BOOKS.

RALSTON'S SONGS OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE.*

IT is one of the familiar features of Russian life, on which every traveller dwells, that the shop and the eating-house, the noble- man's lofty hall and the foul grimy hovel of the moujik, are alike sanctified to the purpose of a temple by the sacred picture, the icon, which hangs high and honoured on the wall, with its faintly gleaming lamp before it, to receive the salutation and the muttered prayer of each who enters. But our present author, one who goes deeper into the meaning of things than the mere curious tourist, can point out to us the traces of an ancient pre-Christian faith lingering even in this holiest spot. Those kindly household gods of Slavonic heathendom, the souls of departed ancestors and kinsfolk, still hold their sway in the Russian peasant mind ; leaving their mortal bodies in the grave, they come back to take up their abode behind the sacred pictures, and the survivors set out hot cakes on the very ledge the icons stand on, for the hungry souls to come out and take their meals. Thus it is indeed throughout the peasant religion of Russia ; the figures of the old gods still lurk every- where behind the consecrated pictures of the new. Volos, the ancient god of cattle, has scarcely even changed his name to become identified with the Holy Vlas (our St. Blake), who still receives the offerings of pats of butter set before his picture, and still has the flocks and herds driven to church on his day to receive his pro- tection for the ensuing year. Thus, too, " in pagan times the gods were supposed to walk the earth at springtide, and so the Russian peasant now believes that from Easter Sunday to Ascension Day Christ and his Apostles wander about the world, dressed in rags and asking alms." The millions of Holy Russia, devoutly receiving the newer Christianity, but without discarding the wild nature-worship of their distant ancestors, still justify the old ecclesiastical writer who called them a " two-faithed " people. And what is true of their religion is not less true of their poetry and legend, their moral and social life. Scratch a Russian, and you will find, not indeed a Tartar, but an ancient Aryan.

It is no slight proof of the growth of an intelligent interest in ethnology that Mr. Ralston should see his way to writing for English readers on the folk-lore and national poetry of Russia. He does not write, however, only to instruct those already in- terested in such pursuits, but to increase their numbers. The volume will be widely read because it is fresh and poetical in style, and carries on the reader's interest gracefully from scene to scene of a picturesque and unfamiliar life. But beyond this, many readers will find a few months hence that something has happened to their minds through reading lightly of the manners and super- stitions of a quaint outlandish nation,—that something being a clearer conception of many points of English history, and a more rational understanding of the antecedents of the English peasant. Our ancestors of centuries ago are still alive, if not well. At any • The Songs of the Russian People, as Illustrative of Slavonic Mythology and RUATi211 Social Life. By W. S. S. Ralston, M.A. London: Ellis and Green. . rate, here is a vast nation standing, like our ancestors of centuries ago, as the inheritors of an ancient Aryan civilization, on which Christianity and growing culture have as yet acted but partially. The Russians show us, actually existing and comparatively in vigour, old thoughts and institutions which are fading into mere relics among ourselves, or are gone utterly and past recall. The solar bonfires at the summer solstice are still kindled by fire solemnly " churned " with the fire-drill by the village elders, and the peasants and the cattle pass through the fire as of old. The sun himself still dances on Easter Day, as our old ballad com- memorates his doing,— " But Dick, she dances such a way, No sun upon an Easter Day Is half so fine a sight."

The last patch of the corn in some Russian districts is still left unreaped for the Harvest-God, in the person of St. Elias or St. Nicholas, his modern representative. The forest-demons, thougb indeed their domains have been sadly ravaged by the woodman's. axe, have many a dark glade left, and even now practise their oltl craft of deluding the unwary sportsman by their calls, to lead hint astray for ill ; and the household-demon still " hag-rides " the horse all night in the stall, as the disgusted moujik plainly per- ceives, when he finds the jaded beast in a lather next morning.

All these are things well known in English folk-lore. But one point of most striking interest in the Russian songs and supersti- tious is that we are enabled to judge as with our own eyes what pea- sant-life is like under the pressure of barbaric ignorance and serf- dom. The songs are old, belonging to the poetic school of ages when rhythm was, but as yet not rhyme. The superstitions are old, belonging, as we have said, to far-off heathen times. And if, as Mr. Ralston so dexterously contrives to do, we keep these relics of the past clear of modern influences, they help us to a picture of a stage of life our ancestors passed through, and lead us to some vague answers to the questions that are always being asked,—what was the common man's life like in ancient England ? Was it per- vaded by a rude kindly content and joy which the modern agri- cultural labourer and the factory-hand have lost? or did dense ignorance and lack of sensitiveness make the low man's lot harsh, bitter, gloomy, ill to be compared with his modern fate ? There are proofs to favour in a measure both ideas, but the balance seems- to turn in our favour. If life had been bright and hopeful to the old Slavonic song-makers, their songs would not have been so- musical with sad and even despairing tones. It is characteristic that even the young girl's expectation of married life is an unhappy one. When a holiday comes in fine spring weather, when even the- sad squalid Russian village looks gay, and the maidens troop out toward the open space where the " Khorovods," the circles of choral dance, are held, they will sing as they go such anticipations as these of their coming fate :— " The beautiful maidens have come forth

From within the gates, to wander out of doors.

They have carried out with them a nightingale,

And have set the nightingale upon the grass,—

On the grassy turf, on the blue flowers.

The nightingale will break into song, And the beautiful maidens will begin to dance ; But the young wives will pour forth tears.

'Play OD, ye beautiful maidens,

While you are still at liberty in a father's home, While you still lead a life of ease in the home of a mother.'"

Reading the cycle of songs belonging to all the events of life, as they are given in this book, one asks this question,—is it good to bo a half-civilized peasant in a land where old barbaric institutions have crystallized into feudalism ? and the answer is,—it is not good. The prevailing melancholy view of life which these songs- disclose has to us a significance far wider than that of songs belong- ing to hard, rough customs, or descriptive of incidental hate, sorrow, and despair. We are touched by the pathetic lament of the fair girl whom Sorrow in personal shape pursues from the dark forest to the open field ; he is her dowry in marriage, he sits beside her pillow, till he follows her with the spade as she sinks into the damp earth, and then shouts his cry of triumph over her grave. But this and scores of others are songs of the emotions, not portraits of the national mood. The songs about wife-selling and wife-beating have a large place in Russian popular poetry. But the ceremony has been no doubt for ages a jesting survival, where the girls in chorus entreat the" Tartar of a brother" not to sell his sister's "kosa," the maiden's tress of plaited hair,_ or, at any rate, not to sell it cheap ; but the buyer seizes it and throws money on the table to show that his bride is fairly bought and sold. And sometimes, though a custom may be rough and brutal, there may be a set-off against it. Among the Slovenes the bride pulls off her husband's boots in token of servitude, but she takes the

opportunity of hitting him over the head with one of them, show- ing that even here there are two sides to a question. The domestic whip, it is to be observed, has by no means passed into the stage of survival, but remains a flexible and knotted reality. The game of "A Wife's Love" is a favourite in Russian song-circles. Sulky and shrewish, the wife rejects her husband's little presents, his bits of sleeve-muslin and golden rings, till he brings his third present, a silken whip from the bazaar, and the first cut brings a low obeisance and a tender kiss, while the chorus sings :- "Good people, only see!

How well she levee her lord !

Always agrees with him, always bows down to him, Gives him kisses."

Sometimes, however, in poetry, as in fact, the fun fades out of the song of the whip :—

4, Across the Don a plank lay, thin and bending,

No foot along it passed.

Bat I alone, the young one, from the hill ; I went along it with my true love dear, And to my love I said : '0 darling, dear !

Beat not thy wife without a cause, But only for good cause beat thou thy wife, And for a great offence.

Far away is my father dear, And farther still my mother dear ; They cannot hear my voice, They cannot see my burning tears.'" It is not, of course, to be supposed that there are no gay songs, indeed some in which young life will have its way are charming ; here is one among them, where the girl brings home in triumph the lover of her choice :-

"Her mother has counselled Maryushka,

Has given counsel to her dear Efimovna.

Go not, my child, Go not, my darling, Into thy father's garden for apples, Nor catch the mottled butterflies, Nor frighten the little birds, Nor interrupt the clear-voiced nightingale, For should'at thou pluck the apples The tree will wither away ; Or seize the mottled butterfly, The butterfly will die.

And should'st thou frighten a little bird, That bird will fly away ; Or interrupt the clear-voiced nightingale, The nightingale will be mute ; But catch, my child, My dear one, catch The falcon bright in the open field, The green, the open field.'

"She has brought him to her mother. Maryushka dear has caught,— Caught has the dear Efimovna, The falcon bright in the open field,— The green, the open field.

She has perched him on her hand, She has brought him to her mother. Mother mine, Gosudairuinya, I have caught the falcon bright.'" We cannot dwell much longer on this Russian poetry and mythology. It would take too much space to do justice to scores of other songs, touched with characteristic pathos, and sometimes with character- istic humour; the drunken songs, the sacrificial songs, the bride-lift- ing songs, the wedding chants, the laments for the departed which the professional wailer leads at the funeral. The ethnologist will find much valuable material as to sorcerers and spells (to this day, in the Ukraine, as in Bulgaria, each hamlet keeps its recog- nized witch), as well as such demoniacal creatures as werewolves and vampires. Mischievous but comparatively harmless spirits continue as they have done since remote ages to disturb quiet families by spirit-rapping and moving furniture. Even the kind, serviceable guardian spirit of the household, the Domovoy, is known to forget himself, and play mischievous tricks. Happily, a gentle scolding brings him to his senses. For instance, a story runs that the Domovoy of a certain house took to playing pranks. One day, when he had caught up the cat and flung her on the ground, the housewife expostulated with him as follows :—" Why did you do that ? Is that the way to manage a house ? We can't get on without our cat. A pretty manager, forsooth ! " And from that time the Domovoy gave up troubling the cats.

To students of comparative mythology, who watch with interest the alternate victories and defeats of that cosmic school of mytho- logists who explain divine and heroic legends as nature-myths of sunrise and sunset, thunder and lightning, storm and calm, Mr. Ralston's volume offers some most curious myths, and not less curious interpretations. For these interpretations Mr. Ralston is not responsible ; be is even a little too

modest and cautious, withholding his own judgments as to the inner meaning of many old tales, and letting the Russian. mythologists have it their own way, which way leads into astonish- ing places sometimes. One gasps for breath at hearing a legend. of Tartar invaders imprisoned behind the Iron Hills interpreted. to mean mythic spirits of the storm confined in hills of cloud ; or at the suggestions that vampires sucking men's blood, and witches. milking cows dry by magic arts, keep up ideas of the primeval Aryans about drawing the fertilizing rain from the clouds, the heavenly cows. The fact is that the Russian mythologists. sometimes ride the cosmic theory in the dark, as their OWD. Domovoy rides the horse all night in the stable, thereby making small progress and leaving the steed in a pitiable state. Yet the beast is good, and the theory is good, and even as the Domovoy in his better state of mind brings good fresh fodder to the stall, BO the Russian mythologists have brought together armfuls of excel- lent materials. For instance, the mythic riddles quoted in the present volume about Day and Night, Sky and Stars, Fire, Earth, and Water are perfect examples of nature-myth in its plainest incipient stage. Altogether, to describe the position which Mr. Ralston takes as an expounder of Slavonic lore in England, it must. be allowed that he has not only had the advantage of introducing a subject full of solid instruction, yet previously all but unknown to general readers, but he has used his literary stores with a skill which has earned a marked success where clumsy handling would. have brought utter failure.