Russian Folk-Tales - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 edition. Excerpt: ... with Byelun." On the other hand the memory of the black or evil god is preserved in such imprecations as the Ukraine "May the black god smite thee !" * To ancient pagan traditions, also, into which a Christian element has entered, may be assigned the popular belief that infants which have been cursed by their mothers before their birth, or which are suffocated during their sleep, or which die from any causes unchristened or christened by a drunken priest, become the prey of demons. This idea has given rise in Russia, as well as elsewhere, to a large group of stories. The Russian peasants believe, it is said, that in order to rescue from the fiends the soul of a babe which has been suffocated in its sleep, its mother must spend three nights in a church, standing within a circle traced by the hand of a priest. When the cocks crow on the third morning, the demons will give her back her dead child.f Great stress is laid in the skazkas and legends upon the terrible power of a parent's curse. The " hasty word" of a father or a mother will condemn even an innocent child to slavery among devils, and when it has once been uttered, it is irrevocable. It might have been supposed that the fearful efficacy of such an imprecation would have silenced bad language, as that of the Vril rendered wat impossible among the Vril-ya of "The Coming Race;" but that such was not the case is proved by the number of narratives which turn on uncalled-for parental cursing. Here is an abridgment of one of these stories. There was an old man who lived near Lake Onega, and who supported himself and his wife by hunting. One * Shchob tebe ckorny bog ubif I Afanasief, P. V. S.t i. 93, 94. t Afanasief, P. V. S. iii. 314, 315. day when he was engaged in the pursuit of game,...