“To-day I suckle thee, to-morrow I shall suckle thee, but on the third day I shall fly away beyond the dark forests, beyond the high mountains!”
This occurred on two successive days, but on the second occasion Prince Ivan was a witness of what took place, and he seized her feather-dress and burnt it, and then laid hold of her. She first turned into a frog, then assumed various reptile forms, and finally became a spindle. This he broke in two, and flung one half in front and the other behind him, and the spell was broken along with it. So he regained his wife and went home with her. But as for the false wife, he took a gun and shot her.
We will now return to the stories in which Harm or Misery figures as a living agent. To Likho is always attributed a character of unmitigated malevolence, and a similar disposition is ascribed by the songs of the people to another being in whom the idea of misfortune is personified. This is Goré, or Woe, who is frequently represented in popular poetry—sometimes under the name of Béda or Misery—as chasing and ultimately destroying the unhappy victims of destiny. In vain do the fugitives attempt to escape. If they enter the dark forest, Woe follows them there; if they rush to the pot-house, there they find Woe sitting; when they seek refuge in the grave, Woe stands over it with a shovel and rejoices.[232] In the following story, however, the gloomy figure of Woe has been painted in a less than usually sombre tone.
Woe.[233]
In a certain village there lived two peasants, two brothers: one of them poor, the other rich. The rich one went away to live in a town, built himself a large house, and enrolled himself among the traders. Meanwhile the poor man sometimes had not so much as a morsel of bread, and his children—each one smaller than the other—were crying and begging for food. From morning till night the peasant would struggle, like a fish trying to break through ice, but nothing came of it all. At last one day he said to his wife:
“Suppose I go to town, and ask my brother whether he won’t do something to help us.”
So he went to the rich man and said:
“Ah, brother mine! do help me a bit in my trouble. My wife and children are without bread. They have to go whole days without eating.”
“Work for me this week, then I’ll help you,” said his brother.
What was there to be done! The poor man betook himself to work, swept out the yard, cleaned the horses, fetched water, chopped firewood.