Sixty Folk-Tales from Exclusively Slavonic Sources

Once upon a time a man went out alone, and met on the road the Sun, the Frost, and the Wind. Well, on meeting them, he gave them a salutation: 'Praised' [be the Lord Jesus Christ]! To which did he present the salutation? The Sun said: 'To me, that I might not burn him.' The Frost said: 'To me, and not to you, for he is not so much afraid of you as of me.' 'Story-tellers! it's false!' said, lastly, the Wind; 'that man presented the salutation not to you two, but to me.' They began to jangle and quarrel together, and all but pulled the mantles off each other's backs. 'Well, if it's so, let's ask him to whom he presented the salutation, to me or to you?' They overtook the man and asked him; then he said: 'To the Wind.' 'Didn't I say that it was to me?' 'Stop you! I'll give you a baking, you rascal!' said the Sun; 'you shall remember me.' Then said the Wind: 'Never fear, he won't bake you; I shall blow and cool him.' 'So will I freeze you up, you scoundrel!' said the Frost. 'Don't be frightened, poor fellow! then I shan't blow, and he'll do nothing to you; he doesn't freeze you up without a wind.'

Moraz, Solntse i Vyeter. A. Afanasief, 'National Russian Stories,' i. 1

EASTERN SLAVONIANS.

WHITE RUSSIAN STORIES.

We now come to the first set of stories belonging to those Slavonians who make use of the Cyrillic instead of the Latin characters. The White Russians occupy the whole of the Governments of Minsk and Mogilef, and great part of those of Vitebsk and Grodno. In these stories we first met with the distinction between the Western and Eastern Slavonic terms for monarch. The Western Slavonians employ the terms kral, krul, or korol, for a monarch, which are believed to originate from the name of the mighty Frankish monarch, KARL the Great, whom we generally know by his French title, Charlemagne. The Eastern Slavonians usually make use of the term TZAR, 'Emperor,' which is a corruption of the Latin 'Cæsar,' the title of the emperors of Constantinople, and later of the Russian emperors. Thus in the following stories we shall find emperors and empresses generally, though not invariably, replacing kings and queens, till we return again to the West.

The White Russian language possesses but little literature, but was employed for diplomatic purposes by the once powerful state of Lithuania (Morfill's 'Slavonic Literature,' S.P.C.K., p. 113).

The heroes 'Overturn-hill' (Vertogor) and 'Overturn-oak' (Vertodub), who appear in No. 22, occur also in a story from the Ukraine, given by Mr. Ralston (pp. 170-175). Several circumstances in No. 22 are also similar to incidents in the Russian tale of 'Ivan Popyalof' (Ralston, p. 66), but in spite of these similarities the stories are truly distinct.