Any editor of Slav folk-tales starts with great advantages. Russia is a
country where artistic development began very late; where popular lore
was conserved with little alteration owing to the immensities of the
country, the primitiveness of the people, and the punctiliousness of the
compilers.
The principal source for Russian folk-tales is the great collection of
Afanáśev, a coeval of Rybnikov, Kirěyevski, Sakharov, Bezsonov, and
others who all from about 1850 to 1870 laboriously took down from the
lips of the peasants of all parts of Russia what they could of the
endless store of traditional song, ballad, and folk-tale. These great
collectors were actuated only by the desire for accuracy; they appended
laboriously erudite notes; but they were not literary men and did not
sophisticate, or improve on their material.
But, before venturing on a brief account of the tales, something must be
premised as to the position occupied by folk-tales in the cultural
development of a people. In Pagan times, there always existed a double
religion, the ceremonial worship of the gods of nature and the tribal
deities,—a realm of thought in which all current philosophy and idealism
entered into a set form that symbolized the State,—and also local cults
and superstitions, the adoration of the spirits of streams, wells,
hills, etc. To all Aryan peoples, Nature has always been alive, but
never universalized, or romanticized, as in modern days; wherever you
were, the brook, the wind, the knoll, the stream were all inhabited by
agencies, which could be propitiated, cajoled, threatened, but, under
all conditions, were personal forces, who could not be disregarded.
When Christianity transformed the face of the world, it necessarily left
much below the surface unaffected. The great national divinities were
proscribed and submerged; some of their features reappearing in the
legendary feats of the saints. The local cults continued, with this
difference, that they were now condemned by the Church and became
clandestine magic; or else they were adopted by the Church, and the
rites and sanctuaries transferred. The memory of them subsisted; the
fear of these local gods degenerated into superstition; the magic of the
folk-tales becomes half-fantastic, half-conventional, belief in which is
surreptitious, usual, and optional. At this stage of disorganization of
local custom, folk-tales arise, and into them, transmitted as they are
orally and under the ban of the Church, contaminations of all sorts
creep, such as mistaken etymologies, faint memories of real history,
reminiscences of lost folk-songs, Christian legend and morals, etc.
The Russian people have handed down three categories of records. First
of all, the Chronicles, which are very full, very accurate, and, within
the limits of the temporary concepts of possibility and science,
absolutely true. Secondly, the ballads or _bylíny_; epic songs in an
ancient metre, narrating historical episodes as they occur; and also
comprising a cycle of heroic romance, comparable with the _chansons de
geste_ of Charlemagne, the cycles of Finn and Cuchúlain of the Irish,
and possibly with the little minor epics out of which it is supposed
that some supreme Greek genius built up the artistic epics of the Iliad
and the Odyssey. These _bylíny_ may be ranked as fiction: i.e. as facts
of real life (as then understood), applied to non-existent, unvouched,
or legendary individuals. They are not bare records of fact, like the
Chronicles; imagination enters into their scope; non-human, miraculous
incidents are allowable; their content is not a matter for faith or
factual record; they may be called historical fiction, which, broadly
taken, corresponded to actual events, and typified the national
strivings and ideals. The traditional ceremonial songs, magical
incantations and popular melodies are of the same date and in the same
style.
Thirdly, the folk-tales. In their matter, these differ little, if at
all, from the common Aryan stock. In their treatment, there are
well-marked divergencies. They are, in the first place, characterized by
the so-called realism that tinges all Russian literature; a better word
would be factualism, as realism is associated with the anti-romanticism
that accentuates material facts and seeks to obliterate moral factors.
This attitude of mind is rather like that of a careful observer, who has
become callous, because he is helpless—an attitude of those who serve
and stand and wait.
From the earliest Chronicles to the most modern fiction, this factualism
characterizes Russian work. It has reacted on the Folk-tales in several
ways; all the more observable as we have them fresh and ungarnished, as
the tellers told them.
The stories are not, like the German _Märchen_, neatly rounded off into
consequential and purposive stories. The incidents follow almost
haphazard; and at the end, the persons mentioned at the beginning may be
forgotten; the stories are often almost as casual as real life.
The stories relate experiences in succession, attempt no judgment, do
not even affirm their own credibility. Things simply happen; our
exertions may sometimes be some good; we can only be quietly resigned.
But, unlike the Arabian Nights, there is no positive fatalism; for that
would imply a judgment; a warping of facts to suit a theory.
Equally, there is none of the artistic grace of Greek legend, nor the
exuberance of Celtic fantasy; both of these are departures from the
crude, unilluded, unexpectant observation.
This unconsciously involves a perfect art with regard to detail; so much
is told as a man would remember of an experience; there is no striving
after impressionism, nor meticulous detail.
The prevailing tone is sadness; but there is no absence of humour; yet
fun merely happens, and is inherent; there is no broad, boisterous fun.
In them, unlike other Aryan folk-tales, there are no fairies, nor
giants, nor gnomes, nor personifications of nature. As in his Pagan
myths, the Slav never advanced beyond inchoate conceptions of Nature, he
neither philosophized like the Hindu, nor created types of pure grace
like the Greek, nor beautiful fancies, like the Celt. Where the
river-gods [vodyanóy], or the wood-sprites [lěši], have human form, it
is to a certain extent because they have been contaminated with the
Christian Devil.
To sum up, these undiluted products of the Russian people are a faithful
mirroring of life, as it appeared, casual; for the most part
unfortunate, and inscrutable.
There are some very frequent supernatural beings. The Witch who lives in
the forest, rides the winds in a mortar, devours human flesh, lives in a
hut on cocks’ legs, is one of the commonest. The great baleful magician
is Koshchéy the Deathless, whose soul, in some stories, is contained in
an egg far away, fearsomely guarded. Historically, his ancestry is the
dread Tatar, in which figure all the previous Turanian tribes that
overran medieval Russia have been confounded.
Notes will be found dealing with all such specific persons and places.
The folk-tales are very various; some classes of them can be
distinguished.
The bestiary, or animal story, is common, and the parts which the beasts
enact are similar to the Teutonic fairy-tales.
The semi-sacred legends of the days when Christ and his Apostles walked
the earth, superficially may be compared with Grimm’s stories. But the
spirit is very different. To a very slight extent they are based on the
Gospel. But the Russian Christ of the folk-tales is a good, just, honest
peasant, with democratic sympathies, and plenty of humour. His justice
is unwavering, but tempered with sound common sense. He is kind,
charitable and thoroughly human.
The Saints also walk the earth. Saint George [Egóri] has taken over many
Pagan legends; in one of the semi-sacred _bylíny_ [v. Bezsónov, _Kalěki_
_Perekhózhie_], he turns round the oaks and the mountains, like Vertodúb
and Vertogór, and in other _bylíny_ of the same class the miraculous
incidents of the birth of Ilyá Múromets are attributed to him. Saint
Nicholas is the worker of miracles; and Saint Elias has had some of the
powers of the thundergod transferred to him.
Other stories are prose adaptations of the ballads, and must be
considered as such.
There are two personifications, which call for special attention, those
of Death and of Sorrow. Both are borrowed from ballad cycles. Both
figures appear as ghostly spirits, who persecute man, but yet can be
very efficaciously and roughly handled.
There are some few satires; but the large majority cannot be readily
classified. They contain the usual incidents of transformations, magic,
witches, the valorous youngest son, the beautiful princess wronged by
the evil stepmother,—in fact, the common Aryan stock, all tinged with
the characteristic Slav temperament.
Artless as these stories are, there are a few peculiar conventions in
the narration. Such are the little forewords, with their sardonic
musings; the conclusion of almost every happy tale that the narrator was
at the feast, but never might taste the viands; the references to the
distances the hero must go, which the narrator has not the knowledge to
estimate accurately; the reference to the land of these wonderful
happenings, “the thrice-ninth land, the thrice-tenth kingdom”; and many
other traditional stylisms.
In conclusion, it should be stated that the store of primitive folk-lore
of the Slavs has scarcely been touched. The Slav peoples conserved
primitive Aryan customs almost up to the middle of the nineteenth
century; and then these were industriously and conscientiously compiled.
Taking Russia alone, there are collections of magic formulas, ceremonial
songs of Pagan origin, volumes of traditional ballads; and the ancient
munic has also been recorded. But Bulgaria, Little-Russia, Serbia,
Bohemia, and all the Slav countries have similar compilations; and every
one of these nationalities is as strongly individualized, as are, say,
the Danes, the Dutch, and the Germans.
These stories have been translated direct from the Russian of Afanášev;
the selection is intended to represent, as completely as possible, the
varieties of Russian folk-tale. As far as an analytic language, like
modern English, can render so highly inflected a tongue as Russian, the
translator has tried to keep strictly to the style and diction of the
originals, which are the undoctored traditional stories.