into a magic slumber, and the Queen-Maiden has to return home
without him. When he awakes, and learns that she has gone, he sorrows
greatly, and sets out in search of her. At last he learns from a
friendly witch that his betrothed no longer cares for him, "her love
is hidden far away." It seems "that on the other side of the ocean
stands an oak, and on the oak a coffer, and in the coffer a hare, and
in the hare a duck, and in the duck an egg, and in the egg the love of
the Queen-Maiden." Ivan gets possession of the egg, and the friendly
witch contrives to have it placed before the Queen-Maiden at dinner.
She eats it, and immediately her love for Ivan returns in all its
pristine force. He appears, and she, overjoyed, carries him off to her
own land and there marries him.

* * * * *

After this digression we will now return to our Snakes. All the
monstrous forms which figure in the stories we have just been
considering appear to be merely different species of the great serpent
family. Such names as Koshchei, Chudo Yudo, Usuinya, and the like,
seem to admit of exchange at the will of the story-teller with that of
Zmei Goruinuich, the many-headed Snake, who in Russian storyland is
represented as the type of all that is evil. But in the actual Russia
of to-day, snakes bear by no means so bad a character. Their presence
in a cottage is considered a good omen by the peasants, who leave out
milk for them to drink, and who think that to kill such visitors would
be a terrible sin.[140] This is probably a result of some remembrance
of a religious cultus paid to the household gods under the form of
snakes, such as existed of old, according to Kromer, in Poland and
Lithuania. The following story is more in keeping with such ideas as
these, than with those which are expressed in the tales about Koshchei
and his kin.

THE WATER SNAKE.[141]

There was once an old woman who had a daughter; and her
daughter went down to the pond one day to bathe with the
other girls. They all stripped off their shifts, and went into the
water. Then there came a snake out of the water, and glided on
to the daughter's shift. After a time the girls all came out, and
began to put on their shifts, and the old woman's daughter wanted
to put on hers, but there was the snake lying on it. She tried
to drive him away, but there he stuck and would not move. Then
the snake said:

"If you'll marry me, I'l