Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, November, 1878

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 mediæval 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 personæ of Caucasian popular tales such Old-Testament heroes as Jonah and Solomon, and such historical characters as the Roman Cæsars. 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 - Mohammedan fasts generally end with the first sight of the new moon.] 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 aërial 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.