Chapter V: Epilogue

Forth in the sunlit, rain-bathed air we stepped,
Sweet with the dripping grass and flowering vine,
And saw through irised clouds the pale sun shine.
Back o'er the hills the rain-mist slowly crept
Like a transparent curtain's silvery sheen;
And fronting us the painted bow was arched,
Whereunder the majestic cloud-shapes marched:
In the wet, yellow light the dazzling green
Of lawn and bush and tree seemed stained with blue.
Our hearts o'erflowed with peace. With smiles we spake
Of partings in the past, of courage new,
Of high achievement, of the dreams that make
A wonder and a glory of our days,
And all life's music but a hymn of praise.

EMMA LAZARUS.

UNWRITTEN LITERATURE OF THE CAUCASIAN MOUNTAINEERS.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

All or nearly all of the unwritten literature of the Caucasian mountaineers may be referred to one or the other of three great classes. First. Literature which is intended simply to amuse or entertain, including popular tales, beast-fables, anecdotes, riddles and burlesques. Second. Literature which grows out of, and afterward reacts upon, the popular love of glory, of war, of adventure and of heroism, including historical ballads, death-songs and the fiery orations of the mullahs. And third. Literature which serves merely as an outlet for the emotions. A fourth class might perhaps be made of the prayers, exhortations, pious traditions and edifying anecdotes of the theological schools and the mosques, but such productions are more or less alike among all Mohammedan peoples, and those current in the Caucasus are interesting only as illustrations of a peculiar phase of Oriental mysticism--viz. the philosophy of the Murids.

Of these three classes, that which includes anecdotes, beast-fables and popular tales is, although not the most original, by far the most varied and extensive, comprising as it does full four-fifths of the entire body of Caucasian traditionary lore. The popular tales already collected by the officers of the Caucasian mountain administration at Tiflis would make a volume of four or five hundred pages, and as yet the collectors have hardly gone outside the limits of the single province of Daghestan. For the most part, however, these stories are only variants of well-known Aryan and Turanian originals, and are valuable chiefly for their local coloring and for the light which they throw upon the tastes, the habits and the mental processes of a peculiar and long-isolated people. Yet the fact that they are among the oldest heirlooms of the human race does not detract in the least from their value as indices to character. On the contrary, it adds to it by linking them with the folk-lore of the world, and enabling the student to compare them with their original types and understand and estimate aright the significance of the variations. Every one knows how a story is unconsciously varied, colored and adapted in the course of repeated narration to accord with the views, knowledge and tastes of its successive narrators, and how differently the same intellectual framework of fact or fancy will be filled up by the imaginations of different races. This working-over process, which has been going on in the Caucasus without interference and without literary restraint for hundreds--perhaps thousands--of years, has given to Caucasian stories a peculiar psychological interest which in their original forms they never could have had. The themes upon which they were originally founded are most of them perfectly familiar to every student of comparative folk-lore, but the modifications which they have undergone, the changed forms in which they reappear, are all new, and every such change or modification points to some peculiarity in the character of the people who originated it. The variations of a story, therefore, are so many "Fraunhofer's lines" which reveal to us the nature of the intellectual medium through which it has passed. For these reasons the stories, fables and songs which are herewith presented must not be judged by their intrinsic value as literature alone, but by the light which they throw upon the life, tastes, temperament and artistic methods of a semi-barbarous but naturally gifted people.

The space to which I am limited will enable me to give only one or two specimens from each of the three classes into which I have for convenience' sake divided Caucasian literature. I will begin with one of the shortest of its popular tales, a humorous narrative entitled "The Hero Naznai." This story, in one form or another, is common to all branches of the Aryan family, but the mountaineers have so modified and improved it as to make it almost their own. It recites the adventures and achievements of a certain worthless coward who is made by the force of circumstances to appear a hero.

_The Hero Naznai._--Listen! listen! There was and there was not. The fox lived with the hare in the fields, the bear lived with the wild-boar in the forest, and in the land of Daghestan there lived a hero, a scurvy fellow without brains or bravery. When he should have been in front he was behind; when he should have been behind he was in front; and if his wife only lifted the poker he hid himself behind the door. Oh, he was very brave! He was called "the hero Naznai." One night he went out of doors to get a drink: it was bright moonlight. Beside him, with a pitcher in her hand, stood his wife. Without his wife he never went out at night: he said, because he didn't like to leave her alone; she said, because he was afraid to go out of doors without her. "What a beautiful night!" exclaimed Naznai--"the very night for a raid."--"Look out!" cried his wife suddenly: "there's a wolf." Naznai, trembling with fear, ran and climbed up into a cart, almost breaking his neck in his haste. His wife led him into the house and said, "I am disgusted with your cowardice, and I am disgusted with you: leave my house this instant (the house belonged to her), or you shall never see another peaceful day: every God-given day, morning and evening, I will pound you with the poker." Naznai begged her to let him stay until daybreak. She consented. In the morning he slung his miserable old sabre over his shoulder and started. Walking and strolling along, he came to a place where some one had been eating fruit, and where there had gathered a great swarm of flies. Picking up a big flat stone, he clapped it down on the very spot, lifted it up, looked, and there lay exactly five hundred dead flies. Then he went on until he reached a certain town, where he inquired for a blacksmith. Having found one, he ordered him to cut on the blade of his sabre this inscription: "The hero Naznai, killer of five hundred at a blow."

Then he went on, on--travelled little, travelled much, travelled as far as a frog can jump--until he came at last to a country where he had never before been, and where he was himself unknown, and entered the capital city of a great king. It was already growing dark, and Naznai was beginning to wonder where he should spend the night, when he heard not far away the sound of fifes, drums and singing. "That's the place for me," he said to himself: "there's nothing worse than a dry throat and an empty stomach." So he went in the direction of the music. When he came to the place he looked, and there stood a great building surrounded by a spacious courtyard, all full of men and women who were eating, drinking and singing. "Will you receive a guest?" inquired Naznai, entering the courtyard. The servants rushed up to him, took his sabre, led him into the house, gave him the seat of honor, and made him eat and drink until he was full up to the very nostrils. The house was the palace of the king's vizier, and they were celebrating that night the wedding of his son. When Naznai had eaten and drunk all he could--enough to last him for a month, the clever rascal!--the vizier asked him, "Where do you come from, guest? Where is your city? Of what country are you? Are you buying or selling?"--"Why should I talk about myself?" replied Naznai. "Look at my sabre: that will tell you who I am." The vizier unsheathed the sabre, looked at it, stared first at Naznai and then at the weapon, and finally rushed, sabre in hand, straight to the king. The king was even more astonished than the vizier. He sent for all the eloquent fools in the city, called together all the wise men who hadn't any judgment, and held a great council. They all said to the king, "You must take the hero Naznai from the land of Daghestan into your service, no matter at what cost, no matter how much you may have to reward him: so long as he lives you will be as safe as if you were behind an iron wall." Then the king sent for Naznai, and the vizier brought him in. "Hero Naznai from the land of Daghestan," said the king--"first I, then you, I the father, you the son--take my only daughter: live with me and defend my kingdom."--"Hard as it is for me," replied Naznai, twisting his moustache, "I will do as you desire." That very night he married the king's daughter, and went to sleep in her arms on a bed from which if one should fall out not even so much as one's bones could ever be gathered together again.[3]

In the course of a week Naznai was summoned to the king, and found him sitting on his throne surrounded by a great multitude of people. "My dear son, Hero Naznai," said the king, "I gave you my daughter and made you my son with the hope that when a black day should come upon me you would give me your help. The black day has come: a great dragon gives no peace to my flocks and my herds. Twice every year, at certain known times, he makes his appearance: to-morrow is the day of his coming. You must go out to meet him: who should go if not you, the killer of five hundred men at a blow?" No sooner did Naznai catch the word "dragon" than his heart sank within him, and hardly had the king finished speaking when he ran furiously out of doors. Some said that he had turned coward: others said, "No: he ran out filled with rage against the dragon." In the mean time Naznai had gone home; and that night, as soon as his wife fell asleep, he took to his heels to save his head. He ran and ran and ran until he was so tired that he could run no farther, and at last came to a great forest. Fearing to sleep on the ground, he climbed up into a tree, and, holding fast to a limb with each hand, he fell asleep. When he awoke he looked down, and there, coiled around the trunk of the tree and fast asleep, lay the dragon. Overcome with terror, Naznai lost his hold, fell from the tree and came down plump on the dragon's back. The dragon thought that God in His wrath had struck him with lightning: his heart burst and he gave up the ghost. Naznai started to run, but, looking over his shoulder, he saw that the dragon did not move. Then he knew that it was dead, and going back he cut off its head and went with it to the king. "Then that is what you call a dragon, is it?" he demanded: "in our Daghestan we have cats like that. Why didn't you send some of your children after him, and not give me so much trouble?" The king could think of nothing to say, and so was left with his mouth open.

After a little time the king sent for Naznai again, and said to him, "My dear son-in-law, Hero Naznai, three _narts_ [giants] have invaded my kingdom and are harassing my people with their raids: to-morrow you must go out against them." Again Naznai's heart sank within him, and he ran home. At midnight he fled a second time from the city, took refuge in the same forest as before, and, climbing up the very same tree, went to sleep. When it began to grow light he looked down, and there were the three narts, who, having hoppled their horses and turned them out to graze, were themselves resting under the tree. Naznai's soul went down into his very toes: he almost fell from the tree in a swoon. Suddenly one of the narts said to another, "Now that the king has in his service the hero Naznai, who kills five hundred at a blow, we must be more careful than we have been, and not turn our horses out in this way to graze."--"We have never been afraid of any living thing yet," rejoined the other: "are we going to let him scare us?" This led to a dispute which ended in a quarrel, and the three narts all killed one another. Then Naznai climbed down out of the tree, cut off their heads, stripped them of their clothes and weapons, which he loaded upon two of their horses, and, mounting the third, rode back to the city. Throwing down the heads before the king, he said, "Then those are your narts? We should have called them orphan children in our Daghestan. What was the use of sending a man after them? Women would have done as well." The king was surprised, so were all the people.

A little while afterward the king summoned Naznai for the third time. "My dear son-in-law," he said, "an infidel king has declared war against me. Tomorrow at the head of my army you must invade his dominions: otherwise the infidel hordes will come down like grass of the earth and like the stars of heaven, and surround our capital." Again Naznai ran home with a quaking heart. That night the king stationed a hundred sentinels around the hero's house to restrain him, lest his rash bravery should impel him to go off alone in search of the infidel horde. In vain he tried again and again to escape from the house: the sentinels always stopped him, and his wife worried over him as if she were afraid that he would be carried away by some passing crow. In the morning the king assembled all his forces, put Naznai in the midst of them, and said, "March now, and God go with you! Whoever does not obey my son-in-law's orders, whoever does not do exactly as he sees him do, is a traitor." The army marched away, taking one step forward to two or three steps backward, until they came in sight of the infidel forces. Then Naznai's heart failed him: he grew hot under his clothes. He took off his shoes, so as to be able to run away faster, then his coat, and finally stripped himself as bare as a cake of ice. The soldiers all followed his example, as the king had ordered. Just at that moment a hungry wandering dog ran past, and seizing one of Naznai's shoes (they were greased with mutton tallow: may their owner die!) set off with it in the direction of the infidel army. "Hm!" exclaimed Naznai: "so you'll make me a laughing-stock too, will you?" and, naked as he was, he started in pursuit. After him rushed the whole naked army. "Those are not men: they are devils," thought the infidels; and, filled with terror, they scattered in all directions, throwing away their weapons and abandoning their treasure. Naznai gathered up all the booty, and returned at the head of the army to the kingdom of his father-in-law. Upon their arrival they found that the king was dead, and the army with one voice chose Naznai as his successor. Ever afterward, when the conversation turned upon heroism and notable exploits, Naznai used to say, "They who will may boast of courage: _I_ would rather have good luck."

If the reader will take the trouble to compare the above rendering of this story with the Hindoo variant entitled "The Valiant Chattee-Maker,"[4] and the closely-related German version called by Grimm "The Valiant Little Tailor,"[5] he will see how far it surpasses them both in unity of conception, in coherence of detail, in keen appreciation of humor and in skill of literary treatment. The grotesque statement of impossibilities with which it begins is the Caucasian story-teller's conventional method of forewarning his hearers that they are about to listen to a burlesque, a pure extravaganza, lying entirely outside the domain of fact and reality. There is no attempt made to give it the air of truth: on the contrary, the narrator takes especial pains to demolish what little intrinsic probability the story has by introducing the conventional formula, "Travelled little, travelled much, travelled as far as a frog can jump," etc. This, like the jingle of a court-jester's bells, is intended to remind the hearer that nothing is to be taken seriously.

It is remarkable that men living in such wild, gloomy fastnesses as the tremendous ravines of the Eastern Caucasus--men whose characters have been hardened and tempered in the hot fires of war and the vendetta--men who have the pride and fortitude of American Indians with the sternness and ferocity of Scandinavian Berserkers--should still be capable of appreciating and enjoying such anecdotes as "The Kettle that Died" and "The Big Turnip," and such popular tales as "The Hero Naznai." The fierce lust of war, which is perhaps the most salient feature of the mountaineer's character, and the sternness and hardness of mental and moral fibre which it tends to produce, are generally supposed to be incompatible not only with the delicacy of perception upon which humor largely depends, but with the very taste for humor itself; and yet in the Caucasian mountaineer they are coexistent. How versatile the Caucasian character is, and how wide is the range of its tastes and sympathies, I shall show more fully hereafter.

The characters which figure in Caucasian popular tales are very numerous, and are taken, as might be expected, from a great variety of sources. There are the stereotyped three brothers of German and Russian stories; the dragons, giants, were-wolves, wicked magicians, and beautiful girls married to bears, of all Aryan folk-lore; and sundry nondescript personages with superhuman powers which have no exact analogues among the other Aryan races, and seem to be original products of Caucasian fancy. Among the latter are _karts_, female ogres with cannibalistic tastes; _narts_, or giants of protean shapes and variable dispositions; and certain mysterious equestrians who are always described as "hare-riders." These three classes of supernatural beings, karts, narts and hare-riders, are known to the whole body of the Caucasian mountaineers without distinction of tribe or race; and it is a significant fact that the two first mentioned have everywhere and in all Caucasian languages the same names. By whom they were originally invented, and from what tongue their appellations were derived, philologists can as yet only conjecture. Among the Ossetes, who are unquestionably an Aryan race, narts have a quasi-historical existence like the Knights of the Round Table, and their lives and adventures have been woven by popular tradition into a sort of mediaeval epic resembling the _Nibelungen Lied_ of Germany. Elsewhere, among the Chechenses, the Avars and the Circassians, narts are simply giants of the orthodox nursery type.

It is remarkable that we should also find among the _dramatis personae_ of Caucasian popular tales such Old-Testament heroes as Jonah and Solomon, and such historical characters as the Roman Caesars. The former were very likely introduced by the Jews and Arabs, whose descendants form no inconsiderable part of the present population, but the Roman emperors must have gained a foothold in Caucasian traditional lore before the downfall of the Byzantine Empire, and may have done so as long ago as the reign of Augustus, when the lowlands of the Caucasus were under Roman rule.

Next to anecdotes and stories in importance and popularity come beast-fables, of which the mountaineers have an almost endless number and variety. Animals, especially birds and foxes, figure more or less extensively throughout Caucasian literature, but in the beast-fables, properly so called, they have the whole stage to themselves, and think, act and talk in perfect independence of natural laws and limitations. The view taken by the mountaineers of the animal world seems to be the view of the Aryan races generally. With them, as with us, the fox is the embodiment of cunning, the ass of stupidity, and the bear of clumsy strength and good-humored simplicity. If they can be said to have a favorite animal, it is the wolf, whose predatory life, ferocity when at bay and ability to die fighting and in silence comprise all that in a mountaineer's eyes is most worthy of admiration. "Short-eared wolf" is a Caucasian girl's pet name for her lover, and "wolf of the North" was the most complimentary title which the Chechenses could think of to head an address to a distinguished Russian general whose gallantry in battle had won their respect. The serpent, in the Caucasus, is the Cardinal Mezzofanti of the brute world. To know as many languages as a serpent is the _ne plus ultra_ of polyglot erudition. A swaggering coward is compared to a drunken mouse; and many a boaster on the porch of the Caucasian village mosque has been silenced by some sceptical bystander with the well-known quotation from a popular beast-fable: "'What has become of all the cats?' inquired the drunken mouse." Of the Caucasian beast-fables the following is a characteristic specimen:

_The Jackal and the Fox._--Once upon a time a hunter set a trap and baited it with a piece of fat mutton. Along came a hungry fox and discovered it, but, not daring to approach it, she proceeded to walk round and round it at a distance. In the mean time she was joined by a jackal. The fox asked the jackal where he was going. "Oh, I am almost dead with hunger," replied the jackal. "I started to go to the village in search of something to eat, but I am afraid of the dogs."--"Well, Brother Jackal," said the fox, "I know a place not far from here where there lies a big piece of fat mutton: how would you like that?"--"Why don't you eat it yourself?" inquired the jackal.--"I'm now keeping _oroozh_" [a Mohammedan fast], said the fox, "but I'll show it to you." Whereupon she led the jackal to the trap. Hardly had the jackal seized the mutton when the trap sprung and caught him by the neck. In trying to free himself by shaking his head he dislodged the bait, which rolled away to one side. This was all that the fox had waited for: she quickly seized the mutton, and sat down composedly to eat it. "Here!" exclaimed the jackal: "I thought you said you were keeping a fast, and now you are eating."--"I was," replied the fox, "but I have seen the moon,[6] and now I am having a holiday."--"But when am I going to have my holiday?" asked the jackal.--"When the owner of the trap comes," answered the fox, and so saying walked away.

Most of the Caucasian literature to which I have hitherto had occasion to refer is the reflection of the lighter, more genial side of the mountaineer's character, and taken alone would give the impression that he is an amiable, jovial, good-humored fellow with a keen sense of the ludicrous and little knowledge of, or feeling for, the sorrows, the sufferings and the tragedies of life. Such an impression, however, would be a wholly mistaken one; and in order that the reader may see how full of sorrow and suffering and tragedy his life really is, I will, before taking up Caucasian poetry, give some extracts from a code of Caucasian criminal law. I do this partly because the code itself is a legal and literary curiosity, and partly because it shows better than any description could do the state of society in which a Caucasian mountaineer lives:

_Laws of Ootsmee Rustem, Khan of Kaitaga._--1. To the reader of these ordinances a piece of silk from him in whose favor the case shall be decided.

2. He shall not read these laws for any one who has not a paper from the _bek_, with the impression of the bek's seal.

_He who holds his tongue will save his head._

1. He who kills a robber in his sheepfold or his house shall not be punished.

2. He who kills the killer of a robber shall pay two fines and have two blood-enemies.

3. One suspected of robbery shall clear himself by taking the oath of purgation, with seven compurgators.

4. For robbery with murder, a sevenfold fine and seven blood-avengers.

5. For robbery and murder of a woman, a fourteen-fold fine and fourteen blood-avengers.

_He who holds his tongue will save his head._

1. He who assaults a woman with intent to commit outrage shall forfeit a thousand yards of linen to the community.

2. The life-blood of him who carries off a woman and keeps her by force shall count for nothing.

3. If a slave touch a free woman, kill him.

4. He who murders a Jew shall fill a part of his skin with silver and give it to the bek.

_He who holds his tongue will save his head._

1. If one be killed in a fight between a number of persons, and the killer be unknown, the relatives of the killed may count as blood-enemy any one whom they choose of those engaged in the fight.

2. If in a general fight several persons are killed, the relatives of those who die first shall be the blood-seekers of the relatives of those who die last.

3. If one die from wounds inflicted by several persons, count two of them blood-enemies, and after the killing of one take a fine from the other.

4. He who kills another and hides the body shall pay a sevenfold fine and have seven blood-avengers.

_He who holds his tongue will save his head._

1. He who does not at once leave the village where his blood-seekers live shall forfeit one hundred yards of linen for the benefit of the community.

2. If a blood-enemy claim refuge, do not send him away: receive him.

3. If he wishes to go away, let no one travel with him.

4. If one be killed while travelling with a blood-enemy, his blood shall count for nothing.

5. Him through whose betrayal a blood-enemy is killed, count as himself a blood-enemy, with all his family.

_He who holds his tongue will save his head._

1. The bek shall summon the general assembly every year: if he does not, remove him.

2. From him who does not come at the bek's call take a hundred yards of linen.

3. From a country without a ruler, from a community without a general assembly, from a flock without a shepherd, from an army without a leader and from a village without aldermen, no good will come. Let him who has sense think of this.

4. Have a care, bek! Speak the truth. Truth exalts a man and makes his power endure for ever. The earth does not consume, but glorifies, the body of him whom God has blessed.

5. Have a care, people of Kaitaga! Receive the truth. It is by justice and truth that a community becomes great.

The above are only a few extracts from a long and detailed code of criminal law written in Arabic and preserved in the mosque of an East Caucasian village. The separate rules are known as _adats_, or precedents, and the system of jurisprudence founded upon them is called "trial by adat," to distinguish it from the course of procedure laid down in the Koran and known as "trial by _shariat_." It is hardly necessary to say that in such a state of society as that reflected in this barbarous and archaic code of laws there must exist the elements of the profoundest tragedy and almost infinite possibilities of suffering. Out of grief, tragedy and suffering grows the literature of heroism, bearing fruit in such fierce triumphant songs as the one which follows. It is supposed to be sung by the spirit of a mountaineer who has been killed in battle:

THE DEATH-SONG OF THE CHECHENSE.

The earth is drying on my grave, and thou art forgetting me,
O my own mother!
The weeds are overgrowing my burial-place, and they deaden even
thy sorrow, O my aged father!
The tears fall no more from the eyes of my sister, and from her
heart the misery is passing away;
But do not thou forget me, O my elder brother! until thou shalt
have avenged my death;
And do not thou forget me, O my younger brother! until thou
shalt lie beside me.
Thou art hot, O bullet! and thou bringest death, but hast thou
not been my true slave?
Thou art black, O earth! and thou coverest me, but have I not
spurned thee under my very horses' feet?
Thou art cold, O death! but I _have_ been _thy_ master.
My body is the inheritance of earth, but my soul rises in
triumph to heaven.

It would be hard to find in any literature a song which breathes a fiercer, more indomitable, spirit of heroism than this. The mountaineer is dead; he can fight no more; his body lies in the black earth; but his freed soul is as proud, defiant and unconquerable as ever. He takes a fierce delight even beyond the grave in taunting the bullet which has killed him with having once been his slave; in reminding the earth which covers him that he has spurned it under his horses' hoofs; and in mocking and defying even death itself. They have destroyed his body, but nothing has subdued, or ever can subdue, the brave, proud spirit which tenanted it. That, and not the body, was the man's true self, and that still lives to exult over bullet, grave and death.

So far is the true mountaineer from being afraid of death, that he seems to take a savage pleasure in imagining it in its most horrible forms and dwelling upon its most repulsive and terrifying features, merely to have the satisfaction of triumphing over it in fancy. As an illustration of this I give below a part of another Chechense song called "The Song of Khamzat." Khamzat was a celebrated _abrek_, or Caucasian Berserker, who harried the Russian armed line of the Terek with bloody and destructive raids before and during the reign of the great Caucasian hero Shamyl. He was finally overtaken and surrounded by a large Russian force on the summit of a high hill near the river Terek, called the Circassian Gora. Finding it impossible to escape, he and his men slaughtered their horses, built a breastwork of their bodies, and behind this bloody half-living wall fought until they were literally annihilated. The song of which the following are the closing lines was composed in commemoration of Khamzat's heroic defence and death. Just before the final Russian onset he is supposed to see a bird flying over the field of battle in the direction of his native village, and he addresses it as follows:

O aerial bird! carry to Akh Verdi Mohammed, the ruler of Hikka,
our last farewell:
Bid good-bye to our sweethearts, the fair girls of Hikka,
And tell them that our breasts are a wall which will stop the
Russian bullets:
Tell them that we had hoped to lie in the graveyard of our
native village,
Where our sisters would have come to weep over our graves,
Where sorrowful relatives would have gathered to mourn our
death.
But God has not granted us this last favor: instead of the
weeping of sisters,
Over us will be heard the growls of fighting wolves;
Instead of sorrowing relatives, here will assemble clouds of
croaking ravens:
The ravens will drink up our eyes and the bloodthirsty wolves
will devour our bodies.
Tell them all, O bird! that on the Circassian mountain, in the
land of the infidel,
With naked sabres in our hands, we all lie dead.

The reader who merely sees this song on a printed page in an imperfect prose translation can form little conception of the thrilling effect which it produces when sung by an excited woman to the fierce wild music of the Caucasian highlanders amid a group of Khamzat's fiery and sensitive countrymen. Their faces flush with strong emotion, their hands close with nervous grip upon the hilts of their long kinjals, and their bright eyes slowly fill with tears of mingled grief, rage and pity as the excited singer wails out the dying words of their lost leader.

The heroic poetry of the Caucasian mountaineers is largely taken up with recitals of their freebooting exploits and achievements in the valley of Georgia, usually in the form of songs or ballads, which all breathe the same fierce, proud, cruel spirit. In the diction there is very little art. Rhyme, although it is known to the mountaineers, is seldom used, and their poetry is, as a rule, nothing more than rhythmical or blank verse broken into irregular stanzas of from seven to eleven metrical feet. This kind of verse they improvise with great readiness and facility. It seems to be the form of expression which their stronger feelings naturally take. I have heard an Avarian mother chant amid her sobs an improvised but rhythmical lament over the body of her dead child. Rude as Caucasian poetry is, however, in construction, fierce and warlike as it generally is in spirit, one meets occasionally in Caucasian songs with the most delicate and graceful conceptions. Contrast, for example, "The Song of Khamzat" or "The Death-Song of the Chechense" with the following bit of Avarian poetry, which I have taken the liberty of calling:

GLAMOUR.

Come out of doors, O mother! and see what a wonder is here:
Up through the snows of the mountain the flowers of spring
appear.
Come out on the roof, O mother! and see how along the ravine
The glacier-ice is covered with the springtime's leafy green!

There are no flowers, my daughter: 'tis only because thou art
young
That blossoms from under the mountain-snows appear to thee to
have sprung.
There is no grass on the glacier: the blades do not even start;
But thou art in love, and the grass and flowers are springing
in thy heart.

I have space for only one more specimen of Caucasian heroic literature, a brief oration of Kazi Mullah, the friend and teacher of Shamyl and the founder of Caucasian Muridism. An imperfect translation of this speech will be found in Latham's _Races of the Russian Empire_. Copies of it in Arabic were widely circulated throughout Daghestan immediately after its delivery, and it probably contributed more than any other single thing to bring on the general insurrection of the East Caucasian mountaineers in 1832. In the spring of that year the inhabitants of a small aoul or mountain-village in Central Daghestan--I think Khunzakh--were assembled one evening in the walled courtyard of one of its houses under the minaret of the village mosque for the purpose of social enjoyment. Tradition relates that they were celebrating a wedding. A fire had been built in the middle of the courtyard, and around it picturesquely-dressed men and women were singing and dancing to the accompaniment of fifes, kettledrums and tambourines. Suddenly there appeared in the circular gallery of the minaret which overlooked the courtyard the figure of a tall, gray-bearded stranger, a mullah, whose green turban marked his lineal descent from the family of the Prophet. He looked down for a moment with stern displeasure into the fire-lighted courtyard, and then putting his hands to his lips chanted the Mohammedan call to prayers. The music and merrymaking instantly ceased, and the sweet weird chant rang out far and wide through the still evening air over the silent village, dying away at last in a long musical cry of _La illaha il Allah!_ ("There is no God but God"). Amid profound silence Kazi Mullah--for the gray-bearded stranger was that renowned priest--stretched out his hand over the crowded courtyard and with slow stern gravity said:

"Upon all your merrymakings and feasts, upon all your marriages and rejoicings, upon yourselves, your children and your households, upon everything that you do, have and are, rests the awful curse of God! Heaven has marked you with the black seal of eternal damnation because you still grovel in sin and refuse to obey the voice and teachings of our holy Prophet. Your duty is to spread with the sword the light of our holy faith throughout the world; but what have you done? what are you doing? Miserable cowards! without faith and without religion! you pursue eagerly the pleasures of this life, but you despise the law of God and of his holy Prophet. Vain are your selfish prayers--vain is your daily attendance at the mosque. Heaven rejects your heartless sacrifices. The presence of the Russian infidel blocks up the way to the throne of God! Repent, pray, and arm yourselves for the war of the Most High. The hour draws near when I shall call you forth and consecrate you for the holy sacrifice of battle."

This impassioned speech fell like a lighted torch into a perfect powder-magazine of religious enthusiasm. Copies of it in Arabic were borne from village to village by mounted Murids; other mullahs took up Kazi's cry of _gazavat_ (war for the faith), using his speech as a text for their excited harangues; and in less than a month the whole district was in a blaze of insurrection. Kazi Mullah himself was the first victim of the fire of war which his eloquence had kindled. He was killed while fighting desperately at the storming of the aoul of Ghimry by a column of Russian infantry under Baron Rosen, on October 17, 1832.

I have endeavored to give in the preceding songs and in the speech of Kazi Mullah an idea of the nature and the spirit of Caucasian heroic literature. I will turn now in closing to the literature of sorrow and suffering, which is the black shadow cast by heroism across the threshold of domestic life. Heroic literature is the voice of Caucasian manhood: the literature of suffering is the cry of bereaved women.

The following lines are the lament of an Avarian girl whose lover has been killed while making a raid with a troop of Lesghian horsemen through the valley of Georgia:

My beloved went away into the valley of the Alazan,
and as he left me he looked over his shoulder
at every step.
My clear-eyed one rode down into the lowlands of
Georgia, and his horse was fleet and fearless
as a mountain-wolf.
But from the depths of the lowlands has come the
bitter news that our mountain-hawks will never
more return:
From the far-away valley of Georgia have come the
scorching tidings that our lions lie dead in the
pass with broken talons.
O merciful God! if I were only an eagle, that I might
touch once more those cold dead hands!
O almighty One! if I were only a wild dove of the
cliffs, that I might look once more into that
pale dead face!
I envy thee, I envy thee, O jackal of Georgia! thou
feedest upon the bodies of those who wore
weapons of steel!
I envy thee, I envy thee, O raven of the river! thou
drinkest the eyes of those who rode to battle on
swift horses.
The jackal devours the bodies of the warriors who
bore weapons of steel, and skulks away into
the depths of the forest:
The raven drinks up the eyes of those who rode to
battle on swift horses, and with hoarse croaks
vanishes in the blue sky.

There is no attempt in this wild lament to soften or mitigate the horrors of a violent death by throwing around it a halo of heroism and glory. The woman cares not what prodigies of valor her lover performed, but she dwells with self-torturing vividness of imagination upon the helpless and abandoned body which she can never again see or touch, but which the ravens and jackals can tear and mutilate at will.

Compare with this the following lament of a Lesghian woman over the body of her dead husband:

I would stand on the shore of the green ocean if I only knew
That I should see the diamond which has fallen into its surges:
I would climb to the lonely summit of the highest mountain if I
only knew
That I should find a spring flower blossoming in the blue ice.
If one look carefully one may see the diamond which has fallen
into the ocean,
But never again shall I see the life which has gone:
If one search patiently one may find a spring flower rooted in
the blue ice,
But never again shall I find the swift falcon which has flown
away.
Henceforth I live upon an earth which is no longer a world,
And in a world which has no longer a heaven.

There is a certain rude art in the way in which the asserted possibility of two evident impossibilities is made to lead up to and heighten the utter hopelessness of the third. The diamond may be recovered from the depths of the ocean; the flower which has withered and died may spring again even from glacier-ice; but the soul once gone is gone for ever: the great disaster of death is irretrievable even in imagination. There is no hint or suggestion here of any possible resurrection of the body or of reunion beyond the grave: I cannot recall any Caucasian lament in which there is. But whether the omission is due to the breaking down of faith under the strain of grief, or whether it is conventionally improper in a lament to allude to anything which would lighten the sense of bereavement, I do not know.

With these two characteristic illustrations of the form of expression which sorrow takes in Caucasian life, I must close my brief and imperfect sketch of Caucasian literature. I hope I have amply proved the assertions which I made in a previous paper with regard to the originality and innate intellectual capacity of the Caucasian highlanders; but whether I have or not, the reader must, I am sure, admit that the proverbs, songs and anecdotes above translated are at least indications of great latent capability, of unusual versatility of talent, and of a wide range of human feeling and sympathy. It is possible that I overestimate their value on account of my inability to separate the impressions made upon me by the people themselves from those made by their literature; but I am confident that the general outlines of the Caucasian character as I have tried here to sketch them are accurate, and that the reader would fully appreciate and admit the significance of the literature if he could make the personal acquaintance of the people.

In conclusion, I cannot better express my own opinion of the Caucasian mountaineers than by adopting the words of A. Viskovatof, one of the fairest and most discriminating of Russian travellers: "Nature has not properly brought out the moral and intellectual capacity of the Caucasian highlanders. Through the superficial crust of ignorance and wildness you may see in every mountaineer a frank and acute intellect, and, brigand though he may be, he still shows evidences of human feeling and of a soul. His brigandage, indeed, is only the external roughness which results naturally from his education, his circumstances and his mode of life. Beneath it there are intellect, feeling, manliness and strength of character. Under certain conditions of course these very traits go to make up the daring, skilful mountain-brigand whom we know; but separate him from his surroundings, educate him in the civilized world, and you have a capable, energetic, intellectual and feeling man. Love of honor and love of fame are, generally speaking, among the strongest actuating impulses of the mountaineer's character; and these were the very impulses which kept him always hostile to the Russians, which impelled him constantly to engage in partisan warfare, and which enabled him to resist so long and with such terrible strength all Russia's efforts to subdue him. Was it merely for plunder that parties of mountaineers used to assemble in front of our lines and throw themselves furiously upon our outposts? No: the leaders of those parties reminded them in forcible and eloquent speeches of the deeds of their heroic fathers and forefathers, of the glory to be won in battle with the _giours_, of the exploits of their brothers and countrymen who had left their bodies on Russian soil; and they fought for honor and fame. What made the Chechenses hold out so long and so desperately, suffering hunger and peril and hardship, dying, and sending their children to die, in battle? Was it a spirit of blind submission to Shamyl and their religious leaders, or an unreasoning hatred of infidels, or a thirst for plunder and rapine? Not at all. It was the love of independence--the natural devotion of brave men who were fighting for their country, their honor and their freedom."

GEORGE KENNAN.

THE GIFT.

You brought me a flower of spring
When the winter airs were cold,
And the birds began to sing,
And the gloom turned swift to gold.

The world looked chilly and dark,
But you called a flash from the sky:
Your clear eyes kindled a spark
Of splendor that cannot die.

O Love with the heart of Truth!
What is it you lay at my feet?
The bloom of your glorious youth,
Its flower and radiance sweet?

I lift to my lips the flower,
For thanks seem worthless and weak,
And I bless the beautiful hour,
But I have no word to speak.

CELIA THAXTER.

THROUGH WINDING WAYS.