Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/358

330 Slovene. The rest of the review is devoted to Dr. Franko's collection of songs about Chmelnicki, pointing out the extraordinary variety of relations of Cossackdom with the world around, and the complexity of its developments.

3. The most important essay is a revision of an article of 1893 in Wisla on what the author has called "metabiose," the belief that the soul was bound to stay in some part of the body after death, or at least in contact with it. The subject is based upon certain incidents in Stowacki's poem, Balladyna. Dr. Bugiel entirely denies that metempsychosis is in question here.

4. Reviewed at length for its other qualities and also because of its bearing on the Slavonic fairy tales. His main point is that the popular tale comes from the artistic (artificial) originally. Cf. Countess Martinengo Cesaresco on the Study of Folk Songs.

5. A mother lost her child and wept and wept and wept, day and night, until her tears filled the well and overflowed. But she never ceased to weep. On a time her child appeared to her in a white shirt. It smiled, it shone, but it had a blood-red wound on its head, from which blood dripped constantly. The mother rejoiced to see her child, but was terrified at the wound, and asked who had given it. "Ah! mamma, do not weep for me. This wound I have because you weep so much for me. The more you weep, the more the blood will drip from the wound." The child then disappeared and the mother stopped. Already she no longer wept so much and the well did not overflow. And again her child appeared to her. The wound on the little head was already smaller, but the child pointed to it and disappeared. Then the mother ceased to weep altogether and the well dried up. Only she prayed for her dead child. And the child appeared a third time and said: "Now I am happy with God." On the head there was no wound, and the child smiled blessedly. On this the mother was full of joy.

There follows a series of variants. The story, though not a common one, is found at great distances apart. The continuation by Dr. Polívka shows the extreme antiquity of the idea, and that it is in medieval literature, e.g. in Magnum Speculum Exemplorum, in whose Russian version it appears (P. V. Vladimirov).