Alenka heated the stove hot, ever so hot, and said to Ivashko,
“Come here and sit on this shovel!”
“I’m still very young and foolish,” answered Ivashko: “I haven’t yet quite got my wits about me. Please teach me how one ought to sit on a shovel.”
“Very good,” said Alenka; “it won’t take long to teach you.”
But the moment she sat down on the shovel, Ivashko instantly pitched her into the oven, slammed to the iron plate in front of it, ran out of the hut, shut the door, and hurriedly climbed up ever so high an oak-tree [which stood close by].
Presently the witch arrived with her guests and knocked at the door of the hut. But nobody opened it for her.
“Ah! that cursed Alenka!” she cried. “No doubt she’s gone off somewhere to amuse herself.” Then she slipped in through the window, opened the door, and let in her guests. They all sat down to table, and the witch opened the oven, took out Alenka’s baked body, and served it up. They all ate their fill and drank their fill, and then they went out into the courtyard and began rolling about on the grass.
“I turn about, I roll about, having fed on Ivashko’s flesh,” cried the witch. “I turn about, I roll about, having fed on Ivashko’s flesh.”
But Ivashko called out to her from the top of the oak:
“Turn about, roll about, having fed on Alenka’s flesh!”
“Did I hear something?” said the witch. “No it was only the noise of the leaves.” Again the witch began:
“I turn about, I roll about, having fed on Ivashko’s flesh!”
And Ivashko repeated:
“Turn about, roll about, having fed on Alenka’s flesh!”
Then the witch looked up and saw Ivashko, and immediately rushed at the oak on which Ivashko was seated, and began to gnaw away at it. And she gnawed, and gnawed, and gnawed, until at last she smashed two front teeth. Then she ran to a forge, and when she reached it she cried, “Smith, smith! make me some iron teeth; if you don’t I’ll eat you!”
So the smith forged her two iron teeth.
The witch returned and began gnawing the oak again.
She gnawed, and gnawed, and was just on the point of gnawing it through, when Ivashko jumped out of it into another tree which stood beside it. The oak that the witch had gnawed through fell down to the ground; but then she saw that Ivashko was sitting up in another tree, so she gnashed her teeth with spite and set to work afresh, to gnaw that tree also. She gnawed, and gnawed, and gnawed—broke two lower teeth, and ran off to the forge.
“Smith, smith!” she cried when she got there, “make me some iron teeth; if you don’t I’ll eat you!”
The smith forged two more iron teeth for her. She went back again, and once more began to gnaw the oak.
Ivashko didn’t know what he was to do now. He looked out, and saw that swans and geese[210] were flying by, so he called to them imploringly:
Oh, my swans and geese, Take me on your pinions, Bear me to my father and my mother, To the cottage of my father and my mother, There to eat, and drink, and live in comfort.
“Let those in the centre carry you,” said the birds.
Ivashko waited; a second flock flew past, and he again cried imploringly:
Oh, my swans and geese! Take me on your pinions, Bear me to my father and my mother, To the cottage of my father and my mother, There to eat, and drink, and live in comfort.
“Let those in the rear carry you!” said the birds.
Again Ivashko waited. A third flock came flying up, and he cried:
Oh, my swans and geese! Take me on your pinions, Bear me to my father and my mother, To the cottage of my father and my mother, There to eat, and drink, and live in comfort.
And those swans and geese took hold of him and carried him back, flew up to the cottage, and dropped him in the upper room.
Early the next morning his mother set to work to bake pancakes, baked them, and all of a sudden fell to thinking about her boy. “Where is my Ivashko?” she cried; “would that I could see him, were it only in a dream!”
Then his father said, “I dreamed that swans and geese had brought our Ivashko home on their wings.”
And when she had finished baking the pancakes, she said, “Now, then, old man, let’s divide the cakes: there’s for you, father! there’s for me! There’s for you, father! there’s for me.”
“And none for me?” called out Ivashko.
“There’s for you, father!” went on the old woman, “there’s for me.”
“And none for me!” [repeated the boy.]
“Why, old man,” said the wife, “go and see whatever that is up there.”
The father climbed into the upper room and there he found Ivashko. The old people were delighted, and asked their boy about everything that had happened. And after that he and they lived on happily together.
[That part of this story which relates to the baking and eating of the witch’s daughter is well known in many lands. It is found in the German “Hänsel und Grethel” (Grimm. KM. No. 15, and iii. p. 25, where a number of parallels are mentioned); in the Norse “Askelad” (Asbjörnsen and Moe, No. 1. Dasent, “Boots and the Troll,” No. 32), where a Troll’s daughter is baked; and “Smörbuk” (Asb. and Moe, No. 52. Dasent, “Buttercup,” No. 18), in which the victim is daughter of a “Haugkjœrring,” another name for a Troll-wife; in the Servian story of “The Stepmother,” &c. (Vuk Karajich, No. 35, pp. 174-5) in which two Chivuti, or Jews, are tricked into eating their baked mother; in the Modern Greek stories (Hahn, No. 3 and ii. p. 181), in which the hero bakes (1) a Drakäna, while her husband, the Drakos, is at church, (2) a Lamiopula, during the absence of the Lamia, her mother; and in the Albanian story of “Augenhündin” (Hahn, No. 95), in which the heroine gets rid in a similar manner of Maro, the daughter of that four eyed συκιένεζα. (See note, ii, 309.) Afanasief also refers (i. p. 121) to Haltrich, No. 37, and Haupt and Schmaler, ii. pp. 172-4. He also mentions a similar tale about a giantess existing among the Baltic Kashoubes. See also the end of the song of Tardanak, showing how he killed “the Seven Headed Jelbegen,” Radloff, i. p. 31.]
A variant of this story (from the Chernigof Government)[211] begins by telling how two old people were childless for a long time. At last the husband went into the forest, felled wood, and made a cradle. Into this his wife laid one of the logs he had cut, and began swinging it, crooning the while a rune beginning
Swing, blockie dear, swing.
After a little time “behold! the block already had legs. The old woman rejoiced greatly and began singing anew, and went on singing until the block became a babe.” In this variant the boy rows a silver boat with a golden oar; in another South Russian variant[212] the boat is golden, the oar of silver. In a White-Russian variant quoted by Afanasief (i. p. 118), the place of the witch’s daughter is filled by her son, who had been in the habit of alluring to her den by gifts of toys, and there devouring, the children from the adjacent villages. Buslaef’s “Historical Essays,” (i. pp. 313-321) contain a valuable investigation of Kulish’s version of this story, which he compares with the romance of “The Knight of the Swan.”
In another of the variants of this story[213] Ivanushka is the son of a Baruinya or Lady, and he is carried off in a whirlwind by a Baba Yaga. His three sisters go to look for him, and each of them in turn finds out where he is and attempts to carry him off, after sending the Baba Yaga to sleep and smearing her eyelids with pitch. But the two elder sisters are caught on their way home by the Baba Yaga, and terribly scratched and torn. The youngest sister, however, succeeds in rescuing her brother, having taken the precaution of propitiating with butter the cat Jeremiah, “who was telling the boy stories and singing him songs.” When the Baba Yaga awakes, she tells Jeremiah to scratch her eyes open, but he refuses, reminding her that, long as he has lived under her roof, she has never in any way regaled him, whereas the “fair maiden” had no sooner arrived than she treated him to butter. In another variant[214] the bereaved mother sends three servant-maids in search of her boy. Two of them get torn to pieces; the third succeeds in saving Ivanushka from the Baba Yaga, who is so vexed that she pinches her butter-bribed cat to death for not having awakened her when the rescue took place. A comparison of these three stories is sufficient to show how closely connected are the Witch and the Baba Yaga, how readily the name of either of the two may be transferred to the other.
But there is one class of stories in which the Vyed’ma is represented as differing from the Baba Yaga, in so far as she is the offspring of parents who are not in any way supernatural or inhuman. Without any apparent cause for her abnormal conduct, the daughter of an ordinary royal house will suddenly begin to destroy and devour all living things which fall in her way—her strength developing as rapidly as her appetite. Of such a nature—to be accounted for only on the supposition that an evil spirit has taken up its abode in a human body[215]—is the witch who appears in the somewhat incomprehensible story that follows.
The Witch and the Sun’s Sister.[216]
In a certain far-off country there once lived a king and queen. And they had an only son, Prince Ivan, who was dumb from his birth. One day, when he was twelve years old, he went into the stable to see a groom who was a great friend of his.
That groom always used to tell him tales [skazki], and on this occasion Prince Ivan went to him expecting to hear some stories [skazochki], but that wasn’t what he heard.
“Prince Ivan!” said the groom, “your mother will soon have a daughter, and you a sister. She will be a terrible witch, and she will eat up her father, and her mother, and all their subjects. So go and ask your father for the best horse he has—as if you wanted a gallop—and then, if you want to be out of harm’s way, ride away whithersoever your eyes guide you.”
Prince Ivan ran off to his father and, for the first time in his life, began speaking to him.
At that the king was so delighted that he never thought of asking what he wanted a good steed for, but immediately ordered the very best horse he had in his stud to be saddled for the prince.
Prince Ivan mounted, and rode off without caring where he went.[217] Long, long did he ride.
At length he came to where two old women were sewing and he begged them to let him live with them. But they said:
“Gladly would we do so, Prince Ivan, only we have now but a short time to live. As soon as we have broken that trunkful of needles, and used up that trunkful of thread, that instant will death arrive!”
Prince Ivan burst into tears and rode on. Long, long did he ride. At length he came to where the giant Vertodub was,[218] and he besought him, saying:
“Take me to live with you.”
“Gladly would I have taken you, Prince Ivan!” replied the giant, “but now I have very little longer to live. As soon as I have pulled up all these trees by the roots, instantly will come my death!”
More bitterly still did the prince weep as he rode farther and farther on. By-and-by he came to where the giant Vertogor was, and made the same request to him, but he replied:
“Gladly would I have taken you, Prince Ivan! but I myself have very little longer to live. I am set here, you know, to level mountains. The moment I have settled matters with these you see remaining, then will my death come!”
Prince Ivan burst into a flood of bitter tears, and rode on still farther. Long, long did he ride. At last he came to the dwelling of the Sun’s Sister. She received him into her house, gave him food and drink, and treated him just as if he had been her own son.
The prince now led an easy life. But it was all no use; he couldn’t help being miserable. He longed so to know what was going on at home.
He often went to the top of a high mountain, and thence gazed at the palace in which he used to live, and he could see that it was all eaten away; nothing but the bare walls remained! Then he would sigh and weep. Once when he returned after he had been thus looking and crying, the Sun’s Sister asked him:
“What makes your eyes so red to-day, Prince Ivan?”[219]
“The wind has been blowing in them,” said he.
The same thing happened a second time. Then the Sun’s Sister ordered the wind to stop blowing. Again a third time did Prince Ivan come back with a blubbered face. This time there was no help for it; he had to confess everything, and then he took to entreating the Sun’s Sister to let him go, that he might satisfy himself about his old home. She would not let him go, but he went on urgently entreating.
So at last he persuaded her, and she let him go away to find out about his home. But first she provided him for the journey with a brush, a comb, and two youth-giving apples. However old any one might be, let him eat one of these apples, he would grow young again in an instant.
Well, Prince Ivan came to where Vertogor was. There was only just one mountain left! He took his brush and cast it down on the open plain. Immediately there rose out of the earth, goodness knows whence,[220] high, ever so high mountains, their peaks touching the sky. And the number of them was such that there were more than the eye could see![221] Vertogor rejoiced greatly and blithely recommenced his work.
After a time Prince Ivan came to where Vertodub was, and found that there were only three trees remaining there. So he took the comb and flung it on the open plain. Immediately from somewhere or other there came a sound of trees,[222] and forth from the ground arose dense oak forests! each stem more huge than the other! Vertodub was delighted, thanked the Prince, and set to work uprooting the ancient oaks.
By-and-by Prince Ivan reached the old women, and gave each of them an apple. They ate them, and straightway became young again. So they gave him a handkerchief; you only had to wave it, and behind you lay a whole lake! At last Prince Ivan arrived at home. Out came running his sister to meet him, caressed him fondly.
“Sit thee down, my brother!” she said, “play a tune on the lute while I go and get dinner ready.”
The Prince sat down and strummed away on the lute [gusli].
Then there crept a mouse out of a hole, and said to him in a human voice:
“Save yourself, Prince. Run away quick! your sister has gone to sharpen her teeth.”
Prince Ivan fled from the room, jumped on his horse, and galloped away back. Meantime the mouse kept running over the strings of the lute. They twanged, and the sister never guessed that her brother was off. When she had sharpened her teeth she burst into the room. Lo and behold! not a soul was there, nothing but the mouse bolting into its hole! The witch waxed wroth, ground her teeth like anything, and set off in pursuit.
Prince Ivan heard a loud noise and looked back. There was his sister chasing him. So he waved his handkerchief, and a deep lake lay behind him. While the witch was swimming across the water, Prince Ivan got a long way ahead. But on she came faster than ever; and now she was close at hand! Vertodub guessed that the Prince was trying to escape from his sister. So he began tearing up oaks and strewing them across the road. A regular mountain did he pile up! there was no passing by for the witch! So she set to work to clear the way. She gnawed, and gnawed, and at length contrived by hard work to bore her way through; but by this time Prince Ivan was far ahead.
On she dashed in pursuit, chased and chased. Just a little more, and it would be impossible for him to escape! But Vertogor spied the witch, laid hold of the very highest of all the mountains, pitched it down all of a heap on the road, and flung another mountain right on top of it. While the witch was climbing and clambering, Prince Ivan rode and rode, and found himself a long way ahead. At last the witch got across the mountain, and once more set off in pursuit of her brother. By-and-by she caught sight of him, and exclaimed:
“You sha’n’t get away from me this time!” And now she is close, now she is just going to catch him!
At that very moment Prince Ivan dashed up to the abode of the Sun’s Sister and cried:
“Sun, Sun! open the window!”
The Sun’s Sister opened the window, and the Prince bounded through it, horse and all.
Then the witch began to ask that her brother might be given up to her for punishment. The Sun’s Sister would not listen to her, nor would she give him up. Then the witch said:
“Let Prince Ivan be weighed against me, to see which is the heavier. If I am, then I will eat him; but if he is, then let him kill me!”
This was done. Prince Ivan was the first to get into one of the scales; then the witch began to get into the other. But no sooner had she set foot in it than up shot Prince Ivan in the air, and that with such force that he flew right up into the sky, and into the chamber of the Sun’s Sister.
But as for the Witch-Snake, she remained down below on earth.
[The word terem (plural terema) which occurs twice in this story (rendered the second time by “chamber”) deserves a special notice. It is defined by Dahl, in its antique sense, as “a raised, lofty habitation, or part of one—a Boyar’s castle—a Seigneur’s house—the dwelling-place of a ruler within a fortress,” &c. The “terem of the women,” sometimes styled “of the girls,” used to comprise the part of a Seigneur’s house, on the upper floor, set aside for the female members of his family. Dahl compares it with the Russian tyurma, a prison, and the German Thurm. But it seems really to be derived from the Greek τέρεμνον, “anything closely shut fast or closely covered, a room, chamber,” &c.
That part of the story which refers to the Cannibal Princess is familiar to the Modern Greeks. In the Syriote tale of “The Strigla” (Hahn, No. 65) a princess devours her father and all his subjects. Her brother, who had escaped while she was still a babe, visits her and is kindly received. But while she is sharpening her teeth with a view towards eating him, a mouse gives him a warning which saves his life. As in the Russian story the mouse jumps about on the strings of a lute in order to deceive the witch, so in the Greek it plays a fiddle. But the Greek hero does not leave his sister’s abode. After remaining concealed one night, he again accosts her. She attempts to eat him, but he kills her.
In a variant from Epirus (Hahn, ii. p. 283-4) the cannibal princess is called a Chursusissa. Her brother climbs a tree, the stem of which she gnaws almost asunder. But before it falls, a Lamia comes to his aid and kills his sister.
Afanasief (viii. p. 527) identifies the Sun’s Sister with the Dawn. The following explanation of the skazka (with the exception of the words within brackets) is given by A. de Gubernatis (“Zool. Myth.” i. 183). “Ivan is the Sun, the aurora [or dawn] is his [true] sister; at morning, near the abode of the aurora, that is, in the east, the shades of night [his witch, or false sister] 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.”]
As an illustration of this story, Afanasief (P.V.S. iii. 272) quotes a Little-Russian Skazka in which a man, who is seeking “the Isle in which there is no death,” meets with various personages like those with whom the Prince at first wished to stay on his journey, and at last takes up his abode with the moon. Death comes in search of him, after a hundred years or so have elapsed, and engages in a struggle with the Moon, the result of which is that the man is caught up into the sky, and there shines thenceforth “as a star near the moon.”
The Sun’s Sister is a mythical being who is often mentioned in the popular poetry of the South-Slavonians. A Servian song represents a beautiful maiden, with “arms of silver up to the elbows,” sitting on a silver throne which floats on water. A suitor comes to woo her. She waxes wroth and cries,
Whom wishes he to woo? The sister of the Sun, The cousin of the Moon, The adopted-sister of the Dawn.
Then she flings down three golden apples, which the “marriage-proposers” attempt to catch, but “three lightnings flash from the sky” and kill the suitor and his friends.
In another Servian song a girl cries to the Sun—
O brilliant Sun! I am fairer than thou, Than thy brother, the bright Moon, Than thy sister, the moving star [Venus?].
In South-Slavonian poetry the sun often figures as a radiant youth. But among the Northern Slavonians, as well as the Lithuanians, the sun was regarded as a female being, the bride of the moon. “Thou askest me of what race, of what family I am,” says the fair maiden of a song preserved in the Tambof Government—
My mother is—the beauteous Sun, And my father—the bright Moon; My brothers are—the many Stars, And my sisters—the white Dawns.[223]
A far more detailed account might be given of the Witch and her near relation the Baba Yaga, as well as of those masculine embodiments of that spirit of evil which is personified in them, the Snake, Koshchei, and other similar beings. But the stories which have been quoted will suffice to give at least a general idea of their moral and physical attributes. We will now turn from their forms, so constantly introduced into the skazka-drama, to some of the supernatural figures which are not so often brought upon the stage—to those mythical beings of whom (numerous as may be the traditions about them) the regular “story” does not so often speak, to such personifications of abstract ideas as are less frequently employed to set its conventional machinery in motion.