Remains of paganism are to be found in some of the sayings. A curse still existing says, "May Perun (_i. e._, the lightning) strike thee." The god Perun, the Thunderer, resembles Thor, and like him carries a hammer. He has been transformed into Elijah, the prophet Ilya, the rumbling of whose chariot as he rolls through heaven, especially on the week in summer when his festival falls, may be heard in thunder. There is a dismal custom by which the children are made to eat the mouldy bread, "because the Rusalkas (the fairies) do not choose bread to be wasted." Inhuman stories about burying a child alive in the foundation of a new town to propitiate the earth spirit; that a drowning man must not be saved, lest the water spirit be offended; that if groans or cries are heard in the forest, a traveller must go straight on without paying any attention, "for it is only the wood demon, the lyeshey," seem only to be invented as excuses for selfish inaction. Wolves bear a great part in the stories. A peasant driving in a sledge with three children is pursued by a pack of wolves: he throws out a child, which they stop to devour; then the howls come near him again, and he throws out a second; again they return, when the last is sacrificed; and one is grieved to hear that he saves his own wretched cowardly life at last. The Emancipation was doubtless a great work. Twenty million serfs belonging to private owners, and 30,000,000 more, the serfs of the Crown were set free. They had always, however, considered the communal land as in one sense their own. "We are yours but the land is ours," was the phrase. The Act was received with mistrust and suspicion, and the owners were supposed to have tampered with the good intentions of the Tsar. Land had been allotted to each peasant family sufficient, as supposed, for its support, besides paying a fixed yearly sum to Government. Much of it, however, is so bad that it cannot be made to afford a living and pay the tax, in fact a poll tax, not dependent on the size of the strip, but on the number of the souls. The population in Russia has always had a great tendency to migrate, and serfdom in past ages is said to have been instituted to enable the lord of the soil to be responsible for the taxes. "It would have been impossible to collect these from peasants free to roam from Archangel to the Caucasus, from St. Petersburg to Siberia." It was therefore necessary to enforce the payments from the village community, the Mir, which is a much less merciful landlord than the nobles of former days, and constantly sells up the defaulting peasant.