allusion to the Libusa legend (cf., γεονργος), and at the same time connect the legends in which it occurs with St. George and the Dragon.
5. Gross matter, congealed by the cold, and the cold itself, represented as extreme old age, tempting the hero to the knowledge of good and evil. The primitive idea seems to have been that of an old woman or old man leaning on a staff—a figure dear to Slavonic literature. In the Slovenian legend, one of the most complete and elaborate of any Slavonic fairy stories, Jezibaba, the fire-hag of the tundra and steppes, plays the part. Now this hag (agni, gipsy, yag, fire), was imagined as driving in a car drawn by two horses over the steppes at a wild speed, stirring with an immense pestle an immense mortar, from which sparks flew in all directions. She bears, therefore, a certain resemblance to the heroine on horse-back (inferred as existing somewhere from the Sun-horse), and may perhaps be considered as a sort of burlesque of her. In Golden Locks she bears a considerable resemblance to Eve. She appears at the palace (as Jezibaba does in the Three Citrons), and offers the king a serpent, which, when eaten, was to make him understand the language of birds and animals. For the interpretation of the symbols of the serpent and the apple, I refer the reader to Michael Angelo and Gubernatis. George, the servant, contrary to express orders, himself takes a bite before serving up the serpent, and in this way also acquires the gift of understanding what the birds and beasts say.
This character, as I have said, represents the clotting cold, and more or less merges, on the one hand, into the Fates, on the other into the king or Black Prince-representing the black sunless winter of the Arctic circle. Thus the mother-in-law of the Sun-horse legend in part resembles the Black Prince of the Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes legend, while her three daughters, the snow, have much in common with the Fates dressed in white, with tapers in their hands. It is easy to see why in Arctic regions the idea of cold and fate should be associated. Fate is, above all things, associated with death, and death with cold-particularly where the cold is intense enough to kill directly. To dwellers in Arctic regions the ever-present idea is, and always must have been, that cold is the cause of death, or vice versa, and this explains why in old Slavonic the words for cold, congelation, and death are all closely linked together, because at some very early period of their history the Slav stock certainly inhabited a region within the Polar circle. Here is a list of some of these words: mor, pestilence; Morana, the Goddess of pestilence and death; mord, murder (cf., the Italian merda, the compact excrement); more, a morass or stagnant piece of water, afterwards the sea; morek, marrow; morena, madder; morous, a morose, concentrated, reserved person; mrak, a cloud; mramor, marble; mraz, frost; mrcha, carrion; mriti, to die; mrtev, dead, and other derivatives; mrzeti, to vex or render morose; mrznouti, to freeze; mrzout, a grumbler; mrzuty, tiresome, morose; smrk, a turpentine pine and snot; smrkati, (cf. Danish mörke, Yorkshire mirk, and Mercury Psychopompon, the
