In Afanassieff, we find new interesting data. Ivan the fool watches during the night to surprise the horse which devastates his father's crops, and succeeds in binding it with rods from a linden-tree, after it has smelt the odour of tobacco. Then, by the help of the sister of the hero Nikanore, it acquires the faculty, when running after cows and horses, of turning their tails into gold, as well as their horns or manes, and their flanks into stars. What better image could there be of the starry sky of night, the golden tail of which is the red evening, and the front parts, also of gold, the morning aurora?[562]
In another story,[563] we have Ivan the son of the bitch occupying the place and playing the part of Ivan the son of the mare. Ivan of the bitch, after having delivered the three princesses from the deep cistern, is himself thrown into it. The black horse comes to deliver him, and cannot; the grey horse comes, and cannot either; the red horse comes, and succeeds in dragging the hero out. The black horse represents the dark night, the grey horse the night beginning to clear, and the red horse the roseate morning, which delivers the sun or solar hero.
The third brother Ivan, mounted on a marvellous horse, comes first to the bronze castle, then to the silver one, and lastly to that of gold.[564] This is a variety of the same myth, and represents similarly the solar voyage from evening to morning. The next mythical legend, however, probably alludes rather to the three days of the winter solstice, which the sun takes to return. The hero, Theodore, finds a horse that has been just brought forth, which the wolves have driven towards him; he makes it pasture upon the dew for three dawns (like the Hungarian Tátos, who feeds upon the golden oats in a silver field, that is to say, who, during the silvery night, or else during the white dawn, or the snowy winter, absorbs the dewy humours of the spring, or the morning aurora). The first day, the young horse becomes as high as half a tree; the second, higher than the tree; the third day it is as high as the heavens, and bears the hero Theodore and his wife Anastasia on its back.
Ivan Durák watches three nights at his father's tomb.[565] His father tells him that if at any time of need he calls with a hero's whistle, a wonderful grey horse will appear to help him, whose eyes shoot flames, and from whose nostrils issues smoke. Ivan does so, and is answered; he gets into his right ear, and comes out of the left. By means of this horse, Ivan succeeds in taking down the portrait of the Tzar's daughter three times, though hung high up on the wall of the palace, and thus obtains the beautiful princess to wife.
According to another variety of this story,[566] Ivan, the third and foolish brother, goes with the most worthless jade in the stable into the open air, and calls up the grey horse with a loud shout; he enters into him by one ear, and comes out at the other. Two young horsemen (the Açvinâu) appear to him, and make a horse with golden mane and tail come forth; upon this horse Ivan succeeds in three times kissing, through twelve glasses (the glass mountain of the Esthonian story), the daughter of the Tzar, who therefore becomes his wife. Here, therefore, we find the ugly horse which is made beautiful by the two horsemen, represented by the two ears of the grey horse out of which they come. These two horsemen give the hero a better steed. Be it understood that their own heroic steed (that is, the sun's horse), from being ugly or asinine during the night, became beautiful and noble; in the Küllaros of the Dioscuri, too, we ought probably to recognise a courser that has been transformed from an ass to a heroic horse.
Sometimes, instead of the horse, we have only its head. The step-mother persecutes the old man's daughter;[567] the persecuted maiden finds a mare's head, which beseeches her to relieve and cover it; at last it invites her to enter the right ear and come out of the left one. The persecuted girl comes out in the form of an exceedingly beautiful maiden. The step-mother sends her own daughter to try the same means of becoming beautiful; but she maltreats the mare's head, and the mare's head devours her.
There is also a singularly clear allusion to the Açvinâu in the forty-fourth story of the fifth book of Afanassieff, which seems to me to be a full confirmation of these interpretations. When Basiliça, the girl persecuted by her step-mother, approaches the house of the old witch (the baba-jegá), she sees galloping towards the great door of it a black horseman, dressed all in black, upon a black horse, who disappears underground, upon which night begins.[568] When the day begins to appear, Basiliça sees before her a white horseman, dressed all in white, upon a white horse, caparisoned in white. The maiden goes on; when the sun begins to rise, she sees a red horseman, dressed in red, upon a red horse.[569] The myth does not require comment; but it happens to be given to us in the story itself by the witch, who, to appease the curiosity of the girl Basiliça, reveals to her that the black horseman represents the dark night (noć tiómnaja), the white horseman the clear day (dien jasnoi), and the red horseman the little red sun (solnishko krasnoje).
Returning from Slavonic to Asiatic tradition, we meet with the same myths.
Let us begin with the demoniacal horse, or demon of horses. The Ṛigvedas already knows it; the yâtudhanas, or monster, feeds now upon human flesh (like the Bucephalus of the legend of Alexander), now upon horse flesh, and now milk from cows. We have said it seems probable that the custom of keeping a lamp lighted in the stables is a form of exorcism against the demon; the Ṛigvedas, indeed, tells us that Agnis (that is, Fire, with his flame) cuts off the heads of such monsters.[570] But this is not enough; the Ṛigvedas offers us in the same hymn the proof of another identification. We have seen in the last chapter how Rebhas, the invoker, is the third brother, whom his envious and perfidious brothers threw into the well; and we have seen above how Ivan, who is also the third brother, invokes with a sonorous voice the grey horse which is to help him, and how the same Ivan is the one that discovers the monstrous horse which ravages the seed or the crops in his father's field. In the same Vedic hymn where the flame of Agnis beats down the heads of the monster that torments horses, Agnis (that is, fire) is invoked in order that the hero Rebhas may see the monster which devastates with its claws.[571] Rebhas and Bhuǵyus are two names of the hero who falls into the cistern in the Ṛigvedas. We have seen, not long ago, in the Russian story, that Ivan, the third brother, who is thrown down into the cistern, is delivered by the red horse. The Açvinâu, in the Ṛigvedas, deliver Bhuǵyus out of the sea by means of red-winged horses.[572] Here the grey and imperfect horse of night is become a red horse. In the same Vedic hymn, Rebhas, overwhelmed in the waters, is identified with his own horse (Ivan is son of the bitch, or the cow, or the mare), he being compared to a horse hidden by wicked ones.[573] We saw above, in the Russian story, how the two horsemen who come out of the grey horse's ear give to the foolish Ivan, who has an ugly and worthless horse, a handsome hero's palfrey, by means of which he accomplishes the arduous undertakings which entitle him to the hand of the king's daughter. It is remarkable how completely the Vedic myth agrees with this European legend. The Açvinâu have given, for his eternal happiness, a luminous horse to him who has a bad one.[574] In another hymn, the god Agnis gives to his worshipper a pious, truthful, invincible, and very glorious son, who vanquishes heroes, and a swift, victorious, and unconquered horse.[575]
We have seen, moreover, how Ivan, the most popular type of the Russian hero, has always to make three essays before he accomplishes his undertaking upon the wonderful horse which he has obtained from the two horsemen. The Ṛigvedas, which celebrates the famous mythical enterprise of the three steps of Vishṇus, of the great body (bṛihaććharîraḥ),[576] of the very vast step (urukramishṭaḥ),[577] who, in three steps, measured or traversed the whole span of the heavens,[578] betrays in another hymn the secret of Vishṇus's success in this divine enterprise, since it says that when, with the strength of Indras, he made his three steps, he was drawn by the two fair-haired horses of Indras[579] (that is, the two Açvinâu lent him the swift and strong horse which was to bear him on to victory). The three steps of Vishṇus correspond, therefore, to the three stations of Ivan, to the three races of the young hero to win the beautiful princess. Vishṇus also appears in the Râmâyaṇam,[580] in the midst of the sea of liquified butter, attractive to all beings, in the form of a horse's head. Hero and the solar or lunar horse are identified.