Chapter Iii. Mythic And Ritual Songs : p. 186 CHAPTER III. MYTHIC AND RITUAL SONGS. EACH season of the year has its own songs set apart for it in Russia, hallowed by old traditions, and linked with customs of which the original meaning has, in most cases, long been forgotten, but which still retain much of that firm hold up...
Preface : p. v PREFACE. WHEN the present volume was originally planned it was intended to contain an account of Russian folklore in general--of the stories, legends, riddles, proverbs, and epic as well as lyric poems, which oral tradition has preserved among the Russian peasantry. But I soon found th...
Section Iii. Storyland Beings : SECTION III.--STORYLAND BEINGS. BESIDES the spiritual beings in whom the Russian peasant actually believes as haunting his house, or making themselves a habitation in the neighbouring woods and waters, there are a few fantastic creatures who belong for the most part only to his story-world, with...
Preface To The Second Edition : p. x PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. A work has recently been published, to which, had I seen it before my book went to press, I should have made frequent reference--Professor Bernhard Schmidt's "Das Volksleben der Neugriechen und das hellenische Alterthum". The similarity between the folk-lore...
Untitled : SONGS OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE BY W. R. S. RALSTON [1872] This book, despite its title, is a treasure-trove of Slavic mythology, tradition, folklore and ethnography. There "are" plenty of songs, not only from Russia but every part of the Slavic region from Serbia to Siberia. The songs are used...
Section Ii. Demigods And Fairies : p. 106 SECTION II.--DEMIGODS AND FAIRIES. FROM the Gods of the Eastern Slavonians we may now turn to the inferior inhabitants of their spirit-world. In considering these we have no longer to deal almost exclusively with the past, for they still, to a considerable degree, retain their hold...
Appendix B : p. 440 APPENDIX B. A few words about the measures of the songs may be considered useful. The following specimens are given by Sakharof in his "Pyesni Russkago Naroda" 1. The Khorovod Songs are as follows:-- The "Dance Songs " are usually in one of the following metres;-- p. 441 Of the Svyatki...
Appendix A. Bibliography : p. 437 APPENDIX A. The following are the Russian books to which I am principally indebted. In alluding to them in the foot-notes to the present volume I have frequently given only the initials of their titles, just as I have often represented the words "Deutsche Mythologie" by the letters D. M...
Chapter Iv. Marriage Songs : p. 262 CHAPTER IV. MARRIAGE SONGS. HAVING formed some idea of the various other divisions of the "Obrydnuiya Pyesni", or Ritual Songs--many of them relics of pagan worship or mythical doctrine which, after having undergone a more or less serious change, have come down to our own times, and still...
Chapter I. Introductory : p. 1 THE SONGS OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. BEFORE entering upon the consideration of the more important features of the poetical folk-lore of Russia--the relies of mythic and ritual song, the remains of a wide-spread system of sorcery which have drifted down to our days...
Chapter Vi. Sorcery And Witchcraft : p. 345 CHAPTER VI. SORCERY AND WITCHCRAFT. THE ideas which were prevalent among the heathen Slavonians with respect to the life beyond the grave, and their belief in the close communion of mortals with the inhabitants of the spiritual world, are of themselves sufficient to account...
Chapter V. Funeral Songs : p. 309 CHAPTER V. FUNERAL SONGS. FROM the gaiety of the epithalamium we now abruptly pass to the melancholy of the dirge. Marriage and death were often brought into strange fellowship by at least some of the Old Slavonians. Strongly impressed with the idea that those whom the nuptial bond had...
Chapter Ii. Section I. The Old Gods : p. 80 CHAPTER II. MYTHOLOGY. SECTION I.--THE OLD GODS. AT some remote period, of which very little is known with certainty, but when, it may be supposed, what are now the various Slavonic peoples spoke the same tongue and worshipped the same gods, some kind of mythological system, in all...
Title Page : THE SONGS OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE, AS ILLUSTRATIVE OF SLAVONIC MYTHOLOGY AND RUSSIAN SOCIAL LIFE. BY W. E. S. RALSTON, M.A. OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM, AUTHOR OF "KRILOF AND HIS FABLES." SECOND EDITION. London, Ellis & Green [1872] Scanned , February, 2003. J.B. Hare, Redactor. This Book Is In The Public...