ess, who runs away from an unnatural father. In one of the
Modern Greek versions (Hahn, No. 27), she sinks into the earth. For
references to seven other forms of the story, see Grimm, _KM._, iii.
p. 116. In one Russian variant (Khudyakof, No. 54), she hides in a
secret drawer, constructed for the purpose in a bedstead; in another
(Afanasief, vi. No. 28 _a_), her father, not recognising her in the
pig-skin dress, spits at her, and turns her out of the house. In a
third, which is of a very repulsive character (ibid. vii. No. 29), the
father kills his daughter.

[196] Afanasief, vi. No. 18.

[197] The Russian word is _zakukovali_, _i.e._, "They began to
cuckoo." The resemblance between the word _kukla_, a puppet, and the
name and cry of the cuckoo (_Kukushka_) may be merely accidental, but
that bird has a marked mythological character. See the account of the
rite called "the Christening of the Cuckoos," in "Songs of the Russian
people," p. 215.

[198] Very like these puppets are the images which reply for the
sleeping prince in the opening scene of "De beiden Kuenigeskinner"
(Grimm, No. 113). A doll plays an important part in one of
Straparola's stories (Night v. Fable 2). Professor de Gubernatis
identifies the Russian puppet with "the moon, the Vedic Raka, very
small, but very intelligent, enclosed in the wooden dress, in the
forest of night," "Zoological Mythology," i. 207-8.

[199] Afanasief, ii. No. 31.

[200] Khudyakof, No. 55.

[201] Ibid., No. 83.

[202] Wojcicki's "Polnische Volkssagen," &c. Lewestam's translation,
iii. No. 8.

[203] The germ of all these repulsive stories about incestuous unions,
proposed but not carried out, was probably a nature myth akin to that
alluded to in the passage of the Rigveda containing the dialogue
between Yama and Yami--"where she (the night) implores her brother
(the day) to make her his wife, and where he declines her offer
because, as he says, 'they have called it sin that a brother should
marry his sister.'" Max Mueller, "Lectures," sixth edition, ii. 557.

[204] Afanasief, vii. No. 18.

[205] Her name _Vyed'ma_ comes from a Slavonic root _ved_, answering
to the Sanskrit _vid_--from which springs an immense family of words
having reference to knowledge. _Vyed'ma_ and _witch_ are in fact
cousins who, though very distantly related, closely resemble each
other both in appearance and in character.

[206] Afanasief, i. No. 4 _a_. From the Voroneje Government.

[207]