“Pray forgive me for scolding you,” said she.
“God be with you,” said he.[116]
So he went into the church and, finding his brothers had not yet arrived, he stood up alongside of the bride and got married to her. Then he and she were escorted back to the palace, and as they went along, the proper bridegroom, his eldest brother, met them. But when he saw that his bride and Prince Ivan were being escorted home together, he turned back again ignominiously.
As to the king, he was delighted to see Prince Ivan again, and when he had learnt all about the treachery of his brothers, after the wedding feast had been solemnized, he banished the two elder princes, but he made Ivan heir to the throne.
In the story of “Prince Arikad,”[117] the Queen-Mother is carried off by the Whirlwind,[118] instead of by Koshchei. Her youngest son climbs the hill by the aid of iron hooks, kills Vikhor, and lowers his mother and three other ladies whom he has rescued, by means of a rope made of strips of hide. This his brothers cut to prevent him from descending.[119] They then oblige the ladies to swear not to betray them, the taking of the oath being accompanied by the eating of earth.[120] The same formality is observed in another story in which an oath of a like kind is exacted.[121]
The sacred nature of such an obligation may account for the singular reticence so often maintained, under similar circumstances, in stories of this class.
In one of the descriptions of Koshchei’s death, he is said to be killed by a blow on the forehead inflicted by the mysterious egg—that last link in the magic chain by which his life is darkly bound.[122] In another version of the same story, but told of a Snake, the fatal blow is struck by a small stone found in the yolk of an egg, which is inside a duck, which is inside a hare, which is inside a stone, which is on an island [i.e., the fabulous island Buyan].[123] In another variant[124] Koshchei attempts to deceive his fair captive, pretending that his “death” resides in a besom, or in a fence, both of which she adorns with gold in token of her love. Then he confesses that his “death” really lies in an egg, inside a duck, inside a log which is floating on the sea. Prince Ivan gets hold of the egg and shifts it from one hand to the other. Koshchei rushes wildly from side to side of the room. At last the prince breaks the egg. Koshchei falls on the floor and dies.
This heart-breaking episode occurs in the folk-tales of many lands.[125] It may not be amiss to trace it through some of its forms. In a Norse story[126] a Giant’s heart lies in an egg, inside a duck, which swims in a well, in a church, on an island. With this may be compared another Norse tale,[127] in which a Haugebasse, or Troll, who has carried off a princess, informs her that he and all his companions will burst asunder when above them passes “the grain of sand that lies under the ninth tongue in the ninth head” of a certain dead dragon. The grain of sand is found and brought, and the result is that the whole of the monstrous brood of Trolls or Haugebasser is instantaneously destroyed. In a Transylvanian-Saxon story[128] a Witch’s “life” is a light which burns in an egg, inside a duck, which swims on a pond, inside a mountain, and she dies when it is put out. In the Bohemian story of “The Sun-horse”[129] a Warlock’s “strength” lies in an egg, which is within a duck, which is within a stag, which is under a tree. A Seer finds the egg and sucks it. Then the Warlock becomes as weak as a child, “for all his strength had passed into the Seer.” In the Gaelic story of “The Sea-Maiden,”[130] the “great beast with three heads” which haunts the loch cannot be killed until an egg is broken, which is in the mouth of a trout, which springs out of a crow, which flies out of a hind, which lives on an island in the middle of the loch. In a Modern Greek tale the life of a dragon or other baleful being comes to an end simultaneously with the lives of three pigeons which are shut up in an all but inaccessible chamber,[131] or inclosed within a wild boar.[132] Closely connected with the Greek tale is the Servian story of the dragon[133] whose “strength” (snaga) lies in a sparrow, which is inside a dove, inside a hare, inside a boar, inside a dragon (ajdaya) which is in a lake, near a royal city. The hero of the story fights the dragon of the lake, and after a long struggle, being invigorated at the critical moment by a kiss which the heroine imprints on his forehead—he flings it high in the air. When it falls to the ground it breaks in pieces, and out comes the boar. Eventually the hero seizes the sparrow and wrings its neck, but not before he has obtained from it the charm necessary for the recovery of his missing brothers and a number of other victims of the dragon’s cruelty.
To these European tales a very interesting parallel is afforded by the Indian story of “Punchkin,”[134] whose life depends on that of a parrot, which is in a cage placed beneath the lowest of six jars of water, piled one on the other, and standing in the midst of a desolate country covered with thick jungle. When the parrot’s legs and wings are pulled off, Punchkin loses his legs and arms; and when its neck is wrung, his head twists round and he dies.
One of the strangest of the stories which turn on this idea of an external heart is the Samoyed tale,[135] in which seven brothers are in the habit, every night, of taking out their hearts and sleeping without them. A captive damsel whose mother they have killed, receives the extracted hearts and hangs them on the tent-pole, where they remain till the following morning. One night her brother contrives to get the hearts into his possession. Next morning he takes them into the tent, where he finds the brothers at the point of death. In vain do they beg for their hearts, which he flings on the floor. “And as he flings down the hearts the brothers die.”