66 covering of the water, sends the ice-floes | lage, headed by the "Lyalya," stopping at drifting, drives the fish from their haunts, certain dwellings settled upon beforehand. and causes the streams to overflow. In At the first of the houses where a halt is the last week of March, therefore, before made, a cake prepared over night is the ice begins to break, the peasants in handed to the party. At the next, they rural Russia start the "Death-Week" cel- receive a basket containing as many eggs ebration by preparing a sacrifice for the as there are girls in the procession, and "Vodyanoi," so that he shall not be kept one over. At the third house they get a waiting when he awakes from his winter measure of mixed grain. Preceded still sleep. They meet together in the village by the "Lyalya," they leave the village, where the celebration is to take place, and stopping, however, at the last house, subscribe a sum of money for the purchase where an egg is taken from the basketful of a young horse. The animal must not and thrown clear over the roof. The be a gift, but bought for money; it must party now make the round of the fields not be bargained for, and no one person belonging to the village, each one dipping must contribute more than another to the her hand into the grain-measure, and amount required. The horse is taken to strewing a few of the seeds over the a stable specially reserved for the gift to ground. This is supposed to ensure ferthe "Vodyanoi," and fed for three days tility in the coming year. When all the on bread and oil-cake. On the fourth day, fields have been traversed, the procession at midnight, the horse is taken from the returns to the spot whence a start was stall, and conducted to the nearest river made; the cake and eggs are divided, and or stream, the villagers following in a each girl returns to her home. The egg body. The mane is decorated with red and cake must not be eaten, but are preribbons, the head smeared with honey, the served as charms against all sorts of mislegs are tied together, and a couple of mill- fortune. The young women who have stones secured to the neck. Then a hole taken part in the procession can, if they is made in the ice, and the horse thrown are curious that way, ascertain on the into the water, a living sacrifice to the night of the "Lyalya" whether they are Vodyanoi." Fisher-folk in the Archan- likely to marry in the course of the next gel district pour a quantity of fat into the twelve months, and if so, in which month. water instead of throwing in a horse; and They must procure an onion, and take off the millers of the Ukraine cast the horse's twelve layers, and put them in a row behead into the river, and not the living tween the piece of the "Lyalya" cake and animal. After appeasing the Water- the egg. Each layer of onion represents Spirit, the House-Spirit, the " Domovoi," a month, and if one of them be quite dry calls for a sacrifice. He awakes on the by the morning, it is a sign of marriage, night of March 25th, and will only wait and the order in which the piece stands three days for his offering. So on return- shows the month in which the marriage ing from the riverside, the villagers pre- will take place. pare a suitable gift for him. They take a fat black pig, kill it, and cut it into as many pieces as there are residents in the place. Each resident receives one piece, which he straightway buries under the doorstep at the entrance to his house. In some parts, it is said, the country folk bury a few eggs beneath the threshold of the dwelling to propitiate the "Domovoi." On the following day, the ceremony known as the "Lyalya " takes place. The "Lyalya" is not the Goddess of Spring, but a personification of the season. The ceremony of the day is known as the "Lyalynik," and only young unmarried girls take part in it. They all meet in a field outside the village, and select one who is to be the "Lyalya." She is attired in a white robe, with a crown of green stuff on her head, and a staff, decorated with green leaves, in her hands. Barefooted the girls then perambulate the vil All is now ready for the ceremony of driving out Death, from which the week derives its designation. Early in the morning the residents of the village, men, women, and children, meet in the marketplace. Some bring packages of rags and old clothes, others bundles of straw, long sticks, and cross-pieces. Out of these, three or four expert hands, accustomed to the work, manufacture a dummy figure resembling an old woman. The face is painted and made as hideous as possible. This is the figure of Death Death, ac cording to Slavonic mythology, being a woman. The dummy is perched aloft upon a long pole, which is given to a sturdy peasant, who is dressed out in what is left of the rags and tatters used in the construction of the figure. The men then arm themselves with whips and whistles, the women and children bring pots and pans and iron kettles-any utensils, in fact, they can bang upon and make a earthly clatter. On they go, dashing up On returning to the village sundry additions are made to the instruments with which the people are provided. The bells are taken from the necks of the cows, as well as the horns used for calling cattle together. One or two procure drums to beat. Then, men, women, and children begin to run round the village as fast as they can, making as much noise as possible. The object of this performance is to drive out the evil spirits Death is supposed to have left behind. The quicker the people go, and the more noise they make, the more effectually is the place cleared of the imps supposed to follow in the train of Death, and the greater will be the blessings of the coming season. The villagers, therefore, rush along pell-mell, as for a wager, the men hooting, the women screaming at the top of their voices, the children joining in with a piping treble, horns blowing, drums beating, and bells ringing, the pots and pans making an un It is generally evening by the time Death has been drowned, and the place cleared of evil spirits. The villagers take a rest, and then prepare to camp-out for the night; among the southern Slavs, no one ever dreams of going to sleep on the evening of the festival. It is an old Slavonic belief that on this night the gates of heaven are opened, and if any one asks for a special gift at the actual moment of opening, it will certainly be granted. At that particular instant, too, all trees are said to bear golden fruits, and whoever is lucky enough to grasp them just then, may retain them for his own. The Russian peasant, therefore, stays out in the field all night, in order to watch for the opening of the sky. That he does not make much of the opportunity, is perhaps due to the fact that he often takes advan tage of the camping-out festivity to get so drunk on vodki, that were the heavens really to rain gifts during the night, he would be in no condition to profit by the bounty of the skies. As soon as the first signs of sunrise are observed in the east by the women who keep watch, the villagers are roused, and are speedily afoot. In a body they proceed to the nearest hill facing east, where the earliest rays of the spring sun fall, there to welcome " Vesna,” the goddess of returning summer. The two elders of the village take with them a clean white cloth and some bread and salt. Arrived at the summit of the hill, the cloth is spread upon the ground, and fastened down by pegs to prevent it blowing away. The bread and salt are placed upon it, and the men call out loudly: "Mother Vesna! see here!" desiring the goddess to accept their welcome. And with this invocation the special ceremonies of the "Death Week" terminate. In western Russia, the "Smartna Nedelya" is not much observed. But in the rural districts of central and southern Russia, this week, with its pagan ceremonies, is celebrated as regularly, and with much the same simple belief on the part of the country-folk, as among their heathen ancestors on the banks of the Ural and the Irtysh. For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. Is this the saddest time?" they said, "The birds and the flowers and the year all dead!" "Haply," I said, "'tis sad to die; But still our griefs we may forget, As in a dreamless sleep we lie; I know a sadder season yet!" They cried, "We hear the thrushes sing, Have fallen like an emerald cloud And banished is the Winter's gloom. And smell sweet beds of violet; They said, "The Summer heat has come; Recalls the by-gone summer days! Their nests are on the sunlit wall. And say not this is sad!" they said. I said, "I feel the heated air Hang heavy with the breath of flowers, Nor can conceive a world more fair Than this, in these sweet summer hours! " I said, "I see the swallows wheel, And hear the distant landrail call Across the corn; and yet I feel This is the saddest time of all! There is no grief like Summer's grief! The yearning, born of summer sky, The sorrow of a summer leaf, How great! And oft I wonder why! From The Edinburgh Review. Eriksen has lent a kind of official sanction to the claim of that dashing sea-rover to take rank as the pioneer of the Aryan race on American soil. His exploit, although a considerable one, fell in quite naturally with the sequence of preceding events. The overthrow of the Jarls of Norway by Harold Haarfagr drove those restless spirits among them who could not brook the fixed order of a consolidated kingdom, to seek their fortunes outside its bounds; ALTHOUGH America was no more discovered than Rome was built in a day, yet October 12, 1492, may fitly serve as the representative date of what has been well described as a process rather than an event. On that day Columbus first set foot on transatlantic land, and his doing so proved decisive for the spread westward of European civilization. Events, indeed, might easily have been directed otherwise. The incident might under and an exodus ensued more disastrous slightly altered circumstances have remained isolated, and devoid of momentous consequences, like so many others in the history of geographical exploration; and it seemed at first to mark no more than the opening of a long series of tentative gropings after facts confirmatory of a false theory. Nevertheless, as things turned out, that solemn disembarkation of a little band of white men on the palm-fringed shore of Guanahani really typified the effective discovery of the new continent. Its effective, not its formal, discovery. Columbus, like most other innovators in the realms of knowledge and thought, had been anticipated. "Wineland the Good" was no creation of Norse fancy, no shimmering region between sea and sky, where The Spring and the middle Summer sat each on the lap of the breeze, but a concrete strip of coast-land, of ap proximately assignable latitude and longi. tude, washed perhaps by the same waters in which, one night of December in the year 1773, an obnoxious cargo of tea was memorably engulfed. And the recent erection at Boston of a monument to Leif 1. The Discovery of America. With some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest. By John Fiske. In 2 vols. London: 1892. 2. Narrative and Critical History of America. Edited by Justin Winsor. In 8 vols. London: 1885 89. 3. Christopher Columbus, and how he received and imparted the Spirit of Discovery. By Justin Winsor. London: 1890. than plague or famine to many helpless populations. One of the few tranquil episodes in its eventful history was the settlement of Iceland in 874. Thence, by stress of weather, land further west was certain, sooner or later, to be reached; and it actually fell out within two years that one Gunnbjörn found himself icebound for the winter in one of the fiords near Cape Farewell. A century and more passed, however, before the unalluring possibility of adventure in this direction was followed up. It was the outlawry for homicide of Erik the Red in 983 that led to his exploring and colonizing expedition to the frigid peninsula visited by Gunnbjörn. He made his headquarters by the upper Igaliko fiord, near the site of the modern Julianshaab, and there "upon a smooth, grassy plain may still be seen the blocks of sandstone, their chinks caulked ruins of seventeen houses built of rough up with clay and gravel," the dwellings, nine hundred years ago, of the first European settlers in the Western hemisphere. The spot was one of the few in that dismal region where nature wore now and then even the semblance of a smile; and Erik called it "Greenland," somewhat, it may be admitted, on the same advertising principle of nomenclature followed by General Choke and Mr. Scadder in the designation of the "Eden Settlement." And the name, extended from one of its choicest corners to the whole frost-bound 4. Christophe Colomb, son Origine, sa Vie, ses Voyages, sa Famille, et ses Découvertes. Etudes Country, survives as if in mockery of the d'Histoire Critique. Par Henry Harrisse. tomes. Paris: 1884. Deux 5. The North Americans of Antiquity. By John T. Short. Second edition. New York: 1880. 6. Prehistoric America. By the Marquis de Nadaillac. Translated by N. d'Anvers. London: 1885. grim reality. From Greenland, the continent of America was attained in precisely the same casual way that Greenland itself had been attained from Iceland. Thus Bjarni Her |