r performing sacrifice, an old Wajdelote began to sing the deeds of
the ancient Lithuanian heroes, mingling therewith prayers and moral
instructions. Grunau, who well understood Lithuanian, confesses that he
never expected to hear anything similar from the lips of a Lithuanian,
such was the beauty of the theme and the phraseology.

(10) _"__Stands visibly the pestilential maid.__"_

The common people in Lithuania figure pestilential air under the form of a
maiden, whose appearance, here described according to the popular song,
precedes a terrible sickness. I quote, in substance at least, a ballad I
once heard in Lithuania: --"In a village appeared the maiden of the
pestilence; and, after her custom, thrusting her hand through door or
window, and waving a red cloth, scattered death through the houses. The
inhabitants shut themselves up in a state of siege, but hunger and other
necessities soon obliged them to neglect such means of safety; all
therefore awaited death. A certain gentleman, although well provided with
victuals, and able to maintain a long while this strange siege, yet
resolved to sacrifice himself for the good of his neighbours, took a sabre
of the time of the Sigismonds, on which was the name of Jesus and the name
of Mary, and thus armed, opened the window of the house. The gentleman,
with one stroke, cut off the spectre's hand, and got possession of the
handkerchief. It is true he died, and all his family died; but from that
time the disease was never known in the village." This handkerchief was
said to be preserved in the church, I do not recollect of what village. In
the East, before the appearance of the plague, a phantom with bats' wings
is said to appear, and to point with its fingers at those condemned to
die. It appears as though popular imagination wished to present, by such
images, that mysterious foreboding and strange anxiety which usually
precedes great misfortune or destruction, and which often is shared, not
by individuals only, but by whole nations. Thus in Greece were forebodings
of the long duration and terrible results of the Peloponnesian war; in the
Roman Empire of the fall of monarchy; in America of the coming of the
Spaniards.

(11) _"__The trees of Bialowiez.__"_

[The trees here referred to are of an immense age and extra-ordinary
height, challenging comparison with the giant trees of California. Many of
them were venerated as divinities by the pagans of Lithuania, in whose
reli