hrough the earth, Komor was
destroyed by fire, and Arabia was afflicted by a sea-monster which
demanded a human victim every day. This victim was selected by lot; and
one day the lot fell upon the king; but at the suggestion of the queen,
who hated her daughter, Elizabeth the Fair, the girl was sent in his
place, under the pretext that she was going to meet her bridegroom.
Yegory the Brave comes to her assistance, as Perseus did to the
assistance of Andromeda, but lies down for a nap while awaiting the
arrival of the dragon. The beast approaches; Elizabeth dares not awaken
Yegory, but a "burning tear" from her right eye arouses him. He attacks
the dragon with his spear, and his "heroic steed" (which is sometimes a
white mule) tramples on it, after the fashion with which we are familiar
in art. Then he binds Elizabeth's sash, which is "five and forty ells in
length," about the dragon's jaws, and bids the maiden have three
churches built in honor of her deliverance: one to St. Nicholas and the
Holy Trinity, one to the All-Holy Birth-giver of God, and one to Yegory
the Brave. Elizabeth the Fair then returns to town, leading the tamed
dragon by her sash, to the terror of the inhabitants and to the disgust
of her mother. The three churches are duly built, and Christianity is
promptly adopted as the state religion of Arabia. In another ballad,
Yegory is imprisoned for thirty years in a pit under the ground, because
he will not accept the "Latin-Mussulman faith."

Among the most ancient religious ballads, properly speaking, are: "The
Dove Book," "The Merciful Woman of Compassion" (or "The Alleluia
Woman"), "The Wanderings of the All-Holy Birth-giver of God," in
addition to the songs about Yegory the Brave, already mentioned. The
groundwork of "The Dove Book" is of very ancient heathen origin, and
almost identical with the oldest religious songs of the Greeks. The book
itself is somewhat suggestive of the "little book" in Revelation. "The
Dove Book" falls from Alatyr, the "burning white stone on the Island of
Buyan," the heathen Paradise, which corresponds to our Fortunate Isles
of the Blest, in the Western Sea, but lies far towards sunrise, in the
"Ocean Sea." The heathen significance of this stone is not known, but it
is cleverly explained in "The Dove Book" as the stone whereon Christ
stood when he preached to his disciples. This "little book," "forty
fathoms long and twenty wide," was written by St. John the Evangelist,
and