on shore!"

"By the Pike's command, at my request," said the fool,
"cast this tub ashore and tear it open!"

He and his wife stepped out of the tub. Then she again
began imploring him to build some sort of a house. The fool
said:

"By the Pike's command, at my request, let a marble palace
be built, and let it stand immediately opposite the King's
palace!"

This was all done in an instant. In the morning the King
saw the new palace, and sent to enquire who it was that lived
in it. As soon as he learnt that his daughter lived there, that
very minute he summoned her and her husband. They came.
The King pardoned them, and they all began living together
and flourishing.[355]

"The Pike," observes Afanasief, "is a fish of great repute in
northern mythology." One of the old Russian songs still sung at
Christmas, tells how a Pike comes from Novgorod, its scales of silver
and gold, its back woven with pearls, a costly diamond gleaming in its
head instead of eyes. And this song is one which promises wealth, a
fact connecting the Russian fish with that Scandinavian pike which was
a shape assumed by Andvari--the dwarf-guardian of the famous treasure,
from which sprang the woes recounted in the _Voelsunga Saga_ and the
_Nibelungenlied_. According to a Lithuanian tradition,[356] there is a
certain lake which is ruled by the monstrous pike Strukis. It sleeps
only once a year, and then only for a single hour. It used always to
sleep on St. John's Night, but a fisherman once took advantage of its
slumber to catch a quantity of its scaly subjects. Strukis awoke in
time to upset the fisherman's boat; but fearing a repetition of the
attempt, it now changes each year the hour of its annual sleep. A
gigantic pike figures also in the _Kalevala_.

It would be easy to fill with similar stories, not only a section of
a chapter, but a whole volume; but instead of quoting any more of
them, I will take a few specimens from a different, though a somewhat
kindred group of tales--those which relate to the magic powers
supposed to be wielded in modern times by dealers in the Black Art.
Such narratives as these are to be found in every land, but Russia is
specially rich in them, the faith of the peasantry in the existence of
Witches and Wizards, Turnskins and Vampires, not having been as yet
seriously shaken. Some of the stories relating to the supernatural
Witch, who evidently belongs to the demon world, have alread