[99] The word koshchei, says Afanasief, may fairly be derived from kost’, a bone, for changes between st and shch are not uncommon—as in the cases of pustoi, waste, pushcha, a wild wood, or of gustoi, thick, gushcha, sediment, etc. The verb okostenyet’, to grow numb, describes the state into which a skazka represents the realm of the “Sleeping Beauty,” as being thrown by Koshchei. Buslaef remarks in his “Influence of Christianity on Slavonic Language,” p. 103, that one of the Gothic words used by Ulfilas to express the Greek δαιμόνιον is skôhsl, which “is purely Slavonic, being preserved in the Czekh kauzlo, sorcery; in the Lower-Lusatian-Wendish, kostlar means a sorcerer. (But see Grimm’s “Deutsche Mythologie,” pp. 454-5, where skôhsl is supposed to mean a forest-sprite, also p. 954.) Kost’ changes into koshch whence our Koshchei.” There is also a provincial word, kostit’, meaning to revile or scold.
[100] Bezsmertny (bez = without, smert’ = death).
[101] Afanasief, viii. No. 8. Morevna means daughter of More, (the Sea or any great water).
[102] Grom. It is the thunder, rather than the lightning, which the Russian peasants look upon as the destructive agent in a storm. They let the flash pass unheeded, but they take the precaution of crossing themselves when the roar follows.
[103] Zamorskaya, from the other side of the water, strange, splendid.
[104] In Afanasief, iv. No. 39, a father marries his three daughters to the Sun, the Moon, and the Raven. In Hahn, No. 25, a younger brother gives his sisters in marriage to a Lion, a Tiger, and an Eagle, after his elder brothers have refused to do so. By their aid he recovers his lost bride. In Schott, No. 1 and Vuk Karajich, No. 5, the three sisters are carried off by Dragons, which their subsequently-born brother kills. (See also Basile, No. 33, referred to by Hahn, and Valjavec, p. 1, Stier, No. 13, and Bozena Nêmcova, pp. 414-432, and a German story in Musæus, all referred to by Afanasief, viii. p. 662.)
[105] See [Chap. IV].
[106] “Being by the advice of her father Hæreð given in marriage to Offa, she left off her violent practices; and accordingly she appears in Hygelác’s court, exercising the peaceful duties of a princess. Now this whole representation can hardly be other than the modern, altered, and Christian one of a Wælcyrie or Swan-Maiden; and almost in the same words the Nibelungen Lied relates of Brynhild, the flashing shield-may of the Edda, that with her virginity she lost her mighty strength and warlike habits.”—Kemble’s Beowulf, p. xxxv.
[107] Khudyakof, ii, p. 90.
[108] Khudyakof, No. 20.