"I can see well enough by the bridegroom's eyes that the bride is to his taste, only I don't know what the bride thinks about taking him."
"I don't mind!" says the widow. "Well, then, glory be to God! Now, stand up, we'll say a prayer before the Holy Pictures; then give each other a kiss, and go in Heaven's name and get married at once!" And so the question is settled.
From a courtship and a marriage in peasant life we may turn to a death and a burial. There are frequent allusions in the Skazkas to these gloomy subjects, with reference to which we will quote two stories, the one pathetic, the other (unintentionally) grotesque. Neither of them bears any title in the original, but we may style the first--
The Dead Mother.[24]
In a certain village there lived a husband and wife--lived happily, lovingly, peaceably. All their neighbors envied them; the sight of them gave pleasure to honest folks. Well, the mistress bore a son, but directly after it was born she died. The poor moujik moaned and wept. Above all he was in despair about the babe. How was he to nourish it now? how to bring it up without its mother? He did what was best, and hired an old woman to look after it. Only here was a wonder! all day long the babe would take no food, and did nothing but cry; there was no soothing it anyhow. But during (a great part of) the night one could fancy it wasn't there at all, so silently and peacefully did it sleep.
[Pg 33] "What's the meaning of this?" thinks the old woman; "suppose I keep awake to-night; may be I shall find out."
Well, just at midnight she heard some one quietly open the door and go up to the cradle. The babe became still, just as if it was being
suckled.
The next night the same thing took place, and the third night, too. Then she told the moujik about it. He called his kinsfolk together, and held counsel with them. They determined on this; to keep awake on a certain night, and to spy out who it was that came to suckle the babe. So at eventide they all lay down on the floor, and beside them they set a lighted taper hidden in an earthen pot.
At midnight the cottage door opened. Some one stepped up to the cradle. The babe became still. At that moment one of the kinsfolk suddenly brought out the light. They looked, and saw the dead mother, in the very same clothes in which she had been buried, on her knees besides the cradle, over which she bent as she suckled the babe at her dead breast.
The moment the light shone in the cottage she stood up, gazed sadly on her little one, and then went out of the room without a sound, not saying a word to anyone. All those who saw her stood for a time terror-struck; and then they found the babe was dead. [25]
The second story will serve as an illustration of one of the Russian customs with respect to the dead, and also of the ideas about witchcraft, still prevalent in Russia. We may create for it the title of--
[Pg 34]
The Dead Witch.[26]
There was once an old woman who was a terrible witch, and she had a daughter and a granddaughter. The time came for the old crone to die, so she summoned her daughter and gave her these instructions:
12
"Mind, daughter! when I'm dead, don't you wash my body with lukewarm water; but fill a cauldron, make it boil its very hottest, and
then with that boiling water regularly scald me all over."
After saying this, the witch lay ill two or three days, and then died. The daughter ran round to all her neighbors, begging them to come and help her to wash the old woman, and meantime the little granddaughter was left all alone in the cottage. And this is what she saw there. All of a sudden there crept out from beneath the stove two demons--a big one and a tiny one--and they ran up to the dead witch. The old demon seized her by the feet, and tore away at her so that he stripped off all her skin at one pull. Then he said to the little demon:
"Take the flesh for yourself, and lug it under the stove."
So the little demon flung his arms round the carcase, and dragged it under the stove. Nothing was left of the old woman but her skin. Into it the old demon inserted himself, and then he lay down just where the witch had been lying.
Presently the daughter came back, bringing a dozen other women with her, and they all set to work laying out the corpse.
"Mammy," says the child, "they've pulled granny's skin off while you were away." "What do you mean by telling such lies?"
"It's quite true, Mammy! There was ever such a blackie came from under the stove, and he pulled the skin off, and got into it him-
self."
"Hold your tongue, naughty child! you're talking nonsense!" cried the old crone's daughter; then she fetched a big cauldron, filled it with cold water, put it on the stove, and heated it till it [Pg 35] boiled furiously. Then the women lifted up the old crone, laid her in a trough, took hold of the cauldron, and poured the whole of the boiling water over her at once. The demon couldn't stand it. He leaped out of the trough, dashed through the doorway, and disappeared, skin and all. The women stared:
"What marvel is this?" they cried. "Here was the dead woman, and now she isn't here. There's nobody left to lay out or to bury. The
demons have carried her off before our very eyes!"[27]
A Russian peasant funeral is preceded or accompanied by a considerable amount of wailing, which answers in some respect to the Irish "keening." To the zaplachki,[28] or laments, which are uttered on such occasions--frequently by hired wailers, who closely resemble the Corsican "vociferators," the modern Greek "myrologists"--allusions are sometimes made in the Skazkas. In the "Fox-wailer,"[29] for example--one of the variants of the well-known "Jack and the Beanstalk" story--an old man puts his wife in a bag and attempts to carry her up the beanstalk to heaven. Becoming tired on the way, he drops the bag, and the old woman is killed. After weeping over her dead body he sets out in search of a Wailer. Meeting a bear, he cries, "Wail a bit, Bear, for my old woman! I'll give you a pair of nice white fowls." The bear growls [Pg 36] out "Oh, dear granny of mine! how I grieve for thee!" "No, no!" says
the old man, "you can't wail." Going a little further he tries a wolf, but the wolf succeeds no better than the bear. At last a fox comes by, and on being appealed to, begins to cry aloud "Turu-Turu, grandmother! grandfather has killed thee!"--a wail which pleases the widower so much that he hands over the fowls to the fox at once, and asks, enraptured, for "that strain again!"[30]
One of the most curious of the stories which relate to a village burial,--one in which also the feeling with which the Russian villag-
ers sometimes regard their clergy finds expression--is that called-- The Treasure.[31]
In a certain kingdom there lived an old couple in great poverty. Sooner or later the old woman died. It was in winter, in severe and frosty weather. The old man went round to his friends and neighbors, begging them to help him to dig a grave for the old woman; but his friends and neighbors, knowing his great poverty, all flatly refused. The old man went to the pope,[32] (but in that village they had an awfully grasping pope, one without any conscience), and says he:--
"Lend a hand, reverend father, to get my old woman buried."
"But have you got any money to pay for the funeral? if so, friend, pay up beforehand!"
"It's no use hiding anything from you. Not a single copeck have I at home. But if you'll wait a little, I'll earn some, and then I'll pay
you with interest--on my word I'll pay you!"
13
The pope wouldn't so much as listen to the old man.
[Pg 37] "If you haven't any money, don't you dare to come here," says he.