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concerning them is accessible in English.

In all countries where the Roman Church reigned supreme in early times,
it did its best to consign all popular religious poetry to oblivion. But
about the seventeenth century it determined to turn such fragments as
had survived this procedure to its own profit. Accordingly they were
written over in conformity with its particular tenets, for the purpose
of inculcating its doctrines. Both courses were equally fatal to the
preservation of anything truly national. Incongruousness was the
inevitable result.

The Greek, or rather the Russo-Greek, Church adopted precisely the
opposite course: it never interfered, in the slightest degree, with
popular poetry, either secular or religious. Christianity, therefore,
merely enlarged the field of subjects. The result is, that the Slavonic
peoples (including even, to some extent, the Roman Catholic Poles)
possess a mass of religious poetry, the like of which, either in kind or
in quantity, is not to be found in all western Europe.

It is well to note, at this point, that the word _stikh_ (derived from
an ancient Greek word) is incorporated into the modern Russian word for
poetry, _stikhotvorenie_--verse-making, literally rendered--and it has
now become plain that Lomonosoff, the father of Russian Literature, who
was the first secular Russian poet, and polished the ancient tongue into
the beginning of the modern literary language, about the middle of the
eighteenth century, did not originate his verse-measures, but derived
them from the common people, the peasants, whence he himself sprang.
Modern Russian verse, therefore, is thus traced back directly, in its
most national traits, to these religious ballads. It is impossible to
give any adequate account of them here, and it is especially difficult
to convey an adequate idea of the genuine poetry and happy phrasing
which are often interwoven with absurdities approaching the grotesque.

The ballads to which we shall briefly refer are full of illustrations of
the manner in which old pagan gods became Christian deities, so to
speak, of the newly baptized nation. For example: Perun the Thunder-god
became, in popular superstition, "St. Ilya" (or Elijah), and the day
dedicated to him, July 20th (old style), is called "Ilya the
Thunder-bringer." Elijah's fiery chariot, the lightning, rumbling across
the sky, brings a thunder-storm on or very near that date; and although
Perun's name is forgotte