Russian Fairy Tales | Page 5

more than comparatively modern adaptations of old and foreign themes; nor are they sufficiently numerous, so far as we can judge from existing collections, to render by any means complete the national portrait for which they are expected to supply the materials. In order to fill up the gaps they leave, it is necessary to bring together a number of fragments taken from stories which evidently refer to another clime--fragments which may be looked upon as excrescences or developments due to the novel influences to which the foreign slip, or seedling, or even full-grown plant, has been subjected since its transportation.
The great bulk of the Russian folk-tales, and, indeed, of those of all the Indo-European nations, is devoted to the adventures of such fairy princes and princesses, such snakes and giants and demons, as are quite out of keeping with ordinary men and women--at all events with the inhabitants of modern Europe since the termination of those internecine struggles between aboriginals and invaders, which some commentators see typified in the combats between the heroes of our popular tales and the whole race of giants, trolls, ogres, snakes, dragons, and other monsters. The air we breathe in them is that of Fairy-land; the conditions of existence, the relations between the human race and the spiritual world on the one hand, the material world on the other, are totally inconsistent with those to which we are now restricted. There is boundless freedom of intercourse between mortals and immortals, between mankind and the brute creation, and, although there are certain conventional rules which must always be observed, they are not those which are enforced by any people known to anthropologists. The stories which are common to all Europe differ, no doubt, in different countries, but their variations, so far as their matter is concerned, seem to be due less to the moral character than to the geographical distribution of their reciters. The manner in which these tales are told, however, may often be taken as a test of the intellectual capacity of their tellers. For in style the folk-tale changes greatly as it travels. A story which we find narrated in one country with terseness and precision may be rendered almost unintelligible in another by vagueness or verbiage; by one race it may be elevated into poetic life, by another it may be degraded into the most prosaic dulness.
Now, so far as style is concerned, the Skazkas or Russian folk-tales, may justly be said to be characteristic of the Russian people. There are numerous points on which the "lower classes" of all the Aryan peoples in Europe closely resemble each other, but the Russian peasant has--in common with all his Slavonic brethren--a genuine talent for narrative which distinguishes him from some of his more distant cousins. And the stories which are current among the Russian peasantry are for the most part exceedingly well narrated. Their language is simple and pleasantly quaint, their humor is natural and unobtrusive, and their descriptions, whether of persons or of events, are often excellent.[13] A taste for acting is widely spread in Russia, and the Russian folk-tales are full of dramatic positions which offer a wide scope for a display of their reciter's mimetic talents. Every here and there, indeed, a tag of genuine comedy has evidently been attached by the story-teller to a narrative which in its original form was probably devoid of the comic element.
And thus from the Russian tales may be derived some idea of the mental characteristics of the Russian peasantry--one which is very incomplete, but, within its narrow limits, sufficiently accurate. And a similar statement may be made with respect to the pictures of Russian peasant life contained in these tales. So far as they go they are true to nature, and the notion which they convey to a stranger of the manners and customs of Russian villagers is not likely to prove erroneous, but they do not go very far. On some of the questions which are likely to be of the greatest interest to a foreigner they never touch. There is very little information to be gleaned from them, for instance, with regard to the religious views of the people, none with respect to the relations which, during the times of serfdom, existed between the lord and the thrall. But from the casual references to actual scenes and ordinary occupations which every here and there occur in the descriptions of fairy-land and the narratives of heroic adventure--from the realistic vignettes which are sometimes inserted between the idealized portraits of invincible princes and irresistible princesses--some idea may be obtained of the usual aspect of a Russian village, and of the ordinary behavior of its inhabitants. Turning from one to another of these accidental illustrations, we by degrees create a mental picture which