"Heigh, Simpleton! what have you been and done!" cried his brothers. "You're a lost man, and you'll be the cause of our destruction, too! Wherever shall we put the dead body?"
They thought and thought, and at last they dragged it to an empty cellar and flung it in there. But later on in the evening the eldest
brother said to the second one:--
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"This piece of work is sure to turn out badly. When they begin looking for the Diachok, you'll see that Simpleton will tell them everything. Let's kill a goat and bury it in the cellar, and hide the body of the dead man in some other place."
Well, they waited till the dead of night; then they killed a goat and flung it into the cellar, but they carried the Diachok to another place and there hid him in the ground. Several days passed, and then people began looking everywhere for the Diachok, asking everyone about him.
"What do you want him for?" said the Simpleton, when he was asked. "I killed him some time ago with my hatchet, and my brothers carried him into the cellar."
Straightway they laid hands on the Simpleton, crying, "Take us there and show him to us." [Pg 66] The Simpleton went down into the cellar, got hold of the goat's head, and asked:-- "Was your Diachok dark-haired?"
"He was."
"And had he a beard?" "Yes, he'd a beard." "And horns?"
"What horns are you talking about, Simpleton?"
"Well, see for yourselves," said he, tossing up the head to them. They looked, saw it was a goat's, spat in the Simpleton's face, and went their ways home.
One of the most popular simpleton-tales in the world is that of the fond parents who harrow their feelings by conjuring up the misfortunes which may possibly await their as yet unborn grandchildren. In Scotland it is told, in a slightly different form, of two old maids who were once found bathed in tears, and who were obliged to confess that they had been day-dreaming and suppos-
ing--if they had been married, and one had had a boy and the other a girl; and if the children, when they grew up, had married, and had had a little child; and if it had tumbled out of the window and been killed--what a dreadful thing it would have been. At which terrible idea they both gave way to not unnatural tears. In one of its Russian forms, it is told of the old parents of a boy named Lutonya, who weep over the hypothetical death of an imaginary grandchild, thinking how sad it would have been if a log which the old woman has dropped had killed that as yet merely potential infant. The parent's grief appears to Lutonya so uncalled for that he leaves home, declaring that he will not return until he has found people more foolish than they. He travels long and far, and witnesses several foolish doings, [Pg 67] most of which are familiar to us. In one place, a cow is being hoisted on to a roof in order that it may eat the grass growing thereon; in another a horse is being inserted into its collar by sheer force; in a third, a woman is fetching milk from the cellar, a spoonful at a time. But the story comes to an end before its hero has discovered the surpassing stupidity of which he is in quest. In another Russian story of a similar nature Lutonya goes from home in search of some one more foolish than his mother, who has been tricked by a cunning sharper. First he finds carpenters attempting to stretch a beam which is not long enough, and earns their gratitude by showing them how to add a piece to it. Then he comes to a place where sickles are unknown, and harvesters are in the habit of biting off the ears of corn, so he makes a sickle for them, thrusts it into a sheaf and leaves it there. They take it for a monstrous worm, tie a cord to it, and drag it away to the bank of the river. There they fasten one of their number to a log and set him afloat, giving him the end of the cord, in order that he may drag the "worm" after him into the water. The log turns over, and the moujik with it, so that his head is under water while his legs appear above it. "Why, brother!" they call to him
from the bank, "why are you so particular about your leggings? If they do get wet, you can dry them at the fire." But he makes no
reply, only drowns. Finally Lutonya meets the counterpart of the well-known Irishman who, when counting the party to which he
belongs, always forgets to count himself, and so gets into numerical difficulties. After which he returns home.[65]
[Pg 68] It would be easy to multiply examples of this style of humor--to find in the folk-tales current all over Russia the equivalents of our own facetious narratives about the wise men of Gotham, the old woman whose petticoats were cut short by the pedlar whose name was Stout, and a number of other inhabitants of Fool-land, to whom the heart of childhood is still closely attached, and also
of the exaggeration-stories, the German Lugenmahrchen, on which was founded the narrative of Baron Munchausen's surprising
adventures. But instead of doing this, before passing on to the more important groups of the Skazkas, I will quote, as this chapter's
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final illustrations of the Russian storyteller's art, an "animal story" and a "legend." Here is the former:-- The Mizgir.[66]
In the olden years, long long ago, with the spring-tide fair and the summer's heat there came on the world distress and shame. For
gnats and flies began to swarm, biting folks and letting their warm blood flow.
Then the Spider[67] appeared, the hero bold, who, with waving arms, weaved webs around the highways and byways in which the
gnats and flies were most to be found.
A ghastly Gadfly, coming that way, stumbled straight into the Spider's snare. The Spider, tightly squeezing her throat, prepared to put her out of the world. From the Spider the Gadfly mercy sought.
"Good father Spider! please not to kill me. I've ever so many little ones. Without me they'll be orphans left, and from door to door have to beg their bread and squabble with dogs."
[Pg 69] Well, the Spider released her. Away she flew, and everywhere humming and buzzing about, told the flies and gnats of what
had occurred.
"Ho, ye gnats and flies! Meet here beneath this ash-tree's roots. A spider has come, and, with waving of arms and weaving of nets, has set his snares in all the ways to which the flies and gnats resort. He'll catch them, every single one!"
They flew to the spot; beneath the ash-tree's roots they hid, and lay there as though they were dead. The Spider came, and there he
found a cricket, a beetle, and a bug.
"O Cricket!" he cried, "upon this mound sit and take snuff ! Beetle, do thou beat a drum. And do thou crawl, O Bug, the bun-like, beneath the ash, and spread abroad this news of me, the Spider, the wrestler, the hero bold--that the Spider, the wrestler, the hero bold, no longer in the world exists; that they have sent him to Kazan; that in Kazan, upon a block, they've chopped his head off, and the block destroyed."
On the mound sat the Cricket and took snuff. The Beetle smote upon the drum. The Bug crawled in among the ash-tree's roots, and cried:--
"Why have ye fallen? Wherefore as in death do ye lie here? Truly no longer lives the Spider, the wrestler, the hero bold. They've sent
him to Kazan and in Kazan they've chopped his head off on a block, and afterwards destroyed the block."
The gnats and flies grew blithe and merry. Thrice they crossed themselves, then out they flew--and straight into the Spider's snares.
Said he:--
"But seldom do ye come! I would that ye would far more often come to visit me! to quaff my wine and beer, and pay me trib-
ute!"[68]
[Pg 70] This story is specially interesting in the original, inasmuch as it is rhymed throughout, although printed as prose. A kind of
lilt is perceptible in many of the Skazkas, and traces of rhyme are often to be detected in them, but "The Mizgir's" mould is different from theirs. Many stories also exist in an artificially versified form, but their movement differs entirely from that of the naturally cadenced periods of the ordinary Skazka, or of such rhymed prose as that