In a variation of this legend, a prince, fifteen years of age, who has been lost by his parents, is found again by means of a riddle which they propose, and which he alone can solve.[403] In the Vedic hymns it is now the aurora, the beautiful maiden, who delivers the hero-sun, and now the hero-sun who delivers the beautiful maiden, the aurora. In the forty-first story of the sixth book of Afanassieff, a little girl, seven years old (semilietká), presents herself to the Tzar, who must marry her, inasmuch as she solves the riddle proposed by him, by arriving riding on a hare (an animal which represents the moon), with a quail (an animal which seems to represent the sun) tied to her hand.[404] She too, like the aurora, knows all; she too protects the poor against the rich, and the innocent against the guilty. The dwarf Allwis is a form of this child. Allwis is the omniscient man of the Edda, who solves all the questions put to him by the god Thor, in order to obtain his daughter; when he is done with answering these questions, day breaks, and the sun shines.
The wondrous girl of seven years of age (the aurora), brings us back to the marvellous puppet (generally, the moon). It is three puppets (the wooden chest of Marion d'bosch, or wooden little Mary of the Piedmontese story, the dark forest of night, the tree that hides the splendid treasures of the evening aurora; another variety of the same myth in relation to the sun) that hide the three splendid dresses of the stars, the moon and the sun, which belong to the beautiful maiden, the daughter of the priest (a variation of the Vedic aurora, duhitar divas, or daughter of the sky). It is the three puppets which enable the beautiful girl to descend through the ground, and so escape from the persecutions of her father and seducer (in other versions, of her brother), and which go down with her, dressed as old women, and enter a forest, where, near an oak-tree, there is the house of a princess, who has a young and handsome son.[405] In a variation of this story,[406] the girl is persecuted, not by her father, but the well-known cruel stepmother, for whom she divides the wheat from the barley, and draws water at the fountain (like the Vedic maiden Apalâ); she goes three times splendidly dressed to church (which takes the place of the ball-room of other stories), where she is seen three times by a handsome prince; she is twice followed, and twice disappears; the third time the prince has gum (pitch, in other variations) put on the ground; the fugitive loses her golden slipper in consequence, which the prince picks up, and tries on all the maidens till he finds his bride. In another story,[407] where the relation of the aurora with the two Açvinâu comes out in wonderful distinctness,[408] it is by means of her marvellous speaking puppet (i.e., the moon, the Vedic Rakâ, very small, but very intelligent, enclosed in the wooden dress, in the forest of night) that the girl, persecuted by her step-mother, weaves a cloth so fine that it can pass like a thread through the eye of a needle (just as the girl's feet are very small, so also are the puppet's hands). The marvellous cloth is brought to the Tzar, but no one is found who is able to sew it into a shirt for the Tzar.[409] The maiden alone, by the help of her puppet, succeeds; the Tzar wishes to see the girl who prepared his extraordinary shirt, and goes to find her; he is astonished at her beauty, and marries her. In the Ṛigvedas, the aurora weaves a robe for her husband the sun. The same girl (the aurora) whom we have here only as a good, beautiful, intelligent, and skilful maiden, appears in other stories given in Afanassieff as a heroic damsel. In the seventh story of the first book she disguises herself as a man, and mocks the Tzar three times. In the fourteenth story of the first book, the same girl, under the name of Anastasia the beautiful, vanquishes and binds the serpent, and discovers the secret of how he can be killed. Under the name of Helen, or Little Helen, she is the protectress of her little brother, Ivanusca (Little John),[410] and his guide through the world; and when the boy, by the incantation of a witch, is transformed into a lamb or kid (in a story of the Canavese, in Piedmont, the seven monks, brothers of the courageous girl, are transformed into seven hogs), she recommends him to the care of the prince, her husband, in order that he may destroy the evil work of the witch. The same maiden is found again as the very wise Basilia (Vasilisa Premudraia), who succours the young hero, because, after stealing her dress while she was bathing in the sea, he restores it to her, agreeably to her prayer. For this favour she gratefully accomplishes for him the labours imposed upon him by the king of the waters, and ends, after many vicissitudes, by marrying him.[411] She appears once more as the royal maiden (Tzar-dievitza), who comes three times with her ships by sea to lead away the young Ivan, beloved by her;[412] and I also place among the girl-heroines the daughter of the shepherd in the twenty-ninth story of the fifth book of Afanassieff, of which this is an abridgment. There was once a king who could not find a maiden beautiful enough to suit his taste. One day, returning from the chase (the solar hero always meets the aurora, his bride, when returning from the hunt in the forest of night), he meets a shepherd's daughter, who is leading out the flock to pasture, so beautiful that her like would be sought for in vain over the world. He becomes enamoured of her, and promises to make her his wife, but only on condition that she will never say anything displeasing to him, whatever he may do; the poor enamoured maiden consents, the nuptials are celebrated, and the couple live together happily for a year. A boy is born to them; then the king says roughly to his wife that the boy must be killed, that it may never be said the heir to the throne is the son of a shepherdess. The poor woman resigns herself to her fate, remarking, "The will of the king must be done." Another year passes, and a daughter is born. The king informs his wife that she too must be killed, as she can never become a princess, but will always remain a peasant girl. The unhappy mother once more bows her head to the will of the king, who, however, consigns his son and daughter, not to an executioner, but to his sister, that they may receive all the attentions due to their royal pedigree and standing. Years pass away; the little prince and princess grow up beautiful, healthy, good, and happy, and pass adolescence. Then the king puts his wife to the last proof. He sends her back to her house in the dress of a shepherdess, signifying at the same time that she has lived with him long enough. Then he orders her to return, to put the rooms in order, and to wait upon the new bride whom he intends to take her place; the shepherd's daughter obeys again without a murmur. The new bride arrives, and is set down at the table; they eat, drink, and are merry; the shepherd's daughter is obliged to see and hear all, and to serve in silence; at last the king asks her, "Well, is not my bride beautiful?" To which the unhappy woman responds with a heroic effort, "If she seem beautiful to thee, still more does she seem so to me." Then the king, at the summit of his felicity, exclaims, "Dress thyself again in thy royal robes, and place thyself by my side; thou hast been, and shalt always be, my wife, my only wife; this, my supposed bride, is thy daughter, and this handsome youth is thy son." The poor heroine had undergone the last proof of her virtue, and triumphed.
But the virtue of the legendary heroine is not always so sound. Often the good wife, sister, maiden, or woman is corrupted by contact with the wicked. We have already seen how the beautiful aurora, the pitying and beneficent maiden, becomes, in the Vedic hymns themselves, the evil-doer, whom the god Indras overthrows and destroys. The Hellenic Amazons, the beautiful and proud warrior-women, were also pursued, fought with, and vanquished by the Hellenic heroes. Thus the Scandinavian warrior, Walkiries, has a double aspect, a good and a bad. The Russian stories also supply numerous instances of the ease with which the good degenerates into the demon, the hero into the monster, and the beautiful heroine into the powerful and mischief-working witch.
This good sister Helen or Little Helen, so careful a guardian of her brother John, ends, when she conceives a passion for the monster, with becoming his perfidious persecutor. (The evening aurora is represented as a friend of the monster of night, who conspires with him against her brother the sun; and whoever observes the sinister aspect often assumed by the reddish sky of evening, will find this fiction a very natural one. I have said above that a Piedmontese proverb predicts bad weather for the morrow from a red evening; but in Piedmont the belief is also widely diffused that the red of evening signifies blood, and that this bloody redness signifies war. It certainly does mean war, but a mythical war—the war in which the hero, fighting against the monster, succumbs and sheds blood. It is a woman that is the hero's destruction. A counter-type of the biblical Delilah is found in all the popular Indo-European traditions; the Vedic aurora, the sister of Râvaṇas in the Râmâyaṇam, the sister of Hidimbas in the Mahâbhâratam, the Hellenic Dejanira, Ariadne, Medea, the Amazons, Helen, the Slavonic Helen, and Anna the Sabine woman, the Scandinavian Walkiries, Freya, Idun, Brünhilt, Gudrun, the Germanic Krîmhilt, are all forms of one and the same heroine, conceived now in the light of a saint, and now in that of a witch.
In the Russian story,[413] after the bull has saved from the bear the fugitive brother and sister, Ivan Tzarević and Helen the exceedingly beautiful (Prekraçna), they enter a brigand's house. Their bull, having become a dwarf, kills all the brigands, and shuts their bodies up in a room, which he forbids Helen to enter; the latter, not attending to the prohibition, enters, and seeing the head of the brigand chief, falls in love with him, resuscitates him by means of the water of life, and then conspires with him to destroy her brother Ivan, by requiring him to accomplish enterprises in which death seemed inevitable, or else by ordering him to bring her, first, the milk of a wolf, then that of a she-bear, and then that of a lioness. Ivan, by the help of his dwarf (or the sun grown small during the night, and perhaps also the moon), accomplishes all these undertakings. We have already seen how white comes from black; the milk of the wolf, the bear, and the lioness is the alba luna, or the white morning sky brought back by the solar hero. Ivan is then sent to fetch the eggs of the burning bird (Szar-ptitza). Ivan goes with his dwarf (that is to say, the moon, or he makes himself a dwarf, in other words, renders himself invisible); the bird is enraged, and swallows the dwarf (i.e., the red sky of evening, the burning bird, or phœnix, absorbs the moon or the sun in its flames.[414]) Ivan goes back to his sister without the eggs, upon which she threatens to burn him in the bath. Ivan, with the help of the wolf's, the bear's, and the lion's whelps, or Ivan, with the young wolf, bear, or lion (the moon), or Ivan the son of the wolf, Ivan the son of the bear, Ivan the son of the lion (Ivan born of the she-wolf Night, the she-bear Night, or the lioness Night), tears the brigand to pieces, and binds his sister (as the Vedic cow) to a tree (the aurora almost always loses herself in a tree or the water). Then Ivan wishes to marry a heroine. [Two myths are here united in the story, originating in one and the same phenomenon, which seems twofold, because observed at different, almost literally succeeding, instants. The morning sun comes and puts to flight his sister the aurora, driving her back into the forest of night, and binding her to the tree; the morning sun passes safe and sound through the flames (like Sîfrit in the Nibelungen), vanquishes and subdues the aurora, makes her his, and espouses her.] He fights with her first, and succeeds in throwing her with his lance from her horse, and subduing her. The first night—that is, when evening comes, she embraces and presses him so tightly, and with such strength, that he cannot succeed in extricating himself (the evening aurora envelops and surrounds the sun; it is the famous nuptial belt, the belt of strength of the god Thor, the shirt of Nessus). At last, however, towards morning, Ivan vanquishes, subdues, and throws down (like Sîfrit in the Nibelungen) the girl-heroine (the morning sun, as Indras, throws down the aurora). He then thinks of liberating his sister Helen, who is bound to the tree, in order to take her with him; but she, under the pretext of combing his hair, thrusts a dead man's tooth into his head. Ivan is about to die. Here the primary myth of the sun and aurora, as brother and sister, reappears, and the secondary one of the husband and wife is forgotten. The lion's whelp comes forward and extracts the tooth; the lion is on the point of dying, when the young bear runs up and extracts it again. He is also about to die; the fox then comes up, who assumes towards the end of the story the part played in the middle by the young wolf (in the same way as in Indian tales the jackal is substituted for the fox), and, with more cunning, throws the dead man's tooth into the fire, and thus saves himself—i.e., the solar hero, passing through the flames, comes out of the shadows which enveloped him during the night. Helen is attached to the tail of a horse (of Ivan's solar horse itself), and is thus made to perish (when the sun comes forth in the morning the aurora loses herself behind him).
The same story of Ivan's perfidious sister, of which the mythical sense appears to me more than usually evident, occurs again in other forms in Russian tales.
Whilst Ivan is travelling with his sister towards the kingdom where all the people die[415] (that is, towards the night), a fairy gives him a towel, by shaking which a bridge may be thrown across a river—(is this bridge the milky way, the bridge or road to be taken by the souls in the Persian and Porphyrian belief, as well as in the German?)—but advises him never to let his sister see him shake it. Ivan arrives with his sister in the kingdom of the dead; they come upon a river on the further bank of which there is a serpent, who has the power of transforming himself into a handsome youth; Ivan's sister becomes enamoured of him, and he induces her to steal the towel from her brother and shake it. The sister, under the pretext of washing the dirty linen, takes off the fairy's towel and shakes it; a bridge rises, upon which the serpent crosses the river, and then conspires with the girl with intent to work Ivan's ruin. They demand the usual milk, which Ivan brings; then the flour which is shut up within twelve doors. Ivan goes thither with his beasts of prey, takes the flour and brings it away, but his beasts remain shut up inside; then his strength diminishes, and the serpent, boasting that he fears him no longer, prepares to devour him. Ivan, by the advice of a crow, prays for time, and procrastinates till his beasts of prey, gnawing the twelve doors through, come to his help, and tear the serpent in pieces. The serpent's bones are burned in the fire, its ashes are dispersed to the four winds, and the sister is bound to a stone pillar (to the rock or mountain upon which the aurora arises, fading away afterwards when the sun appears). Ivan places near her some hay and a vessel full of water, that she may have whereof to eat and drink, and another empty vessel, which she is to fill with her tears: when she has eaten the hay, drunk the water, and filled the vessel with her tears, it will be a sign that God has forgiven her; when Ivan too will forgive her. Meanwhile, Ivan goes into a kingdom where there is nothing but mourning, because a twelve-headed serpent is massacring all the people (the usual nocturnal sky, where it is now the hero-sun, now the heroine aurora that sacrifices itself), and the king's daughter is the next victim. Ivan, by the help of his hunting animals, cuts the serpent to pieces, and then goes to sleep on the knees of the king's daughter. While he sleeps, a water-carrier passes towards morning, cuts off his head, and presents himself to the king as the deliverer of the princess, whom he demands for his wife. The beasts of prey come up, descry the crow upon Ivan's corpse, and prepare to eat it, when the crow begs for its life; they consent, and in return require it to search for the water of life and death, by means of which Ivan is resuscitated; the water-carrier's deceit is found out, and Ivan marries the princess whom he had delivered from the monster. Then he goes to look for his sister, and finds she has eaten the hay, drunk the water, and filled half the vessel with tears; upon this he pardons her, and takes her away with him.
In another story,[416] instead of the perfidious sister, we have the perfidious mother (probably step-mother), who, to please her demon lover, feigns illness, and demands from Ivan the heart, first of the three-headed, then of the six-headed, and finally of the twelve-headed monster. Ivan accomplishes these undertakings. He is then sent to a hot bath, to weaken his strength. Ivan goes, and his head is cut off by the monster. But Ivan's two sons resuscitate him by rubbing a root upon his body; the demon lover of Ivan's mother dies as soon as the hero revives again. In the two sons of Ivan we recognise again the myth of the Açvinâu, the celestial physicians who resuscitate the solar hero.
In another story, Ivan Karoliević (king's son) is threatened with death by his own wife,[417] who, feigning illness, demands the usual milk of a she-wolf, a she-bear, and a lioness, and then the enchanted powder (powder of gold or flour), which is under the devils mill, barred behind twelve doors. Ivan comes out, but his beasts remain inside. He returns and finds his wife with the serpent, the son of the serpent; he chaunts the song of death—he sings it three times;[418] on hearing which the serpent is thrown down, and the beasts, regaining strength to deliver themselves, come out and tear the serpent, and with him the perfidious wife is put to death.
Ivan's perfidious wife occurs again in the thirty-fifth story of the fifth book of Afanassieff, under the name of Anna the very beautiful (Prekraçnaia). She has married Ivan Tzarević against her will, because she could not solve a riddle which he proposed to her; she does not love him, and endeavours to destroy him by requiring an extraordinary proof of his valour,[419] in which, by the help of his tutor, Katoma, Ivan is victorious, so that Anna falls into his hands. But, understanding that Ivan's strength is not in himself, but his tutor, she induces Ivan to send him away, after depriving him of his feet. Anna then sends Ivan to take the cows to pasture. The lame Katoma finds in the forest a blind man, also made so by Anna;[420] they become friends and consociate together, and carry off a beautiful maiden to be their sister; but a witch comes and makes the maiden comb her hair, whilst she sucks her breast (we must remember that in the Indian story the girl has three breasts, or is defective in her breast, in the same way as the witch makes the Russian girl so by sucking her breast). The poor girl grows thin and ugly, until the old witch is surprised in her evil doings by the two heroes, fallen upon by them like a mountain of stone, and pressed so tightly that she cries for mercy. Then they demand to be shown where the fountain of life and healing can be found. The old woman conducts them into a dense forest, and shows them a fountain. They first throw a dry twig in, which immediately takes fire; they threaten to kill the old witch, and force her to lead them to another fountain, into which they throw another dry twig; it becomes green again. Then one rubs his eyes, and the other his feet, with the water, and both become healthy and strong again. They throw the witch into the fountain of fire. Katoma, in a shepherd's dress, goes to deliver the hero Ivan from the demon cow, which lifts up its tail and gives him back his strength and splendour. This is again the Vedic myth of the Açvinâu united to the aurora, who cure the blind and the lame, i.e., themselves, and save the multiform solar hero.