SUPERSTITION AND CRIME. 209 



Lowenstimm mentions a curious superstition of pagan origin 

 still practiced in portions of Russia, and known as " korovya smertj " 

 (cow-death) and " opachivaniye " (plowing roundabout). If pesti- 

 lence or murrain prevails in a village, an old woman of repute as a 

 seeress or fortune-teller enters the confines of the village at midnight 

 and beats a pan. Thereupon all the women of the place assemble in 

 haste, armed with divers domestic utensils — frying-pans, pokers, 

 tongs, shovels, scythes, and cudgels. After shutting the cattle in 

 their stalls, and warning the men not to leave their houses, a 

 procession is formed. The seeress takes off her dress and pro- 

 nounces a curse upon Death. She is then hitched to a plow, to- 

 gether with a bevy of virgins and a misshapen woman, if such a 

 one can be found, and a continuous and closed furrow is drawn 

 round the village three times. When the procession starts, the 

 image of some saint suitable to the occasion, that of St. Blasius, for 

 example, in the case of murrain, is borne in front of it; this is fol- 

 lowed by the seeress, clad only in a shift, with disheveled hair and 

 riding on a broomstick; after her come women and maidens draw- 

 ing the plow, and behind them the rest of the crowd, shrieking and 

 making a fearful din. They kill every animal they meet, and if a 

 man is so unfortunate as to fall in with them he is mercilessly beaten, 

 and usually put to death. In the eyes of these raging women he is 

 not a human being, but Death himself in the form of a were-wolf, 

 who seeks to cross their path and thus break the charm and destroy 

 the healing virtue of the furrow. The ceremony varies in different 

 places, and generally ends by burying alive a cat, cock, or dog. . In 

 some districts the whole population of the village, both men and 

 women, take part in the procession, and are often attended by the 

 clergy with sacred images and consecrated banners. During the 

 prevalence of the pest in the province of Podolia, in 1738, the in- 

 habitants of the village of Gummenez, while marching in procession 

 through the fields, met Michael Matkovskij, a nobleman of a neigh- 

 boring village, who was looking for his stray horses. The strange 

 man, wandering about with an eager look and a bridle in his hand, 

 was regarded as the incarnate pestilence, and was therefore seized 

 and most brutally beaten and left lying half naked and half dead 

 on the ground. At length he recovered his senses and succeeded with 



was produced in Pekin by the rumor that the Russian minister had applied to the Empress 

 of China for two thousand children to be buried in the roadbed under the rails in order to 

 strengthen it Some years ago, in rebuilding a large bridge, which had been swept away 

 several times by inundations in the Yarkand, eight children, purchased from poor people at 

 a high price, were immured alive in the foundations. As the new bridge was firmly con- 

 structed out of excellent materials, it has hitherto withstood the force of the strongest 

 floods, a result which the Chinese attribute, not to the solid masonry, but to the propitia- 

 tion of the river god by an offering of infants. 



TOL. LIT. — 15 



