"
[1. Poor, "Sanskrit Literature," p. 236.]
{p. 243}
This is the same old serpent, the dragon, the apostate, the leviathan.
"Then came a _third_ snake with twelve heads. Ivan killed it, and
destroyed the heads, and immediately there was _a bright light_
throughout the whole land."[1]
Here we have the same series of monsters found in Hesiod, in
Ragnarok, and in the legends of different nations; and the killing of
the third serpent is followed by a bright light throughout the whole
land--the conflagration.
And the Russians have the legend in another form. They tell of Ilia,
the peasant, the servant of Vladimir, _Fair Sun_. He meets the
brigand Solove?, a monster, a gigantic bird, called the nightingale;
his claws extend for seven versts over the country. Like the dragon
of Hesiod, he was full of sounds--"he roared like a wild beast,
bowled like a dog, and whistled like a nightingale." Ilia bits him
with an arrow in the right eye, and he _tumbles_ headlong from his
lofty nest _to the earth_. The wife of the monster follows Ilia, who
has attached him to his saddle, and is dragging him away; she offers
cupfuls of gold, silver, and pearls--an allusion probably to the
precious metals and stones which were said to have fallen from the
heavens.
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