“Why have ye fallen? Wherefore as in death do ye lie here? Truly no longer lives the Spider, the wrestler, the hero bold. They’ve sent him to Kazan and in Kazan they’ve chopped his head off on a block, and afterwards destroyed the block.”
The gnats and flies grew blithe and merry. Thrice they crossed themselves, then out they flew—and straight into the Spider’s snares. Said he:—
“But seldom do ye come! I would that ye would far more often come to visit me! to quaff my wine and beer, and pay me tribute!”[68]
This story is specially interesting in the original, inasmuch as it is rhymed throughout, although printed as prose. A kind of lilt is perceptible in many of the Skazkas, and traces of rhyme are often to be detected in them, but “The Mizgir’s” mould is different from theirs. Many stories also exist in an artificially versified form, but their movement differs entirely from that of the naturally cadenced periods of the ordinary Skazka, or of such rhymed prose as that of “The Mizgir.”
The following legend is not altogether new in “motive,” but a certain freshness is lent to it by its simple style, its unstrained humor, and its genial tone.
The Smith and the Demon.[69]
Once upon a time there was a Smith, and he had one son, a sharp, smart, six-year-old boy. One day the old man went to church, and as he stood before a picture of the Last Judgment he saw a Demon painted there—such a terrible one!—black, with horns and a tail.
“O my!” says he to himself. “Suppose I get just such another painted for the smithy.” So he hired an artist, and ordered him to paint on the door of the smithy exactly such another demon as he had seen in the church. The artist painted it. Thenceforward the old man, every time he entered the smithy, always looked at the Demon and said, “Good morning, fellow-countryman!” And then he would lay the fire in the furnace and begin his work.
Well, the Smith lived in good accord with the Demon for some ten years. Then he fell ill and died. His son succeeded to his place as head of the household, and took the smithy into his own hands. But he was not disposed to show attention to the Demon as the old man had done. When he went into the smithy in the morning, he never said “Good morrow” to him; instead of offering him a kindly word, he took the biggest hammer he had handy, and thumped the Demon with it three times right on the forehead, and then he would go to his work. And when one of God’s holy days came round, he would go to church and offer each saint a taper; but he would go up to the Demon and spit in his face. Thus three years went by, he all the while favoring the Evil One every morning either with a spitting or with a hammering. The Demon endured it and endured it, and at last found it past all endurance. It was too much for him.
“I’ve had quite enough of this insolence from him!” thinks he. “Suppose I make use of a little diplomacy, and play him some sort of a trick!”