the peasants tilled the soil for the landowners under a system which allowed them a half, or other fixed share, of the harvest produced, the freeman having this distinction from the _kholop_ or bondman that he was able to move from one estate to another at will. Under these conditions of hand-to-mouth existence farm-craft remained at a very low ebb; with axe, scythe, and plough the peasant won precarious roothold for his crops, which might be blighted by an untimely frost-coming or damaged by a too-late thaw, leaving him to propitiate his appeal-court of saints by an involuntary emptiness of stomach. With cattle-stock, horses, and horned beasts, the Russian lands, of the north especially, were ill-provided, and possibly this was partly the outcome of the unsettled state of the country, which discouraged the multiplication of movable property, even the heaviest church bells being now and again swept off in the wake of some pilfering kniaz-raid.[34] FOOTNOTES: [22] See Table I. for Grand Princes of Kiev. [23] The affix _vitch_ signifies _son of_: Sviatoslavitch--son of Sviatoslav. [24] Vseslav Briatcheslavitch. [25] “The Song of the Expedition of Igor.” [26] Georg Pray. [27] N. G. Riesenkampff, _Der Deutsche Hof zu Nowgorod_. [28] Rambaud, _History of Russia_. [29] See Table III. for house of Souzdal. [30] Stribog was the Slavonic wind-god. [31] Rendered into English partly from H. von Paucker’s German translation, _Das Lied von der Heerfahrt Igor’s Fürsten von Seversk_, and partly from a modernised Russian reproduction of the Slavonic text. [32] Kadlubek, _Origine et rebus gestis Polonorum_. [33] S. Solov’ev. [34] Karamzin; S. Solov’ev; Schiemann; Kostomarov, _Sieverno Rousskiya Narodopravstva_, _Chronique de Nestor_. CHAPTER IV THE COMING OF THE MONGOLS