# Segnius Irritant: or Eight Primitive Folk-lore Stories/The Sun-Horse

Throughout this book the translator frequently uses the adjective "Slovenian", meaning "Slovakian". Strickland translated the tale from Erben’s anthology Sto prostonárodních pohádek a pověstí slovanských v nářečích původních (1865), but it was first retold and published by Ján Francisci in 1845.
The Sun-Horse.
[Slovenian.]
There was once a region, gloomy and dark as the grave, for in it the divine sun never cast its rays. But there was there a king, and this king had a horse with a sun on its forehead, and this Sun-horse of his he had led through the dark region, from one end to the other, that the people might exist; and from this horse light flashed in all directions wherever they led him, as if it had been the loveliest day.
All at once this Sun-horse vanished. Darkness worse than that of night rolled over the whole region, and nothing could scare it away. Unheard-of terror spread among the subjects, dreadful misery began to weigh them down, for they could neither work at anything nor fashion anything, and such confusion arose among them that everything was turned upside down. And so, to prevent the dissolution of his kingdom and the general ruin, the king set out with all his army to look for the Sun-horse.
Through dense darkness, here, there and everywhere, he at last somehow groped his way to the boundary of his kingdom. Through dense primeval mountains the divine light at last began to break forth from the next region, as if at dawn sunrise were emerging from densely packed masses of cloud. In these same mountains the king and his army arrived at a poor and lonely cottage. He enters to enquire where he is, what it all means, and so forth. By the table sat a fellow diligently reading in a large open folio. When the king bowed, he raised his eyes, returned the greeting, and got up. His whole figure proclaimed that he was not a man like other men, but that he was a seer.
“I have just been reading about thee,” he said to the king; “how that thou goest in search of the Sun-horse. Harass not thyself further, for thou wilt not get him; but rely on me, I will discover him for thee.” “And i’ faith right royally will I reward thee, good man,” responded the king. “I reck not of any recompense; return home, thou and thy army; there there is need of thee; only leave me one servant.” ​The following day the seer, together with the servant, set off on a journey. The journey was long, and led them far, for they had already past the sixth region and had to go yet further, until, in the seventh kingdom, they halted at the royal palace. In this seventh kingdom three own brothers ruled, having three own sjsters as their wives, whose mother was a witch. When they had halted before the palace, the seer says to the servant: Now, listen, stay thou here and I will go in to spy out whether the kings are at home, for with them is the Sun-horse, and the youngest king is wont to ride it.” So saying, he transformed himself into a green bird, and, flying off to the window of the eldest queen, fluttered about it so long and so kept pecking at it, until at last she opened it and let him into her apartment. And when she had let him in, he sat upon her white hand, and the queen was as delighted with him as if she had been a little child. “Ach! little rascal! i’ faith! thou art a darling,” she kept repeating as she sported with him; “if my husband were at home, thou hadst delighted him, too; but he comes not save in the evening, he has gone away to inspect a third part of his district.”
All at once the old witch dashed into the apartment, and glancing at the bird shrieked to the girl: “Seize that accursed bird, or else it will dirty thee.” “Ach! how could it dirty me when it is such a darling, such a harmless little thing?” replied the girl; and the witch: “A harmless darling? piece of nastiness! here with it, that I may wring its neck;” and now she rushed after it. But the bird quickly turned itself into a man, and away out of the door; they did not the least know what had become of him.
After this, he again turned himself into a green bird, and flew off to the window of the second sister, and pecked and pecked at it until at last she opened it for him. And when she had let him in he flew on to her white hand and fluttered backwards and forwards from hand to hand. “Ah! little wretch, what a darling thou art!” exclaimed the queen smilingly; “faith, thou hadst delighted my spouse when he left home; but he cometh not until to-morrow evening, he has gone to inspect two-third parts of his kingdom.”
At this moment the witch dashed wildly into the apartment. “Wring its neck! wring its neck! the accursed bird, or it will dirty thee still!” she shrieked the moment she caught sight of it. “Ach! how should it dirty me? why, it’s such a harmless, such a darling little thing!” replied the girl; and the witch: “A harmless darling piece of nastiness; here with it, let me wring its neck,” and she was ​just on the point of clutching it. But the green bird, at that instant, transformed itself into a man; he ran out of the door, and as if from a flat palm of the hand, disappeared, so that they did not the least know what had become of him.
After awhile he again changed himself to a green bird, and flew away to the window of the youngest queen, and fluttered about it and pecked at it so long until at last the queen opened it. And when she had let him in, he flew straight to her white hand, and so ingratiated himself that she sported with him with a childlike delight. “Ach! little rascal! indeed thou art a darling!” says the queen; “were my husband here, indeed thou hadst charmed him too; but he will not come until the evening of the day after tomorrow, for he is gone to inspect all three divisions of his kingdom.”
At this moment the old witch ran into the apartment. “Wring its neck! wring its neck! the accursed bird!” she shrieked while still at the door, “or it will dirty thee yet!” ‘Ah! mother mine, the idea of its dirtying me, the beautiful innocent little pet!” replied the daughter; and the witch: “Beautiful, innocent piece of nastiness! here with it, let me wring its neck!” But at that instant the bird made itself into a man, and he off and away out of the door so that they never saw him again.
Now the seer knew where the kings were, and when they were coming home. He came to the servant and told him to hasten after him out of the city. After this they went at a brisk pace, on and on, until they came to a bridge, over which the kings must pass. Under this bridge they lurked until the evening.
When the evening sun had sunk behind the mountains, there was to be heard at the bridge the thud of a horse’s hoofs. It was the eldest king returning home. At the bridge the horse stumbled over a beam which the seer had rolled across the bridge. “Eh! who is the scoundrel that has rolled this beam here?” shouted the king, incensed. That instant the seer leapt from under the bridge and stormed at the king for daring to abuse him as a scoundrel, and seizing his sword hurried after him. The king, too, drew his sword in defence; but after fencing a short time, fell from his horse a corpse. The seer lashed the dead king to his horse and then whipped up the horse that it might carry its dead master home. After this he retired under the bridge and again lurked there until evening.
When the next day inclined towards evening, the second king arrived at the bridge, and seeing the ground bespattered with blood, ​exclaimed: “They have killed someone here! Who has ventured, in my kingdom, to commit such a crime?” At these words, the seer leapt from under the bridge, and with drawn sword rushed at the king, exclaiming: “How darest thou insult me? Defend thyself as best thou canst.” The king fenced and fenced, but after a short tussle expired under the sword of the seer. The seer again lashed the dead body to the horse and whipped up the horse that it might carry its dead master home. After this he retired under the bridge and lurked there until the third evening.
The third evening, just at the set of the sun, sped the youngest king on the Sun-horse, sped fast, for he had been delayed somewhat; but as a pool of blood crimsoned the ground before the bridge, he halted, and observing it, exclaimed: It has been some unheard-of criminal who has dared to kill a man in my kingdom.” Scarcely had these words escaped his lips when the seer posted himself before him with drawn sword, vigorously urging him to defend himself for having cast a slur upon the honour of a seer. I know not how,” responded the king, “unless thou art thyself the criminal.” But as his opponent was already hurrying after him with a sword, he drew his, too, and did his best to defend himself.
To vanquish the first two brothers was mere child’s play for the seer. Not so, this one. Long they fought, their swords were broken, and yet victory did not declare itself for one or the other. “Now we shall never decide the affair with our swords,” says the seer; “but knowest thou what? We will turn ourselves into wheels, and then let ourselves off down yonder hill; the wheel which is broken, he is vanquished.” “Very well,” replied the king; I will be a cart wheel, and thou some lighter wheel.” “Ah, not so; thou shalt be the lighter wheel and I will be the cart wheel,” observed the seer hastily; and the king agreed even to that. Hereupon they set off to the hill, there turned themselves into wheels and let themselves roll down the slope. The cart wheel flew spinning along, and whack! into the lighter one, so that it smashed it all to pieces. The seer immediately emerged in his proper shape from the cart wheel, and exclaimed exultantly: There thou art at last! mine is the victory!” “Ah! not so, worshipful brother,” cried out the king; it is only my finger that thou hast broken as yet. But knowest thou what? We will transform ourselves into flames, and the flame which burns up the other shall be the victor. I will transform myself into a crimson flame, thou into a whitish one.” ‘Ah! not ​so,” broke in the seer; “thou into the whitish one and I into the crimson one.” The king consented even to this. They ran out on to the road to the bridge, and, changing themselves into flames, began to burn one another without mercy. For a long time they burnt one another and nothing came of it. At this moment—would you believe it?—appears an old beggar-man with a long grey beard and a bald head; he has a large wallet at his side, and is bending over a big thick staff. “Old father,” says the whitish flame, “if you will bring water and sprinkle that crimson flame, I will give you a kreutzer.” And the pink flame quickly cries out: “Old father, I will give you a groschen if you will pour the water on to the white flame.” The beggar liked a groschen better than a kreutzer; brought the water and poured it on the white flame. So it was all over with the king. The crimson flame changed itself into a man, caught the Sun-Horse by the curb-chain, seated himself upon it, summoned the servant, and, thanking the beggar for his timely aid, continued his journey.
In the royal palace was deep sorrow over the murdered kings: the whole palace was draped in black cloth, and the people thronged into it from all sides to look at the mutilated bodies of the two elder brothers, just as their horses had brought them home. The old witch, infuriated at the death of her sons-in-law, was brewing vengeance upon their murderer, the seer. Then suddenly she seats herself upon a rake-handle, catches up her three girls under the armpits, and hie! away with them into the air.
The seer and his servant had already traversed a good part of the road, for they had put their best foot forward; and now they were going among nothing but barren mountains and smooth-shorn wildernesses. Here a terrible hunger seized upon the servant, and to appease it there were not even any wild berries anywhere. Hereupon they all at once come to an apple-tree. Apples hung upon it; ’twas well the boughs were not broken; they smelt beautifully, they glowed a delicious russet red, and quite invited you to eat. “Praised be God!” cries out the servant, in ecstacies; “now I shall make a dainty feast off these apples.” And he was just running to the apple-tree. “Don’t attempt to pluck of them,” shouted the seer to him; “stay, I will gather them myself for thee.” And instead of gathering an apple, he drew his sword and thrust it forcibly into the apple-tree. Crimson blood spouted far out of it. “There, look! thou seest; thou wouldst have taken corruption if thou hadst eaten ​of those apples, for that apple-tree was the eldest queen, whom her mother had posted here on purpose to carry us out of the world.”
After a time they came to a spring. The water in it welled up, clear as crystal; it regularly surged out, and quite allured the wayfarers, “Ach!” says the servant, “if I cannot get anything more substantial, I will drink plenty of this good water.” “Do not venture to drink of it,” cried the seer; “but wait, I myself will draw of it for thee.” But the seer did not really draw the water, but with drawn sword made a stab into the very middle of it. All at once it was stained with the blood which began vigorously to surge up, wave after wave. " That’s the second queen, whom her mother, the witch, posted for the purpose of carrying us out of the world,” said the sage; and the servant, thanking him for his warning, trudged on, willy nilly, whether thirsting or starving, wherever the seer led him.
Soon after this they came to a rose-bush; it was one mass of pink from the delicious roses all over it, and filled the whole neighbourhood with its odour. ‘Ah! what beautiful roses! Really, I am sure I never saw their like before in all my life. Ej! I will go and gather a few of them; at any rate, I shall find some consolation in them for not being able to satisfy my hunger and thirst.” Nay, do not venture to pluck any of them,” exclaimed the seer; “I will gather them for thee myself.” So saying, he made a slash at the bush with his sword; crimson blood spurted out, just as when one cuts a human vein. “That is the youngest queen,” says the seer to the servant,” whom her mother, the witch, posted here, wishing to avenge herself upon us for the death of her sons-in-law.” This said, they continued their journey.
When they stepped across the boundary of the dark kingdom, flashes of light streamed in every direction from the horse’s forehead, and everything came to life again; the beautiful regions exulted, and spring returned with new flowers. The king knew not how sufficiently to thank the seer, and pressed upon him as a reward one half of his kingdom; but the seer replied: “Thou art king, lord it over the kingdom, and I will return to my cottage in peace.” He departed and went.
NOTE.
From the conclusion of the Three Citrons it was inferred that the primitive epic fairy story was hatched within the Arctic circle at some point where there are numerous lakes or rivers, or both. The Sun-horse tends to confirm this theory. Let the reader turn to the plan of the two stories, and he will see that, assuming, the six kingdoms traversed by the seer and servant in search of the Sun-horse to be so many weeks, they exactly tally with the journey of the young prince from the first meeting with the ravens to the departure from the castle of silver, a period of forty-two days. And, assuming this coincidence, the other elements also exactly coincide. It follows, therefore, that the first kingdom—that one, namely, in which the divine sun never shone—is also a period of time. It therefore coincides with November, of which, in fact, it is a perfectly natural and obvious allegory. The disappearance of the Sun-horse seems to allegorize a year when the fog was so thick that the sun disappeared for awhile altogether: that is to say, the legend, belongs to some region intersected with lakes or canals to supply vapour enough to produce such a phenomenon in an Arctic, and therefore smokeless, part of the world. The arrival of the king at the limits of his kingdom where the sun peeps, through dense fogs, will thus correspond to the Manka, Doodle and Kate incident in George and his Goat, and the end of the three first days’ travelling of the young prince in the Three Citrons, that is, to the end of the first three days’ winter frost, at the end of November.
We have already seen that Father Know-All represents the original epic fairy story with the incidents fairly distributed over it, the only part which is missing being the last week’s epilogue or anti-climax, followed by a brief indeterminate period of a few days.
The stories we have been considering are all varied from the primitive type by the omission of part of the period, or the excessive elaboration of one or two of its elements. Thus, while Father Know-All corresponds in form to the epic poem, Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes is the prototype of our three-volume novel. The Three Citrons of the three-volume novel with an anti-climax of the Lorna Doone type; in both of these stories the three months’ winter period being excessively elaborated; in the former, indeed, the last three days’ struggle to get back the sun is the pièce de résistance, while in the latter the journey through the forty-two sunless days is the appetizing morsel. In reading other fairy stories and legends with intelligence, it will be perceived that all the more celebrated ones—those, that is to say, most widely diffused—obey the same law. Either we have abridgments of the whole primitive epic, or condensation of one part or parts, combined with the expansion of others, or the isolation of one of the elements and its special elaboration. In the more purely local stories the disintegration may have gone further, and some single incident be that from which the story is evolved, and the only link connecting it with its proper section of the primitive myth. To make this clearer, I will give two instances of local fairy stories in which the connecting link has almost disappeared. The first is a Venetian one called La Merda, which is an allegory of the rise of Venice from the slime and mud of the Lagoons. ​Three fairies, passing over a meadow, find a beautiful piece of dung. They decide to turn it into a beautiful girl with a golden ring on her finger, who, so long as she wears this ring, is fated to say nothing but “Dung, dung, dung.” The ring, transferred to another person, carries the peculiarity with it. A prince passes and sees the beautiful girl, and in spite of her conversational defects takes her home and marries her. (The incident of the Virgin Mary Godmother, The Tinkling Linden, Bela la mare ma più bela la fia, and hundreds of others.) One day they go to mass. Affer mass there is a collection and a sermon. The girl, having forgotten her purse, puts the gold ring in the collector’s alms-salver. The preacher, seeing a fine gold ring in the salver, beckons the collector to bring it him, puts it on his finger and begins his sermon: “Dearly beloved brethren, Dung, dung, dung, dung, dung.” Hereupon the congregation stampedes, scandalized at this peculiar form of Papal benediction; but henceforth the young queen remains cured of her defect. This ring is almost the only link between La Merda and Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes, or Golden Locks; but the incident of the gold ring on the pike’s fin turns up in a thousand different forms. We have seen it in the Sakuntala, in All’s Well that Ends Well, and in Boccacio; we have it in the King of Thule and a Lowland Scotch variant of the Sakuntala legend; nay, this image of the disappearance of the golden apple of the Arctic circle into its black sea of sunless winter has so taken hold of popular imagination that it has become embodied in custom, and we have the Papal fisherman’s ring, the wedding ring, and the gold ring worn by the boys in their left ear all through the Venetian province, as well as the ring with which the Doge married the Adriatic. Lastly, in the legend of the piece of money found in the fish’s mouth we have another form of the primitive myth, unless indeed it was that the myth so impressed Christ’s mind, that he took it into his head to act it by means of ground-baiting, and the simple, ignorant, and superstitious Christians have since dubbed this commonplace trick of fishing craft, a miracle—something, that is to say, according to their confused ideas, which reverses the ordinary laws of nature, and proves the performer of it to be a direct Incarnation of the Divinity.
The other story of a local type similar to La Merda to which I alluded, is a Slovenian one called The Lake of Carlovics. In this story a Wallachian peasant is induced by a black priest (or enchanter) to help him to exorcize two dragons out of the lake. They then fly through the air on their backs until they arrive at a certain town. Here they alight, kill the dragons, and sell their flesh for a large sum of money, because it is so hot in that town that the inhabitants, to keep alive, are obliged constantly to hold a piece of the dragon’s flesh under their tongues. Now this is obviously the popular, poetical way of saying that some one, long ago, made a lucrative business of collecting the ice of the Lake of Carlovics, and selling it in some hot southern town in the neighbourhood; but the black priest or prince (the two words are closely connected in Slavonic) is our friend of the Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes story, and the dragon is the gentleman that so frequently keeps guard over the enchanted beauty. The black priest or sorcerer is, in fact, the long black night of the Arctic winter, who, after the three days’ struggle, flies out of the window as a raven; and the dragon is the frost and ice—his agent in keeping nature spell-bound. This story forms a remarkable instance of how easily the most commonplace events become distorted into legends of miraculous events, by the imagination of the ignorant and superstitious, and how they become a sort ​of radiating centre for much more ancient legends and myths to crystallize around.
We have seen in Father Know-All that the Prelude occupies a period of a year from the 1st of December to the 1st of December. Naturally, therefore, the events are sketched in but slightly. The childhood of Plavachek, for example, is passed over without comment, because, occupying the same period as the great winter romance, it would only be a feeble, infantile anticipation of it. This period, however, being left indefinite, has been seized hold of by popular fancy to burlesque the great winter romance; hence we have a crop of stories of the Red Riding Hood type, in which a wolf or an overgrown baby eats up all the characters and then splits open, and all the characters march out again. El Galo, the cock (Venetian), Le tre ochete (the three goslings), also Venetian, Otesanek (Little Shaveling, Czech), Budulinek (Moravian: buda is connected with the word “booth”), Red Riding Hood, the Finding of Moses in the Rushes (so appropriately parodied in the frontispiece to Mark Twain’s “Innocents Abroad”), are one or two types of this large group of popular burlesqued annual solar myths. Speaking generally, it may be said that the first incident in Father Know-All has given us the group of miraculous birth legends of the Bethlehem and Three Magi (Christian), or The Godmother death type (Moravian, but found in a degraded form in Italy as Crispino e la Comare). The saving of Plavachek has given us the popular burlesques of which the Finding of Moses and Little Red Riding Hood are types. The journey of the prince and the struggle for the three hairs gives the bulk of the popular fairy stories which differ according as the journey or the struggle is the most elaborated; in the Three Citrons the journey, in the Sun-horse the struggle, is the part most carefully worked out. The struggle for the three hairs isolated has perhaps, on drifting south, transformed into the midsummer fairy stories of which Jezinky and the Wood Woman (Czech) are among the most beautiful instances. Lastly, the week’s epilogue, tag, or anti-climax has given us the great group of Lorely and Miraculous Hair legends. Nor is this, perhaps, all. This or that segment of the primitive myth having produced a whole group of variants, the details of these new stories have been transformed and grafted, so to say, upon members of the other groups; language, latitude, and climate, as the stories drifted southward or to and fro, have helped to modify them, and thus the precious heirloom of folk-lore and popular legend, as we possess it at the present day, has been gradually compounded from the disintegration of the primitive rock.
A glance at the plan, and a rapid mental résumé of the Sun-horse, and we see that the whole bulk of the story consists of a development of the incident of the three hairs in Father Know-All, of the three days and nights in the enchanted castle of Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes, and of the castle of gold and the hill of glass in the Three Citrons. The Sun-horse, in this part of it, is nearest to the Three Citrons; the three days’ struggle at the return of the sun from its winter underworld causes a twofold set of events, the first in the castle or palace where information is obtained as to the whereabouts of the hill of glass in the former, and of the three kings in the latter case, but it is more highly elaborated. I have said that the rape of the three hairs in Father Know-All can only be explained as an Arctic allegory of the first days of the sun’s return, when it only appears for so short a time above the horizon that it may be said just to wake and go to sleep again during a single long night. No doubt as the myth drifted south this part of ​the legend would gradually modify itself to suit a less rigorous winter and other changed climatic conditions, and perhaps this may have been partly the case with Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes; nevertheless, in all four of the above-cited fairy stories it is perfectly possible to interpret the incidents, without forcing them, as Arctic winter ones, while in Father Know-All and the Three Citrons it is the only satisfactory interpretation. Let us look a little more closely at the event as elaborated in the Sun-horse. But before doing so let us try and put ourselves into the mental position of our savage circumpolar ancestors. At present, enlightened by science, we refer all the vital phenomena of the surface of our globe to the heat of the sun. But the instinct of savage people is just the other way. There is with them a complete inversion of cause and effect. It is not (see supplementary essay) the sun that creates mankind, but mankind that creates the sun. It is not the sun that brings back the spring, but the gathering vital forces of nature that conjure back the sun. And if this habit of mind, still prevalent among religious folk whose superstitions represent the dying cosmical blunders of primitive barbarism, is still powerful enough to cause hundreds of thousands of Christians to believe that by prayer they can conjure the climatic effects dependent upon the movements of cyclones and anti-cyclones, or thereby change the course of epidemics or their own lives and conduct, it is not wonderful if savages within the Arctic circle, with few or no means of accurate observation and scanty stores of accumulated knowledge, mistook cause for effect, and imagined it was the cold which killed the sun and not the sun which killed the cold. In fact, it is probable that with the scanty accumulated knowledge and means of observation of those times, our first men of science would have come to pretty much the same conclusion. The sun being imagined as at all events not so very far away from the earth, the cold that affected the earth would naturally be supposed, when it was extreme, also to extend itself to the upper sun-heaven. Now it would be matter of constant observation that as things lost their heat they lost their mobility and buoyancy, that as the fire smouldered out its flames leapt less high, that as the water cooled its vapour ceases to rise, that when it congealed to ice all movement was checked. Again, it would be also recognized that if the sun was not the primary source of heat, it was all events a sort of reservoir or point of condensation of terrestrial warmth, and that, as this last declined, the sun had less vis viva to perform its diurnal revolution, until at last, growing weaker and weaker pari passu with the increasing rigour of the frost, it had hardly force left to raise itself a few degrees above the horizon. At last it died, the cold had killed it, it disappeared into the maw of Fenris the wolf; the golden apple, frost-bitten like any other apple, had fallen into the subterranean apple garth; all that remained to hope for was that the deity, prime source of the vigorous, sensual northern vitality, would have vital force enough to revivify the old sun or to create another one. In order to do this, in order to resuscitate the sun, to recover the Sun-horse, what was required was for the vital forces of nature to combat and conquer the long winter frost and lifelessness. And seeing that man was conscious above all things in himself of that general vitality, the notion of the seer or hero who performed the miracle became something more than a mere metaphor, it hovered between allegory and reality, like the faiths, hopes, and superstitions of our own modern religious world. If the reader has followed these preliminary observations, he will see how perfectly natural and easy is the explanation of ​the incidents which take place in the castle and at the bridge in the story of the Sun-horse.
In the adventures of the seer at the palace of the three kings we have an allegory of the indications of the coming break-up of the long winter Arctic night and the return of warmth and vitality upon the earth which rescue and bring back the sun. The reader will remember that the Three Fates in Father Know-All were dressed in white and carried tapers in their hands, the imagery being taken from the white world of snow with the stars shining above it. In the same way the three queens with their white hands represent the snow, and the witch mother-in-law is the cold or the darkness, the dragon or the black priest, or perhaps a sort of blending of the two. The green bird is the patches of green where the snow has melted owing to the ground-thaw, so often the prelude to the atmospheric thaw. When the witch exclaims, “Wring the bird’s neck, or it will dirty you yet,” it is only another way of saying: “If the thaw continue, the snow will become nothing but mud and slush.” In the palace of the seventh kingdom, then, we are given the indications of the coming thaw—Nature’s great vernal transformation-scene in circum-polar lands; at the bridge, which, as we know from Long, Broad, and and Sharp-Eyes, is the popular, poetical figure for the moment of sunset, we have the actual beginning of the transformation scene. All ardent skaters must be conscious with what anxiety they scan the weather at the moment of sunset, in order to divine whether their divine pastime will yet have a lease of life accorded to it, or is destined to expire with the morrow’s sun.
No doubt, in the same way, in circum-polar regions, the sunsets of the brief days after the first re-appearance of the sun after its winter sleep were scanned by our circum-polar ancestors with the same eagerness, in order to be able to conjecture whether or no the victory of vitality and light were at last in process of being secured. Did the puddles remain wet, or was a net-work of ice-spicules beginning to form over them? Did the dead-white sky veil itself rapidly in a cloak of darkness, or did the sunset burn low in lurid redness, or did a pellucid rose-tree rise transparent, like the shimmering vapour of a hot summer mid-day, suffusing itself through the limpid transparency of the western sky? It was a matter of very practical importance to those primitive ancestors of ours in their stuffy, uncomfortable, round winter pits, destitute of all or nearly all our modern luxuries, with the water that wouldn’t boil, or cooled as soon as boiled, no soap, and only flint scraping stones to shave with, quite as important, indeed, as it is nowadays to the modern skating enthusiast or tobogganer, or perhaps even more so.
Now in the three days’ contest at the bridge we have an admirable description of the last three days of a spell of winter weather. We have all the prognostications of the coming thaw in a poetical dress, and in the journey home a picture of the milder weather with the efforts of the frost “to take hold” again. Two popular weather saws (Sagas) inform us that in winter “Three white frosts and then a thaw,” and in summer, “Three fine days and then a thunderstorm,” is the usual sequence; and in both cases the weather intensifies from the first day to the third. The frost goes on doubling and doubling, and then bursts like the “enfant terrible” in Otesanek or Little Shaveling; the weather gets hotter and hotter, and people say: “Oh! this must end in a thunderstorm.” In the present instance we shall have two elements, therefore, tugging in opposite directions, so to say: the ​lengthening days and the strengthening power of the sun, the strengthening frost and the shortening nights, or three to one against the frost-kings. For let us assume the three kings to be the frost, riding home at sunset, then we see at once why the encounters became more difficult each night; the story also gives us a clear hint of the lengthening of the days when it says “the youngest king sped fast, for he had been delayed somewhat.” The horror of the frost-kings at bloodshed is intelligible enough, anything fluid being contrary to their very existence and abhorrent to their whole régime. The pool of blood is evidently the pool of unfrozen water in which the lurid red of the sunset is reflected. The cart-wheel which smashes the lighter wheel is the disc of the sun, supplanting the disc of the moon that had been omnipotent in the long winter night; the red flame conquering the pale flame is the light of the sunset and the sunrise gradually crowding out the moonlight; the old beggar man is the Annual Destiny or Fate sprinkling with dew the dying moon at the triumph of the dawn. The witch catching up her daughters and flying with them into the air is the evaporation of the snow, which, by cooling the air occasionally at the end of a long spell of winter weather, galvanizes the frost into a last effort, and effects brief temporary arrests of the triumph of returning spring. The apple tree, the well, and the rose tree symbolize three such brief arrests, and the blood of the three queens is the surface-water produced by the melting of the snow in contradistinction to the genuine streams and rivers. And lastly, the Sun-horse, with the sun on its forehead, which at the beginning of the story in November was but a substitute for the sun, faintly glimmering through autumnal mist and fog, has now become the sun itself, returning triumphant in the triumph of a re-awakening and unclouded spring.