Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 2 1913.djvu/452

424 evenings the village youths assemble in the streets and often promenade the whole night long singing in chorus their melancholy lyric songs. The White Russian has remained true to the ancient Slav character. According to Procopius, the Slavs were not malignant or villainous, but harmless and naive; "Mauricius" says, "They are hardened to heat, frost, wet, nakedness, and hunger, and are well-disposed to strangers." According to Adam of Bremen (died 1075) there was no more hospitable and kindly people than the Slavs of Pomerania. The variety of musical instruments among the Slavs struck the Arabian geographer of the ninth century, and all Slav peoples are still very musical.

The bottomless marshes of the Pripet were no sufficient protection from sudden raids and attacks; in winter the nomads could penetrate over the ice on their fleet horses far into the land, and in summer the pirates could use the rivers up to their sources. Defence was hopeless. This made the Old Slavs exceptionally unwarlike, and shy as the beast of the forest. In summer, when suddenly attacked, they had to disappear like frogs into the water or into the woods; in winter they had to take refuge behind the shelter of their numerous stockades. According to Procopius they fought without armour but with little shields and darts, some even without coat and cloak and with only an apron about their loins. But not even this wretched equipment was really Slavonic; it must have been borrowed from some German people, probably the warlike Heruli who fought in the same way.

Polesie is a land of exuberant fancy. A remarkable autumnal stillness is peculiar to its sea of marsh, a stillness not disturbed even by the humming of a gnat and only broken now and then by the gentle rustling of the rushes. To the fisherman as he glides at night in his punt over the smooth silver water it is as impressive as its contrast, the surging of the sea of reeds and the roaring of the forest in the storm-wind. This produced in the inhabitant an uncontrolled imagination which made him people the world of nature with spirits. To-day he still personifies sun, moon, fire, wood, marsh, will-o'-the-wisp, spring, and all else that is perceivable. But joy and sorrow, every illness, Sunday, every holiday, are also spirits. His house, stable, barn, threshing-floor have their own goblins, each with wife and children. To this must be added ancestor-worship. On certain days the father says at the evening meal "Holy ancestors, we invite you to come to us and eat of all that God has given to us, in which this house is rich — Holy ancestors, I pray you come, fly to us." Kneeling with bread and salt in his hands he prays to the spirit of the house and its wife and children, beseeching its favour and deliverance from all evil. The Polesian has only obscure ideas of a future life, but he has most definite knowledge of the wicked dead and their appearance as werewolves and vampires. So superstitious is he that he harbours in his mind a copious code of secret expedients for scaring away all evil spirits, and at every step he is