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

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 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 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 CHECHENSEThe 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: