GREAT RUSSIA 361

since it was the Mongols who developed most fully the professional
champion-at-arins. The word used at Kiev had been 'hrabryi'
* brave'. One of the champions bears the name Saur, which is
Tatar for 'bull'.

Independent as they are, the 'byliny' have been open to sugges-
tions from the west and south-west. Constantinople (Tsarigrad)
is, for them, a greater city than Kiev, and its songs are finer.
Dobrynja played his lyre in the manners of Kiev and Constanti-
nople, when he returned to find his wife about to be married to
another. He was disguised as a 'skomoroh' 'juggler, jongleur"; the
'skomorohi' correspond to the Byzantine 'skommarchoi' or masters
of the revels. This is the oldest word for a Russian minstrel, though
it has, like 'juggler', sunk since to the level of buffoonery. The
word 'kalika' is also used in the sense of minstrel, but it properly
means 'pilgrim' (as in the ballad of the Forty Pilgrims), a class
whose interest in the entirely secular 4byliny' can only be deemed
secondary. From 'kalika1 to 'kaleka' 'cripple' is an easy stage, and
justified by the traditional association between minstrelsy and
bodily affliction; but neither of these terms is supported by the
text of old ballads, as is the term 'skomoroh*. Negative com-
parisons and delaying devices in syntax are also a feature of Greek
and Balkan balladry, held in common with Russia.

The Christian faith, when it came to Russia, was Greek in type.
Michael, Elias, Nicholas are favourite saints of the Eastern Church
and of the 'byliny*. These make use of Biblical narratives, but they
go beyond the Biblical warrant, using the legends of Joseph^
Samson, Bathsheba, and Solomon as they have been elaborated by
Jewish tradition.1 Curilo Plenkovic's beauty is that of Joseph in
Jewish apocrypha:

His locks of gold he tossed them all,

his locks of gold he shook them,
like scattering pearls lie scattered them down.
Little girls looked and burst the fences,
young women looked and made their windows tingle,
old hags looked and preened their mantles round them.
(Gil'ferding 223, with lines from Kireevskii, Pesni Sobrannyay
iv. 2.)

1 For all that relates to external influences see A. N. Veselovskii, Juzm-
Russkija Byliny, St. Petersburg, 1881, and Slacjeanskija Skazamja o Solomons i

Kitovrasg, St. Petersburg, 1872, together with the summary treatment In
Keltujala.

4615 3 A