According to another story, when men first inhabited the earth, they did not know how to build houses, so as to keep themselves warm in winter. But instead of asking aid from the Lord, they applied to the Devil, who taught them how to make an izba or ordinary Russian cottage. Following his instructions, they made wooden houses, each of which had a door but no window. Inside these huts it was warm; but there was no living in them, on account of the darkness. “So the people went back to the Evil One. The Evil one strove and strove, but nothing came of it, the izba still remained pitch dark. Then the people prayed unto the Lord. And the Lord said: ‘Hew out a window!’ So they hewed out windows, and it became light.”[425]
Some of the Russian traditions about the creation of man are closely connected with Teutonic myths. The Schismatics called Dukhobortsui, or Spirit-Wrestlers, for instance, hold that man was composed of earthly materials, but that God breathed into his body the breath of life. “His flesh was made of earth, his bones of stone, his veins of roots, his blood of water, his hair of grass, his thought of the wind, his spirit of the cloud.”[426] Many of the Russian stories about the early ages of the world, also, are current in Western Europe, such as that about the rye—which in olden days was a mass of ears from top to bottom. But some lazy harvest-women having cursed “God’s corn,” the Lord waxed wroth and began to strip the ears from the stem. But when the last ear was about to fall, the Lord had pity upon the penitent culprits, and allowed the single ear to remain as we now see it.[427]
A Little-Russian variant of this story says that Ilya (Elijah), was so angry at seeing the base uses to which a woman turned “God’s corn,” that he began to destroy all the corn in the world. But a dog begged for, and received a few ears. From these, after Ilya’s wrath was spent, mankind obtained seed, and corn began to grow again on the face of the earth, but not in its pristine bulk and beauty. It is on account of the good service thus rendered to our race that we ought to cherish and feed the dog.[428]
Another story, from the Archangel Government, tells how a certain King, as he roamed afield with his princes and boyars, found a grain of corn as large as a sparrow’s egg. Marvelling greatly at its size, he tried in vain to obtain from his followers some explanation thereof. Then they bethought them of “a certain man from among the old people, who might be able to tell them something about it.” But when the old man came, “scarcely able to crawl along on a pair of crutches,” he said he knew nothing about it, but perhaps his father might remember something. So they sent for his father, who came limping along with the help of one crutch, and who said:
“I have a father living, in whose granary I have seen just such a seed.”
So they sent for his father, a man a hundred and seventy years old. And the patriarch came, walking nimbly needing neither guide nor crutch. Then the King began to question him, saying:
“Who sowed this sort of corn?”
“I sowed it, and reaped it,” answered the old man, “and now I have some of it in my granary. I keep it as a memorial. When I was young, the grain was large and plentiful, but after a time it began to grow smaller and smaller.”
“Now tell me,” asked the King, “how comes it, old man, that thou goest more nimbly than thy son and thy grandson?”
“Because I lived according to the law of the Lord,” answered the old man. “I held mine own, I grasped not at what was another’s.”[429]