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To sum up, these undiluted products of the Russian people are a faithful mirroring of life, as it appeared, casual; for the most part unfortunate, and inscrutable.

There are some very frequent supernatural beings. The Witch who lives in the forest, rides the winds in a mortar, devours human flesh, lives in a hut on cocks’ legs, is one of the commonest. The great baleful magician is Koshchéy the Deathless, whose soul, in some stories, is contained in an egg far away, fearsomely guarded. Historically, his ancestry is the dread Tatar, in which figure all the previous Turanian tribes that overran medieval Russia have been confounded.

Notes will be found dealing with all such specific persons and places.

The folk-tales are very various; some classes of them can be distinguished.

The bestiary, or animal story, is common, and the parts which the beasts enact are similar to the Teutonic fairy-tales.

The semi-sacred legends of the days when Christ and his Apostles walked the earth, superficially may be compared with Grimm’s stories. But the spirit is very different. To a very slight extent they are based on the Gospel. But the Russian Christ of the folk-tales is a good, just, honest peasant, with democratic sympathies, and plenty of humour. His justice is unwavering, but tempered with sound common sense. He is kind, charitable and thoroughly human.