[187] Ishbushka, a little izba or cottage.
[188] “Phu, Phu! there is a Russian smell!” the equivalent of our own “Fee, faw, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!”
[189] Luchina, a deal splinter used instead of a candle.
[190] Chernushka, a sort of wild pea.
[191] Krasnoe solnuischko, red (or fair) dear-sun.
[192] Equivalent to saying “she liked to wash her dirty linen at home.”
[193] I break off the narrative at this point, because what follows is inferior in dramatic interest, and I am afraid of diminishing the reader’s admiration for one of the best folk-tales I know. But I give an epitome of the remainder within brackets and in small type.
[194] From the Poltava Government. Afanasief, vi. No. 28 b.
[195] Grimm, No. 65. The Wallachian and Lithuanian forms resemble the German (Schott, No. 3. Schleicher, No. 7). In all of them, the heroine is a princess, who runs away from an unnatural father. In one of the Modern Greek versions (Hahn, No. 27), she sinks into the earth. For references to seven other forms of the story, see Grimm, KM., iii. p. 116. In one Russian variant (Khudyakof, No. 54), she hides in a secret drawer, constructed for the purpose in a bedstead; in another (Afanasief, vi. No. 28 a), her father, not recognising her in the pig-skin dress, spits at her, and turns her out of the house. In a third, which is of a very repulsive character (ibid. vii. No. 29), the father kills his daughter.
[196] Afanasief, vi. No. 18.