The peasant heroes, Mikúla and great Ilyá, are very proud and independent, and sometimes not very respectful to the King; they seem to think they are as good as he is, and so they were. It is their country they love, and their beautiful city of Kiev and its Church, and in those old days they had not learned that the King stands for the country. Ilyá is always wanting to get to Kiev; you see him on the cover of this book, riding up to the Holy City. It is like Jerusalem to him, and he was buried there. But though he dreams of the City, he loves the place where he was born, near Múrom. Múrom is a real place still, with forests round it and a river full of fish. The peasants in the old days owned the land in common, so each village was like a little kingdom. Ilyá hates the dog, King Kálin, because he slays the villagers. Svyatogór’s name means Holy Mountain. He is very strong and huge, like a mountain, but he is clumsy and rather boastful. He boasted he could lift anything, but he soon found he couldn’t. At the end he stops boasting, and is good to young Ilyá, and gives him all his strength, so that makes up. The hero who really can do everything is Volgá. He was a prince, not a peasant, and he was a mighty hunter, like Nimrod in the Bible; and he was a wizard, too, and could turn himself into a grey wolf. Some people said his father was a wolf, some said he was a serpent. The story says “damp earth was his cradle,” and that sounds uncomfortable, but the Russians always call the earth “damp earth.” They mean that the rain has rained on it, and that it is not hard and dry, but full of sap like the trees. Volgá learnt all his wisdom from the beasts and birds. S. Francis used to preach to the birds, but Volgá let the beasts and birds preach to him, and that is better, for the Bible says: Ask now the beasts and they shall teach thee; And the fowls of the air and they shall tell thee. The first story is about Volgá, and in the first picture you see him listening to a wise old Bear. Jane Ellen Harrison. This book is for children, and is no place for bibliography, but we should like to own our debt to three books. Chudinov’s Byliny in the “Russian School Library” was our first introduction (in Russian) to the hero-tales; but for Rambaud’s La Russie Épique it would have been difficult to put the stories together; and, last, to the kindness of Mr. E. T. Minns we are indebted for the loan of Hilferding’s invaluable Sbornik, now out of print, and not easily obtainable during the War. M. C. H. J. E. H. CONTENTS. Page.