STRANGE and unaccountable to the men of the Elizabethan age were the manners and customs of the Muscovites; at this day, some of the things these early visitors minutely described seem scarcely credible.

In many ways the life of the old boyards was not unlike that of their Tsar. They fought and worshipped and maintained state; bought, sold and sought wealth even as he did. There remain at least two old houses of boyards in Moscow. One, the Potieshni Dvorets in the Kremlin, formerly the dwelling of the Miloslavskis, is at the present time chiefly useful as indicating the architecture of a Russian house in mediÆval times; and that only so far as the exterior is concerned, for the internal arrangements have been so many times altered as to bear now but little resemblance to a typical dwelling of the seventeenth century. The other house, the Palata Romanovykh, or Dom Romanof, was at one time the dwelling of the Romanof family and has been restored to as nearly as possible resemble the state in which it was when the Tsar Michael was elected to the throne in 1613. It is situated in the Varvarka, contiguous to the spot on which the English factory stood, and in addition to being a museum of minor antiquities serves well to illustrate some of the habits of the nobles of Moscow in the sixteenth century, for the house belonged to Nikita Romanof, grandfather of the Tsar Michael, who himself gave the house in which his own father was born to the adjoining monastery. Incorporated with those buildings, it shared their vicissitudes; was injured by fire repeatedly, altered, added to, then spoiled and sacked by the French.

It is not a large house: the frontage to the Varvarka is scarcely sixty feet and built on sloping ground it presents but one storey to this street. The principal entrance was from its own courtyard, where the south front presents four storeys looking over the Moskva (v. page 108).

The ground floor is of undoubted antiquity; brick built, plastered and painted. On this foundation is reared the wooden house in the true Russian style. The low clock tower over the entrance has for a weather vane, a griffin, the arms of the Romanofs; the windows are small, ogival, and glazed with mica panes.

It is impossible that in so small a house there could have been any accommodation for the multitude of retainers and body servants a boyard had always about his house. These lived in separate dwellings around the courtyard. The ground floor of Russian houses consisted of cellars and storerooms. In these vaults were kept: wine, mead, kvas, ice, frozen and salted meats and fish. The next storey in this house consists of kitchens and domestic offices—in a house not built upon sloping ground, these would be on the ground floor. The first floor, the Bel Étage, which, in all old Russian buildings—houses, churches and shops—is reached by steps very similar to those from the courtyard to the Varvarka street level in the Dom Romanof.

KRESTOVAIA IN THE DOM ROMANOF
KRESTOVAIA IN THE DOM ROMANOF

Entering the vestibule from the Varvarka, on the right are two small rooms, one for the use of attendants the other now fitted as a nursery, but undoubtedly originally an ante-chamber. The largest room on this floor is called Krestovaia, or Chamber of the Cross. It was the state-room. Here the boyard received the priests who came at Easter-tide, Christmas, and other feasts and on special occasions to offer congratulations or perform sacred offices. The roof is vaulted, and, in addition to the niches seen in the walls, there are secret recesses for the concealment of treasure. In the “sacred corner” is an ancient ikon, and on the table before it, covered with a rich Persian cloth, are two crosses. The stand, or mountain, was the rack on which, upon all solemn or festive occasions, the family plate was displayed. Among the old treasures preserved here are a cocoa-nut shell mounted as a drinking-cup, and various other curious drinking-cups, bowls, and vases; an equestrian statuette, silver-gilt, of Charles I., a gift from that monarch to the Tsar Michael; two ewers presented by Charles II.; a silver salt cellar, and a puisoir presented by Martha Ivanovna, wife of the Patriarch, to her son the Tsar in 1618. No doubt it was in this room that the great banquets given by the boyard took place, but ordinarily the boyard would eat in his own apartment, his wife in hers. From this room a doorway leads to the private room of the boyard. This “study” is heated by a stove of coloured tiles, variously ornamented and bearing quaint inscriptions and designs, as a tortoise, “There is no better house than one’s own”; doves, “Fidelity unites us.” The cases contain some of the personal attire and weapons of the early boyards and their descendants, as: a silk mantle, some swords and daggers, a staff, the sceptre of the Tsar Michael, riding-boots, walking-sticks, and the like. The high narrow-heeled riding-boots are very curious, so too, on the copper inkstands, as antique in appearance as those of Chaucer’s day, will be seen the lion and unicorn, a Byzantine device often found in Russia. There is also a low seat used for writing, for the Russian placed the paper upon his knees, not on a table; his lines were not straight, and much good paper was wasted.

There is an oratory communicating with this four-windowed apartment, also two rooms used as nurseries; one for boys, the other for girls. In these close, small rooms the children were reared, for it was the habit of the Russians not only to hide their children from all strangers, but to keep them from all but their most intimate friends and relatives.

A small doorway leads to a steep narrow staircase communicating with the top storey, the terem or women’s apartments, consisting of a reception room, a bed-chamber and turret; from these rooms the nursery may also be reached by a still narrower staircase. The walls of the reception room are covered with stamped leather, the woodwork is carved in high relief, the stiff benches round the wall have stuffed seats and are covered with brocade. There are a number of old coffers and close wardrobes, also some curious clothing is displayed in cases.

The four-post bedstead cannot be considered a native institution. It is peculiarly Scandinavian. The English adopted it from the Danes; the English reintroduced it into Russia, finding that the Russians themselves slept either on the stove, or on an eastern divan. More than once the early English ambassadors to Russia have complained that bedsteads were lacking, and it was long before their use became general.

The boyards kept their women folk hidden away in the terem in almost eastern seclusion. Jenkinson states that “the women be very obedient to their husbands, and are kept straitly from going abroad but at some seasons.” Other travellers write that the women are hardly used by their husbands, who beat them unmercifully; “and the women, though young and strong, never resent even if the husband be old and weak.” Herberstein relates that a foreigner in Moscow married to a Russian woman was upbraided by his wife because he never beat her as Russian husbands did their wives, and that he then beat her to please her; but as subsequently he cut off her legs, and finally her head also, the story is worth nothing as evidence of a custom.

Sylvester in his “Domostroi” says a wife ought never to take the title of Lady, but always to look on her husband as Lord. She was to concern herself only with household affairs, and might be treated like a slave; only the husband is enjoined “not to use a too thick stick, or a staffe tipped with iron, nor to humiliate unduly by flogging before men.”

Out of doors she was carried in a shuttered litter, and she wore the fata or veil; a special part of the church was assigned women, but the wives and daughters of the boyards usually worshipped in their own private chapels, and went to the Cathedrals but upon special and state occasions. Then it was that suitors caught a glimpse of their future brides, and received glances which bespake love.

As among eastern nations, the bridegroom usually did not see his wife before marriage. When the preliminaries had been arranged and settled by third parties, the bridegroom sent a present of sweetmeats and a whip to his bride elect, who always spent the night before the marriage ceremony at the house of the bridegroom’s parents. On the day of the marriage he put into one of his boots sweetmeats or a trinket, into the other a whip; the newly wedded wife took off the boots, and to remove first that which contained the trinket was considered the omen of a happy life for the woman. “But if she light on the boot with a whip in it, she is reckoned among the unfortunate and gets a bride-lash for her pains, which is but the earnest penny of her future entertainment.” There were also other little passes during the complex ceremony, the winning of any indicating the mastery during wedded life.

Such was the woman’s lot in the seventeenth century, but much was done to better it before Peter the Great introduced western freedom. Collins wrote in 1674:—

Even Peter’s code was cruel: it was during his reign that Le Bruyn saw a woman executed in Moscow by being buried alive; covered up to her neck in the dank black soil she lived but two days, whereas, on the same authority, there were others who lingered ten or more. In Russia, as in countries further west, the crime of petty treason, the murder of a husband, was considered almost as heinous as high treason, and punished accordingly.

Kept closely confined to a small apartment, living almost always in heated rooms the Russian ladies had fair complexions; “white cream-and-snow tinged with the faint hue of the inside of a camellia” one poet describes it. Others are not so generous; Turberville writes:

All writers complain that the women painted without art; many blacked their teeth, and stained their nails with henna, a custom which obtained with the wives of Russian merchants to the present century. So, too, after Peter the Great forced women from the seclusion of the terem, it was the custom of ladies to present to each other in public their paint boxes, even as in the west men offered snuff. It was not until after the French invasion that this custom died out, and Pushkin endeavoured to advance the new order by deriding the practice and ridiculing the English governors who followed it. On the other hand, a lady of the court who, much to the chagrin of others, refused to paint her face, was compelled to do so by order of the Tsar, to whom complaint had been made.

As women were free in the Russia of the Norsemen, the seclusion in the terem was either a custom adopted from Byzantium or, more probably, a precautionary measure to protect them from Tartar invaders. The purpose of these invasions has already been stated, and as on one foray the Tartars are reported to have taken away 400,000 captives from Russia, the hiding of women and children in portions of the dwellings to which men at no time had access was doubtless considered to enhance their chances of escape during the temporary absence of the master in the front of the battle; and from being a temporary retreat it became the ordinary living apartments. But the custom was a town one; not practised by villagers.

The Russians were largely flesh eaters, meat and fish constituted the diet not only of the well to do but of the peasants. In the north Le Bruyn found the natives feeding even their beasts on fish, and Ysbrant noted the same practice among the inhabitants east of the Ural. Jenkinson found that the Muscovites had “many sortes of meates, and delight in eating gross meates and stinking fish.” Brandy was served round before eating commenced, a custom that still obtains and was originally derived from the Norsemen. Collins states that horse-flesh was forbidden; also hare, rabbit, and elk. At some seasons veal was forbidden; any thing sweetened with sugar, or candy, on fast days; and, at all times, dishes flavoured with musk, civet and beaver. The chief dish at a banquet given to Herberstein was of swan, served with sour milk, pickled gherkins and plums. There was abundance of corn, and some of the commoner vegetables; the fruits were insipid; except filberts, Herberstein found none of the sweeter kinds of fruit or nuts. Water melons were grown and then, as now, the Russians fed upon many different kinds of fungus; some thirteen varieties found in the neighbourhood of Moscow are edible, but the Russian regards as scarcely wholesome the only mushroom eaten in England.

Tea was known to the Russians of the middle ages; some quaint samovars are preserved in the Dom Romanof, but the medieval Russ found his greatest pleasure in drinking mead, brandy and strong liquors. Before drinking it was the custom to blow in the cup; to guests and strangers wine was offered by, or on behalf of, each member of the host’s family, in small cups or glasses, then, to conclude, a huge cup filled to the brim from which it was the correct etiquette to take but a sip.

In Sylvester’s “Domostroi” the correct etiquette for masters and servants is set forth. At table the diner may “blow his nose, must spit without noise, take care to turn away from the company, and put his foot over the place.” Instead of advising the lord to sell old slaves and cattle, as Cato told the Romans to do, Sylvester requires that old servants who are no longer good for anything must be “fed and clothed, in consideration of their former services.” Then, for the servant; “when a man sends his servant to honest people, he should on arriving knock softly at the door of the grand entrance; when the slave comes to ask what he wants, he must reply ‘I have nought to do with thee, but with him to whom I am sent.’ He must say only from whom he comes, so that the man may tell his master. On the threshold of the chamber he will wipe his feet on the straw. Before entering he will blow his nose, spit and say a prayer. If no one calls Amen! to him, he will say another prayer; if there is still no answer, a third prayer in a louder voice. If still no answer, he may then knock at the door. On entering he must bow before the sacred ikon; then he will explain his errand: he must not touch his nose, or spit, or cough; look neither to right nor left.”

The Tsars derived much revenue from a cursemay or drinking tavern in each town, which was let out to tenants or bestowed upon some courtier for a year or two, “then, he being grown rich, is taken by the Tsar and sent to the warres again, where he shall spend all that which he hath gotten by ill means, so that the Tsar in his warres is little charged, but all the burden lieth on the poor people.”

Jenkinson writes: “At my being there, I heard of men and women that drunk away their children and all their goods at the Tsar’s tavern, and not being able to pay, having pawned himself, the taverner bringeth him out to the highway, and beates him upon the legs; then they that pass by, knowing the cause and peradventure, having compassion upon him, giveth the money, so he is ransomed.”

During carnival there were many deaths due to excessive drinking and the extreme cold, for it was then that all had licence to drink and make merry. The Tsar Vasili Ivanievich (1505-1533) gave permission to some of his courtiers to drink at any time, but in order that their habits might not corrupt the people they had to live apart in a special suburb, which was appointed them on the south side of the river, where for a time all the dwellers were known by the name of Nali or “Drinkers.”

The Muscovites knew not how to dance. At their merrymakings they made Tartars and Poles dance to amuse them; their music was obtained from brass hunting horns, trumpets, cymbals and the bagpipes. Kotoshin states that the boyards were “dull, ignorant men, who sit in silence, stroking their beards and making no reply to anything said to them.” The common people amused themselves on the “sway” or sea-saw; they loved to assemble in crowds and to sing and drink together. Some were drawn up and down in chairs, others went round and round in flying-chairs affixed to wheels pivoted, some perpendicularly, others horizontally; in short, the prototypes of the “merry-go-rounds” and “high-flyers” of pleasure fairs in Britain and elsewhere. In winter they sped down ice hills on their small sledges (tobogganing), and few only took pleasure in field sports, trapping birds and animals being part of the business of the lives of most; coursing and falconry the privilege of the Tsar and his suite.

In winter when the boyard stirred out of doors it was always in his sledge, where he lay upon a carpet in the skin of a polar bear. The sledge was drawn by a single horse “well decked,” a little boy astride its back, and servants of the boyard stood upon the tail of the sledge.

As traders they had an unenviable reputation. “The people of Moscow are more cunning and deceitful than all others, their honour being especially slack in business contracts—of which fact they themselves are by no means ignorant for, whenever they traffic with foreigners, they pretend, in order to attain greater credit, that they are not men of Moscow but strangers.” The market was in the Kitai Gorod. There the foreign merchants had their warehouses, and for centuries a Gostinnoi Dvor, not unlike the bazaar of Stamboul, occupied the site of the recently erected New Rows (Novi Riadi), but even at the present day the picturesque is not extirpated from the wholesale market. The Starai Gostinnoi Dvor has quite a charm of its own, and the adventurous sightseer who, not content with passing through it from the Ilyinka, turns off into the alleys furthest from the Krasnoe Ploshchad towards the wall of the Kitai-gorod, will see curious courtyards having large galleries around them; huge hatch-ways communicating with the vast vaults and stores below. Quaint shops line the wall of the Kitai-gorod from the Varvarka gate right up to the Nikolskaya; with a sort of permanent rag fair at that end, where, too, from the introduction of printing, the stalls and shops of the booksellers have been located. Another surviving market for miscellaneous articles—from old ikons and bludgeons to picked up trinkets and immense samovars—is held from six o’clock till noon on Sunday mornings around the Sukharev Bashnia. From time immemorial a great fair for frozen fish and game has been held outside the Kitai-gorod wall as soon as winter’s frost sets in. In this commercial district are various old churches of interest and, in the Cherkassky pereulok, the place of legal combat for those who justified their cause by an appeal to strength and skill.

In the administration of justice much was lacking, the principle of the paternal rule of the sovereign necessitating direct appeal by means of a petition. Later, a Prikase or office of direction was established, and this was followed by others empowered with the control of affairs relating respectively to carmen, Siberia, criminals, etc. As in all countries, misdemeanours against the property or liberties of individuals was regarded as a matter for personal redress by the party aggrieved; only those against the crown called for the active interference of the sovereign through his body-guard. The use of torture and some western methods of judicial procedure were introduced by Sophia Palealogus and the Italians who followed her, and were grafted upon native customs.

In the reign of Ivan the Terrible, legal procedure was as follows:—

Harry Best, an Englishman, made good his claim against a defaulter in a trial by combat, which resulted in an immediate petition by the Muscovites to the Tsar, to forbid foreigners engaging in the lists with citizens. As for criminals: thieves were imprisoned and knouted but were not hanged for a first offence; for a second offence, a thief lost the nose or an ear and was branded on the forehead; the third offence was punished with crucifixion, which was a customary penalty long after the days of Ivan IV. Impalement in various ways was also practised; heretics were burned; false-coiners boiled in oil; during winter the condemned were thrust under the ice and drowned. The long category of barbarous punishments borrowed from the west, being minutely followed in addition to excisions, amputations, mutilations and cruelties of local origin. One of these may be mentioned, “the death by 10,000 pieces,” when the condemned was cut away bit by bit and the parts seared to prevent death by hÆmorrhage before it was necessary to attack a vital part. Another form of it was to insert a hook under a rib and pull the bone out of the side—the Muscovite equivalent of the western method of extorting money from Jews by the extraction of tooth after tooth. Ivan “Groznoi” practised even worse cruelties. The widow of one of his victims he put astride a coarse rope and drew her to and fro upon it until sawn through—in this rivalling the excesses of enthusiastic religious persecutors in the Netherlands. More refined was his fiendish practice of hanging in the doorway of a boyard’s house his wife, child, or some other loved one of the boyard, then compel the man to go to and fro past the corpse that day by day became more repulsive. Worse even than this did Ivan “Groznoi,” the cruel Tsar, but his worst need not be mentioned unless, at some future time, men name him not the “Terrible,” but call him the “Great.”

In the days of Peter the Great men were still impaled or crucified; were burned in small pens filled with straw; were beheaded on a block and “hanged as elsewhere.” Le Bruyn says, one day he saw a man burned alive, and in another part of the town a woman buried, with small tapers burning near her; and “all executions with such silence, that what takes place at one end of the town is unknown at the other.” Afterwards, were such barbarities as the Empress Elizabeth ordered to be inflicted upon the Boyarina Lapunof, and still later such cruelties as the Countess Soltikov exercised on her serfs. In fact the tale of Moscow’s woe was not told until the advent to the throne of that greatest of dead Tsars, Alexander II., the true reformer of Russia.

In the olden days the bearers of too illustrious names were forbidden to marry; others might not marry without permission first obtained; leave was necessary before one could carry arms. In times of peace it was unusual for weapons to be worn, a staff shod with steel took the place of sword or dagger, the voievodes only wore side arms generally. Trade was the privilege of the Tsar, and those to whom he granted the right; pen work was always done by humble secretaries or diaks—in the end they became the masters, rather than the servants of their employers.

In their bearing towards their superiors, ecclesiastic and secular, the Russian was abject in his deference; the customary mode of address being similar to that of the east. In Byzantium the petitioner prostrated himself and called, “May I speak and yet live?” In Moscow the Russ cried, “Bid me not to be chastised, bid me speak, I the humble, etc.,” and in Russian a petition, literally, is a “beating of the forehead” before superiority. Peter the Great did much to discourage the abject prostration of his subjects before the property of the crown, but as late as the reign of the Emperor Nicholas some serfs were compelled to uncover when passing any mansion of their lord, whilst other nobles expressly forbade it. The Church never expressly forbade prostration before sacred objects as Peter did before secular property, so in that, the old custom survives. But it is probably owing to the earlier use, and not particularly to the image of our Saviour over the Spasski Gate, that it is customary still to uncover when passing to or from the Kremlin by the state entrance. For in Russia when a practice has been once enjoined by a person in authority it will be continued until expressly forbidden. It is said that many years ago a distinguished visitor to one of the royal residences inquired why it was thought necessary to station a sentry in the centre of a grassplot in the pleasure grounds. It was then discovered that once upon a time, a Tsaritsa, long deceased, had noticed an early snow-drop budding forth at that spot, and expressed her wish that the flower should be protected. To ensure its safety a sentry mounted guard, and so for many years, day and night, in all seasons, a sentry continued to be posted there; for, although the circumstances had been forgotten, the order was conscientiously obeyed.

The rites of the orthodox church are not subject to change, and the ceremonies of to-day are practically the same as they were centuries ago. One of the most characteristic is connected with the periodical removal of some sacred picture from its ikonostas to a special service in a church dedicated to some other saint, or associated with a particular episode in the life of our Saviour. After a preliminary service, the ikon is taken down and reverently borne away by the priests appointed, attended by prelates, deacons, acolytes, choristers and the bearers of “standards.” These standards—znamia, literally “token”—are akin to the banners of the western Church; they are of diverse form, usually of metal, adorned with gems, and always have either a representation of a saint or some sacred symbol upon them. Some are but a fit setting to a small ikon; many are beautiful specimens of metal work, others are of curious design, all are attractive; and when, sometimes to the number of a hundred or more, they are carried aloft through the streets of the old town, they add greatly to the stateliness of an impressive pageant.

It is on such occasions as these—and they are many—that the attitude of the people towards their church may be studied with advantage, and the beholder will realise how strong is the affection of the orthodox for all that pertains to their religion. The great reverence shown the symbols, the fervour and sincerity of the greeting, are convincing evidence of deeply-rooted belief, simple piety and existing close relations between the Church and people. In short, a procession of this kind does more than suggest the religious phase of mediÆvalism, it is a revelation of its actual potency.

Easter is of course the great festival; then the Great Bell of Moscow thunders forth that Christ has risen, and the people embrace each other and with pious glee call “Vosskresenni Khristos” much as in the west acquaintance greet each other with good wishes at the new year. Students of comparative ecclesiasticism cannot afford to miss witnessing the celebration of the feast in Moscow any more than they can that in Rome.

On Trinity Sunday not only are the churches strewn with newly cut herbage and decorated with budding branches, but all houses “sport greenery”—it is a combination of the old time customs of May-Day and Yuletide in the west. The sacred ikons figure in all ceremonies, and private individuals in times of distress requisition them. They are conveyed with considerable pomp to the bedside of the dying, or to the homes of the fortunate, pious in their rejoicing. The church is all inclusive and makes no distinction; is as ready to comfort the most notorious sinner as it is the devout communicant of irreproachable rectitude and honour.

The ikon most desired is that known as the Iberian Mother of God, whose chapel stands before the Vosskresenski Gate. Close by a carriage and six remains in attendance, and usually towards evening it starts forth on long journeys across the town, its round often unfinished when morning dawns. Its place on the ikonostas is filled by a copy, but the original is at once restored on its return. Men uncover as the carriage passes by; those near, when it is carried to or from a house, prostrate themselves or attempt to kiss it, some endeavour so to arrange that the picture must be carried over them. Another ikon in request is that kept at the Vladimirski Vorot; all have great homage paid them. Priests, drivers, attendants, are uncovered, even in the depth of winter; and to be appointed to any post in connection with it is counted a great honour. It is said that the offerings of the thankful in return for the privileges conferred by “visiting” have amounted to as much as £10,000 in a single year in respect of one picture alone. This money is part of the church revenue—the servants attending with the ikon receiving presents in addition.

Originally the private ikon was a picture of the patron saint of its owner. As every day in the year is a saint’s day, the saint of the day on which a person happened to be born was considered his patron; often he took that saint’s name, if some other were chosen then the recipient must be christened on the day assigned to that saint, and thus the “name” day is distinct from the birthday and is observed, whilst the anniversary of one’s birth may or may not be celebrated. Often, indeed usually, an ikon of the Virgin now occupies the “sacred corner.” It is so placed that it must be visible on entering the room and receive the obeisance of the orthodox; it is also, as it were, to be a witness of all that takes place before it. To do anything wrong in the presence of an ikon makes the fault the greater; persistent evil-doers screen the ikon before wilfully transgressing. It was even made one of the charges in the indictment of the false Tsar Dmitri that he neglected to veil the ikon the day of his marriage. To western minds such an attitude is as incomprehensible as the action related in one of Tolstoi’s stories, of the pious peasants who, about to murder their offspring, knelt reverently by the hole they had made in the ice and prayed to God that He would protect and bless them. But the Russian understands.

The private ikon, or some other sacred picture, always precedes the corpse at the funerals of the orthodox. The obsequies of the wealthy are still conducted with great pomp; the modern practice of hiding the coffin beneath wreaths and crosses being combined with the more austere solemnities of a statelier age. The church of St Sophia, on the south side of the Moskva, opposite the Kremlin, is much used in connection with military funerals and those of a public character. The peasant’s coffin is simply covered with a pall, and the bier carried through the streets shoulder-high, with no other pomp than the ikon reverently borne some paces ahead of the cortege. The hands of the dead one are closed over a paper on which is printed a prayer for the repose of his soul, the deceased’s baptismal name being written in, and this is the only justification for the assertions of the early writers that “the Russ when he dies hath his passport to Saint Nicholas buried with him.”

If it is the practice to decorate the ikon with presented jewels, it was not only counted a sin but a crime to take any back again. Collins says that the punishment for so doing was the loss of a hand, as befell a woman “who thought she had but lent to the image” she favoured. With the private ikon “they do as they will, decorating the ikon one day and with the same tawdry themselves the next,” an indication that the ignorant peasant may treat his ikon much as the West African negroes treat their fetiches.

A common object in Moscow of to-day is the watch-tower or chastok, where night and day sentinels patrol on the look out for fires, not nowadays so frequent or so disastrous as formerly, since the erection of wooden houses within the town limits has been forbidden. In summer, when the signal is run up on the staff, numerous one horse drays, each with a small barrel of water, hurry to the scene and in somewhat primitive fashion attempt to quench the conflagration. If a wooden house the fire usually subsides when the roof with its thick layer of earth between rafters and plates collapses. Dearly paid for experience has taught the Muscovite how the spread of fires may best be stopped where water is scarce and hydrants far distant. Primitive and mediÆval in many things, Moscow reveals how the people of long past ages overcame the difficulties incidental to life in large cities, and a great fire will bring together such an array of water carts as will convince the beholder of the very thorough organisation of a department charged with the duty of safeguarding public safety.

Even the vehicles exhibit a survival from mediÆvalism since each horse is harnessed beneath a duga or piece of bent wood intended to strengthen the shafts, as it is by them alone the load is hauled, and traces are unknown. The duga, just as it is to-day, was used with the first wheeled vehicles introduced to Russia and will persist for aye. But the observant stranger will not lack entertainment in Moscow, especially if he shows generous toleration of primitive customs. If a house be building, the simple and superstitious working man, his original intention being now directed by the church to a manifestation of piety, will first raise above all the scaffolding a well made, often decorated, cross, so seeking a blessing from the good by the same sign that his early ancestors sought to appease the powers of evil. The carter, whose horse drops with heat sickness, will get the animal on his legs again and cause him three times to cross the duga he purposely places thwartwise. To those versed in symbols an act as easy to understand as the every day remedy of the kitchenmaid who puts the poker across the bars of the grate to prevent the newly lighted fire from being extinguished—a not commendable practice yet effective epithem. Sprite ridden the Moscow peasant is still, but though “it” moves him to do many things of which he knows not the reason, merely obeying the prompting intuitively, he has forgotten what this “it” is that must be appeased. A bridge, a girder cantilever across a wide estuary or a couple of planks across a ditch, is not finished till some trifle has been cast into the water, in this the mujik being not unlike the skipper of a Grimsby trawler who tosses a new coin into the ocean before lowering his net.

The enthusiast may attempt to trace the direct connection between baksheesh, nachai, and the extortion of gratuities generally, with the ancient practice of trifling sacrifices to some mythical demon; both old as the offer of a cock by Socrates to Æsculapius, and world-wide as the application of a door-key to the spine as a cure for nasal hÆmorrhage. In such matters may hap Moscow is as other towns, and neither mediÆval nor peculiar.

But whosoever of a summer’s night will wander into the suburbs will hear the policeman on his round beating two pieces of wood together with aggravating rhythm. If the listener be country-bred the noise will remind him of the farm boy of old days who, with wooden clapper, scared birds from the corn. If he be so curious as to examine the instrument he will find it to be a piece of board with a handle, and a wooden ball attached to it with a piece of twine. The knocking of the two together to produce an intermittent whirr is accomplished by a curious turn of the wrist. The watchman will explain that the noise is to warn garden-robbers and other depredators of his coming, or to advise his employers that he is about his duty. The most learned ethnologist of the west says that an identical instrument, handled in the same manner, is employed by the minor priests of a wild race in the far far east to drive away evil spirits from the native temple.

Further a-field—a twenty-five kopeck ride on a lineika from the Trubaya—Ostankina is reached. There is a curious and elegant church of red brick built by Moscow artisans in the golden age, at the cost of the boyard Mikhail Cherkassky. Near by is a great wooden palace, stuccoed and prim, the property of the Sheremetievs. Passing through its park where Le Bruyn shot his great crane flying by a single bullet from his musket, and where the upper reaches of the Yauza are still haunted by wild fowl, is a thick wood to the north of the stream, and in the middle of that near the path, a clearing where at midday a drove of mares are coralled and milked by men who speak a strange tongue, and are of quite different appearance to the Muscovites. A mile further on is their village, near a large pool. It is a poor, insignificant, rather dirty and very untidy place. Mordva its name; Mordva its people, whose ancestors, many centuries ago, left their home among the Altai Mountains on the confines of Manchuria and spread westward over Russia, fighting with their later conquerors almost to their own extermination. Various isolated groups of this once powerful race are scattered about Russia, mixing but little with its people. These, who through long centuries have been resident in the heart of Muscovy, seems as incongruous and impossible as would be the present occupation of Hampstead Heath by survivors of ancient Picts in the full glory of their primitive customs. It is nearest to the great towns that primitive methods and beliefs persist most strongly, and just as in the villages about London, antiquated farming implements and old country superstitions are more plentiful than in the rural districts of England, so near Moscow the old customs and manners die hard. In villages within easy walk of the Kremlin, mediÆval practices are rife, especially during the celebration of marriages, and the performance of minor domestic pageants. The curious, if persistent and lucky, may see the bowl of Tantalus presented to the mother of the bride of yesterday, and as the liquor escapes the cup by the hole in its bottom from which the profferer has removed his finger, guess at the significance of the custom and speculate as to its origin.

PETROVSKI MONASTYR
PETROVSKI MONASTYR

Within the town almost every old building has its legends. Very diverse are those connected with the Lobnoe Mesto on the Grand Square. It derived its name—literally “the place of a skull”—from the Golgotha that was erected there for the Easter Passion play which was performed yearly before the church of the Trinity disappeared. From time immemorial it has been the place of public assembly, being to Moscow what St Paul’s Cross was to old London, and the perron to LiÉge. Therefore, as all who have studied the migration of symbols will know, not only is it of very early origin, but associated with stories in some form common to all peoples.

Another almost universal superstition is in Moscow attached to the Sukharev Bashnia, which is supposed to be the feminine complement of the Ivan Veliki tower in the Kremlin. The people call the Sukharev the jena (wife) of Ivan, and, according to tradition, Jack and Jenny get nearer to each other every year.

Visitors for whom folk-lore has no attraction will look for the picturesque in Moscow. The most characteristic view, the prospect the tourist expects, is that seen by turning westward along the boulevard from the Lubianka, and keeping along the south footpath, near the wall, watch the old town appear little by little as the brow of the hill is reached. Houses—of all sorts and colours—a faÇade like that of a classic temple, domes blue, green and golden, the red tower of a Chastok, a medley of roofs and walls, all these will appear framed in the foliage of the trees on the boulevards, and those overhanging the walls of the Rojdestvenka Convent, until the valley of the Neglinnaia is right below and the crosses and domes of the Petrovski Monastery are disclosed to view. Then it is time to cross the road to the centre of the boulevard and see Moscow unfold itself—walls and towers changing like the coloured fragments in a kaleidoscope. Opposite, where the bank rises to the Strastnoi Monastery, was once the old village of Vissotski—older, it is said, than Moscow town, or Kremlin, or even the hall of Kuchkovo and the twelfth century hamlet on the Chisty Prud at the back.

Again, ascend the belfry of St Nikita in the Goncharevskaya; time—the very early morning, and see the rising sun glitter on the domes of the Kremlin, and the churches of the Bielo Gorod; or, when it has long passed the meridian, watch the afterglow reflected from the thousand domes, tinting the white walls from the balcony of Krinkin’s on the Hill of Salutation. Stay on and watch the great white town, silent, reposeful and glorious, fade into the haze of the “white-night”; see it shimmering in the moonlight, or the glare of midday sun; sparkling feebly in the blue star light, or glowing like a new-cast ingot in the blackness of winter’s midnight; see it how, when and where you may, solve the enigma of its vitality if you can—but neither doubt its strength, nor question its beauty.