Inferior deities were believed in and many supernatural beings were supposed to haunt the woods and waters. The Russalkas, which are naiads, though no more seen, are still believed in, and are of a nature similar to the elves and fairies of western nations. “They are generally represented under the form of beauteous maidens, with full and snow-white bosoms, and with long and slender limbs. Their feet are small, their eyes are wild, their faces are fair to see, but their complexion is pale, their expression anxious. Their hair is long and thick and wavy, and green as is the grass.” The Russians are very superstitious in regard to them, fearing to offend them, while the maidens go into the woods and throw garlands to them, asking for rich husbands in return.
Then there are Mavkas, or Little-Russian fairies and water-nymphs, wood demons, house spirits and numerous other minor spirits and powers which teem in the folk songs of the peasants.
Among the eastern Slavs there seem to have been no temples or priests, while the contrary was true of the west. They burned their dead and greatly reverenced the spirits of the departed, in whose honor festivals were held.
A form of Sutteeism undoubtedly prevailed, widows destroying themselves in order to accompany their husbands to the spirit land, while slaves were sometimes sacrificed upon the same occasions—a practice common to most barbarous states of society.
Upon a general view of ancient Slavonic mythology we observe the same characteristics as among all the other Indo-European tribes—the same nature-worship and inclination to personify the powers of the air and sky; to worship the beneficent sun, which brings to man prosperity, light and happiness; to execrate the night, the enemy of the bright, the beautiful god of day. Men in the childhood of the human race were as simple as children ever have been. The same characteristics mark them. When the mother leaves her child for a moment, the babe with piteous cries calls on her to return. Why is this so? Because in the mind of the child there is no connecting link between the ideas of her going and returning; in other words, the child cannot reason enough to consider it possible—not to say probable, certain—that she will return.
Thus in the simple pastoral days of extreme antiquity, when the glorious sun, the light of men’s eyes, the joy of their hearts, sank below the horizon, the idea of its return failed to suggest itself to their minds. Each sun-setting was a grief, each rising of the blessed orb a joy unspeakable.
And thus upon the plains of Iran, in the flowery meads of Asia Minor and on the Russian steppes, when man beheld the sun, his joy appeared, he fell on his face and thanked the regent of the sky for his light again.
Had the earth been nearer to the sun the face of Comparative Mythology had been changed; the sun-myth would have had to seek a different origin and home, and the history of that greatest of all studies—the study of man—would have had a different course.
It is sincerely to be hoped that the future of the Slavonic tribes may be such as God and nature have intended for them, and that their name may be changed again from slaves to Slavs—“men of glory”—is the aspiration of all who have hopes for the race; in short, of all who wish well to our common humanity.