The Shadow of the Gloomy East. Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski
beheld bridles hanging down from the ceiling, horsetails and skins, tufts of grass and herbs and little bags blackened with smoke.
In front of the stove sat a little grey-haired man with conspiciously squinting eyes, open-mouthed, showing two rows of black teeth, and wearing a look of inquisitive fear.
He took the bridle, examined it carefully, smelled it, tried its hardness with his teeth, and then all of a sudden he burst into a terrific yell:
"The horse was led away … driven far away … very far … it's a good horse … all foaming … neighing … breaking away for home. … Turn … here's good oats for you … ta … ta … ta … little horse … come … come here!"
During the invocation he cast upon the coals handfuls of oats, gazing intently into the leaping tongues of fire.
He jumped up, tore from the celling a bundle of grass and threw it on the coals. … The dry stalks and leaves twisted, stretched like snakes and burst into flame. Next the old man threw into the stove horse-dung, and as the smoke rose up, he bent over the coals and said in a whisper:
"The horse … the horse. … A broad road … a highway … three cottages … a burnt fir-tree … a meadow with a blackened haystack. … A tall lean man leads a horse … a shaven head, a scar upon his forehead, and he limps,"
"I know him! I know him!" shouted the peasant "It's Kuzma! The gipsy from Neshetilov. He won't escape me this time!"
With these words he rushed out of the room, I went home, and a few days afterwards I learned that the peasant, with the assistance of his two sons and his son-in-law, surprised the gipsy, bound him to his own horse and dragged him back into the village.
Here the crowd set on him, beat him, bruised his legs and arms, tore his hair, ordering him to say at once where the horse was hidden. The poor fellow swore by all the saints that he had not seen the horse, that he knew nothing about it, but the crowd would not believe him. Like mad, they beat him again, trampled upon him, until one of the frenzied lynchers finally finished him with a pitchfork.
The body was buried in a waste field, and a pale planted on the grave by way of memorial.
This is the emblem of the ancient law of the Golden Horde, which ordains that the captured horse-thief should be impaled. Such an execution, however, requiring too many preparations, it is easier for the crowd to beat the culprit to death, and afterwards to impale the dead body within its grave.
The demon-worship or shamanism is quite comprehensible in the vast desert of the North, where Nature unlooses a veritable inferno of multifarious and terrifying voices; where the hurricanes, blowing from the Arctic Ocean, claim death; where the quagmires breathe plague, emit pestilence; where savage men and beasts run wild, carrying death in their despondent, hunger-glowing eyes; where the earth and the air are overcloyed with the blood, the groans, and the curses of those whom the Tsars and their intelligent bureaucracy cast into the bottomless pit of solitary torture and death, solely because they strove for freedom, giving them the freedom of the boundless desert of snow in which, like stones in the depths of an unfathomable sea, were lost without trail hundreds and thousands of tombs of martyrs!
In those God-forsaken regions shamanism appears a natural phenomenon amongst the savage tribes of nomads.
Still, even in Russia proper, even near the capital, its existence is revealed.
I knew two instances.
I was a student at that time spending my holidays with a doctor, a friend of mine, in the Kola peninsula. We were travelling in the province of Olonetz, and before reaching the town of Petrozavodsk we had to stay the night in a large village a few miles from the town. We went to the local inn, the usual den, not too clean, damp, and pervaded with the fumes of alcohol.
After the evening meal, we retired into our room to load cartridges for our sporting guns, as we had expended our ammunition on the way.
We were just beginning operations when there was a cautious knock on the door. A pale, emaciated little fellow came in; he was dressed in a long black coat, like a monastic servant. But the face of the man glowed with its huge, burning, and piercing eyes.
I remember well the fear that crept upon me involuntarily under their gaze.
"What do you want?" asked the doctor, throwing a measure of powder into the husk without raising his eyes.
"I came to invoke the spirits for you," replied the visitor gravely.
The measure fell from my friend's fingers as he lifted his amazed look upon the newcomer.
"Spirits? he asked, shrugging his shoulders.
"Yes, spirits," said our guest gently.
"Who are you?" asked the doctor again.
"I am a 'coldun,' a shaman!" was the indifferent reply. "I brought this science from the Tundra of Malaya Zyemla, where the nomading tribes possess the secret of intercourse with the dead and the spirits."
"How very interesting!" interjected the doctor. "But you cannot invoke the souls of the dead or the spirits here."
"Yes, I can. I can do it here right away," smiled the shaman. "It will cost you three roubles, gentlemen!"
His voice was imploring and betrayed the fear that we might refuse his offer.
"I shall pay three roubles," agreed the doctor. "Please begin at once!"
"Immediately!" said the shaman with joy, while greedily pocketing the money. "Please sit down at the other end of the room and put the light out."
I had time enough to notice that he took from his pocket a tiny, flat piece of wood which he put to his lips.
We were sitting in darkness and silence. From the neighboring cottage entered through the window the scanty light of a petrol lamp. Still we were able to see the shaman's black figure standing immovably near the door. All of a sudden a faint, scarcely audible sound was heard like the buzzing of a fly entangled in a spider's net.
The sound became gradually louder till it seemed to fill the whole space of the room. It split into tens, hundreds of tunes, which reverberated against the panes of the window, the papered ceiling, the walls; the sounds, trembling, squeaking, roaring, raced in a mad whirl through the whole room, approached my very ears and vanished again in the distance, far away until they seemed almost smothered. I was seized with a strange restlessness; incomprehensible, morbid forebodings began to torment my soul.
The black figure of the shaman, hardly visible in the gloom, reeled, slowly at first, methodically, then with quicker passion, till his movements changed imperceptibly into swift jumps, twists, leaps. Standing on one leg, he started to turn round with ever increasing speed, till after a few minutes he fell to the ground exhausted and breathless, shouting with piercing accents: "They have come! … They have come! …"
Immense multitudes of echoing sounds seemed to chase each other through the dark room, changing into a whirlwind, storm, and chaos, which one could feel with almost a physical pain. Blasts of wind waves rushed through the room. It made my flesh creep to see it lifting the papers lying upon the table. I do not know how long it all lasted. I only know that my hands became icy cold and that my brow was covered with sweat. My eyes seemed to become extraordinarily sharp. I could see quite clearly the prostrate figure of the shaman. I could distinguish his pale, almost shining face and his wide-opened, glowing eyes. He had the same little piece of wood in his hand and with his lips called forth the various sounds.
Suddenly, in the darkness, at many spots, for the twinkling of an eye, there blazed out greenish, phosphoric flames. Then again they came and vanished. The sounds abruptly died away. A sudden blast made tongues of flame flicker up near the ceiling, and then all was dark and silent as if a heavy black curtain was drawn. The shaman remained lifeless and did not answer the doctor's repeated questions if he might light the lamp.
He did so at last and approached the prostrate figure. The shaman was lying with closed