THE RAINS. 359 



pared to make a night of it, while the men lay 

 huddled in their bourkas. Nothing save the voices 

 of the storm and the spluttering of the fire, which 

 the ruin soon extinguished, broke the sullen still- 

 ness of the night. 



It was not a cheerful end to my shooting ex- 

 pedition ; and again the truth of the Russian pro- 

 verb, which the men sometimes muttered, appeared 

 a possibility, ' the chase is worse than slavery.' 



During the night one of the men sang us some 

 wild Cossack songs, one of which I had often heard 

 the women crooning parts of before. Whether it 

 was that the wild forms and scenes that were round 

 me lent them a beauty the words do not really 

 possess, or whether there is in fact some charm in 

 this cradle-song of a warlike race, in some things 

 not unlike our borderers of two centuries ago, it 

 seemed at the time very impressive. I will there- 

 fore try to help my readers to judge for themselves, 

 from a translation of Poushkin's verses, which, if it 

 does not convey all the spirit of the original, is at 

 least a close transcript of the words and metre. 



COSSACK CRADLE-SONG. 



Sleep, my darling boy, serenely, 



Bai-oosh-kie-baiou, 

 While the still moon, culm and queenly, 



Gleams thy cradle through. 

 1 will rise and tell thee legends, 



Chaunting rhymes thereto ; 

 Ah, thine heavy eyes are closing, 



Bai-oosh-kie-baiou. 



