A very pretty Little-Russian _duma_, or ballad, also shows the efficacy of confession in such a crisis: 'The Storm on the Black Sea,' Maksimovitch, Songs of Ukraine, p. 14, Moscow, 1834, p. 48, Kief, 1849; translated by Bodenstedt, Die poetische Ukraine, p. 118. The Cossack flotilla has been divided by a storm on the Black Sea, and two portions of it have gone to wreck. In the third sails the hetman. He walks his deck in sombre composure, and says to the sailors, Some offence has been done, and this makes the sea so wild: confess then your sins to God, to the Black Sea, and to me your hetman; the guilty man shall die, and the fleet of the Cossacks not perish. The Cossacks stand silent, for no one knows who is guilty, when lo, Alexis, son of the priest of Piriatin, steps forth and says, Let me be the sacrifice; bind a cloth round my eyes, a stone about my neck, and throw me in; so shall the fleet of the Cossacks not perish. The men are astounded: how can a heavy sin be resting on Alexis, who reads them the sacred books, whose example has kept them from wickedness! Alexis left home, he says, without asking his father's and mother's blessing, and with an angry threat against his brother; he wrenched the last crust of bread from his neighbors; he rode along the street wantonly spurning the breasts of women and the foreheads of children; he passed churches without uncovering, without crossing himself: and now he must die for his sins. As he makes this shrift the storm begins to abate; to the amazement of the Cossacks, the fleet is saved, and not one man drowned.