“Mother Friday, forgive me! pardon me, the guilty one! I’ll offer thee a taper, and I’ll never let friend or foe dishonor thee, Mother!”
Well, what do you think? During the night, back came Mother Friday and took the dust out of that woman’s eyes, so that she was able to get about again. It’s a great sin to dishonor Mother Friday—combing and spinning flax, forsooth!
Very similar to this story is that about Wednesday which follows. Wednesday, the day consecrated to Odin, the eve of the day sacred to the Thundergod,[254] may also have been held holy by the heathen Slavonians, but to some commentators it appears more likely that the traditions now attached to it in Russia became transferred to it from Friday in Christian times—Wednesday and Friday having been associated by the Church as days sacred to the memory of Our Lord’s passion and death. The Russian name for the day, Sereda or Sreda, means “the middle,” Wednesday being the middle of the working week.
Wednesday.[255]
A young housewife was spinning late one evening. It was during the night between a Tuesday and a Wednesday. She had been left alone for a long time, and after midnight, when the first cock crew, she began to think about going to bed, only she would have liked to finish spinning what she had in hand. “Well,” thinks she, “I’ll get up a bit earlier in the morning, but just now I want to go to sleep.” So she laid down her hatchel—but without crossing herself—and said:
“Now then, Mother Wednesday, lend me thy aid, that I may get up early in the morning and finish my spinning.” And then she went to sleep.
Well, very early in the morning, long before it was light, she heard someone moving, bustling about the room. She opened her eyes and looked. The room was lighted up. A splinter of fir was burning in the cresset, and the fire was lighted in the stove. A woman, no longer young, wearing a white towel by way of head-dress, was moving about the cottage, going to and fro, supplying the stove with firewood, getting everything ready. Presently she came up to the young woman, and roused her, saying, “Get up!” The young woman got up, full of wonder, saying:
“But who art thou? What hast thou come here for?”
“I am she on whom thou didst call. I have come to thy aid.”
“But who art thou? On whom did I call?”