There is a more marked individuality in the Russian tales of this kind, as compared with those of Western Europe, than is to be traced in the stories (especially those of a humorous cast) which relate to the events that chequer an ordinary existence. The actors in the _comediettas_ of European peasant-life vary but little, either in title or in character, wherever the scene may be laid; just as in the European beast-epos the Fox, the Wolf, and the Bear play parts which change but slightly with the regions they inhabit. But the supernatural beings which people the fairy-land peculiar to each race, though closely resembling each other in many respects, differ conspicuously in others. They may, it is true, be nothing more than various developments of the same original type; they may be traceable to germs common to the prehistoric ancestors of the now widely separated Aryan peoples; their peculiarities may simply be due to the accidents to which travellers from distant lands are liable. But at all events each family now has features of its own, typical characteristics by which it may be readily distinguished from its neighbors. My chief aim at present is to give an idea of those characteristics which lend individuality to the "mythical beings" in the Skazkas; in order to effect this, I shall attempt a delineation of those supernatural figures, to some extent peculiar to Slavonic fairy-land, which make their appearance in the Russian folk-tales. I have given a brief sketch of them elsewhere.[72] I now propose to deal with them more fully, quoting at length, instead of merely mentioning, some of the evidence on which the proof of their existence depends. For the sake of convenience, we may select from the great mass of the mythical skazkas those which are supposed most manifestly to typify the conflict of opposing elements--whether of Good and Evil, or of Light and Darkness, or of Heat and Cold, or of any other pair of antagonistic forces or phenomena. The typical hero of this class of stories, who represents the cause of right, and who is resolved by mythologists into so many different essences, presents almost identically the same appearance in most of the countries wherein he has become naturalized. He is endowed with supernatural powers, but he remains a man, for all that. Whether as prince or peasant, he alters but very little in his wanderings among the Aryan races of Europe. And a somewhat similar statement may be made about his feminine counterpart--for all the types of Fairy-land life are of an epicene nature, admitting of a feminine as well as a masculine development--the heroine who in the Skazkas, as well as in other folk-tales, braves the wrath of female demons in quest of means whereby to lighten the darkness of her home, or rescues her bewitched brothers from the thraldom of an enchantress, or liberates her captive husband from a dungeon's gloom.