A Russian peasant funeral is preceded or accompanied by a considerable amount of wailing, which answers in some respect to the Irish “keening.” To the zaplachki,[28] or laments, which are uttered on such occasions—frequently by hired wailers, who closely resemble the Corsican “vociferators,” the modern Greek “myrologists”—allusions are sometimes made in the Skazkas. In the “Fox-wailer,”[29] for example—one of the variants of the well-known “Jack and the Beanstalk” story—an old man puts his wife in a bag and attempts to carry her up the beanstalk to heaven. Becoming tired on the way, he drops the bag, and the old woman is killed. After weeping over her dead body he sets out in search of a Wailer. Meeting a bear, he cries, “Wail a bit, Bear, for my old woman! I’ll give you a pair of nice white fowls.” The bear growls out “Oh, dear granny of mine! how I grieve for thee!” “No, no!” says the old man, “you can’t wail.” Going a little further he tries a wolf, but the wolf succeeds no better than the bear. At last a fox comes by, and on being appealed to, begins to cry aloud “Turu-Turu, grandmother! grandfather has killed thee!”—a wail which pleases the widower so much that he hands over the fowls to the fox at once, and asks, enraptured, for “that strain again!”[30]
One of the most curious of the stories which relate to a village burial,—one in which also the feeling with which the Russian villagers sometimes regard their clergy finds expression—is that called—
The Treasure.[31]
In a certain kingdom there lived an old couple in great poverty. Sooner or later the old woman died. It was in winter, in severe and frosty weather. The old man went round to his friends and neighbors, begging them to help him to dig a grave for the old woman; but his friends and neighbors, knowing his great poverty, all flatly refused. The old man went to the pope,[32] (but in that village they had an awfully grasping pope, one without any conscience), and says he:—
“Lend a hand, reverend father, to get my old woman buried.”
“But have you got any money to pay for the funeral? if so, friend, pay up beforehand!”
“It’s no use hiding anything from you. Not a single copeck have I at home. But if you’ll wait a little, I’ll earn some, and then I’ll pay you with interest—on my word I’ll pay you!”
The pope wouldn’t so much as listen to the old man.
“If you haven’t any money, don’t you dare to come here,” says he.
“What’s to be done?” thinks the old man. “I’ll go to the graveyard, dig a grave as I best can, and bury the old woman myself.” So he took an axe and a shovel, and went to the graveyard. When he got there he began to prepare a grave. He chopped away the frozen ground on the top with the axe, and then he took to the shovel. He dug and dug, and at last he dug out a metal pot. Looking into it he saw that it was stuffed full of ducats that shone like fire. The old man was immensely delighted, and cried, “Glory be to Thee, O Lord! I shall have wherewithal both to bury my old woman, and to perform the rites of remembrance.”