LXXX. A.

THE STORY OF THE LARK.

Another Version.

A variant of this story tells us that after the girl had left the king’s palace and had gone on seeking for the sun, she came to a river, and did not know how to cross it. Whilst she was sitting there at the bank of the river, not knowing what to do, there came out of the river a girl dressed in white, who told her that she would reach the palace and yet not reach it; and as she spoke these words, there came a bridge and spanned the river. The girl went across the bridge, and going on in her journey, she came to a field where an old woman was watching a flock of geese. Curious as old women are, this one asked the girl what had brought her hither, and whither she was going, and who she was. The girl answered politely, and the old woman, being touched by her beauty, gave her a twig in her right hand and placed a ring on her left hand, and told her to cross herself with the twig, and then she would see what would happen. She did so, and she suddenly felt herself lifted up high in the air and carried as fast as a thought to some distant land. When she found herself again on the ground, she saw the palace of the sun facing her, but the palace was surrounded by a river, over whose waters, clear as tears, there was no bridge. An old man carried the passengers across, but he had to be paid with a silver coin. Those who did not pay had to wander round that river for a year. Remembering the ring which the old woman had given her, she offered it to the old man instead of a coin; he accepted it and carried her across. On the other side a two-headed dog came out and barked at her furiously. At his barking an old woman came out, who was none other than the mother of the sun. The poor girl did not know who it was; she might have been careful with her answer if she had. The woman asked her who she was and what she had come for. The girl, who was truthfulness itself, said in her simplicity that she had come to see the sun whom she loved so much. When the old woman heard this, she cursed her, and thus she became the lark flying about high in the air, and trying in vain to reach her beloved.

It is evident that we have here reminiscences of ancient myths, which have assumed a very peculiar shape in the mind of the people. It would be difficult to say whether these are survivals of Greek myths, of Charon, who ferries the dead across the river, and other legends connected with Apollo, or whether we have here later stories which have lingered on in the Balkans and have then been carried across the Danube. Whatever the connection, one cannot deny that we are dealing here with materials closely akin to those which form the substance of some parts of ancient Greek mythology, but in a modified form. Charon has survived to this very day in the legends and in the folk-lore of modern Greece, no less than in that of Macedonia and the other peoples of the Balkans. It is curious, however, that in this tale no blending with Christianity has taken place. We find various layers of religious belief which seem to have been superimposed upon one another, each one as it were leading an independent life of its own, seldom mixing to such an extent that the line of demarcation between what, in the absence of another term, one might call heathen mythology and Christian mythology or legendary lore.