The Dead Witch

The Dead Witch

THE DEAD WITCH.[26]

There was once an old woman who was a terrible witch, and

she had a daughter and a granddaughter. The time came for

the old crone to die, so she summoned her daughter and gave

her these instructions:

"Mind, daughter! when I'm dead, don't you wash my body

with lukewarm water; but fill a cauldron, make it boil its very

hottest, and then with that boiling water regularly scald me all

over."

After saying this, the witch lay ill two or three days, and

then died. The daughter ran round to all her neighbors, begging

them to come and help her to wash the old woman, and

meantime the little granddaughter was left all alone in the cottage.

And this is what she saw there. All of a sudden there

crept out from beneath the stove two demons--a big one and

a tiny one--and they ran up to the dead witch. The old demon

seized her by the feet, and tore away at her so that he stripped

off all her skin at one pull. Then he said to the little demon:

"Take the flesh for yourself, and lug it under the stove."

So the little demon flung his arms round the carcase, and

dragged it under the stove. Nothing was left of the old woman

but her skin. Into it the old demon inserted himself, and then

he lay down just where the witch had been lying.

Presently the daughter came back, bringing a dozen other

women with her, and they all set to work laying out the corpse.

"Mammy," says the child, "they've pulled granny's skin off

while you were away."

"What do you mean by telling such lies?"

"It's quite true, Mammy! There was ever such a blackie

came from under the stove, and he pulled the skin off, and got

into it himself."

"Hold your tongue, naughty child! you're talking nonsense!"

cried the old crone's daughter; then she fetched a big cauldron,

filled it with cold water, put it on the stove, and heated it till it

boiled furiously. Then the women lifted up the old crone, laid

her in a trough, took hold of the cauldron, and poured the whole

of the boiling water over her at once. The demon couldn't

stand it. He leaped out of the trough, dashed through the

doorway, and disappeared, skin and all. The women stared:

"What marvel is this?" they cried. "Here was the dead

woman, and now she isn't here. There's nobody left to lay out

or to bury. The demons have carried her off before our very

eyes!"[27]

A Russian peasant funeral is preceded or accompanied by a

considerable amount of wailing, which answers in some respect to the

Irish "keening." To the zaplachki,[28] or laments, which are uttered

on such occasions--frequently by hired wailers, who closely resemble

the Corsican "vociferators," the modern Greek "myrologists"--allusions

are sometimes made in the Skazkas. In the "Fox-wailer,"[29] for

example--one of the variants of the well-known "Jack and the

Beanstalk" story--an old man puts his wife in a bag and attempts to

carry her up the beanstalk to heaven. Becoming tired on the way, he

drops the bag, and the old woman is killed. After weeping over her

dead body he sets out in search of a Wailer. Meeting a bear, he cries,

"Wail a bit, Bear, for my old woman! I'll give you a pair of nice

white fowls." The bear growls out "Oh, dear granny of mine! how I

grieve for thee!" "No, no!" says the old man, "you can't wail." Going

a little further he tries a wolf, but the wolf succeeds no better than

the bear. At last a fox comes by, and on being appealed to, begins to

cry aloud "Turu-Turu, grandmother! grandfather has killed thee!"--a

wail which pleases the widower so much that he hands over the fowls to

the fox at once, and asks, enraptured, for "that strain again!"[30]

One of the most curious of the stories which relate to a village

burial,--one in which also the feeling with which the Russian

villagers sometimes regard their clergy finds expression--is that

called--