d the King, "how comes it, old man, that thou goest
more nimbly than thy son and thy grandson?"

"Because I lived according to the law of the Lord," answered the old
man. "I held mine own, I grasped not at what was another's."[429]

The existence of hills is accounted for by legendary lore in this
wise. When the Lord was about to fashion the face of the earth, he
ordered the Devil to dive into the watery depths and bring thence a
handful of the soil he found at the bottom. The Devil obeyed, but when
he filled his hand, he filled his mouth also. The Lord took the soil,
sprinkled it around, and the Earth appeared, all perfectly flat. The
Devil, whose mouth was quite full, looked on for some time in silence.
At last he tried to speak, but choked, and fled in terror. After him
followed the thunder and the lightning, and so he rushed over the
whole face of the earth, hills springing up where he coughed, and
sky-cleaving mountains where he leaped.[430]

As in other countries, a number of legends are current respecting
various animals. Thus the Old Ritualists will not eat the crayfish
(_rak_), holding that it was created by the Devil. On the other hand
the snake (_uzh_, the harmless or common snake) is highly esteemed,
for tradition says that when the Devil, in the form of a mouse, had
gnawed a hole in the Ark, and thereby endangered the safety of Noah
and his family, the snake stopped up the leak with its head.[431] The
flesh of the horse is considered unclean, because when the infant
Saviour was hidden in the manger the horse kept eating the hay under
which the babe was concealed, whereas the ox not only would not touch
it, but brought back hay on its horns to replace what the horse had
eaten. According to an old Lithuanian tradition, the shape of the sole
is due to the fact that the Queen of the Baltic Sea once ate one half
of it and threw the other half into the sea again. A legend from the
Kherson Government accounts for it as follows. At the time of the
Angelical Salutation, the Blessed Virgin told the Archangel Gabriel
that she would give credit to his words "if a fish, one side of which
had already been eaten, were to come to life again. That very moment
the fish came to life, and was put back in the water."

With the birds many graceful legends are connected. There is a bird,
probably the peewit, which during dry weather may be seen always on
the wing, and piteously crying _Peet, Peet_,[432] as if begging for
wate