SECTION IV.
The Bull and the Cow in Slavonic Tradition.
SUMMARY.
The red cow and the black cow; what they prognosticate.—The red hue of evening.—The bull that drinks.—The bull corrupts the water.—The bull's hoofs.—The cow in the bartering of animals.—The hero ascends into heaven.—The bull sold to the tree; the tree, split open, yields gold.—The fool sells the bull.—Two bulls conduct the poor brother to riches.—The bull carries the fugitive home.—The bull is split in two, and is useful even after death.—Ivan and Helen, followed by the bear, flee upon the bull with their faces turned to the part whence the bear is likely to come.—The dwarf comes out of the bull's bones; the dwarf dies amid the flames.—The beasts of prey help the hero.—John and Mary, sun and aurora of the Christians.—The saviour-bull again.—From the dead bull an apple-tree springs up.—Ivan delivers Mary.—Mary, the step-daughter, and persecuted.—The cow that spins, the good fairy, the Madonna, the moon.—The maiden who combs the hair is the same as the purifier.—The demoniacal cow obliges men to kiss her under her tail.—The witch who sucks the beautiful girl's breast whilst the latter combs her hair.—The hide of the demoniacal cow taken off.—The eye which does not sleep and plays the spy.—From the cow, the apple-tree; from the apple-tree, the branches which wound the wicked sisters, and let the good one pluck their fruit; from the apple, the husband.—The maiden bows to the right foot of the beneficent cow; a tree springs up again from the killed cow.—The red apples which cause horns to grow, and the white ones which give beauty and youth.—Ivan, the sun, persecuted by the witch his sister, is saved by the sister of the sun, the aurora.—The mythical scales; the scales of St Michael.—The cows with golden horns and tails.—The black demoniacal bull strikes the ground with his horns, in order to prevent a wedding from taking place.—The hare and the crow put obstacles in the way of nuptials.—The demon blinded whilst drinking.—The third son of the peasant throws down the bull.—The avaricious merchant.—The epidemic among the animals, and the bull killed because he has stolen some hay from a priest.—The bull in the forest.—The robber of cows and of oxen.—The black bull led away by Ivan, by means of a cock.—The hero comes out of the cow.—The intestines of the calf eaten by the fox.—Out of the calf come birds.—The son of the cow, the strongest brother.—The three brothers reduced to one with the qualities of the three.—The third brother mounts into heaven by means of the cow's hide.—He who ascends does not come down again.—Dreams.—The wife of the old man, carried to heaven in a sack, is let fall to the ground and dies.—The ascent into heaven by means of vegetables.—Turn-little-Pea, the third brother, the killer of monsters; Turn-little-Pea and Ivan identified.—Ivan followed by the serpent-witches.—The female serpent tries to file the iron gate with her tongue, which is caught by the pincers and burned.—The three brothers, the evening one, the midnight one, and the clearly-seeing one; the third is the victorious hero; he delivers three princesses out of three castles of copper, of silver, and of gold, and receives from them three eggs of copper, of silver, and of gold, new forms corresponding to those of the three brothers; the third brother, abandoned by his elders, after various vicissitudes, finds his bride again; explanation of this beautiful myth.—Ivan identified with Svetazór.—The mother of the birds, in gratitude, delivers the hero.—The third brother, the cunning one, despoils his two elder brothers of their precious objects.—Ivan of the dog is equivalent to Svetazór; the story of the goldsmith.—Ivan the great drinker.—Ivan the prince, Ivan the fool; Ivan and Emilius, foolish and lazy, are one and the same person.—The red shoes in the legend.—The sister kills her little brother to take his red shoes; a magical flute discovers the crime.—The slippers attract the bridegroom; corresponding nuptial usages.—The slipper tried on; the toe cut off.—The change of wives.—The ugly one becomes beautiful.—The grateful pike.—The barrel full of water, which walks of its own accord.—The forest which is cut down and walks of itself, the chariot which goes on by itself, the stove that moves and carries Emilius where he wishes, the cask in which the hero and heroine are shut up and thrown into the sea, all forms of the cloud and of the gloom of night; the ugly becomes beautiful; the poor, rich and pleasing.—The wine allowed to run out of the barrel, i.e., the cloud which dissolves itself in rain.—Ivan, thought to be stupid, makes his fortune out of having watched by his father's grave.—Ivan, thought to be stupid, speculates upon his dead mother; his brothers try to do the same by their wives, and are punished.—The law of atavism in tradition.—The foolish mother and the cunning son.—The funereal storks.—The thief cheats the gentleman in several ways, and finally places him to guard his hat.—Ivan without fear; a little fish terrifies him.—Various heroical forms of Ivan in Russian tradition: Alessino, the son of the priest, invokes the rain against the monster-serpent; Baldak spits in the Sultan's face—the star under his heel; Basil and Plavaćek, who demand a gift from the monster; the fortunate fictitious hero; the cunning little Thomas; the third brother, who does not allow himself to be put to sleep; the thief Klimka, who terrifies the other thieves in order to rob them; the Cossack who delivers the maiden from the flames, and receives precious gifts; Ilia Muromietz and his companions; the merchant's son educated by the devil; the boy who understands the language of birds; the virtuous workman, who prefers good advice to a large reward.—The flying ship; the protector of the unfortunate rewarded; eating and drinking.—The girl who solves the riddle of the prince, who comes with the hare and the quail, and obtains her husband.—The dwarf Allwis obtains the bride by answering the questions of his father-in-law.—The wonderful puppet (the moon), that sews for the priest's daughter (the aurora) the shirt destined for the prince.—The girl-heroine, protectress of her brother, helper of the young hero in dangers and trials of heroism.—The cow-herd's daughter, who never says anything displeasing to her husband the king, whatever the latter does.—By contact with the monster, the heroine is perverted, and also becomes a persecutor of the hero, her brother or husband; analogous types of the perfidious woman.—Dangerous trials imposed on the hero.—The sister bound to the tree.—The wife subdued, and the magical belt.—The tooth of a dead man thrust into Ivan's head; the animals deliver him; the fox knows better than the rest how to manage it.—The towel which causes a bridge to spring up across the water; the hero's sister steals the towel, and unites herself to the monster-serpent; she demands from her brother Ivan wild beasts' milk, and the flour or powder of gold which is under a mill guarded by twelve gates.—The monster burned, and the hero's sister condemned to weep and to eat hay.—The exchange of the hero.—The crow brings the water of death and of life.—The stepmother who persecutes Ivan.—Ivan resuscitated by his two sons.—Ivan chaunts his death-song; the liberating animals appear to help him.—Ivan and his preceptor persecuted by his wife Anna.—The blind man, the lame man, and the beautiful girl whose breast is sucked by the witch.—The witch is forced to find the fountain of life and of health; the blind man sees, the lame walks, and the girl recovers her good health.—The maiden blinded; the wife changed; the dew which gives eyesight; the girl finds her husband; a Russian variety of the legend of Berta.
Having drawn so far the general outline of the Turanian boundaries of Slavonian tradition, it is now time to begin to study the tradition of the Slaves itself, as far as it concerns the myth and the legend of the bull and the cow.
The Russian peasants and shepherds are accustomed to remark that the weather will be fine when a red cow places herself at the head of the herd, and that it will rain or be bad weather when, on the contrary, the first of the cows to re-enter the stable at evening is a black one. We already know what the black and the red cow signify in the language of the Vedâs. The aurora of morning and evening, that is, the red cows promise fine weather; the cloud (or black cow) announces wet weather. In Piedmont, when a beautiful evening aurora is observed, it is the custom to say—
"Rosso di sera,
Buon tempo si spera."
(Red at eve, we hope for fine weather.)
Let us now follow the Russian tradition relating to the cow and the bull in two of the many invaluable collections of popular stories already printed in Russia, as well as in the celebrated fables of Kriloff.[348] We shall begin with those stories and fables in which the cow or the bull is explicitly mentioned. They show us the bull who protects the hero and the heroine, the bull who enriches the hero, the bull that is sold, the grateful bull, the bull who sacrifices himself, the persecuted bull, the demoniacal bull; the cow who spins, the beneficent cow, the son of the cow, the birds that come out from the cow, the cow's hide which becomes a rope to mount up to heaven, the cow exchanged, the demoniacal cow, the cow's horns. Here, again, therefore, we have the double aspect of the Vedic cow; the dark-coloured one (cloud and darkness), generally monstrous, the luminous one (moon and aurora), usually divine and beneficent.
One of the special characteristics of the bull and of the cow is their capacity of drinking. We have already seen how much the bull Indras (the sun in the cloud) drank. In the third story of the first book of Afanassieff, when the good maiden, persecuted by the witch, stretches out a towel, and thus causes a river to arise, in order that the witch may not overtake her, the latter leads forward the bull to drink up the river (a form of the Hindoo Agastyas, who, in the Mahâbhâratam,[349] absorbs the sea). But the bull, who could dry up the river, refuses to do so on account of a debt of gratitude he owes to the good maiden. The water where this bull, or cow, belonging to the witch, drinks, has the property of transforming into a calf the man who drinks of it;[350] nay, to drink out of the hoof of the bull itself is enough to turn him into a calf.[351] The water which comes out of the hoof of the demoniacal bull is the opposite of the water of Hippokrene, which flows from the hoofs of the divine horse of the Hellenes, the Pêgasos.
In the second book of Afanassieff, there is a story which speaks of the exchange of animals in the very same order as in the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam, i.e., the gold for a horse, the horse for a cow, the cow for a goat or sheep. The Russian peasant goes on with his unfortunate exchanges; he barters the sheep for a young pig, the young pig for a goose, the goose for a duck, the duck for a little stick with which he sees some children playing; he takes the stick home to his wife, and she beats him with it. In the twelfth story of the fifth book of Afanassieff, an old man also begins to barter the golden stockings and silver garters received in heaven from God for a horse, the horse for a bull, the bull for a lamb; his last exchange is for a little needle, which he loses. In the second story of the sixth book, the same foolish liberality is attributed to the third brother, the stupid one (who, in another Russian variation of the same story, is the cunning one), who, having learned that in heaven cows are cheap, gives his cow for a fly, his ox for a horse-fly, and mounts up to heaven.