After this everything went worse and worse with the rich brother, till he became at last quite poor, and remained so.
This story, which I have not abridged, is a well-known Sclavonic legend. It is probably connected with the story of the three apes which forms the introduction to that of "Khaleefeh the Fisherman," in the Thousand and One Nights.
SECTION XIII
PLAGUE-LEGENDS
The plague continued to rage in Eastern Europe long after it had disappeared from the West, and down to a very recent period. Consequently we find plague-legends, which have almost died out in the British Islands, except in Scotland, rife among all the Eastern nations. The Plague-demon is usually represented as female, but in the Esthonian legends it is masculine.
The Plague once seated himself in a boat which was returning to the Island of Rogö,[75] which had hitherto escaped his ravages, in the shape of a tall black man with a great scythe in his hand. He arrived among the dead crew, and at once sprang on shore and began to destroy the inhabitants. Some saw the Plague himself, and others not. If any one saw him, his heart froze with terror before he could speak a word.[76] One night during a violent storm, an old woman saw him enter her cottage as she was sitting alone spinning; but she gathered courage to cry out, "Welcome, in God's name." He stopped short, muttering, "That's enough," returned to the boat in which he had come, and went out to sea. The storm ceased as he departed, and since then he has never reappeared.
In the Island of Nuckö he appeared as an old grey man, with a taper in one hand and a staff in the other, a book under his arm, and a three-cornered hat on his head. As he went from house to house, he looked up the names of his victims in his book, let his taper shine on their faces to make sure that he had made no mistake, and touched the doomed with his staff. A peasant once saw him enter his cottage, and touch all with his staff, except himself and the infant in the cradle. All the others died before cockcrow.[77]