of green in wood and field. In lazy moods and calm sunshiny weather
there are few men who will not condescend to stretch out their limbs
under a spreading beech, or at least to envy one who is taking life
easily for a time in the shade. We all know what a pleasant faint
rustle of leaves there is above, and what a flickering of mellowed
sunlight comes over the eyes, and how these steal into the heart
with a sense of soft content, till we are apt to become like little
children, enjoying without much thought, yielding ourselves up to the
delight of the mere living, letting our consciousness float along
lazily on the current of being. But if we can in such circumstances
nerve ourselves to reflect just a little, we shall—if we possess even
a very slight knowledge of the processes of nature—become conscious
that there are great silent energies and activities at work around us
in every blade of grass, and above us in the cool green foliage. The
leaves have myriads of invisible little mouths eagerly drinking in the
unseen air, and the minute grains that give the green color to these
leaves are all the while laying hold of the infinitesimal percentage of
carbonic acid impurity in that air, and, invigorated by the quickening
sunlight, are able to tear this gaseous impurity to pieces, to wrench
the two elements that form it asunder, making the one into nutriment
for themselves, and letting the other go free in its purity into the
wide atmosphere. What man—with all his sound and fury, his hammering
and clanking—has never achieved, is thus quietly done in summer days
by every green leaf in God’s world, and inorganic matter is forced
to live. While the sun shines these honest workers are striving with
all their might to lay hold of every atom of this gas that fouls the
atmosphere for animals, and thus, while finding food for themselves,
they are keeping the air sweet and pure for other living things. The
necessity is laid on them to maintain themselves by honest work; and
it is interesting to reflect how massive are the material results that
gather round their task. We are apt to forget that by far the greater
part of the solid matter of vegetation—of the giant trees of California
as well as of the tiniest grasses and green herbs—is thus gathered atom
by atom from the atmosphere. One eats his potato thankfully, usually
without bothering himself much as to how it came to be a potato; how
the green leaves labored away, seizing the scanty atoms of an invisible
gas and making them into starch; how this insoluble starch became a
soluble thing, and melting away into the sap flowed through the stem
to the tubers, there to form again into little grains and be laid up
for future use. The rest of the nourishment of such honest plants is
usually derived from the soil. The more stimulating food—within certain
limits—that crops, for instance, take up by the roots, the harder do
their green parts work in the sunlight, making starch and kindred
substances out of what they can snatch from the atmosphere. Hence
the value of manures; they are stimulants to increased endeavor. Such
honest, hard-working plants form by far the greater bulk of vegetation,
and of those that grow on land nearly all are conspicuously green.
Sometimes—but rarely—the green is disguised a little by another color
associated with it, or some tint that is but skin-deep. Take a leaf of
the copper beech, for instance, scratch the surface, and you will find
the honest green beneath. Even the despised field-weeds, that come up
wherever man digs or plows, and linger lovingly about his agriculture,
so be it that they are green, are honest in their way, and only take
hold of what earth they can find to root in, that they may participate
with their fellows in the blessings to be got and given by keeping the
atmosphere pure. Man wants to grow grain, or something of the kind,
where they prefer to grow, and so, as they foul his husbandry, he
ruthlessly roots them out, or tries at least. It is their misfortune
that man does not wish them there; but still, contemned creatures as
they are, they have honest ways about them, and every green grain in
their being is struggling hard to do something genuinely useful. It
is only an earnest striving to hold their own against man and brute,
that makes humble nettles clothe themselves with stings full of formic
acid and fury, and rude thistles bristle with a sharp _nemo me impune
lacessit_ at every prickle point. They are armed for defense, not
aggression. It is not of stuff such as this that vegetable villains are
made.
Since there is so much honesty, however, in the plant world, rogues,
and thieves, and pilferers must abound. Consider the animal kingdom.
Where herds of deer roam in the wilds there beasts of prey are on the
prowl, or sportsmen stalk with murderous guns in hand. Where herrings
and pilchards crowd in shoals clouds of gulls and gannets hover, and
porpoises with rapacious maws tumble and roll about. Where earthworms
abound there moles with ravenous appetite are furiously driving mines,
or birds that have sharp, quick bills keep watch with keen eyes. And so
in this honest plant community, preying on it and pilfering from it,
live and flourish hosts of vegetable villains; some without a trace of
green in their whole being, living by theftuous practices alone; some
with just the faintest suspicion of green and the slightest indications
of a true nature; others with a good deal of the better color about
them, but still only indifferently honest. There is something of marvel
and mystery about these plant pilferers—of strange peculiarities in
their modes of life, and in their adaptations for plundering and
preying, which can hardly fail to interest intelligent minds, even when
brought before them in a sketch such as this, which does not profess to
take in more than the outermost fringe of a wide field. Without terms
and technicalities and a strange jargon of crabbed words that would
be dry as dust, and meaningless to most readers, little professing
to be thorough can be done; yet, after all, something more generally
comprehensive may ooze through in comparatively plain English.
With regard to their pilfering habits, such plants are usually
proportioned off into two great groups. They either attach themselves
to other beings and absorb their juices, in which case they form a
mighty host of plants of prey usually known as _parasites_; or they
seek their nurtriment, and find it, in dead and decaying organisms,
and are then known as _saprophytes_, a somewhat hard word to begin
with, for which I can not find a popular equivalent, but which merely
signifies plants that grow on decomposing matter. All land plants that
are not blessed with a true green color belong to one or other of these
groups, and are villains in their various degrees. They make no effort
to free the air from the gaseous impurity that haunts it, but, like
animals, they keep fouling it instead. With a very few exceptions, all
of them subsist on organic matter in some form, and this they usually
draw from the plants, living or dead, on which they grow, or from
decaying matter in the soil. But many of these vegetable villains run
into half-honest vagaries, and succeed in raising themselves slightly
above the common ruck. If they can not seize and break up carbonic
acid gas, they may do a little toward atmospheric purification of a
kind by laying fast hold on such organic particles as are floating in
the air or brought to them in falling moisture. Plants such as these
are sometimes found growing on barren sand, on hard gravel, on parapets
of bridges, on leaden cisterns, on plastered walls, on slag, and in
like inhospitable places, where they are compelled to turn mainly to
the atmosphere and trickling moisture for food. Some such haunt mines
like phosphorescent ghosts, others make themselves at home on places
like the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. In a mass two feet in length,
similar strange plants were one morning long ago found by a smith on a
piece of iron that he had taken, on the previous night, red-hot from
his fire, and laid on his water trough. Many similar vagaries they
run into that would in the telling sound almost incredible. Indeed,
the whole group of the saprophytes is not to be accounted so utterly
abandoned as that of the parasites. To these they are certainly nearly
related, but there is more of the useful scavenger about them than
of the useless thief. No sooner has death overtaken any plant than a
host of them set to work to clear away the now useless organism from
the world, breaking down herbaceousness into putrescence, timber into
touchwood, and all at last into vegetable mould. Their mission is to
seize upon decaying matter and endow it with life in a new form; and
thus out of rottenness often comes wholesomeness, decay moulding itself
into pleasant mushrooms, or into things unfit for human food perhaps,
but that may bring the blessings of abundance to many little living
creatures. If such as are edible are to be considered villains, then
people of delicate palate who smack their lips over some of them have a
right to insist that these should be specially classed as dainty little
rogues.
Still this useful scavengering habit is nearly allied to the pilfering
one. Decay attacks part of a tree, for instance, and saprophytes set to
work at the dead branch, but they are apt to extend their operations
to the adjoining living tissues, which die, too, and decay, till in
the end the tree may be entirely destroyed. The scavenger, we can
thus understand, is apt on occasion to relapse into the thief and the
out-and-out villain.
To one or other of these two great groups, or occasionally to both,
belong, besides a few flowering plants, the whole extensive division
of the fungi, and it is to be noted that none of this curious class of
plants is ever blessed with leaf-green or starch in any part of its
substance. Whether minute even under powerful microscopes or measuring
several feet across; whether hard as wood or a mere mass of jelly;
whether horny, fleshy, or leathery; whether resisting the action of the
elements for years or hardly able to outlive a puff of wind; whether
beautiful, commonplace, or ugly; whether sweet-scented or otherwise, in
this they agree, that in all of them is wanting that greenness which
makes honest work possible, and those little grains of starch that come
from honest work done.—_Good Words._
* * * * *
I AM afraid that a lightsome disposition and a relish for humor are not
so common in those whose benevolence takes an active turn as in people
of sentiment, who are always ready with their tears and abounding
in passionate expressions of sympathy. Working philanthropy is a
practical specialty, requiring not a mere impulse, but a talent, with
a peculiar sagacity for finding its objects, a tact for selecting its
agencies, an organizing and arranging faculty, a steady set of nerves,
and a constitution such as Sallust describes in Catiline, patient of
cold, of hunger, and of watching. Philanthropists are commonly grave,
occasionally grim, and not very rarely morose. Their expansive social
force is imprisoned as a working power, to show itself only through
its legitimate pistons and cranks. The tighter the boiler, the less it
whistles and sings at its work.—_Oliver Wendell Holmes._
SLAVONIC MYTHOLOGY.[B]
By ADLEY H. CUMMINGS.
The mythology of various tribes and races has of late attracted much
attention, while that of our own ancestors of the North has been
studied with the greatest care.
Little attention, however, has been devoted to the religious belief of
the ancient Slavonic race, and yet it is replete with interest for all
who yield to the fascination of ancient myth.
We unfortunately possess no Slavic Edda, or Veda, to throw illumination
upon the ancient creed of the tribes, but a few scattered facts have
come down to modern times—principally contained in popular songs—but
sufficient to enable us to observe the similarity between Slavonic
mythology and that of the other members of the Indo-European stock—all
pointing to that immensely ancient time when the ancestors of the
combined race could have been gathered within the circuit of the
same camp; when they passed the same lives and worshiped the same
divinities; wept when the “serpents of the night” strangled the god
appointed to preside over the day, and rejoiced together with an
exceeding great joy when the day-god, victorious over his foes, gilded
the hills again.
In Slavonic tradition Swarog is represented as the most ancient of
their gods, as the one who was originally—before Perkunas—the supreme
deity of those tribes, corresponding to Sanskrit Surya, like Helios in
Greece, the dweller in the orb of the sun. Swarog was the pervading,
irresistible luminary, the solar deity, _par excellence_, of the race,
and vague recollections of him still exist. In some places Swarog
seems to have yielded to another solar deity, Dazhbog, the god of
fruitfulness, represented as the son of Swarog.
The etymological signification of Dazhbog is the “day-god.” With
him, as a representative of the sun, was a god named Khors—probably,
however, but another name of the day-god.
Ogon, answering closely to Sanskrit Agni, Latin, _ignis_ (fire), was
the god of fire, brother of Dazhbog; his worship was principally
connected with the domestic hearth.
But the deity who stands out most prominently, who became the supreme
divinity of the race, though corresponding to the Scandinavian Thor,
was Perkunas, or Perun, whose name, yielding to certain laws of
phonetic change, may correspond to Greek Keraunos (thunder), but more
closely to Sanskrit Parjanya, called in the Rig-Veda, “The thunderer,
the showerer, the bountiful, who impregnates the plants with rain.”
This god was forgotten by the Hellenic Aryans, who exalted Dyaus (Zeus,
Jove) to the supreme position, but the Letto-Slavonic tribes bestowed
upon him the endearing appellation of the “All-Father,” a title which
they only conferred upon the creator of the lightnings. It is said that
the Russians still say, when the thunder rolls, “_Perkuna gromena_;” in
Lithuanian, “_Perkuns grumena_.”
The South-Slavic term for the rainbow is “Perunika,” “Perun’s flower,”
or “beauty.”
“White-Russian traditions,” says Afanasief,[C] “describe Perun as tall
and well shaped, with black hair and a long golden beard. He rides in a
flaming car, grasping in his left hand a quiver full of arrows, and in
his right a fiery bow.”
He is also represented as carrying a mace, answering to Thor’s hammer,
mjolnir.
After the introduction of Christianity the prophet Elijah became
credited with many of the honors and functions of Perkunas. He was
termed, “Gromovit Ilija” (Thunder Elijah), and the origin of the
notion, and the strange metamorphosis of that sweet spirit into a
Boanerges, undoubtedly lie in his flight to heaven in a chariot of
fire, and in his power, when on earth, of calling down fire from
heaven, and of bringing the rain. Thus, II. Kings, i:10, he says, “If
I be a man of God, then shall fire come down from heaven and consume
thee and thy fifty.” Again, Kings, i., 18:41, “And Elijah said unto
Ahab: Get thee up; eat and drink, for there is a sound of abundance of
rain.”
The Slavs considered that the thunder and lightning were given into
the prophet’s hands, and that he closed the gates of heaven, _i. e._,
the clouds, to sinful men, who thus might not share in his blessed
reign. There is evidence of the same belief among the Teutonic tribes,
and in the old High-German poem, “Muspilli,” a form of that saga which
prevailed throughout all the middle ages with regard to the appearance
of anti-Christ shortly before the end of the world. Elijah takes the
place which Thor assumes in Scandinavian myth at Ragnarok, and fights
the evil one:
“Daz hôrtih rahhôn dia werol trehtwison,
Daz sculi der anti-Christo mit Eliase pâgan.”
I have heard the very learned say,
That anti-Christ shall with Elijah fight.
The poem then proceeds to say that Elijah shall be wounded, and
recounts the many signs and wonders that shall occur before the
Muspell-doom, the Judgment Day.
Volos, or Veles, was another solar deity. It has been held that the
Greek Helios appears in this name, while others have identified him
with Odin, or Woden, pronounced with an epenthetic _l_, and with other
changes, but the etymology seems far-fetched.
He was the special protector of cattle. The name survives to Christian
times in St. Blasius. Mr. Ralston says: “In Christian times the honors
originally paid to Volos were transferred to his namesake, St. Vlas,
or Vlasy (Blasius), who was a shepherd by profession. To him the
peasants throughout Russia pray for the safety of their flocks and
herds, and on the day consecrated to him (February 11) they drive
their cows to church, and have them secured against misfortune by
prayer and the sprinkling of holy water.... Afanasief considers that
the name was originally one of the epithets of Perun, who, as the
cloud-compeller—the clouds being the cattle of the sky—was the guardian
of the heavenly herds, and that the epithet ultimately became regarded
as the name of a distinct deity.”
By the names of Volus and Perun the Russians used to swear and confirm
their sayings and treaties by oath.
Stribog was the wind-god. According to Russian ideas the four winds
are the sons of one mother, and in the Old-Russian Igor song the wind
is addressed as Sir. These winds are called Stribog’s grandsons. So
in India, the winds are regarded as sentient beings; thus in the
Nalopákhyánam:
“Thus adjured, a solemn witness, spake the winds from out the air.
* * * * *
Even as thus the wind was speaking, flowers fell showering all around,
And the gods’ sweet music sounded on the zephyr light.”
Byelbog and Chernobog, the representatives of light and darkness, are
of antagonistic nature—the warring principles of good and evil. Byelbog
is the white, shining god, the bringer of the day, the benignant
Phœbus, while Chernobog, a black god, belongs to the diabolical order.
The goddess of spring and love was Lada—corresponding closely to Freya
in the Scandinavian traditions. Lovers and the newly married addressed
their prayers to her, praising her name in songs. Lado, the Slavonic
counterpart of Norse Freyr, has many of the same attributes as the
goddess Lada, to whom the same adoration and praise were offered. Mr.
Ralston says that “one Lithuanian song distinctly couples the name Lado
with that of the sun. A shepherd sings, ‘I fear thee not O wolf! The
god with the sunny curls will not let thee approach. Lado, O Sun-Lado!’
In one of the old chronicles Lado is mentioned as the god of marriage,
of mirth, of pleasure, and of general happiness, to whom those about to
marry offered sacrifices in order to secure a fortunate union.”
Kupàlo was the god of harvests, and before the harvest—on the 23d of
June—sacrifices were offered to him. Young people lighted fires and
danced around them in the evening, adorned with garlands of flowers,
singing harvest ditties to the god. This custom still survives in the
fires kindled on St. John’s eve, through which sometimes the people
jump and drive their cattle. The Poles and other Slavonians, especially
in remote districts, keep up many of their ancient heathen rites.
The 24th of December was sacred to the goddess Kolyada, a solar deity,
to whom songs were sung in celebration of the renewed life of the sun
after the winter solstice “when the gloom of the long winter nights
begins to give way to the lengthening day.” This festival became
blended with the Christmas celebration upon the advent of Christianity,
and songs are still to be heard at that time containing the name of the
goddess, as
Kolyada! Kolyada!
Kolyada has arrived
On the eve of the Nativity.
These ditties are called Kolyadki.
Inferior deities were believed in and many supernatural beings were
supposed to haunt the woods and waters. The Russalkas, which are
naiads, though no more seen, are still believed in, and are of a
nature similar to the elves and fairies of western nations. “They are
generally represented under the form of beauteous maidens, with full
and snow-white bosoms, and with long and slender limbs. Their feet are
small, their eyes are wild, their faces are fair to see, but their
complexion is pale, their expression anxious. Their hair is long and
thick and wavy, and green as is the grass.” The Russians are very
superstitious in regard to them, fearing to offend them, while the
maidens go into the woods and throw garlands to them, asking for rich
husbands in return.
Then there are Mavkas, or Little-Russian fairies and water-nymphs, wood
demons, house spirits and numerous other minor spirits and powers which
teem in the folk songs of the peasants.
Among the eastern Slavs there seem to have been no temples or priests,
while the contrary was true of the west. They burned their dead
and greatly reverenced the spirits of the departed, in whose honor
festivals were held.
A form of Sutteeism undoubtedly prevailed, widows destroying themselves
in order to accompany their husbands to the spirit land, while slaves
were sometimes sacrificed upon the same occasions—a practice common to
most barbarous states of society.
Upon a general view of ancient Slavonic mythology we observe the same
characteristics as among all the other Indo-European tribes—the same
nature-worship and inclination to personify the powers of the air and
sky; to worship the beneficent sun, which brings to man prosperity,
light and happiness; to execrate the night, the enemy of the bright,
the beautiful god of day. Men in the childhood of the human race were
as simple as children ever have been. The same characteristics mark
them. When the mother leaves her child for a moment, the babe with
piteous cries calls on her to return. Why is this so? Because in the
mind of the child there is no connecting link between the ideas of her
going and returning; in other words, the child cannot reason enough
to consider it possible—not to say probable, _certain_—that she will
return.
Thus in the simple pastoral days of extreme antiquity, when the
glorious sun, the light of men’s eyes, the joy of their hearts, sank
below the horizon, the idea of its return failed to suggest itself to
their minds. Each sun-setting was a grief, each rising of the blessed
orb a joy unspeakable.
And thus upon the plains of Iran, in the flowery meads of Asia Minor
and on the Russian steppes, when man beheld the sun, his joy appeared,
he fell on his face and thanked the regent of the sky for his light
again.
Had the earth been nearer to the sun the face of Comparative Mythology
had been changed; the sun-myth would have had to seek a different
origin and home, and the history of that greatest of all studies—the
study of man—would have had a different course.
It is sincerely to be hoped that the future of the Slavonic tribes may
be such as God and nature have intended for them, and that their name
may be changed again from _slaves_ to _Slavs_—“men of glory”—is the
aspiration of all who have hopes for the race; in short, of all who
wish well to our common humanity.
FOOTNOTES:
[B] Extract from a lecture delivered at Pacific Grove Assembly, July,
1883, Monterey, California.
[C] Ralston, “Songs of the Russian People,” from whom much information
contained in this sketch is gained.
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE ADRIATIC.
By the Author of “German-American Housekeeping,” etc.
We hesitated quite awhile before deciding to expend fifty thalers for
a trip from Berlin to Danzig, finally concluding that the historical
interest of Marienburg, through which we would pass on our return, and
the reputed picturesqueness of Danzig would compensate us for the time
and money. At an early hour one September morning we drove across the
busiest portion of Berlin (and most unknown to the traveler), to take
our train at the _ost bahn_. I had seen this portion of the large city
once before, when we started to visit the country of the Wends, the
original people in all the region by the Baltic.
The tedious stretch of sand (broken here and there by a peasant’s house
with red tile roof), was the same we had traversed so often in leaving
Berlin for a neighboring town or city, the inevitable “plains of Moab”
which discouraged Frederick the Great’s French gardeners. How such
a thriving, populous city as Berlin has ever asserted itself in the
sand, is a curious study. We passed Bismarck’s estate in Pomerania,
“Schönhausen,” and one of the party reflected upon the great statesman,
the largest factor in German political life; while the other remembered
the sad and dejected royal pair which was driven by Napoleon’s fury to
take this same route to Memel. The lovely Queen Louise and Frederick
William III. were there with their royal children, praying that the
tyrant’s hand might be stayed, and they brought back to their rightful
kingdom. Alas! death claimed the beautiful queen before the peace for
which she prayed was restored to Prussia. But in her son, the present
emperor, there has been perpetuated the spirit of his mother. Prussia’s
high position to-day has been secured not altogether by the might of
her great army, nor the tremendous genius of her great statesmen, nor
the ambition of her king, but by the growth of sentiment during the
reigns of Frederick William III. and IV., and by the precept Queen
Louise instilled into her sons during those dark and sorrowful days of
exile in Memel: “My sons, let the spirit of Frederick the Great animate
you,” etc.
Memel, Tilsit, and Königsberg were passed, and finally the blue Baltic
and Danzig were in sight. We had almost looked for amber-colored water,
so long had we associated the beautiful display of amber jewels in the
Berlin shop windows with the Baltic, from which it is taken. Even Homer
refers to the Baltic as the resting place of amber, its bed being laid
with the sunny stone.
A multitude of ship-masts rose from the coast, and from beyond the
pointed gables of the old city, lessening in altitude as the vista
lengthened. This first glimpse was a more fascinating picture than we
were afterward able to find. Yet the hotel helped the preconceived idea
that Danzig was really a second Nuremberg.
The broad stone steps, or stairway, which started from the
_portecochère_, were whitened by ashes, as one so often sees them in
Germany—a pretty state of things for a lady descending in a black
dress. The room we were to occupy was an immense ball-room, utilized
in quiet times for a bed-room. Two candles burned in their tall
candlesticks on the center-table, and by the light of the twilight we
could see across the street some beautiful and curious carvings in the
opposite gabled houses. The price paid for accommodations was large
enough to have enabled us to see castles in the air, and to have our
ball-room illuminated with gas until morning. We concluded they seldom
had guests in this hotel, and therefore made heavy profits when some
did come along.