A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections | Page 5

to each person present are drawn at random from a cloth-covered bowl, in which they have been deposited. This is the first song of the series:
Glory to God in Heaven, Glory! To our Lord[2] on this earth, Glory! May our Lord never grow old, Glory! May his bright robes never be spoiled, Glory! May his good steeds never be worn out, Glory! May his trusty servants never falter, Glory! May the right throughout Russia, Glory! Be fairer than the bright sun, Glory! May the Tzar's golden treasury, Glory! Be forever full to the brim, Glory! May the great rivers, Glory! Bear their renown to the sea, Glory! The little streams to the mill, Glory! But this song we sing to the Grain, Glory! To the Grain we sing, the Grain we honor, Glory! For the old folks to enjoy, Glory! For the young folks to hear, Glory![3]
Another curious old song, connected with the grain, is sung at the New-Year. Boys go about from house to house, scattering grain of different sorts, chiefly oats, and singing:
In the forest, in the pine forest, There stood a pine-tree, Green and shaggy. O, Ovs��n! O, Ovs��n! The Boy��rs came, Cut down the pine, Sawed it into planks, Built a bridge, Covered it with cloth, Fastened it with nails, O, Ovs��n! O, Ovs��n! Who, who will go Along that bridge? Ovs��n will go there, And the New-Year, O, Ovs��n! O, Ovs��n!
Ovs��n, whose name is derived from Ov��s (oats, pronounced avy��s), like the Teutonic Sun-god, is supposed to ride a pig or a boar. Hence sacrifices of pigs' trotters, and other pork products, were offered to the gods at the New-Year, and such dishes are still preferred in Russia at that season. It must be remembered that the New-Year fell on March 1st in Russia until 1348; then the civil New-Year was transferred to September 1st, and January 1st was instituted as the New-Year by Peter the Great only in the year 1700.
The highest stage of development reached by popular song is the heroic epos--the rhythmic story of the deeds of national heroes, either historical or mythical. In many countries these epics were committed to writing at a very early date. In western Europe this took place in the Middle Ages, and they are known to the modern world in that form only, their memory having completely died out among the people. But Russia presents the striking phenomenon of a country where epic song, handed down wholly by oral tradition for nearly a thousand years, is not only flourishing at the present day in certain districts, but even extending into fresh fields.
It is only within the last sixty years that the Russians have become generally aware that their country possesses this wonderfully rich treasure of epic, religious, and ceremonial songs. In some cases, the epic lay and the religious ballad are curiously combined, as in "The One and Forty Pilgrims," which is generally classed with the epic songs, however. But while the singing of the epic songs is not a profession, the singing of the religious ballads is of a professional character, and is used as a means of livelihood by the kaly��ki perekh��zhie, literally, wandering cripples, otherwise known as wandering psalm-singers. These stikh��, or religious ballads, are even more remarkable than the epic songs in some respects, and practically nothing concerning them is accessible in English.
In all countries where the Roman Church reigned supreme in early times, it did its best to consign all popular religious poetry to oblivion. But about the seventeenth century it determined to turn such fragments as had survived this procedure to its own profit. Accordingly they were written over in conformity with its particular tenets, for the purpose of inculcating its doctrines. Both courses were equally fatal to the preservation of anything truly national. Incongruousness was the inevitable result.
The Greek, or rather the Russo-Greek, Church adopted precisely the opposite course: it never interfered, in the slightest degree, with popular poetry, either secular or religious. Christianity, therefore, merely enlarged the field of subjects. The result is, that the Slavonic peoples (including even, to some extent, the Roman Catholic Poles) possess a mass of religious poetry, the like of which, either in kind or in quantity, is not to be found in all western Europe.
It is well to note, at this point, that the word stikh (derived from an ancient Greek word) is incorporated into the modern Russian word for poetry, stikhotvor��nie--verse-making, literally rendered--and it has now become plain that Lomon��soff, the father of Russian Literature, who was the first secular Russian poet, and polished the ancient tongue into the beginning of the modern literary language, about the middle of the eighteenth century, did not originate his verse-measures, but derived them from the common people, the peasants, whence he himself sprang. Modern