Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 54.djvu/223

Rh Löwenstimm mentions a curious superstition of pagan origin still practiced in portions of Russia, and known as "korovya smertj" (cow-death) and "opachivaniye" (plowing roundabout). If pestilence or murrain prevails in a village, an old woman of repute as a seeress or fortune-teller enters the confines of the village at midnight and beats a pan. Thereupon all the women of the place assemble in haste, armed with divers domestic utensils—frying-pans, pokers, tongs, shovels, scythes, and cudgels. After shutting the cattle in their stalls, and warning the men not to leave their houses, a procession is formed. The seeress takes off her dress and pronounces a curse upon Death. She is then hitched to a plow, together with a bevy of virgins and a misshapen woman, if such a one can be found, and a continuous and closed furrow is drawn round the village three times. When the procession starts, the image of some saint suitable to the occasion, that of St. Blasius, for example, in the case of murrain, is borne in front of it; this is followed by the seeress, clad only in a shift, with disheveled hair and riding on a broomstick; after her come women and maidens drawing the plow, and behind them the rest of the crowd, shrieking and making a fearful din. They kill every animal they meet, and if a man is so unfortunate as to fall in with them he is mercilessly beaten, and usually put to death. In the eyes of these raging women he is not a human being, but Death himself in the form of a were-wolf, who seeks to cross their path and thus break the charm and destroy the healing virtue of the furrow. The ceremony varies in different places, and generally ends by burying alive a cat, cock, or dog. . In some districts the whole population of the village, both men and women, take part in the procession, and are often attended by the clergy with sacred images and consecrated banners. During the prevalence of the pest in the province of Podolia, in 1738, the inhabitants of the village of Gummenez, while marching in procession through the fields, met Michael Matkovskij, a nobleman of a neighboring village, who was looking for his stray horses. The strange man, wandering about with an eager look and a bridle in his hand, was regarded as the incarnate pestilence, and was therefore seized and most brutally beaten and left lying half naked and half dead on the ground. At length he recovered his senses and succeeded with