[197] The Russian word is zakukovali, i.e., “They began to cuckoo.” The resemblance between the word kukla, a puppet, and the name and cry of the cuckoo (Kukushka) may be merely accidental, but that bird has a marked mythological character. See the account of the rite called “the Christening of the Cuckoos,” in “Songs of the Russian people,” p. 215.
[198] Very like these puppets are the images which reply for the sleeping prince in the opening scene of “De beiden Künigeskinner” (Grimm, No. 113). A doll plays an important part in one of Straparola’s stories (Night v. Fable 2). Professor de Gubernatis identifies the Russian puppet with “the moon, the Vedic Râkâ, very small, but very intelligent, enclosed in the wooden dress, in the forest of night,” “Zoological Mythology,” i. 207-8.
[199] Afanasief, ii. No. 31.
[200] Khudyakof, No. 55.
[201] Ibid., No. 83.
[202] Wojcicki’s “Polnische Volkssagen,” &c. Lewestam’s translation, iii. No. 8.
[203] The germ of all these repulsive stories about incestuous unions, proposed but not carried out, was probably a nature myth akin to that alluded to in the passage of the Rigveda containing the dialogue between Yama and Yami—“where she (the night) implores her brother (the day) to make her his wife, and where he declines her offer because, as he says, ‘they have called it sin that a brother should marry his sister.’” Max Müller, “Lectures,” sixth edition, ii. 557.
[204] Afanasief, vii. No. 18.
[205] Her name Vyed’ma comes from a Slavonic root véd, answering to the Sanskrit vid—from which springs an immense family of words having reference to knowledge. Vyed’ma and witch are in fact cousins who, though very distantly related, closely resemble each other both in appearance and in character.
[206] Afanasief, i. No. 4 a. From the Voroneje Government.