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       MYTHS AND FOLK-TALES
              OF THE
   RUSSIANS, WESTERN SLAVS, AND
              MAGYARS

        By JEREMIAH CURTIN


              BOSTON
    LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
               1890


         _Copyright, 1890_
        By Jeremiah Curtin


         University Press
  John Wilson and Son, Cambridge




To FRANCIS JAMES CHILD, PH.D., LL.D.

_Professor of English in Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass._


My dear Professor Child,--

It is more than a quarter of a century since you began for Harvard
that collection of myths, folk-tales, and ballads, in all European
languages, which has grown under your hand to such proportions that it
is now, perhaps, the most complete of its kind in either hemisphere.

This work was begun by you through a clear perception of what was
needed for laborers in a most important field of inquiry, and achieved
by tireless and patient care in seeking and finding.

Your labors as a scholar are honored abroad as at home, and your work
on English and Scottish ballads will endure as a monument of skill and
devotion.

During your career as Professor you have been true to the ideals of
Harvard scholarship and life, adding to them meanwhile something of
your own.

Whoso adds to or freshens the spirit of our revered Alma Mater
deserves well of the country; for Harvard, now in the second half of
the third century of her existence, is the oldest witness and, so far,
the most eloquent that we have to the collective and continuous
striving of Americans towards a higher life.

To you,--the distinguished Professor, the earnest scholar, the
faithful friend,--I, one of thousands who have listened to your
instruction, dedicate this volume, gathered from a field in which you
take so much delight.

                                                Jeremiah Curtin.

    Smithsonian Institution,
        Bureau of Ethnology.
            Washington D. C. October 23, 1890.




CONTENTS.


                                                                Page
    Introduction                                                 vii


    RUSSIAN MYTHS AND FOLK-TALES.

    The Three Kingdoms,--The Copper, the Silver, and
      the Golden                                                   1

    Ivan Tsarevich, The Fire-Bird, and the Gray Wolf              20

    Ivan the Peasant's Son and the Little Man Himself
      One-finger Tall, his Mustache Seven Versts in Length        37

    The Feather of Bright Finist the Falcon                       47

    The Pig with Gold Bristles, the Deer with Golden Horns,
      and the Golden-Maned Steed with Golden Tail                 59

    Water of Youth, Water of Life, and Water of Death             72

    The Footless and Blind Champions                              82

    The Three Kingdoms                                            97

    Koshchéi Without-Death                                       106

    Vassilissa Golden Tress, Bareheaded Beauty                   124

    The Ring with Twelve Screws                                  137

    The Footless and the Blind                                   149

    Koshchéi Without-Death                                       165

    Go to the Verge of Destruction and Bring Back
      Shmat-Razum                                                179

    Marya Morevna                                                203

      Variant of the Rescue of Ivan Tsarevich and the
        Winning of the Colt                                      217

    Yelena the Wise                                              218

    The Seven Simeons, Full Brothers                             228

    The Enchanted Princess                                       238

    Vassilissa the Cunning, and the Tsar of the Sea              249


    CHEKH MYTHS AND FOLK-TALES.

    Boyislav, Youngest of Twelve                                 273

    The Table, the Pack, and the Bag                             295

    The King of the Toads                                        311

    The Mouse-hole, and the Underground Kingdom                  331

    The Cuirassier and the Horned Princess                       356

    The Treacherous Brothers                                     370


    MAGYAR MYTHS AND FOLK-TALES.

    The Poor Man, and the King of the Crows                      409

    The Useless Wagoner                                          424

    Mirko, the King's Son                                        434

    The Reed Maiden                                              457

    Kiss Miklos, and the Green Daughter of the Green King        477

    The Hedgehog, the Merchant, the King, and the Poor Man       517




INTRODUCTION.


A few tens of years ago it was all-important to understand and explain
the brotherhood and blood-bond of Aryan nations, and their relation to
the Semitic race; to discover and set forth the meaning of that which
in mental work, historic strivings, and spiritual ideals ties the
historic nations to one another. At the present time this work is
done, if not completely, at least measurably well, and a new work
awaits us, to demonstrate that there is a higher and a mightier
bond,--the relationship of created things with one another, and their
inseverable connection with That which some men reverence as God, but
which other men call the Unknowable, the Unseen.

This new work, which is the necessary continuation of the first, and
which alone can give it completeness and significance, will be
achieved when we have established the science of mythology.

Of course all that may be attempted in a volume like the present is to
throw out a few hints, and to mention some of the uses of mythology as
a science.

There is a large body of myths and folk-tales already published in
Europe, and still a great number as yet uncollected. Many of these
tales are of remarkable beauty. They are of deep interest both to
young and old, and nowhere do they enjoy more delicate appreciation
than among educated people in America and England. The delight in a
beautiful and wonderful story is the very highest mental pleasure for
a child, and great even for a grown man; but the explanation of it (if
explanation there be) and the nature of its heroes (if that can be
discovered) are dear to the mind of a mature person of culture. Much
has been written touching the heroes of folk-tales, as well as the
characters in Aryan mythology, but it appears to have produced small
effect; for to most readers it seems unproven, and founded mainly on
the views of each writer. This is the reason why the chief, almost the
only, value found in folk-tales, as yet, is the story itself, with its
simple beauty, incomparable grotesqueness, and marvellous adventures.

The great majority even of the least modified tales of Europe have
mainly substituted heroes,--sons of kings, tsars, merchants, poor men,
soldiers,--so that in most cases the birth, occupation, or name of the
present hero gives no clew to the original hero of the tale; but
incidents do. The incidents are often an indication of what kind of
person the original hero must have been.

A few of the tales in this volume have preserved elemental heroes; and
this is a fact of great value, for it points to a similarity with the
American system of mythology.

We have in the present volume Raven,--not the common bird, but that
elemental power which, after having been overcome, turned into the
common raven of to-day, and flew off to the mountains; Whirlwind and
South Wind are both heroes,--one as a leading, the other as an
important secondary, character in two of the Russian stories. We have
two brothers Wind, in "The Cuirassier and the Horned Princess," in
whom the personal character of Wind is well maintained. The steed,
fire-eating and wise, of the Magyars, which appears also in Russian
and other Slav tales, always mangy and miserable except in action, is
a very significant character, whose real nature one may hope to
demonstrate. But we have no tale in which it is clear who all the
characters are; the modifying influences were too great and
long-continued to permit that. Though myth-tales are, perhaps, more
interesting for the majority of modern readers in their present form,
they will not have their full interest for science till it is shown
who most of the actors are under their disguises.

This is the nearest task of mythology.

There are masterpieces in literature filled with myths, inspired with
myth conceptions of many kinds, simply  by the life of the time
and the nations among which these masterpieces were written and
moulded to shape by artists, made strong from the spirit of great,
simple people, as unknown to us as the nameless heroes who perished
before Agamemnon. How much mythology is there in the Iliad and the
Odyssey, in the Æneid, in the Divine Comedy of Dante, in the works of
the other three great Italian poets? How much in Paradise Lost? How
could "King Lear" and "Midsummer Night's Dream," or the "Idylls of the
King" have been written without Keltic mythology? Many of these
literary masterpieces have not merely myths in their composition as a
sentence has words, but the earlier ones are enlarged or modified
myth-tales of those periods, while the later ones are largely modelled
on and inspired by the earlier.

The early chronicles of nations are as strikingly associated with
mythology as are the masterpieces of literature. Omitting others, one
case may be noted here,--that of the voluminous Gaelic chronicles and
the so-called historical tales of Ireland, which, in the guise of
history, give mythology, and preserve for coming investigators a whole
buried Pantheon.

The service of the science of mythology will be great in connection
with the myth-tales of nations, with literature, and with early
history; but its weightiest service will be rendered in the domain of
religion, for without mythology there can be no thorough understanding
of any religion on earth, either in its inception or its growth.

But how is this science from which men may receive such service to be
founded?

In one way alone: by obtaining from races outside of the Aryan and
Semitic their myths, their beliefs, their view of the world; this
done, the rest will follow as a result of intelligent labor. But the
great battle is in the first part of the work, for the inherent
difficulty of the task has been increased by Europeans, who have
exterminated great numbers among the best primitive races, partially
civilized or rather degraded others, and rendered the remainder
distrustful and not easily approached on the subject of their myths
and ethnic beliefs.

As to the collection of these myths and beliefs, the following may be
stated:--

There is everywhere a sort of selvage of short tales and anecdotes,
small information about ghosts and snakes, among all these races,
which are easily obtained; and most Europeans seem to think that when
they have collected some of these trivial things they have all that
the given people possess. But they are greatly mistaken. All these
people have something better. There was not a single stock of Indians
in America which did not possess, in beautiful forms, the elements of
an extensive literature, with a religion and philosophy which would
have thrown light on many beginnings of Aryan and Semitic thought, a
knowledge of which in so many cases is now lost to us, but which we
hope to recover in time. The same may be said of other primitive
races, still unbroken, unmodified; and though much has been lost,
still enough remains to serve our purpose fully, if civilized men
instead of slaying "savages," directly and indirectly, will treat them
as human beings, and not add to the labor of those workers who in the
near future will surely endeavor, singly or in small groups, to study
the chief primitive races of the earth, and win from them, not short
insignificant odds and ends of information, but great masses of
material; for the educated world may rest assured that these races
possess in large volume some of the most beautiful productions of the
human mind, and facts that are not merely of great, but of unique,
value.

In the introduction to my volume, "Myths and Folk-lore of Ireland," I
endeavored to explain in brief what the myths of America are,
especially the Creation-myths, referring only to those which I myself
have collected. I stated that, "All myths have the same origin, and
that all run parallel up to a certain point, which may be taken as the
point to which the least developed peoples have risen" (page 27). I do
not know any better way of illustrating this than to bring into
evidence myths of the Morning-star. The Indians have a great many
myths in which the Morning-star figures as the Light-bringer,--the
same office as that indicated by the Latin word _Lucifer_; and here I
may be permitted to present a short chapter of my personal experience
with reference to that word and the Morning-star.

I remember well the feelings roused in my mind at mention or sight of
the name Lucifer during the earlier years of my life. It stood for me
as the name of a being stupendous, dreadful in moral deformity, lurid,
hideous, and mighty. I remember also the surprise with which when I had
grown somewhat older and begun to study Latin, I came upon the name in
Virgil, where it means the Light-bringer, or Morning-star,--the herald
of the sun. Many years after I had found the name in Virgil, I spent a
night at the house of a friend in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, right at the
shore of Lake Michigan. The night was clear but without a moon,--a
night of stars, which is the most impressive of all nights, vast,
brooding, majestic. At three o'clock in the morning I woke, and being
near an uncurtained window, rose and looked out. Rather low in the east
was the Morning-star, shining like silver, with a bluish tinge of
steel. I looked towards the west; the great infinity was filled with
the hosts of heaven, ranged behind this Morning-star. I saw at once the
origin of the myth which grew to have such tremendous moral meaning,
because the Morning-star was not in this case the usher of the day but
the chieftain of night, the Prince of Darkness, the mortal enemy of the
Lord of Light. I returned to bed knowing that the battle in heaven
would soon begin. I rose when the sun was high next morning. All the
world was bright, shining and active, gladsome and fresh, from the rays
of the sun; the kingdom of light was established; but the Prince of
Darkness and all his confederates had vanished, cast down from the sky,
and to the endless eternity of God their places will know them no more
in _that_ night again. They are lost beyond hope or redemption, beyond
penance or prayer.

I have in mind at this moment two Indian stories of the
Morning-star,--one Modoc, the other Delaware. The Modoc story is very
long, and contains much valuable matter; but the group of incidents
that I wish to refer to here are the daily adventures and exploits of
a personage who seems to be no other than the sky with the sun in it.
This personage is destroyed every evening. He always gets into
trouble, and is burned up; but in his back is a golden disk, which
neither fire nor anything in the world can destroy. From this disk his
body is reconstituted every morning; and all that is needed for the
resurrection is the summons of the Morning-star, who calls out, "It is
time to rise, old man; you have slept long enough." Then the old man
springs new again from his ashes through virtue of the immortal disk
and the compelling word of the star.

Now, the Morning-star is the attendant spirit or "medicine" of the
personage with the disk, and cannot escape the performance of his
office; he has to work at it forever. So the old man cannot fail to
rise every morning. As the golden disk is no other than the sun, the
Morning-star of the Modocs is the same character as the Lucifer of the
Latins.

The Delaware story, also a long one, has many grotesque and striking
elements. I will tell it in a closely compressed form. The person who
is the hero of this tale has a wife, who, while he is absent hunting,
turns into a man-eater,--becomes a devouring agency with a mania to
swallow all flesh, but has a special and craving mania to eat up her
own husband first of all; so she runs to the woods to find him.
Informed by a wise, talking dog, a species of brother of his, who had
sprung out to anticipate the woman, the man rushes off southward, runs
with all speed till he reaches a deep mighty river, where is an old
man who makes a bridge by stretching his neck across the water. The
hunted husband speaks kindly, and implores for means to cross or his
wife will devour him. The old man lies down with his shoulder on one
bank, stretches his neck, makes it flat like a horse's neck, to give
safe passage; soon his head is on the other bank, and the man walks
over. The old bridge-maker promises to delay the woman, and then throw
her into the river, where she will be eaten by monsters,--all save
her stomach, in which her life resides; that will float down with the
current, come to life, and the woman will be as well and furious as
ever, unless the stomach is dragged out, cut to pieces, and burned.

The hunted man hastens, runs westward by the bank of the river, runs
till he comes to two aunts who are witches. They promise to help him
and kill the pursuer. Soon after, when the old man has shortened his
neck and is sitting on his own side of the river, the wife comes up in
hot pursuit, talks roughly, tries to hurry the old pontifex; but he
will not hurry, waits, and then stretches his neck, putting the narrow
side upward; it is no wider than the woman's feet. She storms, but he
says that being old he might break his neck were he to give the broad
side as a path; she must walk on the narrow side, and carefully too.
She begins to cross, but in the middle of the river grows restive and
angry. The old man jerks his neck to one side; she falls to the water
and is eaten right away, all save her stomach, which floats with the
current. But the aunts, the two witches, are watching; they see and
pull out the stomach, cut it up, and burn the life of that man-eater.

The man travels westward till he sees a young woman gathering branches
for fuel. He speaks to her, is pleased; she is mild-eyed,
kind-looking. He asks her to marry him; she says she is willing if he
can live with her grandmother, who is very thick, very ugly, and
malicious. He goes home with the young woman; they are married.

Soon after the marriage the old woman took her son-in-law to hunt on
an island in a lake. They landed. She said, "Go down there," pointing
to a place; "I will drive the game." He started, and when half way,
looked back; the old woman was in the canoe paddling to the other
shore. He called; she would not listen, and left him alone on the
island. There was no escape. When the sun had gone down and darkness
came, the water of the lake began to rise, and flooded the place. He
selected the highest tree, and began to climb,--the water all the time
rising; he climbed, and continued to climb. About three o'clock in the
morning all the trees on the island, except that tree, were covered.
Around on every side were great hungry savage-eyed creatures, rising
with the water, waiting to eat the man. He looked, saw the
Morning-star, and cried out: "When I was young the Morning-star
appeared to me in a dream, and said that if ever I should be in
distress he would save me."

The star heard the call, turned to a small boy standing sentry at his
door, and said, "Who is that shouting on the island?"

"That," said the boy, "is the old woman's son-in-law. She put him
there. He says you appeared to him in a dream and promised to save
him."

"I did, and I will." The Morning-star came forth from his house and
called: "Let daylight come!"

Dawn came that moment; the water began to fall, and at sunrise the
island was dry. The man was saved, came down, went to the
landing-place, and hid in the bushes. Soon the old woman's canoe
struck the shore; the man heard her say: "Well, I suppose the larger
bones of my son-in-law are under the tree. I must go and eat the
marrow." When she had gone far enough, he sprang into the canoe and
paddled away. The old woman turned, saw the escape of her son-in-law,
and cried: "Come back! I'll play no more tricks."

The man paddled to the other shore, and went to his wife. The old
woman was alone, not able to escape. When darkness came, the lake
began to rise. She climbed the highest tree, climbed till the water
was nearing the top, and the hungry, terrible creatures were waiting
to eat her. Then she called out towards the east: "When I was young
the Morning-star appeared to me in a dream, and said he would help me
out of distress."

The Morning-star heard, and asked his boy: "Is that man on the island
yet?"

"Oh," said the boy, "the man is at home; the old woman herself is on
the island now. She says that you appeared to her in a dream, and
promised to save her from distress."

"I never appeared to that old woman," said the star. "I will not hurry
daylight to-day."

The water rose till the old woman was on the highest point of the tree
that would bear her. The water raised all the crowd of hungry,
terrible creatures. They tore her to pieces, devoured her.

So the Delawares on the Atlantic, who enjoy seniority among the
Algonkin,--the most widely-extended Indian stock of America,--agree
with the Modocs, near the Pacific, in the theory of the Morning-star,
which for them, as for the Latins, was the Light-bearer. The opposite
view, to which I refer in the night-scene at Milwaukee, gave birth to
the myth of the struggle of the stars with the sun for possession of
the sky. Now, a combination of these two myths--the one in which the
Morning-star is the Light-bearer being the earlier--gives us a third,
in which the Morning-star is not merely an opponent, but a rebel. This
third myth, after it had increased in age, came to be used in
describing, not an event in the sky, looked at variously by primitive
men, but an event in the moral world; and the stories of the
Morning-star and the sun were transferred from the fields of heaven
to the kingdom of the soul. This done, Milton had at hand the splendid
mythologic material and accessories which he used with such power in
Paradise Lost.

I know no American myth in which the Morning-star is represented as
hostile to the sun; the discovery of one would be very interesting and
valuable, as showing that the primitive people of this continent might
possibly have worked out a physical myth like that made in the Eastern
hemisphere, and afterwards spiritualized till it was given the meaning
which we find in the pages of Milton.

But whatever the future may bring, the present American Morning-star
myth is interesting; for it shows a complete parallelism with Aryan
mythology as far as it goes,--that is, to the highest point reached by
the non-Aryan tribes of America.

It should be remembered that whatever be the names of the myth-tale
heroes at present, the original heroes were not human. They were not
men and women, though in most cases the present heroes or heroines
bear the names of men and women, or children; they perform deeds which
no man could perform, which only one of the forces of Nature could
perform, if it had the volition and desires of a person. This is the
great cause of wonderful deeds in myth-tales.

The following Indian myth, in which we know exactly who the actors
were, illustrates this fact very well. I give the myth from memory,
and in a compressed form, making first the statement that in a part of
eastern Oregon and Washington, where I found it, there are two winds,
as the Indians informed me, which are all, or practically all, that
blow in that region. One of these is a northeast, the other a
southwest wind. The Indians subdivide each one of them into five. Each
of these five is a little different from the other,--that is, there
are five kinds of southwest winds, and five kinds of northeast winds.
Each has a proper name describing its character; and in telling the
myth these names are used, just as the name Ivan the Fool, and Mirko
the king's son are used in Russia and Hungary. The Northeast brothers
have a sister more harassing and cruel than they,--cold, damp, fitful.
She also has a name describing her character. The five Southwest winds
have grandparents very old, who live in a hut by themselves. They have
no sister; but the eldest has a wife, brought by him to Oregon from
her birthplace in the Southern seas.

One time the Northeast winds challenged the others to a
wrestling-match, in which whoever should be thrown would have his head
cut off. The Southwest brothers were not free to refuse; they had to
accept. All the details of this match are described precisely as if
the opponents were men and not winds. The Southwest brothers were
thrown, every one, and each had his head cut off; all were killed, and
now the Northeast brothers were lords of that region. The old feeble
grandparents were all of the family left in Oregon. The young wife
went home to her parents and people in the Southern seas. The
victorious brothers did as they pleased,--when they wished to knock
any one down they did so; but the crowning wickedness of the
victorious family was the malice of the sister against the aged
grandparents. She came every morning to their hut and insulted them in
a manner that will not bear recital. Weeping and helpless, they
endured the foulest abuse. The evil sister rejoiced, the wicked
brothers rejoiced, and all men besides were suffering. Some time after
the widow had returned to her home in the Southern seas a son was born
to the late eldest brother,--a wonderful boy. This posthumous child
grew not by years but by days; and when he was three weeks old he had
attained full growth. He was a hero of awful strength; nothing could
resist him. He asked about his father; his mother told how his fathers
had perished (the brothers of a father are fathers too in the Indian
system) at the hands of the Northeast brothers. "I will go to avenge
my fathers," said he, and started.

He reached the coast near the Columbia River, which he ascended; when
at the Cascades he began to try his strength. He pulled out the
greatest trees with their roots, overturned cliffs, and went on his
way with delight. At last he arrived at the land where his fathers had
ruled, and went first in the early morning to the hut of his great
grandparents. They were very weak and wretched, but still they were
able to tell of what they had suffered from the sister. "She will soon
be here," said they; so he lay in waiting.

She came, and was preparing to begin her insults when he seized her
and put her to a painful death. Then he challenged the five wicked
brothers to a wrestling-match, threw them all, and cut their heads
off. The whole country rejoiced. No one felt pain. The young hero
ruled that land to the delight of all. This hero was not a month old,
and since we know the characters in the story, we know that the story
is true.

When, in Gaelic, we find heroes like the son of Fin MacCumhail,
Fialan, who at the age of three years slew whole armies, with their
champion leaders,[1] and the Shee an Gannon, who was born in the
morning, named at noon, and went in the evening to ask his daughter of
the King of Erin; or in Russian, Ivan Tsarevich,[2] nine days old,
who