[344] This is the phenomenon which occurs in the winter solstice on Christmas Eve and that of New Year's Day, in which we pass from one year to another; in one night we become older by a year.
[345] In a popular Swedish song, the maiden Gundela, who plays marvellously upon the harp, and, in order to play it, demands the king to marry her, is also a shepherdess.—Cfr. Schwedische Volkslieder der Vorzeit, übertragen von Warrens, Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1857.
[346] Cfr. the note of F. Löwe, illustrating this passage, in his version of the collection of Kreuzwald, pp. 144 and 145.—[This is also a myth of easy interpretation, if I am not mistaken: at evening, the sun loses his rays; the lion, the hero, loses his nails; these nails are picked up by the demoniacal monster, who forms out of them a hat (the gloom of night, or the clouds), by which the wearer has the gift of seeing without being seen. The magician who sees with his eyes shut is an interesting variation of this subject.]
[347] A similar antithesis is found in a Hungarian proverb, communicated to me by my learned friend Count Geza Kunn, together with other notices of Hungarian beliefs relating to animals. This proverb is as follows: "Even the black cow's milk is white." The black cow is spoken of in two other Hungarian proverbs; one says, "The black cow has not trodden upon his heel," meaning that no misfortune has happened to him; it is the usual vulnerable heel, the heel of Achilles, the posterior part, for which is substituted sometimes, as we shall see in the chapter on the Fox and the Serpent, the tail or extreme hind part. Another proverb is, "In the dark all cows are black;" but it does not seem to have any mythical importance.
[348] These last have already been translated into English, and illustrated, by W. R. S. Ralston, M.A. The Narodnija Skaski sabrannija selskimi ućiteliami, isdanie A. A. Erlenwein (Moskva 1863), and the more voluminous N. Aphanasieva, Narodnija ruskija skaski, Isd. 2 (Moskva 1860, 1861), have not thus far been translated into other European languages. I have therefore thought fit to make copious quotations from them as well for the use of Western readers, as on account of the real importance of their mythical contents, whilst awaiting the publication of the competent work which Mr Ralston is expressly preparing upon Russian songs.
[349] iii. 8805, and following.
[350] Afanassieff, ii. 29.
[351] iv. 45.
[352] This subject is already given in Æsop's Fables, in the twenty-first fable (ed. Del Furia, Florence, 1809): the man prays to a wooden idol (xülinon theon) that it may make him rich; the statue does not answer; he breaks it to pieces, and gold comes out of it.
[353] Seventeenth story.