sia Adovna,"[152] it is
no longer a king of the waters, but a devil's imp,[153] who bargains
with the thirsting father for his child, and the swan-maiden whose
shift the devoted youth steals bears the name of Adovna, the daughter
of Ad or Hades. In "The Youth,"[154] a moujik, who has lost his way in
a forest makes the rash promise to a man who enables him to cross a
great river; "and that man (says the story) was a devil."[155] We
shall meet with other instances further on of parents whose "hasty
words" condemn their children to captivity among evil spirits. In one
of the stories of this class,[156] the father is a hunter who is
perishing with cold one night, and who makes the usual promise as the
condition of his being allowed to warm himself at a fire guarded by a
devil. Being in consequence of this deprived of a son, he becomes very
sad, and drinks himself to death. "The priest will not bury his sinful
body, so it is thrust into a hole at a crossway," and he falls into
the power of "that very same devil," who turns him into a horse, and
uses him as a beast of burden. At last he is released by his son, who
has forced the devil to free him after several adventures--one of them
being a fight with the evil spirit in the shape of a three-headed
snake.

In the Hindoo story of "Brave Seventee Bai,"[157] that heroine kills
"a very large Cobra" which comes out of a lake. Touching the waters
with a magic diamond taken from the snake, she sees them roll back "in
a wall on either hand," between which she passes into a splendid
garden. In it she finds a lovely girl who proves to be the Cobra's
daughter and who is delighted to hear of her serpent-father's death.

Demon haunted waters, which prove fatal to mortals who bathe in or
drink of them, often occur in oriental fiction. In one of the Indian
stories, for instance,[158] a king is induced to order his escort to
bathe in a lake which is the abode of a Rakshasa or demon. They leap
into the water simultaneously, and are all devoured by the terrible
man-eater. From the assaults of such a Rakshasa as this it was that
Buddha, who was at the time a monkey, preserved himself and 80,000 of
his brother monkeys, by suggesting that they should drink from the
tank in which the demon lay in wait for them, "through reeds
previously made completely hollow by their breath."[159]

* * * * *

From these male personifications of evil--from the Snake, Koshchei,
a