Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/93

 Rh them at the corners of bye-ways, superstition laid other snares for them. The Finnish element, still half pagan, came to the front in the constantly-increasing ceremonial of the Church, openly ruled by the pagan spirit. In the north, up till the eighteenth century, the beliefs and customs, and all the structure of the ancient worship, were to preserve their authority over a population which its ethnographical peculiarities rendered less amenable to the Slav conquest, and less easily influenced by Christianity. In this zone, for many ears, the progress of the two powers was only marked by islets here and there, colonies scattered hither and thither over the huge territory. Even quite recently, Keppen's map has shown us how the characteristic traits of the Tchoud race predominate in the case of quite half the population; and this race was superstitious above all others. In this part of the world Nature has always laid a heavy hand on man. Trackless forests, rocks that pierce the clouds, deserts heaped with stones, an endless succession of lakes and bogs—there is something terrifying about the landscape. Our ears are deafened by the roaring of cataracts or the perpetual howl of the angry winds; aurora borealis cast their lurid light around; Will-o'-the-wisps, flickering over the faces of the stagnant pools, startle the imagination; fierce or venomous creatures, bears and vipers, threaten man with death at every step. Out of all these the Finn had built himself up a religion that was nothing but one long shuddering terror. His gods were the sons of Ahriman, rather than of Ormuzd. Every stone, every tree, was the home of some evil spirit. And only one weapon availed against them—sorcery. His priest was priest and sorcerer in one. An artificial imitation of the noises of hostile Nature calmed the spirits' never-ceasing irritation. This was the very essence of the faith spread over the huge continent that stretches from the Ural Mountains to the seas of China and Japan, from the dreary shores of the Frozen Sea to the lonely heights of the Himalaya, and it is the secret of a liturgy which, within those geographical limits, was a mere tempest of unchained elements, of noise and movement. The sorcerer-priest, the Chamane of the Ostiaks, danced round the fire beating a drum, and his audience did their best to drown his noise with that they made themselves, till the pontiff, faint and giddy, was seized by two men and half-strangled by the cord they twisted round his neck. The deafening noise, the leaping flames, the convulsions of the priest's body, and the compression of his throttle, threw him into a trance, in the course of which the spirit was supposed to reveal itself to the medium.

No doubt these rites, the unconscious aim of which was