sung at the
New-Year. Boys go about from house to house, scattering grain of
different sorts, chiefly oats, and singing:

In the forest, in the pine forest,
There stood a pine-tree,
Green and shaggy.
O, Ovsen! O, Ovsen!
The Boyars came,
Cut down the pine,
Sawed it into planks,
Built a bridge,
Covered it with cloth,
Fastened it with nails,
O, Ovsen! O, Ovsen!
Who, who will go
Along that bridge?
Ovsen will go there,
And the New-Year,
O, Ovsen! O, Ovsen!

Ovsen, whose name is derived from Oves (oats, pronounced _avyos_), like
the Teutonic Sun-god, is supposed to ride a pig or a boar. Hence
sacrifices of pigs' trotters, and other pork products, were offered to
the gods at the New-Year, and such dishes are still preferred in Russia
at that season. It must be remembered that the New-Year fell on March
1st in Russia until 1348; then the civil New-Year was transferred to
September 1st, and January 1st was instituted as the New-Year by Peter
the Great only in the year 1700.

The highest stage of development reached by popular song is the heroic
epos--the rhythmic story of the deeds of national heroes, either
historical or mythical. In many countries these epics were committed to
writing at a very early date. In western Europe this took place in the
Middle Ages, and they are known to the modern world in that form only,
their memory having completely died out among the people. But Russia
presents the striking phenomenon of a country where epic song, handed
down wholly by oral tradition for nearly a thousand years, is not only
flourishing at the present day in certain districts, but even extending
into fresh fields.

It is only within the last sixty years that the Russians have become
generally aware that their country possesses this wonderfully rich
treasure of epic, religious, and ceremonial songs. In some cases, the
epic lay and the religious ballad are curiously combined, as in "The One
and Forty Pilgrims," which is generally classed with the epic songs,
however. But while the singing of the epic songs is not a profession,
the singing of the religious ballads is of a professional character, and
is used as a means of livelihood by the _kalyeki perekhozhie_,
literally, wandering cripples, otherwise known as wandering
psalm-singers. These _stikhi_, or religious ballads, are even more
remarkable than the epic songs in some respects, and practically nothi