Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/70

54 your people, still the downpour, ordain the waters to retire into their bed. We offer you our prayers, we invoke your help!"

The men and women thronged closer to the old man, just in the same way as they did the day before, when they bowed their heads before the priest with the cross. The dotard dipped his fingers in the blood and sprinkled it over the heads of those twentieth-century heathens.

This happened in Pskov. The same ceremony was repeated later on in my presence in the Black Sea province.

On the Volga and Kama one can observe to this very day in the cottages of the peasants, mostly Mordvins and Chuvashes, little figures made of wood and clay, representing the old pagan gods standing by the side of holy ikons and crosses in the so-called "red corner," that opposite the entrance door.

True, the peasants who often turn to the "old gods" for help, offering them sacrifices, will sometimes, if the gods disappoint their expectations, pitilessly besmirch their faces with all manner of filth, or flog the little figures with whips.

Times have changed the psychology of worship.

Thus paganism and its spirit has outlasted the long era during which mankind advanced on the road of civilisation and perfection. This fact can be particularly observed in the mediæval belief in witches or hags betrothed to the devil.