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[Illustration: [Russian font: B. N. Nemirovitch-Dantchenko.]]

  PEASANT TALES OF RUSSIA

  BY

  V. I. NEMIROVITCH-DANTCHENKO

  TRANSLATED BY

  CLAUD FIELD, M.A.
  Editor of "Jewish Legends of the Middle Ages."


[Illustration: [_Frontispiece._

"Holding his torch high, Ivan skirted the precipice."]

[Illustration]


  PEASANT TALES
  OF RUSSIA

  [Illustration]

  LONDON: ROBERT SCOTT
  ROXBURGHE HOUSE
  PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.

 _All rights reserved_

  MCMXVII




CONTENTS


                                                           PAGE

  THE DESERTED MINE                                           3

  MAHMOUD'S FAMILY                                           61

  A MISUNDERSTANDING                                         91

  THE LUCK OF IVAN THE FORGETFUL                            129




_LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS_


                                                                    PAGE

  "Holding his torch high, Ivan skirted the
  precipice"                                               _Frontispiece_

  "Your prediction is fulfilled. The Turk has
  escaped"                                                            60

  "From all directions nuns came gliding
  towards the lighted portal"                                         90

  "A strange sight brought her to a standstill"                      128

  "At the edge of the wood lay a dead woman,
  with a little living creature sobbing over
  her"                                                               145




_THE DESERTED MINE_

[Illustration]




_THE DESERTED MINE_


I

At the entrance of the Voskressensky mine stood a group of miners. All
were quite silent.

It was still dark, for the autumn days begin late. Heavy grey clouds
glided slowly over the sky, in which the first streaks of dawn were
hardly visible. These clouds glided so low that they seemed to wish to
lie on the earth in order to hide this black hole, this well-like
orifice which was about to swallow up the miners one by one. The air was
saturated with a cloud of damp dust, particles of which fell on the
men's hair and faces. The miners wore leather jerkins, and small lamps,
whose light flickered fitfully, hung at their belts. An imaginative
person might have thought that they trembled with fear at having to
descend into the heavy dense darkness of the mine.

"Listen, old man! You can never go down alone," said the young overseer
to an old miner who was of tall stature, thin and withered. His long
grey beard fell in disarray over his hollow chest, and his breath came
and went with a thin whistling sound, as though the damp air of this
dark morning found as much difficulty in entering as in leaving it. The
features of the old miner's face were strongly marked, and his two black
eyes burned in the depths of their sockets with a brilliant, almost
fantastic light. This death's-head seemed almost buried from sight
between two very high shoulders. When he walked, his back was arched,
and his whole long body leaned forward, so that he seemed to be looking
for something he had lost, or to be picking his steps very carefully.
His feeble arms hung languidly by his side, and his legs tottered and
gave way every moment under the weight of his body, slight as it was.

"You will never be able to descend the ladders! We will put you into the
basket! Hullo! you fellows over there, come and help to start old
Ivan!" the overseer called to the rest.

"Here we are, Father Ivan!" they cried, saying to each other jocosely,
"Fancy his wishing to go down the ladders with us!"

The old miner turned towards them. It was a long time ago since he had
been born in a mine about five versts distant which had been
subsequently closed. His mother, who had lost her husband by the
falling-in of one of the mine-galleries, continued to work in the same
gallery after it had been repaired. Ivan had been born in the eternal
darkness. His first cry had been drowned by the noise of blasting rocks,
his first glance met nothing but the gloom of the subterranean gallery.
He was hoisted to the surface of the ground in a large bucket full of
ore. All the first impressions of his sad childhood were intimately
connected with the mine where his mother, who was obliged to earn her
living, always worked. As she had no one to whom to entrust the child,
she took him with her, and he remained lying beside her, fixing his
wide-open eyes on his mother's flickering lamp, while he sucked at his
milk-bottle. It was this black hole which echoed to his laughter and his
crying, especially to the latter. His mother, who was naturally
taciturn, had scarcely time to caress her child, for she would have had
to quit her work; when she heard the little one's sobs, she redoubled
the blows of her pickaxe against the