THE MIZGIR

A Russian Fairy Tale Story

  In the olden years, long long ago, with the spring-tide fair and
  the summer's heat there came on the world distress and shame.
  For gnats and flies began to swarm, biting folks and letting
  their warm blood flow.

  Then the Spider[67] appeared, the hero bold, who, with waving
  arms, weaved webs around the highways and byways in
  which the gnats and flies were most to be found.

  A ghastly Gadfly, coming that way, stumbled straight into
  the Spider's snare. The Spider, tightly squeezing her throat,
  prepared to put her out of the world. From the Spider the
  Gadfly mercy sought.

  "Good father Spider! please not to kill me. I've ever so
  many little ones. Without me they'll be orphans left, and from
  door to door have to beg their bread and squabble with dogs."

  Well, the Spider released her. Away she flew, and everywhere
  humming and buzzing about, told the flies and gnats of
  what had occurred.

  "Ho, ye gnats and flies! Meet here beneath this ash-tree's
  roots. A spider has come, and, with waving of arms and weaving
  of nets, has set his snares in all the ways to which the flies
  and gnats resort. He'll catch them, every single one!"

  They flew to the spot; beneath the ash-tree's roots they hid,
  and lay there as though they were dead. The Spider came,
  and there he found a cricket, a beetle, and a bug.

  "O Cricket!" he cried, "upon this mound sit and take
  snuff! Beetle, do thou beat a drum. And do thou crawl, O
  Bug, the bun-like, beneath the ash, and spread abroad this news
  of me, the Spider, the wrestler, the hero bold--that the Spider,
  the wrestler, the hero bold, no longer in the world exists; that
  they have sent him to Kazan; that in Kazan, upon a block,
  they've chopped his head off, and the block destroyed."

  On the mound sat the Cricket and took snuff. The Beetle
  smote upon the drum. The Bug crawled in among the ash-tree's
  roots, and cried:--

  "Why have ye fallen? Wherefore as in death do ye lie
  here? Truly no longer lives the Spider, the wrestler, the hero
  bold. They've sent him to Kazan and in Kazan they've chopped
  his head off on a block, and afterwards destroyed the block."

  The gnats and flies grew blithe and merry. Thrice they
  crossed themselves, then out they flew--and straight into the
  Spider's snares. Said he:--

  "But seldom do ye come! I would that ye would far more
  often come to visit me! to quaff my wine and beer, and pay me
  tribute!"

This story is specially interesting in the original, inasmuch as it
is rhymed throughout, although printed as prose. A kind of lilt is
perceptible in many of the Skazkas, and traces of rhyme are often to
be detected in them, but "The Mizgir's" mould is different from
theirs. Many stories also exist in an artificially versified form, but
their movement differs entirely from that of the naturally cadenced
periods of the ordinary Skazka, or of such rhymed prose as that of
"The Mizgir."