visible girl is of copper, but an invisible one of silver,'—for in older times, as has already been observed, girls were kept in thorough seclusion, partly from an Oriental prejudice, partly for fear of an evil eye. But that village girls, at all events, were happy in their homes, is shown by the vast mass of songs in which are depicted the sorrows of a young bride, forced to depart from under her parents' well-loved roof. This love of home is the theme, also, of many proverbs, such as, 'Where it has grown up, there is a pine-tree fair;' or, 'From the parental land-die, but go not forth.'

For endurance the Russian has always been famous, and his proverbs frequently inculcate the duty of bearing misfortune bravely and patiently. Hold out, Cossack; thou wilt become Ataman' (or Hetman), is a characteristic saying which has spread from the South all over Russia. With this dogged endurance there is no doubt allied a fatalism which may prove dangerous. The ancient Slavs, according to Procopius, recognised no Fate; but this sweeping_statement was an error on the part of the historian. Modern Russians, undoubtedly, lay too much stress on such sayings as, 'Fear or no fear; fate cannot be avoided,' or, 'It was so written down to him at his birth; but their belief in predestination is modified by a firm trust in the power of God and of the Saints, and by the manly independence to which we have already referred. He who sweats afield, and prays to God at home,* will never starve.' Sometimes, it is true, a deplorable audacity or carelessness is expressed by a proverb. One can't die twice,' is a favourite truism: 'It will last our time; what matter if after us no grass grows?' is an adage which unreasonably consoles the Siberian peasant for the gradual disappearance of forests. Russian criminals have always been recklessly bold, ready to undertake all risks with this saying on their lips, Judge me, God and the Gosudar!' or, since Peter's time, 'Judge me, the Senate and the rope!' whereupon it often arises, that 'Boldness drinks mead and chafes fetters.'

In one respect the Russian differs entirely from many other Slavonians. He is not revengeful, and seldom bears malice long. A Morlachian proverb says, 'Who does not revenge himself, he cannot be saved;' but in Russia an opposite sentiment makes itself heard. From him who remembers old times, knock out an eye,' is supposed to refer to the need of letting bygones be bygones; and a similar prudence is recommended by such adages as, 'Remember friendship, but forget evil,' and,

* In his klyet, or closet.

'A bad

A bad peace is better than a good quarrel.' A pogovorka of frequent use in Russia, Poland, and some other Slavonic lands, is 'Like a stone in water.' This is supposed to preserve a formula employed in ancient days at the signing of a peace, or the ratification of any similar agreement, to express the fact that evil feelings should now disappear as does a stone when thrown into a pool. "So be it; all devils into the water and bubbles to the top!' is an expression used by a meeting of peasants when an agreement has been come to. A later and more unpleasant formula was that current up to the time of Catherine II. among the robbers in the Briansk forests, who used to tie stones round the necks of their victims, and then drive them with pitchforks. into the waters of the Desna, crying, 'Not we drive you, but the forks.' Many another virtue is inculcated by Russian proverbial philosophy. Where simplicity is, there are a hundred angels; but where duplicity, there is not one,' and ' He who lives. guilelessly shall live to be a hundred,' are strongly in favour of sincerity: moderation is recommended by, Whosoever is content with little, him will not God forget,' and sloth is warned by, 'On him who rises early God bestows gifts.' Thriftlessness. is discouraged by, 'He who neglects copecks will never be worth a rouble;' and hospitality recommended by, 'A good guest is always dear to a host,' though 'An untimely guest is worse than a Tartar.'

6

6

With respect to good and bad language, we are told that 'A word of kindness is better than a fat pie;' but on the other hand, threats must sometimes be used, for, 'If the thunder rolls. not, the moujik will not cross himself.'* 'Don't beat the moujik with a cudgel, but beat him with a rouble,' has a kindly air; but the recommendation more frequently takes the form, objected to in print by the censorship, of Don't beat the pope [or priest] with a stick, but try him with a rouble.' The force of a spoken word is well expressed by, 'A word isn't a bird. If it flies out you'll never catch it again.' On commercial honesty we may quote two conflicting proverbs: Theft is the last handi-craft; and, To rotten wares the seller is blind.' Kindness to the poor is inculcated by numerous sayings.. Though One's own shirt is nearest to one's body,' yet it is necessary to give freely in order to win God's favour. And kindness as well as money should be bestowed upon poverty: Offend not the poor man; the poor man has just such a soul as yours;' an idea expressed metaphorically by, A snipe is small, but for all that a bird.'

Fear not the threats of the rich but the tears of the

*It is the thunder which the moujik fears: till it follows the flash, he does not cross himself.

poor,' is good advice, and money-lenders ought to remember that In the other world usurers have to count red-hot coins with bare hands.'

About one of the chief weaknesses of the Russian peasant, proverbial philosophy has much to say. That Russians could not get on without drinking was admitted by St. Vladimir nine centuries ago, and the love of liquor has not diminished since that time. Many are the proverbs in praise of good drink, but they hold that a man ought to imbibe sociably. Drink at table, not behind a pillar,' is sound advice; a useful warning is conveyed by, Ivan drinks beer, but the devil beside him bows to the ground. From another's drunkenness one's own head does not ache,' seems to refer to drinking at another man's expense; and on a widely spread belief is based the adage, 'God watches over little children and drunkards.' 'He is not a drunkard who drinks, but he who after-drinks,' refers to a Russian custom of drinking off the effects of a debauch. To express the state which follows intoxication, and the means of removing it, the Russian language has invented several technical terms. Thus khmeľ means firstly, hops, secondly, drunkenness; khmelyeť is to be drunk; pokhmelie is the state succeeding drunkenness; pokhmelyat'sya, or opokhmelyat'sya, is to drink away this state of after-drunkenness.

We will now turn from the proverbs which illustrate the ordinary life led now-a-days by Russian peasants, in order to glance at the very interesting class of popular sayings which refer to the historic life of the country, or the manners and customs of its ancient inhabitants. Some of these are strangely archaic relics of a far-off past; here and there we see one standing out from the ordinary level of rustic speech, like a granite boulder from a grassy plain, its history altogether unknown to the peasants who make use of it. Among the earliest of this group is the pritcha to which we have already referred, as having been quoted by Nestor: Perished like the Obrye.' A little less ancient are the sayings preserved by the chroniclers of the Princely Period of Russian history, such as that employed by the Drevlian chief when he induced his tribe to slay Igor, husband of the afterwards saintly Olga: 'If the wolf gets into the fold, he will slay all the flock:' or the line, 'Seeking another's, thou hast lost thine own!' said to have been inscribed on the gold-bound skull of Sviatoslaf by his Petchenegian conqueror. To the same period also may be ascribed a number of sayings which require historic explanation. Thus, 'The cricket has conquered Tmutarakan,'* was

* An ancient principality on the eastern shore of the Sea of Azof.

first used when Igor was overcome by Iziaslaf, to whom he had said in scorn, 'Fuss not, O cricket, behind the stove.' In The Radimichi fly from the tail of the wolf,' is conveyed a sneer first levelled against those people when they were defeated by one of Vladimir's Generals surnamed Volchy Khvost, or Wolf's Tail. A Novgorod saying ran thus: Putyata christens with the sword, and Dobruinya with fire.' This referred to a rising which took place at Novgorod, when the people protested against the new doctrines of Christianity, and refused to accept baptism. In order to quell the revolt, Putyata, Vladimir's Voevode or General, put a number of the inhabitants to the sword, and Dobruinya, the Prince's uncle, burnt down their houses. obscure saying is quoted by the chronicler who tells how Sviatopolk the Accursed 'fled into the wilderness between Lekh and Chekh.' This is explained by an actually existing Polish phrase, 'Between Czechy and Lechy,' meaning Goodness knows where!'

The excuse for cruelty pleaded by Prince Roman of Galicia, 'To eat the honeycomb in peace, one must stifle the bees,' was borrowed from abroad; but the conduct of another Roman gave rise to an original saying. Having overcome the Lithuanians in 1173, he yoked his captives to the plough. One of them, having a ready wit, apostrophized him in these words: Thou doest ill, Roman, to plough with a Lithuanian;' and the phrase was still current in Lithuania in the sixteenth century. To the two great municipalities of Pskof and Novgorod, which flourished so long and so gloriously till they were crushed by the despotism of Ivan III. and the tyranny of Ivan IV., alludes many a popular saying. Thus 'Novgorod honour,' and 'The firm word of Pskof' long prevailed as familiar expressions. The pride and independence of the older and greater city made themselves heard in the statement that Novgorod is judged by its own laws,' or by God alone;' and in the arrogant cry, 'Who can withstand God and Novgorod the Great?' To the union which existed between Pskof and Novgorod referred the saying, 'Soul on the Velika and heart on the Volkhof,' the latter names being those of the rivers on which the two semi-republican cities stood.

To the nature of the Government which prevailed in those days, and the character imputed to the governing classes, old Russian sayings frequently bear witness. The Prince is often mentioned, and always in terms of respect, not unmingled with fear, whether he be the Grand Prince, (Veliky Kniaz) presiding at Kief or Vladimir over the Russian semi-federal body, or an 'appanaged' or locally-independent Prince, (Udyelny Kniaz) controlling the destinies of Tver, or Rostof, or Novgorod. The

6

6

evidence of these adages is sometimes conflicting. On the one hand we hear that 'A generous Kniaz is a father to all;' on the other, an ominous warning is conveyed by, 'Don't build a house near the Kniaz's Court.' To the sometimes rudely-manifested independence of Novgorod and Pskof may be attributed the uncourtly cry, 'If a Kniaz be bad, into the mud with him!' The constant risings against the Grand Prince, the head of the ruling family, essayed by those of his kinsmen to whom had been assigned an udyel or appanage, gave rise to, 'A Boyar answers for a fault with his head, a Kniaz with his udyel.' The congresses in which princes met and swore to be life-long friends, and immediately afterwards behaved as deadly foes, may, possibly, have suggested the remark that, Where there is an oath, there also is a crime;' and if not relating to, at least suggestive of, the jealousy of interference from without prevailing in each separate Court, are such old saws as, 'One's own judgment is quickest ;' or, When dogs of the same house differ, let not an outside dog interfere!' For five centuries,* more or less, did the 'Separate' or 'Appanaged' principalities hold their own, but, as time went by, with ever-failing power. At length the last traces of Russia's nearest approximation to a feudal system were effaced by the sweeping measures of Ivan the Terrible. The title of Grand Prince paled its glory before the fierce light which shone about that of All-Russian Tsar,' and to the latter became referred in the popular memory almost all the adages which were once connected with the former. The number of proverbs relating to the words Tsar and Tsarstvo (or Tsardom) is very great, as well as to the names of various royal appurtenances-such as Kazna, for instance, originally the Tsar's private treasury, now that of the State, the funds of which the people still regard in the light of the Emperor's privy purse, and of which they say, among other things, The Kazna is not a poor widow: you will not drain it dry.' Most unqualified is the submission to the Tsar which proverbs inculcate. The Tsar is God on earth;' 'Our souls are God's, our bodies the Tsar's;' 'All is God's and the Gosudar's;' and many other sayings of a similar kind testify to the willingness of the nation to obey God's will and the Tsar's decree,' to believe that in all dark and disputed questions 'God will judge and the Gosudar.' It has always been a matter of faith that Prayer to God and service to the Tsar are never thrown away;' but that an element of fear was combined with

* For more than seven, if we date the appanage system from the dimly-seen period of Rurik; but it is popularly supposed to commence with the death of Yaroslaf, in 1054, to expire under Ivan ÏV. (1533–1584).

the