As besides the songs or _pyesni_ there are current among the people a number of _stikhi_ or poems on sacred subjects, so together with the _skazki_ there have been retained in the popular memory a multitude of _legendui_, or legends relating to persons or incidents mentioned in the Bible or in ecclesiastical history. Many of them have been extracted from the various apocryphal books which in olden times had so wide a circulation, and many also from the lives of the Saints; some of them may be traced to such adaptations of Indian legends as the "Varlaam and Josaphat" attributed to St. John of Damascus; and others appear to be ancient heathen traditions, which, with altered names and slightly modified incidents, have been made to do service as Christian narratives. But whatever may be their origin, they all bear witness to the fact of their having been exposed to various influences, and many of them may fairly be considered as relics of hoar antiquity, memorials of that misty period when the pious Slavonian chronicler struck by the confusion of Christian with heathen ideas and ceremonies then prevalent, styled his countrymen a two-faithed people.[424] On the popular tales of a religious character current among the Russian peasantry, the duality of their creed, or of that of their ancestors, has produced a twofold effect. On the one hand, into narratives drawn from purely Christian sources there has entered a pagan element, most clearly perceptible in stories which deal with demons and departed spirits; on the other hand, an attempt has been made to give a Christian nature to what are manifestly heathen legends, by lending saintly names to their characters and clothing their ideas in an imitation of biblical language. Of such stories as these, it will be as well to give a few specimens. Among the legends borrowed from the apocryphal books and similar writings, many of which are said to be still carefully preserved among the "Schismatics," concealed in hiding-places of which the secret is handed down from father to son--as was once the case with the Hussite books among the Bohemians--there are many which relate to the creation of the world and the early history of man. One of these states that when the Lord had created Adam and Eve, he stationed at the gates of Paradise the dog, then a clean beast, giving it strict orders not to give admittance to the Evil One. But "the Evil One came to the gates of Paradise, and threw the dog a piece of bread, and the dog went and let the Evil One into Paradise. Then the Evil One set to work and spat over Adam and Eve--covered them all over with spittle, from the head to the little toe of the left foot." Thence is it that spittle is impure (_pogana_). So Adam and Eve were turned out of Paradise, and the Lord said to the dog: