[350] “Völsunga Saga,” translated by E. Magnússon and W. Morris, pp. 95-6.
[351] Afanasief, vi. No. 32. From the Novgorod Government. A “chap-book” version of this story will be found in Dietrich’s collection (pp. 152-68 of the English translation); also in Keightley’s “Tales and Popular Fictions.”
[352] Nijnie, lower. Thus Nijny Novgorod is the lower (down the Volga) Novgorod. (Dahl.)
[353] Kukova, a stick or cudgel, one end of which is bent and rounded like a ball.
[354] Tak de ego ne vzat’.
[355] There are numerous variants of this story among the Skazkas. In one of these (Afanasief, vii. No. 31) the man on whom the pike has bestowed supernatural power uses it to turn a Maiden princess into a mother. This renders the story wholly in accordance with (1) the Modern Greek tale of “The Half Man,” (Hahn, No. 8) in which the magic formula runs, “according to the first word of God and the second of the fish shall such and such a thing be done!” (2) The Neapolitan story of “Pervonto” (Basile’s “Pentamerone,” No. 3) who obtains his magic power from three youths whom he screens from the sun as they lie asleep one hot day, and who turn out to be sons of a fairy. Afanasief compares the story also with the German tale of “The Little Grey Mannikin,” in the “Zeitschrift für Deutsche Mythologie,” &c., i. pp. 38-40. The incident of wishes being fulfilled by a fish occurs in many stories, as in that of “The Fisherman,” in the “Arabian Nights,” “The Fisherman and his Wife,” in Grimm (KM., No. 19). A number of stories about the Pike are referred to by A. de Gubernatis (“Zoolog. Mythology,” ii. 337-9).
[356] Quoted by Afanasief from Siemienski’s “Podania,” Posen, 1845, p. 42.
[357] “Songs of the Russian People,” pp. 387-427.
[358] Afanasief, vii. No. 36 a. This story has no special title in the original.
[359] The rural police. Sotnick = centurion, from sto = 100. Desyatnik is a word of the same kind from desyat = 10.