“I am,” she replies. “Art thou sitting?” “I sit.” “Dost thou spin?” “I spin.” “Grey wool?” “Grey.” “For a caftan?” “For a caftan.”
Just the same took place a second time. The third time, just as he was going to rush at her, she laid the cross upon him. He fell down and died. She looked into the coffin; there lay ever so much money. The father-in-law wanted to take it away with him, or, at all events, that only some one who could outdo him in cunning should get it.[377]
In one of the least intelligible of the West Highland tales, there is a scene which somewhat resembles the “lykewake” in this skazka. It is called “The Girl and the Dead Man,” and relates, among other strange things, how a youngest sister took service in a house where a corpse lay. “She sat to watch the dead man, and she was sewing; in the middle of night he rose up, and screwed up a grin. ‘If thou dost not lie down properly, I will give thee the one leathering with a stick.’ He lay down. At the end of a while, he rose on one elbow, and screwed up a grin; and the third time he rose and screwed up a grin. When he rose the third time, she struck him a lounder of the stick; the stick stuck to the dead man, and the hand stuck to the stick, and out they were.” Eventually “she got a peck of gold and a peck of silver, and the vessel of cordial” and returned home.[378]
The obscurity of the Celtic tale forms a striking contrast to the lucidity of the Slavonic. The Russian peasant likes a clear statement of facts; the Highlander seems, like Coleridge’s Scotch admirer, to find a pleasure in seeing “an idea looming out of the mist.”
FOOTNOTES:
[296] About which, see Professor Wilson’s note on Somadeva’s story of the “Origin of Pátaliputra,” “Essays,” i. p. 168-9, with Dr. Rost’s reference to L. Deslongchamps, “Essai sur les Fables Indiennes,” Paris, 1838, p. 35 and Grässe, “Sagenkreise des Mittelalters,” Leipsig, 1842, p. 191. See also the numerous references given by Grimm, KM. iii. pp. 168-9.
[297] As well as in all the mythologies. For the magic draught of the fairy-story appears to be closely connected with the Greek ambrosia, the Vedic soma or amrita, the Zend haoma.
[298] A water, “Das Wasser des Lebens,” in two German stories (Grimm, Nos. 92 and 97, and iii. p. 178), and in many Greek tales (Hahn, Nos. 32, 37, &c.). An oil or ointment in the Norse tale (Asbjörnsen and Moe, No. 35, Dasent, No. 3). A balsam in Gaelic tales, in which a “Vessel of Balsam” often occurs. According to Mr. Campbell (“West Highland Tales,” i. p. 218), “Ballan Iocshlaint, teat, of ichor, of health, seems to be the meaning of the words.” The juice squeezed from the leaves of a tree in a modern Indian tale (“Old Deccan Days,” p. 139).
[299] The mythical bird Garuda, the Indian original of the Roc of the Arabian Nights, was similarly connected with the Amrita. See the story of Garuda and the Nágas in Brockhaus’s translation of the “Kathásaritságara,” ii. pp. 98-105. On the Vedic falcon which brings the Soma down to earth, see Kuhn’s “Herabkunft des Feuers,” pp. 138-142.
[300] In the Russian periodical, “Otechestvennuiya Zapiski,” vol. 43 (for 1830) pp. 252-6.