[20] The Nechistol, or unclean. (Chisty = clean, pure, &c.)
[21] Literally, “on thee no face is to be seen.”
[22] I do not propose to comment at any length upon the stories quoted in the present chapter. Some of them will be referred to farther on. Marusia’s demon lover will be recognized as akin to Arabian Ghouls, or the Rákshasas of Indian mythology. (See the story of Sidi Norman in the “Thousand and One Nights,” also Lane’s translation, vol. i., p. 32; and the story of Asokadatta and Vijayadatta in the fifth book of the “Kathásaritságara,” Brockhaus’s translation, 1843, vol. ii. pp. 142-159.) For transformations of a maiden into a flower or tree, see Grimm, No. 76, “Die Nelke,” and the notes to that story in vol. iii., p. 125—Hahn, No. 21, “Das Lorbeerkind,” etc. “The Water of Life,” will meet with due consideration in the [fourth chapter]. The Holy Water which destroys the Fiend is merely a Christian form of the “Water of Death,” viewed in its negative aspect.
[23] Chudinsky, No. 3.
[24] Afanasief, vi. p. 325. Wolfs “Niederlandische Sagen,” No. 326, quoted in Thorpe’s “Northern Mythology,” i. 292. Note 4.
[25] A number of ghost stories, and some remarks about the ideas of the Russian peasants with respect to the dead, will be found in [Chap. V]. Scott mentions a story in “The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,” vol. ii. p. 223, of a widower who believed he was haunted by his dead wife. On one occasion the ghost, to prove her identity, gave suck to her surviving infant.
[26] Afanasief, viii. p. 165.
[27] In West-European stories the devil frequently carries off a witch’s soul after death. Here the fiend enters the corpse, or rather its skin, probably intending to reappear as a vampire. Compare Bleek’s “Reynard the Fox in South Africa,” No. 24, in which a lion squeezes itself into the skin of a girl it has killed. I have generally rendered by “demon,” instead of “devil,” the word chort when it occurs in stories of this class, as the spirits to which they refer are manifestly akin to those of oriental demonology.
[28] For an account of which, see the “Songs of the Russian People,” pp. 333-334. The best Russian work on the subject is Barsof’s “Prichitaniya Syevernago Kraya,” Moscow, 1872.
[29] Afanasief, iv. No. 9.