 | The epic songs of Russia |  |
Sweet Mikailo Ivanovich the Rover
IN some versions of this poem, Marya the White
Swan is the Dragon of the under-world, transforming
herself into that shape in the coffin, in
order to kill Mikailo. This malicious view is the one
adopted in many legends and tales; Mikailo cuts his
bride in bits, when he discovers her character, cleans
out the snakes and other reptiles concealed within
her body, sprinkles her with the living water, marries
her, and lives happily ever after.
In the myth, the White Swan signifies a cloud: the
living water is the rain. The dragon is, as usual, a
cloud, but larger and darker than the first. Mikailo's
roaring in the grave is the thunder, and the bursting
of the coffin denotes the bursting of the cloud.
Mikailo's candles are the lightning. His wife not
only denotes a single cloud, but the cloudiness common
in summer, which is capable of entering into beneficent
union with the thunder and lightning, but in winter
remains sterile in the heaven, and, dying with idleness,
conceals within itself, as though entombed, the Thunder-power,
its husband. For it appears that Mikailo's
mythical foundation is the same as that of Ilya of
Murom, and of Dunaï also, to a certain extent.
Mikailo's rods and pincers point him out as the
heavenly smith, the forger of the lightning, which is
represented by those weapons. A corresponding instance
of double burial in case of death, as a condition
of marriage, and of the visit of a serpent to the grave,
is found in a German tale (Grimm, Kinder- und Hausmärchen).
Mikailo sometimes appears as the leader
of the "One and Forty Pilgrims" instead of Kasyan.
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