The bestiary, or animal story, is common, and the parts which the beasts enact are similar to the Teutonic fairy-tales.
The semi-sacred legends of the days when Christ and his Apostles walked the earth, superficially may be compared with Grimm's stories. But the spirit is very different. To a very slight extent they are based on the Gospel. But the Russian Christ of the folk-tales is a good, just, honest peasant, with democratic sympathies, and plenty of humour. His justice is unwavering, but tempered with sound common sense. He is kind, charitable and thoroughly human.
The Saints also walk the earth. Saint George [Egóri] has taken over many Pagan legends; in one of the semi-sacred bylíny [v. Bezsónov, Kalěki Perekhózhie], he turns round the oaks and the mountains, like Vertodúb and Vertogór, and in other bylíny of the same class the miraculous incidents of the birth of Ilyá Múromets are attributed to him. Saint Nicholas is the worker of miracles; and Saint Elias has had some of the powers of the thundergod transferred to him.
Other stories are prose adaptations of the ballads, and must be considered as such.
There are two personifications, which call for special attention, those of Death and of Sorrow. Both are borrowed from ballad cycles. Both figures appear as ghostly spirits, who persecute man, but yet can be very efficaciously and roughly handled.
There are some few satires; but the large majority cannot be readily classified. They contain the usual incidents of transformations, magic, witches, the valorous youngest son, the beautiful princess wronged by the evil stepmother,—in fact, the common Aryan stock, all tinged with the characteristic Slav temperament.
Artless as these stories are, there are a few peculiar conventions in the narration. Such are the little fore-
