Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/285

Rh showing, stands charged with 43·7 for every 10,000 of its inhabitants.

Figures like these themselves furnish an impressive sermon.

are here called "Epic Songs" are really the folk-songs, or songs of the common people, whose only literary existence is in the form of copies taken down from the mouths of some of the singers, after they have been handed down by oral tradition for, it may be, hundreds of years. Besides the pleasure to be got from the works themselves as stories and poetry, the perusal of them, as Professor Child says, is well adapted to help to an appreciation of those of our fellow-men who have been educated by tradition and not by books, and who, though living on the plainest fare of oats, feel and cherish poetry "not less than those who have been nursed in comfort and schooled in literature." These Russian epics possess a striking distinction from those of Western Europe, in that while the latter passed from the popular mouth to writing during the middle ages, and are no longer to be found except in books, the Russian epics are still living in some districts of the country, and are "even extending into fresh fields"; and "it is only within the present century within the last twenty-five years, in fact that the discovery has been made that Russia possesses a national literature which is not excelled by the finest of Western Europe." Although one or two small collections had been previously published, which gave, however, no real indication of the richness of the field to be explored, systematic investigation of this literature was first begun by Petr N. Rybnikof, of Petrzavodsk, on Lake Onega, about 1860. He discovered the chief minstrel of the region and the most important poem, and succeeded in collecting more than 50,000 verses. A. F. Hilferding, who followed him in 1870, made a still larger collection. "Two of the causes which have aided in the preservation of epic poetry in these remote districts, long after its disappearance from other parts of Russia, are liberty and loneliness. These people have never been subjected to the oppressions of serfdom, and have never lost the ideal of free power celebrated in the ancient rhapsodies." In the isolation of their forests, moreover, they do not come in contact with the world, and have never felt the influence of change—conditions remain as in epic times. They also thoroughly believe the truth of the marvelous things recited in the poems. A curious incident is related, in which the imposition of a new forestry regulation contributed to the extension of the songs. A community were compelled to abandon their farms, and went to net-making. As farmers, they knew nothing of the songs; in company with the net-makers and other handicraftsmen, they learned them all. The singing of the poems is not now a profession, but is a domestic diversion, and the present minstrels all belong to the peasant class, and are nearly all well-to-do. The epic songs proper are divisible into three groups—the cycle of Vladimir or Kiev, that of Novgorod, and that of Moscow—and these are preceded by three songs of the Elder Heroes. In the songs of the Vladimir cycle, the recently Christianized people for convenience' sake baptized their heathen gods, making of Perun, the thunderer, nya, or Elijah the Prophet, the hero of the series, and earned the epithet of "two-faithed," which was applied to the Russian people by their older writers. The Novgorod cycle is more restricted, consisting practically of but two songs, and is more definite, more practical, and closer to history than the Kiev cycle. The Moscow cycle begins with Ivan the Terrible and ends with Peter the Great, and is not represented in this volume. A running view of the development of this poetry is given in the author's introduction.

study of geology may be carried on with two entirely different aims. For one who undertakes the study for the sake of the science itself, the chief interest lies in tracing out from the records of stone a