“Peasant,” cries the Demon, “wherever can I take refuge?”
“Run back into the pit. She won’t go there any more.”
The Demon went back to the pit—and to the Bad Wife too.
In return for his services, the Boyar conferred a rich guerdon on the peasant, giving him his daughter to wife, and presenting him with half his property.
But the Bad Wife sits to this day in the pit—in Tartarus.[54]
Our final illustration of the Skazkas which satirize women is the story of the Golovikha. It is all the more valuable, inasmuch as it is one of the few folk-tales which throw any light on the working of Russian communal institutions. The word Golovikha means, in its strict sense, the wife of a Golova, or elected chief [Golova = head] of a Volost, or association of village communities; but here it is used for a “female Golova,” a species of “mayoress.”
The Golovikha.[55]
A certain woman was very bumptious. Her husband came from a village council one day, and she asked him:
“What have you been deciding over there?”
“What have we been deciding? why choosing a Golova.”