Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/309

 12 8. 1. APRIL 15, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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ductse." Many of the more ordinary of- fences were punished by fines, but the treatment of murderers and robbers was drastic in the extreme. They were tied to stakes, their legs were broken with iron bars, and they were then left to die.

But what is perhaps most singular in the account of Pskoff is the description of two stone figures of gods set up many years before outside the town, and still worshipped by the inhabitants idols, so Wunderer was told, who were known as " Ussladt " and " Corsa." Ussladt was represented as hold- ing a cross, Corsa as standing upon a snake with a sword in one hand. Of these deities Ussladt was a kind of Northern Comus, the god of pleasure and mirth, while Corsa, Chors, or Chorsch was the Bacchus of the Slavs, the god of drunkenness and wine. He was often represented as wearing a wreath of hops and holding a cup in his hand, or sitting astride a cask.

The description of these idols at Pskoff puzzled Adelung and may well surprise us. Wunderer states that he saw them and heard their names, which must have been perfectly familiar to the inhabitants, and it must be left for others more learned than I to carry the matter further. But for this reference, however, one would scarcely have expected to find the old pre-Christian Slav religion alive and even flourishing in Russia at the close of the sixteenth century.

From Pskoff the travellers might well have been expected to visit Moscow, but here the description of Russia ceases abruptly. It is possible that Wunderer was conscious of the suspicion with which every foreigner who did not travel as an ambassador or a mer- chant was regarded in Russia at this time. He gives us no reasons for his movements, but merely states that he left Pskoff with a number of merchants who were bound for India. The company travelled through marshes, forests, across barren wastes and wildernesses, often in great danger from bison,* towards the East, meeting no other travellers by the way except a few merchants from Cairo and Calicut travelling to Novo- gorod, each riding in a small coach covered with red leather and drawn by white horses.

At length Wunderer and his companions arrived safely on the banks of the Don, " which water," he tells us, " divides Europe and Asia," and here he seems to have

neighbourhood of Konigsberg, where they appear to have roamed in a wild state down to the eighteenth century (Adelung, i. 429).
 * Wunderer found these animals also in the

changed his plans. He parted from his companions, and struck first eastwards and then north by a route which it is almost impossible to follow. He arrived after weeks of sledging on the shores of the Arctic Ocean a land of midnight sun where Wunderer and his companion suffered much from the intense cold, as well as from the inhabitants, a hideous folk who lived under the earth and clothed themselves in the skins of wild beasts. In order to get away as- speedily as possible from these miserable people, the travellers procured small carts drawn by reindeer, and, after travelling westward through the country of the Finns (who are described as poor, simple folk), they reached the Norwegian fortress of Wardoehuus, " lying on the Great Ocean opposite Iceland," where night lasted for only one hour.

From here Wunderer seems to have under- taken a voyage westward, for he speaks of seeing, towards midnight, " in der Thyl Insel," Mount Hekla burning \ like a will-o'- the-wisp in the night. There is, however, nothing to show that the travellers actually visited Iceland, and we next find them again at Wardoehuus, whence they reached Stock- holm, a town with but few stone houses, but strongly fortified, and a great market for fish, skins, and metals. Wunderer then sailed by way of Abo, the capital of Finland, to Narwa, whence he continued his journey by land to Riga.

" This town [says Wunderer] is a most famous seaport and the capital of Livonia. It is strongly fortified with high walls, blockhouses, and wide ditches, and is protected on the west by the DAna, a mighty river."

Here he made the acquaintance of the Letts, and seems to have acquired a smat- tering of their language, for he gives the Lord's Prayer fairly correctly in Lettish. He also gives a long and curious account of their burial customs, the habit being to pour dregs, which had been specially col- lected in a goblet, upon the corpse, after which they carried it out and buried it in the nearest wood. With the dead were buried an axe, two copper coins, a piece of bread, and a pot of light beer. The people them- selves he describes as poor, barbarous, heathen folk living as serfs, and subsisting upon sour milk, black bread, and dried uncooked fish. They slept on the hard earth, holding it for shame to make use of beds. In stature they were strong and big, albeit clumsy, dull-witted, and much given to sorcery. At night they would transform themselves into wolves and cats, riding off