Such is the story, says Bronevsky, which the Kirghiz tell with respect to some statues of unknown origin which stand (or used to stand) near the Ayaguza, a river falling into Lake Balkhash. A somewhat similar Armenian story is quoted by Haxthausen in his Transcaucasia (p. 350 of the English translation).
In the Kalevala, when Lemmenkäinen has been torn to pieces, his mother collects his scattered remains, and by a dexterous synthetical operation restores him to physical unity. But the silence of death still possesses him. Then she entreats the Bee to bring vivifying honey. After two fruitless journeys, the Bee succeeds in bringing back honey “from the cellar of the Creator.” When this has been applied, the dead man returns to life, sits up, and says in the words of the Russian heroes—“How long I have slept!”[301]
Here is another instance of a life-giving operation of a double nature. There is a well-known Indian story about four suitors for the hand of one girl. She dies, but is restored to life by one of her lovers, who happens one day to see a dead child resuscitated, and learns how to perform similar miracles. In two Sanskrit versions of the “Vetálapanchavinsati,”[302] as well as in the Hindi version,[303] the life-giving charm consists in a spell taken from a book of magic. But in the Tamil version, the process is described as being of a different and double nature. According to it, the mother of the murdered child “by the charm called sisupàbam re-created the body, and, by the incantation called sanjìvi, restored it to life.” The suitor, having learnt the charm and the incantation, “took the bones and the ashes (of the dead girl), and having created out of them the body, by virtue of the charm sisupàbam gave life to that body by the sanjìvi incantation.” According to Mr. Babington, “Sanjìvi is defined by the Tamuls to be a medicine which restores to life by dissipating a mortal swoon.... In the text the word is used for the art of using this medicine.”[304]]
As a general rule, the two waters of which mention is made in the Skazkas possess the virtues, and are employed in the manner, mentioned above; but there are cases in which their powers are of a different nature. Sometimes we meet with two magic fluids, one of which heals all wounds, and restores sight to the blind and vigor to the cripple, while the other destroys all that it touches. Sometimes, also, recourse is had to magic draughts of two kinds, the one of which strengthens him who quaffs it, while the other produces the opposite effect. Such liquors as these are known as the “Waters of Strength and Weakness,” and are usually described as being stowed away in the cellar of some many-headed Snake. For the Snake is often mentioned as the possessor, or at least the guardian, of magic fluids. Thus one of the Skazkas[305] speaks of a wondrous garden, in which are two springs of healing and vivifying water, and around that garden is coiled like a ring a mighty serpent. Another tells how a flying Snake brought two heroes to a lake, into which they flung a green bough, and immediately the bough broke into flame and was consumed. Then it took them to another lake, into which they cast a mouldy log. And the log straightway began to put forth buds and blossoms.[306]
In some cases the magic waters are the property, not of a Snake, but of one of the mighty heroines who so often occur in these stories, and who bear so great a resemblance to Brynhild, as well in other respects as in that of her enchanted sleep. Thus in one of the Skazkas[307] an aged king dreams that “beyond thrice nine lands, in the thirtieth country, there is a fair maiden from whose hands and feet water is flowing, of which water he who drinks will become thirty years younger.” His sons go forth in search of this youth-giving liquid, and, after many adventures, the youngest is directed to the golden castle in which lives the “fair maiden,” whom his father has seen in his vision. He has been told that when she is awake her custom is to divert herself in the green fields with her Amazon host—“for nine days she rambles about, and then for nine days she sleeps a heroic slumber.” The Prince hides himself among the bushes near the castle, and sees a fair maiden come out of it surrounded by an armed band, “and all the band consists of maidens, each one more beautiful than the other. And the most beautiful, the most never-enough-to-be-gazed-upon, is the Queen herself.” For nine days he watches the fair band of Amazons as they ramble about. On the tenth day all is still, and he enters the castle. In the midst of her slumbering guards sleeps the Queen on a couch of down, the healing water flowing from her hands and feet. With it he fills two flasks, and then he retires. When the Queen awakes, she becomes conscious of the theft and pursues the Prince. Coming up with him, she slays him with a single blow, but then takes compassion on him, and restores him to life.
In another version of the story, the precious fluid is contained in a flask which is hidden under the pillow of the slumbering “Tsar Maiden.” The Prince steals it and flees, but he bears on him the weight of sin, and so, when he tries to clear the fence which girds the enchanted castle, his horse strikes one of the cords attached to it, and the spell is broken which maintains the magic sleep in which the realm is locked. The Tsar Maiden pursues the thief, but does not succeed in catching him. He is killed, however, by his elder brothers, who “cut him into small pieces,” and then take the flask of magic water to their father. The murdered prince is resuscitated by the mythical bird known by the name of the Zhar-Ptitsa, which collects his scattered fragments, puts them together, and sprinkles them first with “dead water” and then with “live-water,”—conveyed for that purpose in its beak—after which the prince gets up, thanks his reviver, and goes his way.[308]
In one of the numerous variants of the story in which a prince is exposed to various dangers by his sister—who is induced to plot against his life by her demon lover, the Snake—the hero is sent in search of “a healing and a vivifying water,” preserved between two lofty mountains which cleave closely together, except during “two or three minutes” of each day. He follows his instructions, rides to a certain spot, and there awaits the hour at which the mountains fly apart. “Suddenly a terrible hurricane arose, a mighty thunder smote, and the two mountains were torn asunder. Prince Ivan spurred his heroic steed, flew like a dart between the mountains, dipped two flasks in the waters, and instantly turned back.” He himself escapes safe and sound, but the hind legs of his horse are caught between the closing cliffs, and smashed to pieces. The magic waters, of course, soon remedy this temporary inconvenience.[309]
In a Slovak version of this story, a murderous mother sends her son to two mountains, each of which is cleft open once in every twenty-four hours—the one opening at midday and the other at midnight; the former disclosing the Water of Life, the latter the Water of Death.[310] In a similar story from the Ukraine, mention is made of two springs of healing and life-giving water, which are guarded by iron-beaked ravens, and the way to which lies between grinding hills. The Fox and the Hare are sent in quest of the magic fluid. The Fox goes and returns in safety, but the Hare, on her way back, is not in time quite to clear the meeting cliffs, and her tail is jammed in between them. Since that time, hares have had no tails.[311]
On the Waters of Strength and Weakness much stress is laid in many of the tales about the many-headed Snakes which carry off men’s wives and daughters to their metallic castles. In one of these, for instance, the golden-haired Queen Anastasia has been torn away by a whirlwind from her husband “Tsar Byel Byelyanin” [the White King]. As in the variant of the story already quoted,[312] her sons go in search of her, and the youngest of them, after finding three palaces—the first of copper, the second of silver, the third of gold, each containing a princess held captive by Vikhor, the whirlwind—comes to a fourth palace gleaming with diamonds and other precious stones. In it he discovers his long-lost mother, who gladly greets him, and at once takes him into Vikhor’s cellar. Here is the account of what ensued.
Well, they entered the cellar; there stood two tubs of water, the one on the right hand, the other on the left. Says the Queen—