“Thou, oh evil witch of Kíev, bid thy crow fly over the sea of Khvalýnsk, to the house of bronze; bid him peck the fiery snake, bid him gain the seven pud key. She was grim, and she clove to her crow, the evil witch of Kíev. In my old age I cannot roam to the sea, to the ocean, to the isle of Buyán, to the Black Crow. Do thou bid, by my enchanting words, the crow gain me the seven pud key.
“The crow has smitten the house of bronze, has pecked the fiery snake to death, has gained the seven pud key.
“With that key I will unlock the princely castle, the castle of Vladímir, I will gain the knightly gear, the trappings of the knights of Nóvgorod, of the youthful war-men; and in that gear the arquebus cannot fell me, the shots cannot hit me, the warriors and champions, the hosts of Tatary and Kazán cannot hurt me.
“I invoke the servant, a man, a fighter, in the host, who goeth to war with these my potent words.
“My words die down,
My deeds they crown.”63
Buyán is a kind of fairy hill like the Tír n’an óg of the Irish folktales, the land of youth, and cannot probably be assigned to any physical geography. Most probably the mythical Isle of Buyán is the reminiscence of the Isle of Rügen. The whole of the Pomeranian coast from Lübeck to the Memel was, prior to its conquest by the Saxons and the Brandenburgers, a Slavonic district, and the Isle of Rügen, in especial, the promontory of Arcona, a seat of the most highly developed Slavonic pagan ritual: Saxo Grammaticus has conserved us full details. Considering the intimate association of the mysterious stone Alátyr (probably meaning amber) with Buyán: and the fact that Buyán is a Slav translation of the Old Slav name Ruyán, the windswept isle;64 also taken the specific references in the magic charms in connection with the facts recorded by the Scandinavian chroniclers, there seems to be little doubt that the Isle of Buyán is a folktale shadow of the old place of Pagan pilgrimage, contaminated, of course, with other fantastic elements.
Katomá. This is one of the marvellous servants whom fortunate princes possess in folklore. In Russian folktales they have magical attributes, and are often described by their caps, e.g. oaken-cap, blue-cap, etc.
Koshchéy the Deathless. The meaning of this name is very hard to determine. There are at least three disparate ideas involved. First of all the most ancient is that which occurs in the Word of Igor’s Armament, in which the word Koshchéy is used for a warrior of the hostile Pólovtsy; and, when Igor is said to be put on a Koshchéy saddle, it means he is taken into captivity. Hence the word koshchéy came to be used in Russian as meaning a slave, or a groom, originally a captive slave from the Pólovtsy who fought the Russians for over two hundred years. Consequently the word has a meaning in Russian folklore which has a widespread Aryan notion, that of a fearful Enchanter who lives in a mountain fastness far removed; runs away with the beautiful princess, and can only be slain by the valiant lover, going through unfordable streams, impenetrable forests and unpassable mountains, so as to catch hold of his soul which is contained in a casket, or in some other manner is always terribly enclosed. He takes this soul, which is as a rule lastly contained in an egg, up to the Monster’s palace, scrunches it in his hand, and the monster dies. Thirdly, the word became confused with kost’, bone, and so came to mean a skeleton or miser, and a wandering Jew. The epithet “deathless” does not mean indestructible, but that he can only be slain in an extraordinary manner and will not die in a natural way.
Kutúzovo. The Kutúzovy are one of the most ancient of Russian families; this particular village from which they derive their name must be somewhere on the trade route of the Dnieper.
Kvass. A liquid made from various kinds of flour and fermented with sour milk to which is added malt or yeast.
Name-day. The day of the patron Saint. In Russia Saints’ days are kept in place of birthdays.
Na-úm. In this Russian name the two vowels are to be sounded separately, Na-úm.
Nightingale Robber. His patronymics are Rakhmánovich, Odikhmantovich, Rakhmánya, all of them very difficult of definition or explanation.
Nightingale Robber. Ilyá Múromet’s conquest of the Nightingale Robber is his most notable feat. He is a very difficult figure to explain. He is a gigantic bird who has been explained on the one hand as a highway robber who was a great bard, for the Russian solovéy (nightingale) is applied to a minstrel. But it is more probable that there is a confusion of two other words in this one, and that the word solovéy, which has come to mean nightingale, is either derived from sláva, meaning fame, or from the same root as the hostile power whom Ilyá Múromets, in some of the ballads, fights, namely Solóvnik the Grey One. Be this as it may, the version which has come down is that the Nightingale Robber was an enormous bird, whose nest spread over seven oaks,
