THE TWO FRIENDS

A Ghost Story from Russia

  In the days of old there lived in a certain village two young
  men. They were great friends, went to _besyedas_ together, in
  fact, regarded each other as brothers. And they made this
  mutual agreement. Whichever of the two should marry first
  was to invite his comrade to his wedding. And it was not to
  make any difference whether he was alive or dead.

  About a year after this one of the young men fell ill and
  died. A few months later his comrade took it into his head to
  get married. So he collected all his kinsmen, and set off to
  fetch his bride. Now it happened that they drove past the
  graveyard, and the bridegroom recalled his friend to mind, and
  remembered his old agreement. So he had the horses stopped,
  saying:

  "I'm going to my comrade's grave. I shall ask him to come
  and enjoy himself at my wedding. A right trusty friend was
  he to me."

  So he went to the grave and began to call aloud:

  "Comrade dear! I invite thee to my wedding."

  Suddenly the grave yawned, the dead man arose, and said:

  "Thanks be to thee, brother, that thou hast fulfilled thy
  promise. And now, that we may profit by this happy chance,
  enter my abode. Let us quaff a glass apiece of grateful drink."

  "I'd have gone, only the marriage procession is stopping
  outside; all the folks are waiting for me."

  "Eh, brother!" replied the dead man, "surely it won't take
  long to toss off a glass!"

  The bridegroom jumped into the grave. The dead man
  poured him out a cup of liquor. He drank it off--and a hundred
  years passed away.

  "Quaff another cup, dear friend!" said the dead man.

  He drank a second cup--two hundred years passed away.

  "Now, comrade dear, quaff a third cup!" said the dead
  man, "and then go, in God's name, and celebrate thy marriage!"

  He drank the third cup--three hundred years passed away.

  The dead man took leave of his comrade. The coffin lid fell;
  the grave closed.

  The bridegroom looked around. Where the graveyard had
  been, was now a piece of waste ground. No road was to be
  seen, no kinsmen, no horses. All around grew nettles and tall
  grass.

  He ran to the village--but the village was not what it used
  to be. The houses were different; the people were all strangers
  to him. He went to the priest's--but the priest was not the one
  who used to be there--and told him about everything that had
  happened. The priest searched through the church-books, and
  found that, three hundred years before, this occurrence had
  taken place: a bridegroom had gone to the graveyard on his
  wedding-day, and had disappeared. And his bride, after some
  time had passed by, had married another man.

      [The "Rip van Winkle" story is too well known to
      require more than a passing allusion. It was doubtless
      founded on one of the numerous folk-tales which
      correspond to the Christian legend of "The Seven
      Sleepers of Ephesus"--itself an echo of an older tale
      (see Baring Gould, "Curious Myths," 1872, pp. 93-112,
      and Cox, "Mythology of the Aryan Nations," i.
      413)--and to that of the monk who listens to a bird
      singing in the convent garden, and remains entranced
      for the space of many years: of which latter legend a
      Russian version occurs in Chudinsky's collection (No.
      17, pp. 92-4). Very close indeed is the resemblance
      between the Russian story of "The Two Friends," and
      the Norse "Friends in Life and Death" (Asbjoernsen's
      New Series, No. 62, pp. 5-7). In the latter the
      bridegroom knocks hard and long on his dead friend's
      grave. At length its occupant appears, and accounts
      for his delay by saying he had been far away when the
      first knocks came, and so had not heard them. Then he
      follows the bridegroom to church and from church, and
      afterwards the bridegroom sees him back to his tomb.
      On the way the living man expresses a desire to see
      something of the world beyond the grave, and the
      corpse fulfils his wish, having first placed on his
      head a sod cut in the graveyard. After witnessing many
      strange sights, the bridegroom is told to sit down and
      wait till his guide returns. When he rises to his
      feet, he is all overgrown with mosses and shrub (var
      han overvoxen med Mose og Busker), and when he reaches
      the outer world he finds all things changed.]

But from these dim sketches of a life beyond, or rather within the
grave, in which memories of old days and old friendships are preserved
by ghosts of an almost genial and entirely harmless disposition, we
will now turn to those more elaborate pictures in which the dead are
represented under an altogether terrific aspect. It is not as an
incorporeal being that the visitor from the other world is represented
in the Skazkas. He comes not as a mere phantom, intangible,
impalpable, incapable of physical exertion, haunting the dwelling
which once was his home, or the spot to which he is drawn by the
memory of some unexpiated crime. It is as a vitalized corpse that he
comes to trouble mankind, often subject to human appetites, constantly
endowed with more than human strength and malignity. His apparel is
generally that of the grave, and he cannot endure to part with it, as
may be seen from the following story--