inent parts were always played by human representatives of a goat
and a bear. Some of the party would be disguised as "Lazaruses," that
is, as the blind beggars who bear that name, and whose plaintive
strains have resounded all over Russia from the earliest times to the
present day. The rest disguised themselves as they best could, a
certain number of them being generally supposed to play the part of
thieves desirous to break in and steal. When, after a time, they were
admitted into the room where the Christmas guests were assembled, the
goat and the bear would dance a merry round together, the Lazaruses
would sing their "dumps so dull and heavy," and the rest of the
performers would exert themselves to produce exhilaration. Even among
the upper classes it was long the custom at this time of year for the
young people to dress up and visit their neighbours in disguise. Thus
in Count Tolstoy's "Peace and War," a novel which aims at giving a
true account of the Russia of the early part of the present century,
there is a charming description of a visit of this kind paid by the
younger members of one family to another. On a bright frosty night the
sledges are suddenly ordered, and the young people dress up, and away
they drive across the crackling snow to a country house six miles off,
all the actors creating a great sensation, but especially the fair
maiden Sonya, who proves irresistible when clad in her cousin's hussar
uniform and adorned with an elegant moustache. Such mummers as these
would lay aside their disguises with a light conscience, but the
peasant was apt to feel a depressing qualm when the sports were over;
and it is said that, even at the present day, there are rustics who do
not venture to go to church, after having taken part in a mumming,
until they have washed off their guilt by immersing themselves in the
benumbing waters of an ice-hole.

Next to the mumming, what the Church most objected to was the
divination always practised at Christmas festivals. With one of its
forms a number of songs have been associated, termed _podblyudnuiya_,
as connected with a _blyudo_, a dish or bowl. Into some vessel of this
kind the young people drop tokens. A cloth is then thrown over it, and
the various objects are drawn out, one after another, to the sound of
songs, from the tenor of which the owners deduce omens relative to
their future happiness. As bread and salt are also thrown into the
bowl, the ceremony may be suppo