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derisive jokes after the manner of the Russian peasants.
Like a good son of a peasant he began by helping his
old parents. Everywhere, as at Vladimir’s table, he
compels the persons of position to give place to those of
low degree. Like a genuine muzhik he sometimes drinks
deeply and sleeps out his drunkenness; but he is open-hearted
towards his prince to the last degree, and when
the latter has taken it ill and punished him cruelly for
it, he is ready to forget the injury as soon as he hears
that there is any question about the cause of the defenceless.
He never brags of his victories, wishes that honors
may redound to the glory of Russia, and, in his aversion
to soiling his hands with blood, spares his enemies when
he can do so, and sets his captives free.
It is a very remarkable instance of Russian imagination
that a well-known bîlîna, with the title “Why there
are no more heroes in holy Russia,” for the purpose of
increasing the impression of the power there is in this
national hero, represents Ilia of Murom as stronger
than Fate itself, to which this people otherwise so
patiently submit, and which conquers all the other
heroes.
Ilia had become fully three hundred and fifty years
old, but his powers were less impaired than Stærkodder’s
as an old man, when, one day, while riding through a
forest, he read on a stone the inscription, “If you go to
the right you will become rich, if you take the middle
road you will be married, if you go to the left you will
be killed.” The old Cossack, as he is called here, after
considering it, concludes that it does not become his age
now to seek for wealth or marriage. It is more becoming
for him to ride in the road in which death is found.
After riding a short distance he meets with a band of
robbers, but disperses them, turns back and writes upon
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