ing on a magic flute. She
is represented as exercising authority over both birds and beasts, and
in a Slovak story she bestows on the hero a magic horse. He has been
sent by an unnatural mother in search of various things hard to be
obtained, but he is assisted in the quest by St. Ned[)e]lka, who
provides him with various magical implements, and lends him her own
steed Tatoschik, and so enables him four times to escape from the
perils to which he has been exposed by his mother, whose mind has been
entirely corrupted by an insidious dragon. But after he has returned
home in safety, his mother binds him as if in sport, and the dragon
chops off his head and cuts his body to pieces. His mother retains his
heart, but ties up the rest of him in a bundle, and sets it on
Tatoschik's back. The steed carries its ghastly burden to St.
Ned[)e]lka, who soon reanimates it, and the youth becomes as sound and
vigorous as a young man without a heart can be. Then the saint sends
him, under the disguise of a begging piper, to the castle in which his
mother dwells, and instructs him how to get his heart back again. He
succeeds, and carries it in his hand to St. Ned[)e]lka. She gives it
to "the bird Pelekan (no mere Pelican, but a magic fowl with a very
long and slim neck), which puts its head down the youth's throat, and
restores his heart to its right place."[262]

St. Friday and St. Wednesday appear to belong to that class of
spiritual beings, sometimes of a demoniacal disposition, with which
the imagination of the old Slavonians peopled the elements. Of several
of these--such as the Domovoy or House-Spirit, the Rusalka or Naiad,
and the Vodyany or Water-Sprite--I have written at some length
elsewhere,[263] and therefore I will not at present quote any of the
stories in which they figure. But, as a specimen of the class to which
such tales as these belong, here is a skazka about one of the
wood-sprites or Slavonic Satyrs, who are still believed by the
peasants to haunt the forests of Russia. In it we see reduced to a
vulgar form, and brought into accordance with everyday peasant-life,
the myth which appears to have given rise to the endless stories about
the theft and recovery of queens and princesses. The leading idea of
the story is the same, but the Snake or Koshchei has become a paltry
wood-demon, the hero is a mere hunter, and the princely heroine has
sunk to the low estate of a priest's daughter.

THE LESHY.[264]

A certa