CHAPTER III THE FEUDS OF THE HOUSE OF RURIK
The history of Russia during the next two hundred years is little more than a long chronicle of aimless and inconsequent feuds between the multiple Princes of the Blood—“the much-too-many” of their crowded little world—overlaid and beclouded with strange-sounding names recurring and clashing in a luxuriant tangle of pedigree, and further embarrassed by a perpetual shifting and reshifting of the family appanages. Here and there the figure of some particular kniaz stands out for a space from the ravelled skein that the old historians painstakingly wove upon the loom of their chronicles, but for the most part the student searches in vain for glimpses of the real life-story of Russia during this barren and over-trampled period.
The city of Kiev, carrying with it the dignity of the Grand-princedom and the nominal authority over the whole realm, was the key-stone of the body politic as Yaroslav left it, but the loosely-ordered theory of succession which obtained in the Slavonic world led to a perpetual dislocation of this local and ill-defined supremacy, and robbed the arch-throne of any chance of making good its claimed dominion over the other units of the State. Under Isiaslav I. and the brothers, son, and nephew who succeeded him in promiscuous order,[22] Kiev became merely a focussing point for the profusion of quarrels and petty revolutions which were set in perpetual motion by the restless ambition of the neighbouring Princes of Polotzk, Smolensk, and Tchernigov. The last– named province passed into the possession of Oleg Sviatoslavitch[23] (nephew of Isiaslav), and from him sprang the house of Olgovitch, which held the fief of Tchernigov for many generations and convulsed South Russia again and again in its attempts to grasp the throne of Kiev, this hereditary feud of the Olgovitchie with the branch of Vsevolod being the most understandable feature of the prevailing strife-storms of the period. A factor which might have been supposed to make for unity and self-help among the detached Russian rulers, but which instead frequently served to complicate the distresses of the country, was the appearance in the south-east, shortly after the death of Yaroslav, of a new enemy, rising phœnix-like on the ruin of the Petchenigs. The Polovtzi, or Kumans, a nomad race of Turko origin, were even fiercer and more cruel than the tribe they had replaced, and their fighting value was such that the princes, though frequently banding in short-lived leagues against them, were often tempted to invoke their aid in pressing family quarrels, and even stooped to mate with their chieftain women—a woful falling away from the bridal splendours of the Court of Yaroslav.
During the reigns of Isiaslav’s three immediate successors two figures stand out prominently amid the bewildering plurality of princes, respectively playing the part of good and evil geniuses of the country. Vladimir Monomachus, son of Vsevolod, sometime Prince of Kiev, fulfils the former function with commendable assiduity, righting wrongs and averting national disasters after the most approved chivalric pattern, and ever ready to improve the occasion by the delivery of irreproachable sentiments—if these were not fathered upon him by the chroniclers of the time. Throughout the turmoil which distinguishes the close of the eleventh century he hovers in the background, like the falcon of Ser Federigo, with his air of “if anything is wanting I am here.” The other side of the picture—and picture it doubtless is, in a large measure, painted by the prejudice and ornamented by the fancies of the old-time annalists—is the wayward Prince of Polotzk,[24] ever ready to devise new troubles for his groaning country, always managing to elude the consequences of his transgressions against the peace. Naturally he achieves the reputation of having more than human powers; rumour has it that he traversed the road from Kiev to Tmoutorakan in a single night, and the unholy wight could in Kiev hear the clock of the Sofia church at Polotzk striking the hours. The suddenness with which he would appear before the gates of some distant town gave rise, no doubt, to the belief that he assumed the form of a wolf on these occasions: “He sped, in blue obscurity hidden, as a wild beast, at midnight to Bielgrad, at morning ... opened the gate of Novgorod, destroyed the glory of Yaroslav, and hunted as a wolf from Dudutki to Nemiga.”[25] Wonders of an evil nature were reported from his capital, where malevolent spirits rode on horseback through the streets day and night, wounding the inhabitants. What with the intermittent attacks of the princes of the house of Yaroslav and the eerie enemies within the town, it must have required exceptional nerve to be a citizen of Polotzk. In 1101 closes the eventful life of the wehr-wolf prince, who makes his last lone journey into the “blue obscurity,” where perhaps his “white soul” yet hies in wolf’s gallop over the eternal plains.
Four years earlier (1097) an interesting gathering had taken place of the numerous princes of the line of Yaroslav, who were assembled together in the town of Lubetch, “on the same carpet,” and swore on the Holy Cross to live in peace and friendship with each other. With a limited number of fiefs and a superabundant supply of Princes of the Blood, many of whom were necessarily in the position of have-nots, it was scarcely likely that the public pact would be very long-lived, but a decent lull might have been looked for before the outbreak of new dissensions. David Igorovitch, cousin of the Grand Prince Sviatopalk, went straight from the council of peace, from the carpet-in-common and the bekissed cross, to stir up fresh strife in the West Russian country, and the series of wars which ensued was remarkable for the armed participation of Kalman, King of Hungary. The reason for this foreign intermeddling, which ended in signal discomfiture and a hurried retreat across the Karpathians, is not obvious. “What were the causes of this war,” wrote a Hungarian annalist,[26] “are not to be ascertained.” It was, however, the opening of a long chapter of western encroachments in the affairs of the Red Russian provinces, while in the steppe-lands of the south, Tmoutorakan and other territory slipped into the hands of the Kuman tribesmen.
1113
The accession of Vladimir Monomachus to the dignity of Velikie Kniaz gave Kiev for the time being greater importance as the sovereign State, since the lands of Péréyaslavl, Novgorod, and Souzdal were also held in the monarch’s family. Under his son Mstislav the Novgorodskie pushed their arms into Livland and took the town of Odenpay (bear’s head), and later these hardy and enterprising folk swept the desolate Finnish northlands into their wide dominion. The character of Vladimir (who died in 1125, and was succeeded by Mstislav) exercised a lively hold on the imaginations of his countrymen, and he is yet reckoned among those sovereigns “whose earthly diadems beamed in anticipation of the crowns they were to receive in Paradise.” This much may fairly be said of him, that during his career, and particularly during his reign, Russia enjoyed a greater measure of cohesion than she experienced under his immediate successors, and that this was in no small measure the outcome of a carefully thought-out and scrupulously applied policy. But the greatest monument to Vladimir’s memory is the parchment document which he left for the guidance of his sons, and which is preserved in the archives of his country as a precious historical relic.
“Bear in mind that a man ought always to be employed” is one of the admonitions of this remarkable homily, though if the persons addressed imitated the example therein displayed it was scarcely needed. “For my part I accustomed myself to do everything that I might have ordered my servants to do. Night and day, summer and winter, I was perpetually moving about. I wished to see everything with my own eyes.... I made it my duty to inspect the churches and the sacred ceremonies of religion, as well as the management of my property, my stables, and the eagles and hawks of my hunting establishment. I have made eighty-three campaigns and many expeditions. I concluded nineteen treaties with the Polovtzi. I took captive one hundred of their princes, whom I set free again; and I put two hundred of them to death by throwing them into rivers. No one has ever travelled more rapidly than I have done. Setting out in the morning from Tchernigov, I have arrived at Kiev before the hour of vespers.” (A feat surpassed by the goblin-post of the Prince of Polotzk.) “In hunting amidst the thickest forests, how many times have I myself caught wild horses and bound them together? How many times have I been thrown down by buffaloes, wounded by the antlers of stags, and trodden under the feet of elks? A furious boar rent my sword from my baldrick; my saddle was torn to pieces by a bear; this terrible beast rushed upon my steed, whom he threw down upon me. But the Lord protected me.”
There is a suspicion of exaggeration in the number of campaigns enumerated, besides “many expeditions,” and the hunting reminiscences are almost too full of incident; neither do wild horses, as a rule, inhabit the thickest forests. Allowing for these enlargements of old age, however, the outlines are probably true.
“Oh, my children,” the testator continues, “fear neither death nor wild beasts. Trust in Providence; it far surpasses all human precautions.” In order, presumably, not to risk all his eggs in one basket, he qualifies this pious aphorism with the following excellent advice: “Never retire to rest till you have posted your guards. Never lay aside your arms while you are within reach of the enemy. And, to avoid being surprised, always be early on horseback.”
With the disappearance of Vladimir Russian political life lapsed into the distracting turmoil of family feuds, embittered now afresh by the jealousies of the elder and younger branches of his descendants, in addition to the existing elements of discord furnished by the houses of Tchernigov and Galitz and the sporadic turbulence of the people of Novgorod.
It is interesting to compare and contrast the condition of the Russian State at this period with that of the neighbouring Germanic Empire, whose constitution and scheme of government was not widely different, and to examine the possible causes of the decay of the Grand-princely power in the one, and the survival of the Imperial ascendency in the other. The Western Empire had, like Russia, her periods of internal confusion, but however weak or unfortunate an individual Kaiser might be, his title and office always carried a certain weight of authority, a certain glamour of reverence with it, while in the Eastern State it is sometimes difficult to remember who was at any given time in possession of the arch-throne of Kiev. Probably the greater stability of German institutions was due to their greater complexity; side by side with the oligarchy of sovereign Dukes and Margraves there had grown up, fostered by the sagacious foresight of successive Emperors, a crop of free cities and burghs, enjoying a large measure of independence, while another element was introduced by the extensive temporal possessions and powers of many of the German prelates. These interwoven and antagonistic interests were naturally fertile of disputes and petty conflicts, in which events appeal was sure to be made, sooner or later, to the Emperor, whose intervention was seldom fruitless; for where a man, or a community, had many possible enemies, it was less easy to defy the sovereign power. If, therefore, each little fragment of the State was a law unto itself, the final supremacy of the Emperor was always in evidence, and in the same way some overweening vassal preparing to wage war on his sovereign liege might have his hand stayed by the irritating incursion of the Herrschaft of a mitred abbot or an aggrieved Burg upon his own dominions. In the Russian Weal, on the contrary, no such delicately adjusted conditions existed. With the exception of Velikie Novgorod, nothing was independent besides the princes of the house of Rurik; towns, clergy, and boyarins “went with” the various appanages to which they belonged, and shared the fortunes of the prince who for the time being ruled over them. Hence there was nothing beyond an empty title and the control of an uncertain quantity of treasure to advance the Grand Prince above the standing of his brothers and cousins. In consequence of this weakness of the central authority it follows that there was little to bind the mass together in a cohesive whole. Besides the kinship of the princes there were, perhaps, only two elements which prevented a splitting asunder of the federation: one was the physical aspect of the country, which presented no natural divisions which might have been resolved into political ones. As certainly as Denmark was destined to break away, in spite of artificial acts of union, such as that of Kalmar, from the other Skandinavian lands, so certainly was Russia likely to remain united. The wide plains, intersected by far-winding rivers, offered no obvious barriers which might have marked off a separate kingdom of Tchernigov or Polotzk, and each district was too dependent on the others to become permanently estranged. The other factor which made for unity was the bond of a common, and as regards their western neighbours, a distinct religion. The Greek-Christian faith, with all its attendant ceremonials and mysteries, had taken deep root among the Slavs of Russia, and had assimilated itself with the national life of the people. The beauties of the old cathedrals of S. Sofia at Kiev, S. John Theologus at Rostov, and S. Dimitri at Vladimir, bore evidence of the care that was lavished on the decoration of these temples of Christian worship. The Metropolitan of Kiev, as Primate over all the Russian churches, served as a link with the capital city which the Grand Prince did not always supply.
Novgorod, which has been mentioned as an exception to the state of subserviency prevalent among the other Russian towns, derived her strength and importance from her situation, which commanded both the Baltic and the Russian overland trade. Although the Hansa League had not yet taken definite shape, the elements of the later organisation were already in existence. The commercial life of the Baltic centred in Wisby, capital of the island of Gothland, and to this convenient meeting-place came, twice a year, German, Swedish, Russian, Danish, and Wendish merchants to exchange their various wares and supply the needs of their respective trade-circles. After the Wisby markets were over many of the traders from Lubeck, Hamburg, Bremen, etc., made their way to Novgorod, where they early possessed a factory and a separate place of worship, even as the Novgorodskie, since the middle of the twelfth century, had their church and quarter at Wisby. The intercourse with enterprising merchant folk from other lands—and merchants needed to be adventurous in those days—infused a spirit of energy and independence into the inhabitants of Novgorod, while the wealth at their disposal enabled them to extend their domination far over the bleak, but by no means barren, northlands of Russia, even to the further side of the Ourals. This extensive over-lordship, again, gave them control of many sources of commerce, and the produce of Arctic seas and sub-Arctic forests filtered through their hands into the channels of Baltic trade. Walrus teeth, the blubber oil from seals, and the down of sea-haunting birds formed the harvest of the frozen ocean; forest and lake furnished their markets with furs, raw leather, tallow, fish, and tar; cultivated lands yielded flax and hemp, honey and wax—the latter an important commodity in the times when the Church kept tapers burning day and night in thousands of shrines throughout the greater part of Europe. In exchange for these products the merchants of Wisby and of the German “Hof” at Novgorod bartered metal wares and manufactured goods. Of raw metals came tin from the celebrated mines of Cornwall, copper from the Swedish uplands, and iron from Bohemia and the Netherlands. Spanish lead found its way through Bruges and Antwerp.
[27] Thus Novgorod was the staple of a flourishing and far-reaching trade, even though the rise of the Italian maritime republics had in a large measure diverted the commerce of the East from its old Russian waterway, and the wealth and importance of this world-faring traffic took the city out of the limitations of the Russian realm, even as Lubeck and her sister towns stood beyond the bonds of the Empire. To the other Russian cities their respective rulers were the mainspring of their being, and each prince might have locally adapted the boast of the great Louis; to the Novgorodskie their prince was only an incident in a busy existence. This spirit of liberty and impatience found vigorous expression in the year 1138 when the citizens of Novgorod, with those of the subject towns of Pskov and Ladoga, in Vetché assembled, solemnly deposed their prince on the following grounds: that he had no care for the poorer people; that he only loved pleasures, falcons, and dogs; that he had coveted the government of Péréyaslavl; that in a battle with the Souzdalians he had been the first to leave the field; that he had no fixed policy, but was at times on the side of the house of Tchernigov, at times on the side of its enemies. The citizens had a quaint and effective way of dealing with a troublesome minority in carrying through their frequent prince-purgings. According to an old Slavonic custom (retained in Poland till her downfall), the decisions of the Vetché or the Diet had to be of one voice; however, “the majority had the resource of drowning the minority in the Volkof,”[28] and the bridge over that river was not unseldom the scene of violent party strife. The great bell of Yaroslav would clang out the curfew of the dethroned kniaz, who was thenceforth “shown the way” out of his erstwhile principality. On an occasion when the Grand Prince Sviatopalk II. wished to foist his son on the people of Novgorod, the elders of the city grimly sent him word to keep the young prince at home, “unless he has a head to spare.”
With the onward march of days and deeds in the stormy times of the twelfth century two facts, indeed, begin to stand forth. One is the waning power and import of Kiev, consequent on the many changes of masters to which she was subject; “the Mother of Russian cities” passed into the keeping of one prince after another, like a dainty piece of carrion dropped and snatched and fought over by a parcel of kites or crows. Side by side with this decline of the southern city is to be marked the silent growth of a new principality in the lands of the north-east, where Urii “Dolgoroukie” (the Long-armed), son of Vladimir Monomachus, had nursed the savage, forest-choked marchland of Souzdal into a well-ordered province, enjoying from its very remoteness and seclusion a domestic calm which was to be found nowhere else in the wide Russian realm. Among the towns which he founded, or advanced from the position of tribal villages, was one on the banks of the Moskva, to which was given the name of the river that watered it, a name to be one day of first importance in Russian history. On the death of Urii (1157) his son Andrei, albeit one of a numerous family, succeeded him in the undivided sovereignty of Souzdal. Turning his back on glittering but unprofitable Kiev, with its thousand shrines and general odour of sanctity and its unhealthy political atmosphere, he established himself at Vladimir-on-the-Kliasma, strong in the possession of a bejewelled ikon of the Virgin, of Greek manufacture—if it were not, as was asserted, the handiwork of the Apostle Luke. From this vantage-ground of possession and authority the wary kniaz proceeded to sweep away with unsparing hand the gaping brood of his brothers and nephews, who were exiled wholesale, together with such boyarins as were suspected of favouring a splitting-up of Andrei’s dominion. The banished Urievitch princes retired to Constantinople, where they were honourably received by the Greek Emperor Manuel, who, amid the vigorous wars which he carried on with most of his neighbours, maintained terms of friendship with the princes of Russia. Shortly after this state-stroke the Prince of Souzdal became embroiled with the turbulent Novgorodskie, whose newly-elected Prince Roman was son of the then Velikie Kniaz of Kiev.
Andrei was minded to show who really was master in the Northern Russian world, and turned his arms, not upon Novgorod, but upon Kiev.
1169
Against the devoted city gathered, in obedience to the behest of Andrei, a mighty host of princes, with their boyarins and followers; Mstislav of Souzdal, Roman of Smolensk, Vseslav of Polotzk, Oleg of Sieversk, the Rostislavitches, and many another, banded themselves together, under the leadership of the first-named, to assist at the death of a fiction. The Grand Prince entrenched himself in his capital and defended the walls for two days against the assaults of his enemies. On the 8th March the walls were stormed and the “Mother of Russian cities” was given over to sack and pillage. In one wild moment all the reverence and religious piety of the Slavonic nature was scattered to the winds, and churches, monasteries, and the cathedrals of S. Sofia and the Dime shared the general disaster. Sacrilegious hands bore gleefully through the roaring streets a spoil of holy ikons, illuminated missals, crosses, priestly robes, and all the trappings of an outraged religion; even the bells were torn down from their campaniles to serve as plunder for the victorious invaders.
Kiev still existed as a city, but on her Golden Gate the conquerors might fitly have hewed the epitaph, “Ichabod. Thy glory is departed from thee.”
The Grand Prince made his escape from the toils of his enemies, and one of the sons of Urii succeeded to what was left of the submerged dignity; but the real centre of authority had shifted. Souzdal extended its influence over nearly the whole of the Russian land; the Princes of Galitz and Tchernigov and the republic of Novgorod alone maintained their independence. The latter government, indeed, despite the internal disorders with which it was from time to time afflicted, had risen to a power which might well cry halt to the most ambitious potentate. Not only had it held its own against the leagued princes of Northern Russia, but it had valiantly repelled the onslaught of a foreign enemy. The union of the crowns of Sweden and Gothland, the pact between the houses of Swerker and Jeswar, and the gradual dying out of the pagan minority had given the Swedes comparative domestic quiet, and at the same time leisure to turn their attention to attacks on their neighbours. Hence it was that Karl VII., in the year 1164 (while Sviatoslav yet reigned at Novgorod), invaded the Russian northlands and besieged Ladoga, which was defended by the citizens with great spirit. The arrival of Sviatoslav with the Posadnik Zakharie and the Novgorodskie forces was followed by the complete defeat of the Swedish host, only a remnant of which, according to the city Chronicles, succeeded in making good its escape. This exploit gives some idea of the power and position of Velikie Novgorod, which at this period matches the standing of Lubeck in the days of the Kaiser Karl IV. Against so dangerous a rival it was inevitable that Andrei, dreaming of autocracy 300 years before its time, should bend the whole crushing weight of his resources and influence, and seek to whelm Novgorod in the same humiliation that had befallen Kiev. The inhabitants of the threatened city saw an ominous league of their enemies gathering together; the Princes of Smolensk, Polotzk, Mourom, and Riazan joined their forces to those of Mstislav Andreivitch, the conqueror of Kiev, under whose banner marched the men of Souzdal, Rostov, Vladimir, and Bielozersk. At the head of the citizens stood their Kniaz, Roman, the Posadnik Yakun, and the Archbishop Ivan. These prepared by every means in their power to resist the formidable army whose skirmishers were ravaging the country for miles around and lighting the winter sky with the fires of hundreds of blazing villages. The doubt voiced by a poet of a later century—
Though kneeling nations watch and yearn,
Does the Primordial Purpose turn?
found no expression in the minds of these early Russians, in whose civil discords the members of the Holy Family of heaven were supposed to take as keen an interest as the gods of Olympus in the skirmishes round Troy.
1170
When the attack closed in upon the city the Archbishop, attended by his clergy, carried round the ramparts, during the thick of the fight, a standard with a representation of the Virgin.
An impious arrow struck the sainted ikon, which thereupon turned its face towards Novgorod and let fall a shower of tears upon the Archbishop; this was too much for the nerves of the Souzdalians, who seemingly were near enough to witness the miracle, and a headlong flight ensued, in which many were slain and many taken prisoners. In the words of the Novgorodskie Chronicle, “You could get ten Souzdalians for a grivna.” It is difficult to discern, under the mass of legend, what was the real cause of this panic. The warriors who had laid ruthless hands on the hallowed sanctuaries of the Russian capital were not likely to be cowed by a provincial representation of the Virgin; had they not their own apostle-wrought ikon of the Mother of God at Vladimir? Whatever the cause of defeat, it gave a serious check to Andrei’s projects of undisputed supremacy. Novgorod, however, was not secure from the enmity of the Prince of Souzdal, from whose province she drew her supplies of grain, and the Posadnik and Archbishop followed up their victory by timely overtures for peace, which was effected by the dismissal of Roman and the subsequent “free election” of a prince from the Souzdal family. Four years later the dreaded northern Kniaz suffered the penalty of being in advance of his times. The high hand with which he had ruled in his own province had inspired among his boyarins and courtiers a fear which might on occasion become dangerous.
1177
And the occasion arrived, when one summer’s evening a band of twenty conspirators, including the chamberlain of his household, burst into the old man’s sleeping-chamber in his palace at Bogolubov (a suburb of Vladimir) and stabbed wildly at him in the uncertain twilight. Favoured by the dusk and confusion, Andrei managed to crawl away into hiding; a light was procured, and by the track of his streaming wounds he was hunted down and the assassins finished their task. Vladimir, which he had raised to the position of his capital over the older towns of Souzdal and Rostov, mourned the grim fate of her patron, but throughout the rest of the province the long-repressed feelings of the inhabitants ran riot in bloodshed and pillage. The affrighted clergy, clad in their priestly vestments and bearing the sacred ensigns of their religion, went in solemn processions through the towns, invoking the assistance of the Most High God to quell a revolt which threatened the submersion of their world. Andrei had tried to weld into a disciplined kingdom materials that were as yet only fitted for a modified anarchy, tempered by attachment to a loosely-ordered succession of princes; dreaming of despotism, he had at least died the death of a despot.
And while they do to death the only prince who had shown them the way to the safety which lay in union and centralisation, far away on the banks of the Okon, in the desert region which borders Northern China and Manchuria, is growing from insignificance to an overmastering weight of supremacy the tribe, horde, locust-swarm of the swarthy Mongols.
The disorders which marked the disappearance of Andrei’s overshadowing personality from the throne of Souzdal were soothed, after a long struggle between his reflucted kinsfolk, by the final establishment of Vsevolod, brother of the murdered prince, surnamed “Big-nest” in allusion to his large family.[29] Applying himself to the ordering of his own province, he meddled but languidly in the seething troubles of the Dniepr-watered principalities, where the house of Olgovitch was enjoying a fitful revival of importance. A scion of that strenuous family at this time embarked on an enterprise which, though fruitless from a military point of view, was crowned with a halo of glory and immortalised in an epic poem of great beauty. “The Song of the Expedition of Igor, Prince of Sieverski,” or, more shortly, the Song of Igor, one of the earliest Slavonic folk-songs that has been handed down from the dead past, has been translated into many languages, but never before into English, so that it is well worth reproducing in part in a history of Russian development. It deals with a campaign undertaken by Igor Sviatoslavitch, Prince of Severski, and his brother Vsevolod, against the Polovtzi in their own country, of its disastrous result, and the ultimate return of Igor.
Brothers, were it not well that we, after the old custom, began the song of the unlucky campaign of Igor, the seed of Sviatoslav? That we celebrate him in the heroic songs of our time, and not in the manner of Bōyan? If the sage Bōyan wished to tune to one a song, it was as if a squirrel sprang up the tree, or a gray wolf hied along the plain, or a blue eagle soared to the clouds....
Igor looked forth and saw that the sun had hidden his face, and a mist had enveloped his warriors. Then spoke Igor to his army: “Brothers and soldiers, it is better to fall in battle than to yield one’s life; so will we mount our mettlesome horses and gain the Blue Don by daylight.” Yearning filled the soul of the Prince, and the wish to see the noble Don led him to forget many evil tokens. “I will break a lance,” cried he, “on the farthest verge of the Polovtzi land, or bow my head with you, Russians, and with my helmet draw water from the Don.” O Bōyan, thou nightingale of the olden days, if thou hadst inspired these warrior-bands, alighting on the Tree of Thought and hovering in the spirit of the clouds, thou hadst, O nightingale, united this severed time (that which is Past with that which Is).... Not a storm-wind drove the falcons over the wide plain, nor hurried the flocks of daws to the glorious Don. Or thou mightest, sage Bōyan, thus have sung: The steeds are neighing this side the Sula, the war-song resounds in Kiev, the trumpets are crashing in Novgorod. The standards wave in Poutivl, where awaits Igor his loved brother Vsevolod. And to him saith the bold, war-lusting Vsevolod, “O Igor, my only brother, my bright Sun, truly are we twain the seed of Sviatoslav. Brother, let thy spirited war-horses be saddled; already are mine saddled and waiting at Koursk, and my Kourskies are right warriors, born ’neath the blare of the trumpets, and nurtured at the point of the lance. The roads are familiar to them; they know the passes, their bows are strung, the quiver is open, the sabres are burnished, and they themselves press forward, like gray wolves on the bleak wold, in pursuit of honour and princely renown.” Then set Prince Igor his foot in the golden stirrup and rode forth into the wide plain. The sun blurs the way through the gloom, the night groans in storm and wakes the birds, swells in chorus the howling of beasts, the evil Div shrieks down from the tree-tops and summons the strange la