hem would consent to accept the dreaded
suitor (who, of course, had not paid the slightest
attention to his toilette for hundreds of centuries).
Ninety-nine of those ladies flatly refused to have
anything to do with him, but the hundredth, the last
and youngest of the party, agreed to sacrifice herself
for her father's sake. But when the Rishi saw his
bride he was discontented, and when he heard that her
elder and fairer sisters had all refused him, he
pronounced a curse which made all ninety-nine of them
humpbacks, and so destroyed their chance of marrying
at all. Stanislas Julien's "Memoires sur les contrees
occidentales," 1857, i. pp. 244-7.]

As the idea that "a hasty word" can place its utterer or its victim
in the power of the Evil One (not only after death, but also during
this life) has given rise to numerous Russian legends, and as it still
exists, to some extent, as a living faith in the minds of the Russian
peasantry, it may be as well to quote at length one of the stories in
which it is embodied. It will be recognized as a variant of the
stories about the youth who visits the "Water King" and elopes with
one of that monarch's daughters. The main difference between the
"legend" we are about to quote, and the skazkas which have already
been quoted, is that a devil of the Satanic type is substituted in it
for the mythical personage--whether Slavonic Neptune or Indian
Rakshasa--who played a similar part in them.

THE HASTY WORD.[470]

In a certain village there lived an old couple in great poverty,
and they had one son. The son grew up,[471] and the old woman
began to say to the old man:

"It's time for us to get our son married."

"Well then, go and ask for a wife for him," said he.

So she went to a neighbor to ask for his daughter for her
son: the neighbor refused. She went to a second peasant's,
but the second refused too--to a third, but he showed her the
door. She went round the whole village; not a soul would
grant her request. So she returned home and cried--

"Well, old man! our lad's an unlucky fellow!"

"How so?"

"I've trudged round to every house, but no one will give
him his daughter."

"That's a bad business!" says the old man; "the summer
will soon be coming, but we have no one to work for us here.
Go to another village, old woman, perhaps you will get a bride
for him th