ideas. In the name, if
not in the nature, of the _Ad_, or subterranean abode of evil spirits
and sinful souls, we recognize the influence of the Byzantine Hades;
but most of the tales in which it occurs are supposed to draw their
original inspiration from Indian sources, while they owe to Christian,
Brahmanic, Buddhistic, and Mohammedan influences the form in which
they now appear. To these "legends," as the folk-tales are styled in
which the saints or their ghostly enemies occur, belongs the following
narrative of--

THE FIDDLER IN HELL.[391]

There was a certain moujik who had three sons. His life was
a prosperous one, and he laid by money enough to fill two pots.
The one he buried in his corn-kiln, the other under the gate of
his farmyard. Well, the moujik died, and never said a word
about the money to any one. One day there was a festival in
the village. A fiddler was on his way to the revel when, all of
a sudden, he sank into the earth--sank right through and
tumbled into hell, lighting exactly there where the rich moujik
was being tormented.

"Hail, friend!" says the Fiddler.

"It's an ill wind that's brought you hither!"[392] answers the
moujik; "this is hell, and in hell here I sit."

"What was it brought you here, uncle?"

"It was money! I had much money: I gave none to the
poor, two pots of it did I bury underground. See now, they
are going to torment me, to beat me with sticks, to tear me with
nails."

"Whatever shall I do?" cried the Fiddler. "Perhaps
they'll take to torturing me too!"

"If you go and sit on the stove behind the chimney-pipe,
and don't eat anything for three years--then you will remain
safe."

The Fiddler hid behind the stove-pipe. Then came fiends,[393]
and they began to beat the rich moujik, reviling him the while,
and saying:

"There's for thee, O rich man. Pots of money didst thou
bury but thou couldst not hide them. There didst thou bury
them that we might not be able to keep watch over them. At
the gate people are always riding about, the horses crush our
heads with their hoofs, and in the corn-kiln we get beaten with
flails."

As soon as the fiends had gone away the moujik said to the
Fiddler:

"If you get out of here, tell my children to dig up the money--one
pot is buried at the gate, and the other in the corn-kiln--and
to distribute it among the poor."

Afterwards there came a whole