Even the vehicles exhibit a survival from mediævalism since each horse is harnessed beneath a duga or piece of bent wood intended to strengthen the shafts, as it is by them alone the load is hauled, and traces are unknown. The duga, just as it is to-day, was used with the first wheeled vehicles introduced to Russia and will persist for aye. But the observant stranger will not lack entertainment in Moscow, especially if he shows generous toleration of primitive customs. If a house be building, the simple and superstitious working man, his original intention being now directed by the church to a manifestation of piety, will first raise above all the scaffolding a well made, often decorated, cross, so seeking a blessing from the good by the same sign that his early ancestors sought to appease the powers of evil. The carter, whose horse drops with heat sickness, will get the animal on his legs again and cause him three times to cross the duga he purposely places thwartwise. To those versed in symbols an act as easy to understand as the every day remedy of the kitchenmaid who puts the poker across the bars of the grate to prevent the newly lighted fire from being extinguished—a not commendable practice yet effective epithem. Sprite ridden the Moscow peasant is still, but though “it” moves him to do many things of which he knows not the reason, merely obeying the prompting intuitively, he has forgotten what this “it” is that must be appeased. A bridge, a girder cantilever across a wide estuary or a couple of planks across a ditch, is not finished till some trifle has been cast into the water, in this the mujik being not unlike the skipper of a Grimsby trawler who tosses a new coin into the ocean before lowering his net.
The enthusiast may attempt to trace the direct connection between baksheesh, nachai, and the extortion of gratuities generally, with the ancient practice of trifling sacrifices to some mythical demon; both old as the offer of a cock by Socrates to Æsculapius, and world-wide as the application of a door-key to the spine as a cure for nasal hæmorrhage. In such matters may hap Moscow is as other towns, and neither mediæval nor peculiar.
But whosoever of a summer’s night will wander into the suburbs will hear the policeman on his round beating two pieces of wood together with aggravating rhythm. If the listener be country-bred the noise will remind him of the farm boy of old days who, with wooden clapper, scared birds from the corn. If he be so curious as to examine the instrument he will find it to be a piece of board with a handle, and a wooden ball attached to it with a piece of twine. The knocking of the two together to produce an intermittent whirr is accomplished by a curious turn of the wrist. The watchman will explain that the noise is to warn garden-robbers and other depredators of his coming, or to advise his employers that he is about his duty. The most learned ethnologist of the west says that an identical instrument, handled in the same manner, is employed by the minor priests of a wild race in the far far east to drive away evil spirits from the native temple.
Further a-field—a twenty-five kopeck ride on a lineika from the Trubaya—Ostankina is reached. There is a curious and elegant church of red brick built by Moscow artisans in the golden age, at the cost of the boyard Mikhail Cherkassky. Near by is a great wooden palace, stuccoed and prim, the property of the Sheremetievs. Passing through its park where Le Bruyn shot his great crane flying by a single bullet from his musket, and where the upper reaches of the Yauza are still haunted by wild fowl, is a thick wood to the north of the stream, and in the middle of that near the path, a clearing where at midday a drove of mares are coralled and milked by men who speak a strange tongue, and are of quite different appearance to the Muscovites. A mile further on is their village, near a large pool. It is a poor, insignificant, rather dirty and very untidy place. Mordva its name; Mordva its people, whose ancestors, many centuries ago, left their home among the Altai Mountains on the confines of Manchuria and spread westward over Russia, fighting with their later conquerors almost to their own extermination. Various isolated groups of this once powerful race are scattered about Russia, mixing but little with its people. These, who through long centuries have been resident in the heart of Muscovy, seems as incongruous and impossible as would be the present occupation of Hampstead Heath by survivors of ancient Picts in the full glory of their primitive customs. It is nearest to the great towns that primitive methods and beliefs persist most strongly, and just as in the villages about London, antiquated farming implements and old country superstitions are more plentiful than in the rural districts of England, so near Moscow the old customs and manners die hard. In villages within easy walk of the Kremlin, mediæval practices are rife, especially during the celebration of marriages, and the performance of minor domestic pageants. The curious, if persistent and lucky, may see the bowl of Tantalus presented to the mother of the bride of yesterday, and as the liquor escapes the cup by the hole in its bottom from which the profferer has removed his finger, guess at the significance of the custom and speculate as to its origin.
Within the town almost every old building has its legends. Very diverse are those connected with the Lobnœ Mesto on the Grand Square. It derived its name—literally “the place of a skull”—from the Golgotha that was erected there for the Easter Passion play which was performed yearly before the church of the Trinity disappeared. From time immemorial it has been the place of public assembly, being to Moscow what St Paul’s Cross was to old London, and the perron to Liége. Therefore, as all who have studied the migration of symbols will know, not only is it of very early origin, but associated with stories in some form common to all peoples.