was none the worse.[193]

[Next morning Vasilissa "buried the skull," locked up
the house and took up her quarters in a neighboring
town. After a time she began to work. Her doll made
her a glorious loom, and by the end of the winter she
had weaved a quantity of linen so fine that it might
be passed like thread through the eye of a needle. In
the spring, after it had been bleached, Vasilissa made
a present of it to the old woman with whom she lodged.
The crone presented it to the king, who ordered it to
be made into shirts. But no seamstress could be found
to make them up, until the linen was entrusted to
Vasilissa. When a dozen shirts were ready, Vasilissa
sent them to the king, and as soon as her carrier had
started, "she washed herself, and combed her hair, and
dressed herself, and sat down at the window." Before
long there arrived a messenger demanding her instant
appearance at court. And "when she appeared before the
royal eyes," the king fell desperately in love with
her.

"No; my beauty!" said he, "never will I part with
thee; thou shalt be my wife." So he married her; and
by-and-by her father returned, and took up his abode
with her. "And Vasilissa took the old woman into her
service, and as for the doll--to the end of her life
she always carried it in her pocket."]

The puppet which plays so important a part in this story is worthy of
a special examination. It is called in the original a _Kukla_ (dim.
_Kukolka_), a word designating any sort of puppet or other figure
representing either man or beast. In a Little-Russian variant[194] of
one of those numerous stories, current in all lands, which commence
with the escape of the heroine from an incestuous union, a priest
insists on marrying his daughter. She goes to her mother's grave and
weeps there. Her dead mother "comes out from her grave," and tells her
what to do. The girl obtains from her father a rough dress of pig's
skin, and two sets of gorgeous apparel; the former she herself
assumes, in the latter she dresses up three _Kuklui_, which in this
instance were probably mere blocks of wood. Then she takes her place
in the midst of the dressed-up forms, which cry, one after the other,
"Open, O moist earth, that the fair maiden may enter within thee!" The
earth opens, and all four sink into it.

This intr