Book Name:

Russian Folk-Tales

[1] The Vólga and the Vazúza had a long argument whether who was the wiser and the stronger and the more honourable of the two. They contended and quarrelled, and could not decide it. So they resolved at last: "Let us both go to sleep at the same time, and the one which wakes up earlier and first reaches the Khvalýnsk Sea [2] is wiser and stronger and the more honourable."

So the Vólga went to sleep, and so did the Vazúza.

But at night the Vazúza got up quietly and ran away from the Vólga; she took the next nearest way and flowed off.

When the Vólga woke up she went neither hurriedly nor lagging, but in an ordinary fashion. At Zubtsov she overtook the Vazúza, and looked so threatening that the Vazúza was frightened, and owned she was the younger daughter, and begged the Vólga to take her in her arms into the Sea of Khvalýnsk.

And, to this day, the Vazúza wakes up in the spring before the Vólga, and wakes the Vólga up out of her winter sleep.

Comments:

[1] Vazúza and Vólga. Similar stories are told of other rivers. The old Russian ballads give names and patronymics to their rivers such as the people use for themselves, e.g. Dnêpr Slovútich Don Iványch.

The Vazúza is a short stream crossing the borders of the provinces of Tver and Smolensk, meeting a great bend of the Vólga at Zubtsóv (in the province of Tver).

The Sea of Khvalýnsk is the Caspian, so called from an ancient people (the Khvalísi) of the eleventh and tenth centuries, who lived at the mouth of the Vólga in the Caspian. There is also a town called Khvalýnsk on the Vólga in the province of Sarátov, above the city of Sarátov.

This particular story is probably a poetization of a geographical fact, but in all the Russian folk-lore the river-gods play a very great part. Thus Ígor in The Word of Ígor's Armament, on the occasion of his defeat, has a very beautiful colloquy with the Donéts. At least two of the heroes of the ballad cycle, Don Ivánovich and Sukhán Odikhmántevich, are in some aspects direct personifications of the rivers, whilst the river-gods exercise a direct arid and vital influence over the fortunes of several others, such as Vasíli Buslávich and Dobrýnya Nikítich.

Many Russian rivers have been rendered almost into human characters. The ordinary speech is still of Mother Vólga. In the Novgorod ballads there is a mention of Father Volkhov, much as we speak of Father Thames, and there were very great possibilities of the development of a river mythology which did not succeed. It is worth observing that in one ballad dealing with Vasíli Buslávich, the hero of Nóvgorod, this semi-comic figure is twitted by the men of Nóvgorod that he will one day turn the Volkhov into Kvas (q.v.): i.e. he will one day set the Thames on fire. [Rybnikov, I, 336].

[2] The old name of the Caspian. Vide Vazúza and Vólga.

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