THE HORSE AS AN EPIC CHARACTER 



courteous master mine, grieve not. I fear not. Do 

 thou water me for three dawns with mead and give me 

 Saracen wheat." When the day of the race came, Ivan 

 rode into the courtyard upon his steed. Then did the 

 shaggy brown dance about the court, and roar Hke an 

 aurochs and hiss and shriek Hke a dragon. The three 

 hundred stallions were affrighted and fled, the iron-gray 

 broke two legs, the long-maned steed his neck; the 

 black fled neighing, with tail uplifted, to the Golden 

 Horde, leaping the Dnieper stream in his flight. Then 

 said sweet Ivan: "Delay not. Prince Vladimir, but 

 count me out the 300,000 roubles." This Vladimir did 

 with sorrow and said: '^ The devil take thee and thy 

 steed." Thus was the great race run. 



Here is another story, this time from a modern Greek 

 ballad, the Rescue of the Wife of Liakos. What mis- 

 fortune has happened to the wife of Liakos? Five 

 Albanians hold her prisoner and they ask her: " O 

 Liskena, won't you marry ? Do you not want a Turk 

 for a husband ? " But Liakos sees her from a high hill. 

 His black horse is close to him, and he whispers in his 

 ear: " Can you, my horse, can you deliver your mis- 

 tress ? " " Yes, I can, my master, I can deliver my 

 mistress, for then she may increase my rations. I go." 

 And he does go, frees his master's wife, and brings her 

 home. This same lack of disinterestedness appears in 

 another modern Greek ballad of a similar nature. One 

 day, while Akritas is plowing in the field, a bird flies up 

 to him and tells him that his wife Eudoxia and his best 



