d,
and a party of robbers crept through it into the church. The
moujik hid himself behind the altar. As soon as the robbers had
come in they began dividing their booty, and after everything
else was shared there remained over and above a golden sabre--each
one laid hold of it for himself, no one would give up his
claim to it. Out jumped the poor man, crying:

"What's the good of disputing that way? Let the sabre
belong to him who will cut this corpse's head off!"

Up jumped Marko the Rich like a madman. The robbers
were frightened out of their wits, flung away their spoil and
scampered off.

"Here, Moujik," says Marko, "let's divide the money."

They divided it equally between them: each of the shares
was a large one.

"But how about the copeck?" asks the poor man.

"Ah, brother!" replies Marko, "surely you can see I've got
no change!"

And so Marko the Rich never paid the copeck after all.

We may take next the large class of stories about simpletons, so dear
to the public in all parts of the world. In the Skazkas a simpleton is
known as a _durak_, a word which admits of a variety of explanations.
Sometimes it means an idiot, sometimes a fool in the sense of a
jester. In the stories of village life its signification is generally
that of a "ninny;" in the "fairy stories" it is frequently applied to
the youngest of the well-known "Three Brothers," the "Boots" of the
family as Dr. Dasent has called him. In the latter case, of course,
the hero's _durachestvo_, or foolishness, is purely subjective. It
exists only in the false conceptions of his character which his family
or his neighbors have formed.[61] But the _durak_ of the following
tale is represented as being really "daft." The story begins with one
of the conventional openings of the Skazka--"In a certain _tsarstvo_,
in a certain _gosudarstvo_,"--but the two synonyms for "kingdom" or
"state" are used only because they rhyme.

THE FOOL AND THE BIRCH-TREE.[62]

In a certain country there once lived an old man who had three
sons. Two of them had their wits about them, but the third was
a fool. The old man died and his sons divided his property
among themselves by lot. The sharp-witted ones got plenty of
all sorts of good things, but nothing fell to the share of the Simpleton
but one ox--and that such a skinny one!

Well, fair-time came round, and the clever brothers got ready
to go and transact busi