And the Russians have the legend in another form. They tell of Ilia, the peasant, the servant of Vladimir, _Fair Sun_. He meets the brigand Soloveï, a monster, a gigantic bird, called the nightingale; his claws extend for seven versts over the country. Like the dragon of Hesiod, he was full of sounds--"he roared like a wild beast, bowled like a dog, and whistled like a nightingale." Ilia bits him with an arrow in the right eye, and he _tumbles_ headlong from his lofty nest _to the earth_. The wife of the monster follows Ilia, who has attached him to his saddle, and is dragging him away; she offers cupfuls of gold, silver, and pearls--an allusion probably to the precious metals and stones which were said to have fallen from the heavens. The Sun (Vladimir) welcomes Ilia, and requests the monster to howl, roar, and whistle for his entertainment; he contemptuously refuses; Ilia then commands him and he obeys: the noise is so terrible that the roof of the palace falls off, and the courtiers _drop dead with fear_. Ilia, indignant at such an uproar, "cuts up the monster into little pieces, which _he scatters over the fields_"--(the Drift).[2] Subsequently Ilia _hides away in a cave_, unfed by [1. Poor, "Sanskrit and Kindred Literatures," p. 390. 2. Ibid., p. .281.] {p. 244} Vladimir--that is to say, without the light of the sun. At length the sun goes to seek him, expecting to find him starved to death; but the king's daughter has sent him food every day for _three years_, and he comes out of the cave hale and hearty, and ready to fight again for Vladimir, the Fair Sun.[1] These three years are the three years of the "Fimbul-winter" of the Norse legends. I have already quoted (see chapter viii, Part Ill, page 216, _ante_) the legends of the Central American race, the Quiches, preserved in the "Popul Vuh," their sacred book, in which they describe the Age of Darkness and cold. I quote again, from the same work, a graphic and wonderful picture of the return of the sun