(10) "Stands visibly the pestilential maid."
The common people in Lithuania figure pestilential air under the form of a maiden, whose appearance, here described according to the popular song, precedes a terrible sickness. I quote, in substance at least, a ballad I once heard in Lithuania:—"In a village appeared the maiden of the pestilence; and, after her custom, thrusting her hand through door or window, and waving a red cloth, scattered death through the houses. The inhabitants shut themselves up in a state of siege, but hunger and other necessities soon obliged them to neglect such means of safety; all therefore awaited death. A certain gentleman, although well provided with victuals, and able to maintain a long while this strange siege, yet resolved to sacrifice himself for the good of his neighbours, took a sabre of the time of the Sigismonds, on which was the name of Jesus and the name of Mary, and thus armed, opened the window of the house. The gentleman, with one stroke, cut off the spectre's hand, and got possession of the handkerchief. It is true he died, and all his family died; but from that time the disease was never known in the village." This handkerchief was said to be preserved in the church, I do not recollect of what village. In the East, before the appearance of the plague, a phantom with bats' wings is said to appear, and to point with its fingers at those condemned to die. It appears as though popular imagination wished to present, by such images, that mysterious foreboding and strange anxiety which usually precedes great misfortune or destruction, and which often is shared, not by individuals only, but by whole nations. Thus in Greece were forebodings of the long duration and terrible results of the Peloponnesian war; in the Roman Empire of the fall of monarchy; in America of the coming of the Spaniards.
(11) "The trees of Bialowiez."
[The trees here referred to are of an immense age and extra-ordinary height, challenging comparison with the giant trees of California. Many of them were venerated as divinities by the pagans of Lithuania, in whose religion tree and serpent worship formed a prominent feature. Oracles were supposed to be given from a peculiar species of oak, called Baublis, ever green both summer and winter. In the trunk of one of these, cut down about the year 1845, there were counted 1417 rings.]
