ng of Tardanak,
showing how he killed "the Seven Headed Jelbegen,"
Radloff, i. p. 31.]

A variant of this story (from the Chernigof Government)[211] begins by
telling how two old people were childless for a long time. At last the
husband went into the forest, felled wood, and made a cradle. Into
this his wife laid one of the logs he had cut, and began swinging it,
crooning the while a rune beginning

Swing, blockie dear, swing.

After a little time "behold! the block already had legs. The old
woman rejoiced greatly and began singing anew, and went on singing
until the block became a babe." In this variant the boy rows a silver
boat with a golden oar; in another South Russian variant[212] the boat
is golden, the oar of silver. In a White-Russian variant quoted by
Afanasief (i. p. 118), the place of the witch's daughter is filled by
her son, who had been in the habit of alluring to her den by gifts of
toys, and there devouring, the children from the adjacent villages.
Buslaef's "Historical Essays," (i. pp. 313-321) contain a valuable
investigation of Kulish's version of this story, which he compares
with the romance of "The Knight of the Swan."

In another of the variants of this story[213] Ivanushka is the son of
a Baruinya or Lady, and he is carried off in a whirlwind by a Baba
Yaga. His three sisters go to look for him, and each of them in turn
finds out where he is and attempts to carry him off, after sending the
Baba Yaga to sleep and smearing her eyelids with pitch. But the two
elder sisters are caught on their way home by the Baba Yaga, and
terribly scratched and torn. The youngest sister, however, succeeds in
rescuing her brother, having taken the precaution of propitiating with
butter the cat Jeremiah, "who was telling the boy stories and singing
him songs." When the Baba Yaga awakes, she tells Jeremiah to scratch
her eyes open, but he refuses, reminding her that, long as he has
lived under her roof, she has never in any way regaled him, whereas
the "fair maiden" had no sooner arrived than she treated him to
butter. In another variant[214] the bereaved mother sends three
servant-maids in search of her boy. Two of them get torn to pieces;
the third succeeds in saving Ivanushka from the Baba Yaga, who is so
vexed that she pinches her butter-bribed cat to death for not having
awakened her when the rescue took place. A comparison of these three
stories is sufficient to show how closely connected