EUROPEAN HERALD.
Nr. 13.
July 1827.
ELEGANT LITERATURE.
Poetry.
The Krivich Christian and Yaga.
An Ancient Smolensk Tale (1).
In dense, dark forests,
Amidst the high mountains,
Beneath a pine, beneath the green one,
In a meadow wide and flower-bright,
By a thunderous spring
The holy cold one (2)
There stood a dwelling
Not of yew (3),
Not of yew, not of stone,
It was an earthen hut;
It was heaped of turf
And overgrown with moss!
In the earthen hut
There was but one window;
Yet that window
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Was slantwise (4).
Beneath that window
He sat and gazed
A valiant young man! —
Long ago had
His homeland
Been left behind by him!
In his homeland
Among the Krivichi
All the evil still
The shameful evil
And day and night
Smoldered on!
And the young man
Long ago to faith in Christ
Had come (5)!
*
Yet even in the woods,
Yet even in the mountains,
And in the little wilderness
From evil snares
He did not hide:
Near him
In the thicket of oaks,
In sight of a bottomless abyss
On dreadful chicken-legs
There whirled a little hut,
And while changing itself often,
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It would seem now a tower,
Now a wondrous chamber,
Now a darkened cavern,
Now a shrine of Veles,
Now a wood goblin, now a mermaid!...
In that little hut there lived and dwelt
The chieftain of all vile rabble:
Of forest spirits - the imaginary ones
Iagai - baba the intricate (6).
*
A sorceress and deceiver
She was fearsome in her mortar.
With pestle, with the pounder - club
She pounded day and night;
She roared, she cracked aloud,
She whistled and creaked all the time!
And to her then,
All through the year,
But one lone day
Was access granted.
From all the villages,
From all the woods,
From all fields,
All the Krivichi
Came flocking to her.
They smoked for her,
They censed for her,
And sang to her,
And ate with her,
Before her – they bowed!
*
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Others still - the ailing,
The feeble and the poor,
Would then bring
To her as sacrifice
Their last daughters;
And the cunning craftswoman,
The whisperer, the enchantress
Would take to her
Those innocent ones.
And where and how,
And whither she
Disposed of them:
Of that no one
In any way knew,
She did not eat them,
She did not consume them;
Yet perished all
The maidens here:
All of them went
Like a key to the bottom!
*
One, or two,
Or perhaps three
Poor little wretches,
And even then, somehow —
By guesswork,
For truly
We do not know —
With Iaga, the wicked one
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They lived here,
And that for this
(So it was thought),
That by their lives
Her own life
May always seem
To be immortal (7).
And one of them,
Having grown accustomed
To Iaga living
And after death of
Her Iaga,
Herself Iaga
She was
And eternal
Was Iaga.
This method was
For all the gods
Imaginary
To appear
Immortal!
*
And where then are the other maidens?
By hundreds were they led to her
And all of them, as you can see,
With Iaga have remained.
Ah! Is it needful to guess,
Where all the beauties were?
Iagaia, cunning in evil,
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Had a shrewd calculation:
The wretched ones went up for sale;
They were bought up by the daring
Poliane and Driagovichi
And by the raiding Sum’ and Yam’ (8).
*
Are you content with the storyteller,
You lovers of fairy tales?
But has everything been told here?
What’s been told is but a preface,
The tale itself has not yet been.
Yet now to you are clear enough
The pranks of the enchantress,
To you are known all the tricks
Of pagan wonder-workers,
To you their faith is also known
In Iaga and her deeds;
Abomination, there’s no other word!
With just such a neighbor
Our Krivich, the solitary flower
Lived side by side in obscurity.
One day, late in the evening,
As the little sun was setting,
In the forest, gathering mushrooms,
And enchanted herbs (9),
The restless sorceress,
A roguish old woman
Noticed the neighboring
Earthen hut, not uninhabited.
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And the cross, the holy sign,
Seeing it, she gasped outright!
The mischief-maker feared
The mind unled astray,
The righteous of Christ’s army!
She feared and so resolved,
Like a monster, like a scarecrow,
In the dead of dark midnight
With a vicious hellish thunderstorm
To appear before the hermit;
She plotted — and she did it.
*
With fire and smoke and choking stench,
At midnight, as was said above,
On her mortar and with pestle, Iaga,
Raising high her broom,
Stamping with her bony leg (10),
Appeared before the earthen hut,
With a shrill, piercing voice
She shrieked aloud to the valiant man:
“Until this day the Russian spirit (11)
In my land has not been heard of,
But now the Russian spirit
Is wrought before my very eyes!
Quickly, give me answers now:
Who are you, and how came you here?
Your whole life lies within my hands!” —
— With me everywhere, with me even here
My Savior, my Creator Christ is with me,
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And boldly I come forth to you,
Rich in deceits! —
Such truthful speech
Our hermit held in answer
And went out to her without fear
With the Cross — a faithful shield.
But evil and treacherous
She did not meet him with words, —
With the blow of a heavy cudgel
She struck down the innocent one.
And his blood, like a river’s stream
Flowed down the little valley;
And fallen in blood lay the wretched man,
And seized by Iaga, he was cast out
Into the deep wilds, the gloomy forest:
There he was given as sacrifice to beasts,
And the owl moaned over him!
*
Yet life still
In his soul
Was — and blossomed!
By the rising of the red sun,
The wretched man came to himself;
And he was not devoured by beasts:
He was saved by the Savior.
Opening his eyes, he rose with effort,
Recovered himself, and — now crawling,
Now with a little staff — went out of the forest,
Wherever his eyes might lead!...
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And so he came,
And so he wandered
To the spring, to the brook
The icy-cold one;
With holy water pure
He washed his pale face,
With a healing herb
He tended his bloody woundsAnd went again
And wandered again,
Wherever his eyes might lead.
*
And so he wandered,
And so he came
To a valley.
Bright and many-hued
Was that valley;
Upon it grew,
And bloomed, the flowers
Azure-blue;
And in a little thicket
The raspberry one
Chattered and trilled,
Trilled and whistled
His springtime song
The spring’s dear friend — the nightingale,
And tiny crumb-like birds
Echoed his songs in chorus.
In the midst of that little valley;
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Beneath a bitter aspen,
To the terror of the poor heart,
Still on chicken legs,
There whirled the little hut!
*
“Again have I fallen into trouble!”
Weeping, the young man prayed:
“I am weak, I am sick
“And I have with me no
“Shield, no damask spear,
“And my sharp, enchanted sword
“Has long been forgotten,
“Has long been lying
“Abandoned
“In my homeland!...
“But God is in my soul,
“But the cross is with me!...”
And thinking no more,
Quietly, softly
He went along the forest edge.
And suddenly, like a serpent — a red-hot
Arrow flies, whistling above him.
He crosses himself, and sees — what then?
Three maidens, fair beauties,
The likes of whom no one had ever seen,
Of whom even in fairy tales
From old nursemaids he had never heard,
Stand before him and take their aim
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With another red-hot arrow
They sought to strike the wretched one.
*
“Maidens, stop!”
The sick man cries:
“Why do you destroy,
“Why do you kill?
“I shall be of use to you:
“I will always be your servant!” —
And the maiden beauties
Their taut bow
With the arrows
Did not touch;
The bow fell suddenly
From their white hands.
“Sister, joy, dear heart!”
Cried out the eldest of them:
“All is wondrous, unclear to me.
“Look what a wondrous beast!”
I think the same;
Marvelous he is — and yet no beast! —
Thus spoke the middle one.
“Sisters! This is a wonder — a god!”
The youngest suddenly exclaimed.
”Sisters! This is a wonder — a god!”
Suddenly all the sisters spoke.
*
And the young man once again with the cross
Approaches the fair maidens.
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“Wondrous and marvelous ones,
Unknown huntresses!
My bow to you, fair young maidens!”
So gently did the little words
Fly toward the unknown ones.
“Tell me:
Whence are you?
And why are you here,
And how are you here,
And how the folks
You do not know?”
“O forest god! Forgive us!”
Spoke the fair maidens:
“We in no way
“Knew you.
“From our tender years
“We have lived with Iaga
“And around ourselves
“Other gods
“We do not know!
“We do not know;
“Who we are and how,
“And where and what
“Lies there beyond the forest?
“Our life
“And our joy,
“We owe in all
“To Iaga alone.
“She taught us
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“To shoot
“Beasts and forest birds;
“Of people, though
“We have no word!”
*
Quick-witted was the valiant youth,
The wicked fraud he understood:
He moved to pity the three fair ones
And secretly entreated them
For nightly shelter in the hut,
And begged a damask knife,
The monster’s heirloom,
Hated by Iaga herself,
And in the dark of the night,
When sleep had closed
Her eyes,
With one swift stroke
He struck her head off.
And from that time on
There is no more Iaga!
*
And the Krivichi learned of this,
And he told them of the deceit;
And from that time on, the Iagas
They no longer believed in anything.
And the three fair maidens?
Were left as tribute to the youth (12).
From them but one became his wife
Ever exemplary she was;
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The other two — other companions
Found for themselves among the Krivichi.
And from that time on, in the wilderness
He no longer lived alone.
Makarov.
1827.
Grazhanitsy.
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