King Nebuchadnezzar made a gold image, ninety feet high and nine feet broad, and had it set up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon ... A herald proclaimed in a loud voice, 'Peoples and nations of every language, you are commanded, when you hear the sound of horn, pipe, zither, triangle, dulcimer, a full consort of music, to prostrate yourselves and worship the gold image which King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. Whosoever does not prostrate himself and worship will be thrown forthwith in a blazing furnace. ... Some Chaldaeans seized the opportunbity to approach the king with a malicious accusation against the Jews. ... 'These men, Shadrach, [Mishael Meshach], and Abed - nego have disregarded the royal command ...'. 'Your majesty, ... If there is a god who is able to save us from the blazing furnace, it is our God whom we serve; he will deliver us from your majesty's power ...'. At this, Nebuchadnezzar was furious with them, and his face became distorted with anger. He ordered that the furnace be heated to seven times its usual heat, and commanded some of the strongest men in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach and Abed - nego, and throw them into the blazing furnace. ... Then King Nebuchadnezzar greatly agitated, sprang to his feet, saying to his courtiers, 'Was it not three men whom we threw bound into the fire?' They answered, 'Yes, certainly, your majesty.' 'Yet,'he insisted, 'I can see four men walking about in the fire, free and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a god.' Nebuchadnezzar approached the furnace door and called, 'Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed - nego, servants of the Most High God, come out!" When Shadrach, Mesach, and Abed - nego emerged from the fire, the satraps, prefects, governors, and the king's courtiers gathered round them and saw how the fire had had no power to harm their bodies ... Nebuchadnezzar declared: 'Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Mesach, and Abed - nego! He has sent his angel to save his servants who, trusting in him, disobeyed the royal command; they were willing to submit themselves to the fire rather than to serve or worship any god other than their own God. ...' (Daniel 3 passim)

John's memory, or his mother's telling, perhaps does not match precisely variants we know from Afanasi'ev(f.13); but it preserves many essential elements remarkably well and shows, as well, distinct Doukhobor oikotyping. The doll embodies a spirit; soldiers appear, ambiguous and threatening; hard work is idealized; and Baba Yaga's enlightening offer of answers - just - so - far is reduced in its prechristian theology, but acquires a condition exquisitely pertinent in Doukhobor society: "questions about internal matters are dangerous." We may also wonder if the concluding interpretation is John's alone, or if his mother was accustomed to comment on the stories she told. Babya Yaga remains ambiguous - 'She is bad" - yet brings the 'hard workers and heroes' to success: and this is remembered as a story about Baba Yaga, rather than about [Vasilisa]. 'That's life.'

Doukhobors present themselves through narrative forms over a fairly wide stretch of time and place. Folklorists are familiar with ways in which the content of narrative is adapted to local needs and values, but issues of style are more opaque. Time, Place, Character and Event are important themes of these narratives. Doukhobor society defined itself by repudiating or reforming values of its cultural matrix. By embracing an historical world view, it gained a tool with which to register the successes and failures of its self - definition. Perhaps we may consider this historical axiom to be an aspect of Doukhobor narrative style.

Aspects of Doukhobor Narrative

ABSTRACT

Historic experience stripped Doukhobors of some vital cultural goods. Still, in Canada Doukhobors retain a powerful and complex narrative tradition, marked by rich variety in type, content, style, rhetoric and principle. Historic, recent and contemporary Narratives are illustrated by annotated texts in English or English translation. To the Folklorists' familiar trinity of Myth/Legend/Marchen, it appears helpful to add some material from both sacred and secular song traditions: and an excerpt from one Freedomite Doukhobor's controversial and rhetorically powerful public address. Such texts imply conscious use of an historical world - view. Folklorists and other scholars are reminded that, while our categorizing serves us in many ways, it may mislead us if we do not look beyond forms to the underlying flow of social and creative forces that bring them into being.

I. Introduction

Some years ago, I discussed Doukhobor Narratives from the point of view of a scholar of Legend or Oral History(f.1), noting that this class of tale apparently dominated tradition and proposing a cluster of narrative categories based on conventional Folkloric terminology:

1. Narratives of the Leaders (Hero Legends, positive and negative)

2. Narratives of Community experience (Anecdotes)

3. Narratives of Personal experience (Memorats)

4. Other Narrative Forms (incl. Psalms) with Historic content or motivation I would now add further categories:

5. Narratives of sectarian Origin (Myths)

6. Marchen

7. Miscellaneous Narratives

It is natural that Doukhobor tradition in Canada should reflect patterns of European tradition, necessarily in ways that suit Doukhobors. We are, after all, considering the self - presentation of a community of some 25,000 Russian Sectarians, heirs of a long history of repeated oppression, destitution and exile. Doukhobors' narrative suggests, among much else, that they choose to emphasize aspects of their traditional ideology over other, less specific traditions, probably as a strategy of cultural survival. Stripping in some areas is balanced by the development of variety and rhetorical expertise in others.

Let us consider some examples of Doukhobor narrative so that we may appreciate the distinctions of morphology and function. This is not to challenge or quibble over terms, but to introduce diverse ways in which telling is achieved and to consider the power of that diversity to communicate knowledge and understanding.

II. An Origin Myth

A remnant of myth appears in an unevenly known account:

The first Doukhobors were the three Israelites in the fiery furnace.

This, more statement than narrative in form, identifies the First 'Doukhobors as the Three Holy Children of Old Testament Daniel (REB: Chs. 1/3 - end; 3).

Among [the Israelite exiles) were certain Jews ... To them the master of the eunuchs gave new names: Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah Shadrach, Mishael Meshach, and Azariah Abed - nego. Daniel determined not to become contaminated with the food and wine from the royal table, and begged the master of the eunuchs to excuse him from touching it. ... Daniel said ... Submit us to this test for ten days: give us only vegetables to eat and water to drink; then compare our appearance with that of the young men who have lived on the king's food ... '... At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who had lived on the food from the king. (Daniel 1/8,10 - 16)

King Nebuchadnezzar made a gold image, ninety feet high and nine feet broad, and had it set up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon ... A herald proclaimed in a loud voice, 'Peoples and nations of every language, you are commanded, when you hear the sound of horn, pipe, zither, triangle, dulcimer, a full consort of music, to prostrate yourselves and worship the gold image which King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. Whosoever does not prostrate himself and worship will be thrown forthwith in a blazing furnace. ... Some Chaldaeans seized the opportunbity to approach the king with a malicious accusation against the Jews. ... 'These men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed - nego have disregarded the royal command ...'. 'Your majesty, ... If there is a god who is able to save us from the blazing furnace, it is our God whom we serve; he will deliver us from your majesty's power ...'. At this, Nebuchadnezzar was furious with them, and his face became distorted with anger. He ordered that the furnace be heated to seven times its usual heat, and commanded some of the strongest men in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach and Abed - nego, and throw them into the blazing furnace. ... Then King Nebuchadnezzar greatly agitated, sprang to his feet, saying to his courtiers, 'Was it not three men whom we threw bound into the fire?' They answered, 'Yes, certainly, your majesty.' 'Yet,'he insisted, 'I can see four men walking about in the fire, free and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a god.' Nebuchadnezzar approached the furnace door and called, 'Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed - nego, servants of the Most High God, come out!" When Shadrach, Mesach, and Abed - nego emerged from the fire, the satraps, prefects, governors, and the king's courtiers gathered round them and saw how the fire had had no power to harm their bodies ... Nebuchadnezzar declared: 'Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Mesach, and Abed - nego! He has sent his angel to save his servants who, trusting in him, disobeyed the royal command; they were willing to submit themselves to the fire rather than to serve or worship any god other than their own God. ...' (Daniel 3 passim)

A few Doukhobor Psalms allude to this account and various writers mention it in passing; I've also heard it from a few Doukhobors of varying age and sectarian view. Motifs in the OT account with which most Doukhobors can immediately identify include the Heroes, hostages of a minority in exile; the overweening but otherwise morally neutral authority of King Nebuchadnezzar; idealist refusal to serve the king's false god punished by a violent and hideous death; life rather than death amidst the flames and in the company of a 'Son of God'; and the king's consequent pardon, repentance and recognition of what is truly divine. Some Doukhobors look askance at what they perceive as an indefensible argument of historical and genetic origin; but this may arise from a corresponding rationalistic unwillingness to give priority to metaphorical interpretation of the story. This problem reappears in the general popular misunderstanding of the term myth: a story that presents the truth, but not necessarily in historical form.

III. Narratives of the Leaders

The sociopolitical institution of Leadership underwent a number of changes from early times, ranging between roles more and less spiritually defined. It has been possible for Doukhobors to perceive leaders as either saints or tyrants and often enough as both. By the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, though, it is apparent that the model of the baryn or rural aristocrat, tempered more or less effectively by a spiritual ethic, had become prevalent. Consider the narrative What is God?(f.2):

There was an old Doukhobor named Zotov, who was the right - hand man of the leader Pobirokhin at the time when the Doukhobors were moving to the Milky Waters. This old man was arrested and sent to prison in the Solovetski Monastery. The Archbishop asked him: "Who are you?" He replied, "We are Doukhobors." "How do you understand God? What is God?" The old man could not answer. So he was imprisoned in the Solovetski Monastery, and twice or three times a year he was asked the same question, "Till you tell us what God is, we shall not free you." So he spent twelve years in the cell.

When the Doukhobors had moved to the Milky Waters and settled down, Pobirokhin remembered the old man who was still imprisoned. He chose two young men, gave them money and told them, "Go to the Monastery and find out where this elder is imprisoned. Then pretend you are drunk bums and one of you ask aloud, 'What is God?' and the other answer, 'God is primordial light; unborn, uncreated, eternal, primordial: enveloped in his light as by a chasuble.' Do not leave there, but wait for the results."

Thus they did as they were told. At one time they were sitting in a tavern and there entered an old man, overgrown with hair as if he were an animal. They asked him, "Who are you?" He said, "I am the old man Zotov. They just let me go. Twelve years I was imprisoned for not being able to answer, 'What is God?' But now I had a vision: I heard a voice which said, 'Answer this: God is primordial light, unborn, uncreated.' When I said this twice or three times, they let me go."

Here the Leader acts rationally; but his elderly adherent Zotov is - perhaps naively - mystified, perceives the apparent drunks as a noumenal vision and loses all but the core of the necessary answer, itself the title of a Doukhobor hymn. One is left to decide to embrace either or both modes of perception and action, rational and mystical. Because Zotov's vision was contrived, was its theology any less valid? Such stories in part opt for content over form.

An informant says of Needle and Thread(f.3):

We also have a parable that says that one of the leaders or the prophets said: "I am the point of the needle; the Doukhobors are the needle; the whole [of] humanity is the thread. What I pierce through, the whole needle - the Doukhobors - must come through also, after me. What the Doukhobors go through, the whole [of] humanity must follow as well, as a thread." and he says, "I am the point of the needle."

This encapsulates some nice bits of semiology in a deliberately logical metaphor: Leader is to Doukhobors as Doukhobors to Humanity; real human experience is a fabric through which all pass sooner or later. Tailoring, mending, embroidering: the spiritual life as construction, repair, ornament; and not gender - bound: this narrative is brief but subtle.

In Waggon, a brief account not yet prepared(f.4) for publication,

Peter Lordly Verigin rebuked an obstreperous but respected elder: he had driven a harness team on the Sabbath, against Community rules. Verigin halted him on a hill, unhitched the horses and let the waggon plummet into the Kootenay River. The old man went mumbling off to train a choir of girls, who sang his song next week in Community meeting. Each verse, ending in a magnificent slurred chord called char - a - banc, 'Waggon,' by Doukhobors - burlesqued the event as a miracle:

Christ Himself came down, Threw my waggon into the river!

The Leader must be obeyed absolutely, yet one need not be obliged to silent submission. The subtle realization of a pun in musical terminology and performance should also remind us that scholastic humour is not limited to the print - literate.

IV. Narratives of Community Experience

Another of Piontkovsky's informants tells of The Lord's Prayer and Grand - father(f.5):

My Grandfather, Stepan Kanigin, died in Canada in 1935. When he and his family were arrested for surrendering their draft cards [in Russia], they were arrested and sent from Alexanderpol in Kars [gubernatoria]. They were being led through our villages. There is the river Kura there; when they reached the river Kura, Grandfather knew how to read [chitat', recite] the Lord's Prayer. When you read the Lord's Prayer, you put a spell on a gun and it cannot shoot. Grandfather said to the leader of the escorting soldiers, "Well, you are leading fifty men. If they start escaping, what will you do?" "I shall use my rifles!" There were five armed soldiers. Grandfather asked, "Can you hit that rock over there in the water?" The soldier aimed, but the bullet just dropped from the barrel. He tried again, again the bullet just dropped at his feet. The officer grabbed the gun of a soldier, the same thing happened; so it repeated itself with all the five soldiers. "Now what are you going to do in case of an escape?" "I do not know what I can do!" "Well, let me hold the gun for a while." The officer gave him the gun. Grandfather held the gun for a while, then returned it and said, "Now, try it again." The officer shot and the bullet flew to its mark. So he was telling us himself. Many others heard the same tale. This actually happened.

Compare this with a tale of Grandfather's Neck(f.6):

This happened a long time ago, when the Doukhobors still drank. It happened in a dukhan [Caucasian tavern] that one man quarrelled with his neighbour, for they were both a little drunk. The man became so angry that he wanted to cut off his neighbour's head. He ran and got an axe, returned to the dukhan and stood outside the door, meaning to cut off his neighbour's head as soon as it showed through the door.

When the neighbour was about to leave, he spoke to Ivan Paramonovitch Abrosimov, my grandfather. It so happened that Ivan Paramonovitch went out first; but, in order to pass through the doorway, one had to lean over: for the door was low. So Grandfather bent down passing through the doorway. The man waiting outside though it was the neighbour and dropped the axe on his neck to do the evil deed. But suddenly he noticed that it was another man's face and tried to hold back. It was too late to stop and the necktendons were cut by the dropping axe.

At that time Ivan Paramonovitch lived nearby. One of those present was sent for his son to call a man who knew how to stop bleeding by casting a spell. When this man arrived, the blood was caking. The man washed the wound, repositioned the head and said: "Ivan Paramonovitch, if you wish that I should save you, let no - one come near you; and I shall do my work." So he began to heal Grandfather; he gave him nothing but broth from boiled pigeons. After a month the tendons had grown together and Grandfather lived for a long time after this. Grandfather did nothing to the culprit, for it was not meant for him.

These two tales present different Doukhobor ideas about violence. The oppressive military can learn, in the first tale, other views about power and compassion: Grandfather first negates physical force through the exercise of spiritual power; then, by returning power to the neutralized officer, shows a different ethic altogether. Grandfather Abrosimoff in turn, healed supernaturally after an evil accident, forgives the fault in a manner coolly rational and tolerant. In both cases, the narrators are primarily concerned with apparently supernatural action: yet they do not omit to portray equally significant values and judgements. More important than the charmed gun is the dogmatic point that the Doukhobors' spiritual strength is so great that they need not call upon it for deliverance: in the very hands of their cruel captors, they are already delivered.

V. Narratives of Personal Experience

Other stories reflect more recent personal dealings with Doukhobor values. A cousin tells of a distraught father's comforting encounter with A Ghost(f.7). We need first to remember that Doukhobors consider death between childhood and old age relatively unnatural and greatly disruptive.

N___ and his wife, both in their early twenties, were coming home ... after a meeting one night and their car went off the road, they were both killed. Well, old Mr. N_, the father, he was really upset even after the funeral and all. He couldn't sleep nights; and finally he went out to the barn very early one morning, not on schedule, you know, and started to milk the cow. Then he heard very quiet steps behind him and someone said, "Dad, Dad." But he didn't turn around, he was shocked, you know, it was N_'s voice. Then he said, "Dad" again, and Mr. N__ turned around, it was his son standing there, and he said to him. "Don't worry about us, Dad, we're all right. Don't worry any more." and Mr. N_ didn't feel shocked or upset any more, he just got up and started to go indoors. and he went inside and went right to sleep without thinking about it at all. But when he woke up in the morning, he was a little upset about it, because he realized what had happened and things like that don't happen very often, it had never happened to him or anyone else in his family before, he's not that kind of person. and he got in touch with or told all the members of the family that N -- had come to see him and that they were all right. So nobody was upset any more.

Here too the element of wonder is fully credited, yet it is not the centre of the tale. The point for the Doukhobor narrator and audience is not - explain it how we may - the appearance of the dead son as revenant: it is the consolation of the old father. It seems to me that such phrases as "this really happened." and "he's not that kind of person." suggest that the hearers should not to be so caught up in questions of plausibility that they miss the real point of the tale.

For plausibility is also an issue. Among members of the sect of Feedomites, private authority has been accepted from time to time, to such a degree that many people lost tools for testing the reliability of information and instructions. Thus Mary Malakoff tells(f.8) of a time when, following a dream vision, her friend Mary Astoforoff had her help Burn Down the House:

In about 1954, '55 it was, we were tired by what was going on here. So we went to the Okanagan, Penticton, for the summer. We would pick fruit and live together in a tent. A schoolteacher let us live on his land, he had a farm and we had our tent down behind in the field. They were real good people, him, his wife, they had children. and one morning Mary woke up in tears: "I saw a dream. The house, the landlord's house, it caught fire at night. and everybody was upstairs sleeping and they all burned to death!" It was terrible and she saw it in the dream. So we talked about it and we prayed, we didn't know what to do, for three days Mary was in an awful state, she cried a lot. So then they went in, the family went in to Penticton to shop, it was Saturday afternoon. and Mary came to me in tears with a [canning] jar of gasoline. "Come," she says, "If we do it then no one will die." and we burned down the house so it wouldn't burn down with the family inside. and we were all in tears.

This was told during a break at a community meeting dealing, among other things, with Freedomite history and the processes of sectarian arson. Mary Malakoff - who, with Mary Astoforoff, was a leading figure at this time - illustrates a crucial dilemma: how does one act in the face of vital yet untestable information? Mary Astoforoff's judgement was to accept her dream as a probable reality and to seek to outreach it: in this case, with drastic results for the friends she was protecting in this backhanded way, as well as for herself and Mary Malakoff, who spent time in prison for arson. But they went to prison with clear consciences: they had taken upon themselves the burden of a possible tragedy and resolved it, if not for the better, then for the least worse.

V. (a) Psalm Narratives

The Doukhobor Psalms contain a variety of narrative genres, including paraphrases of scripture (e.g., Psalms 340 - 353), Apocalyptic accounts (e.g., Psalms 93 - 131) and at least one beautiful allegory (Psalm 166). But two texts occur to me that demand that their hearer already know other narrative content and form. In the former case, without prior history no narrative correlation can occur; in the latter, narrative effect can generate subsequent historic correlation.

Psalm 311(f.9) is a Grace before Eating:

Glory to you, Lord, glory to the heavenly King. I thank you, Lord Christ our God, for you, Lord, have satisfied us with your earthly blessings. Thank the Lord, for bread, for salt, for God's workers of mercy, for nourishment, for the makers of mercy, for those who suffer for the Lord's name, for witnesses of Jesus Christ, for the word of the Lord. Thank the Lord.

Bonch - Bruevich and Eli Popoff note that "the makers of mercy" was added in to the text in 1897, when pagan Tartars risked their lives to deliver food to destitute Doukhobors after the punitive exiles following the Burning of Arms. Here, narrative embedded in history is evoked every mealtime this grace is used; it is not told, but it is told out from the hearers' memories.

Psalm 89, King David Jesse's Son, is remarkable in the tradition for its deliberately cryptic content:

King David Jesse's son, tell us according to ancient memory, whence comes the wide world/white light(f.10)? Whence comes the shining sun? Whence comes the gleaming moon? Whence come the abundant stars? Whence came Mount Zion? Whence came the Ocean - sea? Whence came the whale - fish? Whence came the willow - herb? Whence came the straphil(f.11) - bird? Whence came the cypress - tree? I will tell you, according to ancient memory, [for] I have the Dove - book, the book [that] is three ells broad, the book [that] is six ells deep, in which these words are written: the wide world/white light [comes] from the Lord's heart; the shining sun, from His face; the gleaming moon, from his eyes; the abundant stars, from His speech; Mount Zion, because the Lord blessed it for us to live [there]; the Ocean - sea, [that] takes in the whole wide world/white light; the whale - fish, because everything in the world is based on him; the willow - herb, because it floats against the current; the straphil - bird, because it rests on the sea and lays its eggs among the rocks of the sea, at sea it brings up its young; the cypress - tree, because on that Jesus Christ was crucified.

Explanation

1. The King is the heavenly Father. David -- [is] whoever sees the deeds of the heavenly Father and can write a book of life in his heart with deep and broad thoughts to bear witness to the prophecy of eternal life. Ancient memory - that [is] that, which in former times was prophesied and is today remembered.

2. The white light/wide world began from the the Lord's heart because, when the Lord revealed his love to all the people living - in - darkness, from his heart, he did not spare his flesh for the sake of an enlightening example to everyone living in the world. That example renews the world/light.

3. The shining sun [began] from His face, because when the Lord revealed the real truth from His face, [then] he blessed [his] followers to bear witness to the name of the Lord and not spare the pouring - forth of their [own] blood. In [its] mighty beauty appears [their] reward, face - to - face with the Lord in the final, eternal kingdom

4. The glowing moon [began] from His eyes, because when the Lord revealed recovery of sight spiritually by his miracles for enlightening the world, through his revelation he intended [all] should have a bright life.

5. The abundant stars [began] from his speech, -- that is the solemn saying of words to all living in the world, which are daily brought to mind.

6. Mount Zion -- that [is] the true faith, by which God blessed us to live and keep the truth.

7. The Ocean - sea -- that [is] worldly desires, on account of envy, they swallow up the world/light, they torment the sowers of enlightenment.

8. The whale - fish, -- that [is] earthly nations. By their law - making, restraints and threats they bind the people in a principle of deep darkness.

9. The willow - herb, -- that is the people, whose seed God sowed, it settled in comfortable soil and the herb sprung up and the herb was able to float against the current. That stream -- [is] human institutions, which flow towards darkness for the people; but the children, who sprung up from the Lord, lament for eternal life and go against the authorities.

10. The straphil - bird, which rests on the sea, lays its eggs among the rocks [and] brings up its young at sea, -- that is the advent of the son of man for fulfilling the prophecies and for establishing the law; and as a rock in the sea cannot be washed nor corroded away, so the law, established by Christ among the people, cannot disappear. Now, it lays its eggs among the rocks, -- that [is] Christ bringing [his] deeds and gathering the apostles and establishing them in the law and sending them into the world to preach, so that the children of God flourish.

11. The cypress - tree. -- that is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

The explanation, supplied by Bonch - Bruevich's informant Peter Vasilievich Baturin, leaves undiscussed the motivation for the use of cryptic imagery. Some of the Catechetichal Psalms remind us that Doukhobors had long used oblique and cryptic terms to conceal their doctrine from those hostile powers to whom it appeared schismatic; yet this doesn't help us much. The explanation is internally self - consistent and, in the case of such things as the Ocean - sea and the Whale - fish, somewhat consonant with external christian tradition. But then this decoding leaves unresolved portions of the Psalm text, which moves from declaring the origins of the earlier images to assigning meanings to the latter images, meanings not necessarily aligned with Baturin's key. So here, perhaps, we have one of those particularly challenging texts whose function is not to give us answers but to compel us to ask questions, to learn how to generate such texts ourselves. Here too Peter Baturin's key can help us, especially when it is incomplete: it demonstrates that he too is still learning how to understand, how to generate meaning. Such a Psalm, used in worship and in private meditation, demands the community, the individual, each to narrate it to themselves: a singularly powerful device for training the imagination in doctrine.

VI. Marchen

Marchen, present but poorly represented in Doukhobor tradition, are viewed by many Doukhobors as trivial, suitable only for infantile and senile minds. I suspect that this tradition, like that of Folk Medicine, some perceive as primitive and obsolete, no credit to a progressive community; further, having no rational function, it was excess baggage in times of stress, when, I presume, energy was conserved to maintain traditions more highly valued. It is, of course, also possible to see such apparently phantasmagorical tales as maps of perception, character and human destiny. My student Dan Tomlinson(f.12) collected a variant of Vasilisa Prekrasnaya in Spring 1994:

My mother told me once about a little girl named Vasilisa. When the girl was very young, her mother died, but before she died this girl's mother gave her a doll, a sort of protector. If the girl was in trouble, she would feed the doll and get advice from it.

The girl's father remarried and Vasilisa got two stepsisters. She was treated poorly and was made to do all of the women's work. This did not bother the girl and she just got fatter and more beautiful while her sisters got skinny and ugly from doing no work. When they were old enough to marry, many wanted to marry Vasilisa, but none were interested in the two older sisters. They were both ugly and lazy. The stepmother would beat Vasilisa in anger about this.

Eventually the father was made to go in the army. When he left, the stepmother moved the girls to a house in the woods near where Baba Yaga lived. One night the girl was left in the dark, told she must go to Baba Yaga, eater of men, to obtain fire. Afraid, the girl consulted her doll. The spirit told her that Vasilisa would be safe if she took the doll with her. On the way to Baba yaga's, she saw three horses. They were white, red and black, if I remember correctly.

When the girl arrived at Baba Yaga's cottage, she was told that she could get fire if she worked for it. The doll helped her clean for the whole next day and Baba Yaga, who had left in the morning, gave her even more work for the next day. After the day ended, Baba Yaga told the girl to ask her questions. The girl was curious about the horses and was told that these were servants of Baba Yaga. The girl did not ask more questions and Baba Yaga let her go because Vasilisa was blessed and smart. Too many questions about the inside of the cottage would have gotten her killed because questions about internal matters are dangerous.

Baba Yaga's house was surrounded by skulls, I forgot. Anyway, the girl, she takes one of these with a candle inside of it. By the time Vasilisa got home, she thought her stepmother would have gotten fire from the stove already, and the skull was scarey. The doll told her to take it home anyway and things would be better.

Vasilisa's sisters and stepmother were jealous because they had not been able to keep any candles lit in the house or the stove burning. When the candle in the skull still burned late into the night, they ordered her to the root cellar, to stay in the dark.

Soldiers came in the night and when the morning came, the stepmother and the two sisters were gone and only three piles of ashes were left. The soldiers had seen a fine shirt that Vasilisa had sewn and one of them took it. When an officer saw the shirt, he was impressed and wore it at a party where the Czar was in attendance. The Czar saw the shirt and told the officer to find the maker of the shirt for his personal tailor.

When the men went back to the house in the woods there was nobody there. Searching the local village, they were directed to an old woman's house. In the house they found Vasilisa, who moved there after her sisters and stepmother were gone. The young girl taken to the Czar, Vasilisa impressed him so much that she became his wife.

Mostly this means that if you are honest and work hard, you will get great things, if not on earth, then in heaven. I still remember that story, but not very well, I guess. There is more stories I know about Baba Yaga, but they are all the same. She is bad, kills those who are bad, and the hard workers and heroes survive. Ah, that's life - no?

John's memory, or his mother's telling, perhaps does not match precisely variants we know from Afanasi'ev(f.13); but it preserves many essential elements remarkably well and shows, as well, distinct Doukhobor oikotyping. The doll embodies a spirit; soldiers appear, ambiguous and threatening; hard work is idealized; and Baba Yaga's enlightening offer of answers - just - so - far is reduced in its prechristian theology, but acquires a condition exquisitely pertinent in Doukhobor society: "questions about internal matters are dangerous." We may also wonder if the concluding interpretation is John's alone, or if his mother was accustomed to comment on the stories she told. Babya Yaga remains ambiguous - 'She is bad" - yet brings the 'hard workers and heroes' to success: and this is remembered as a story about Baba Yaga, rather than about Vasilisa. 'That's life.'

VII. Miscellaneous Narratives

In this category I place texts that challenge categories licit within the general Doukhobor community. Some may occur in private periods of license, others in moments of extreme public tension. Young people and their elders sometimes define their attachment to their culture by ridiculing it with selective disrespect. One vehicle for this backhanded affection isthe Party Song; these occur in both Russian and English; Cognac Man(f.14), of Doukhobor origin, should be familiar:

All day, all night, Cognac Man Under the bridges of South Slocan Three sticks of dynamite for Brilliant Dam You don't think I blow him up? I'm damn sure can!

Harry Belafonte's mindless sand - sifting clean - up of the gently bawdy calypso Mary Ann is sent back down into disrepute; but its burden is now questionably competent sectarian violence rather than undeniably competent though incessant copulation. For the Doukhobor who knows either calypso version, Cognac Man couples all the faults of the former precisely with local, equally mindless drunkenness and sectarian violence. For a crude little parody, it does rather well.

I am again indebted to Mary Malakoff for a text that I am not prepared to present in full at this time, since it proposes ideas and events still a putative scandal to a broader Doukhobor community. First composed, then written down, in Russian and then with aid translated into English by Mary Malakoff, it is a remarkable work of expert Doukhobor rhetoric. Briefly, Fenia Poznikoff Konkin's Secret(f.15) presents the begetting of a child supposed destined to symbolize the union of Community and Freedomite Doukhobors and the controversies that surrounded the idea. I offer an excerpt that illustrates movement between history and symbolism in layers of narrative, presented on the page in a mode that I hope illuminates the spoken delivery:

DRUMS LOUDLY THUNDERED VARIOUS TRUMPETS BEGAN TO PLAY CANDLES WERE LIT

& workers joyfully amicably moved forward on scheduled plans regardless of one's own feelings & sacrifice et cetera left behind themselves ONLY ASHES

CARLOADS OF TOILERS were loaded & sent off to jails

LEBEDOFF WENT throughout the districts recording properties as if ordering quotas as if so many 'sellable' 'sacks of potatoes' had to be gathered from each district to make up a carload

IT WAS ALSO SUCH It was suggested to some but if they were in doubt then measure were taken:

explanation of such measures:

IN A FAMILY at Krestova or in the circle of Lebedoff was a girl Fedosia Perepolkin began to decline supposedly seeing something unjust became disillusioned

THIS is what happened... to her into her home at night two persons came attired as the devil with horns & tails frightening mother & daughter unto death one of them fainted she became ill & ended in the hospital These Perepolkins then TOTALLY left Krestova....

The first section is almost entirely metaphorical: the trumpets and drums are dynamite bombs, the candles are set fires; the toilers, obedient servants carrying out these acts; the properties and sacks of potatoes those coached to confess and flood the courts and prisons. Next we meet the unfortunate doubting Perepolkins, faced with the community's literal demons, metaphor made flesh as it were. Underlying all this is the problem of the purpose of the text itself: Mary ends with an impassioned demand for clarity in a community that has, often by necessity, long planted its politics in obscurity:

THE CUP has overfilled with tears & suffering DO NOT KEEP QUIET AND DO NOT CONCEAL YOUR DEEDS COME OUT & GIVE ORDER SO CHRIST'S LOVE WOULD NOT SUFFER

Such discussion must certainly remind us of the complexity of Doukhobor society; but in doing so, it must then make clear to us the use of such carefully and energetically crafted forms of narrative for shaping complex views.

I must apologize to anyone offended by these references: because I know scholars sometimes claim latitude of study without great care for the sensibilities of others. That latitude is based, of course, on commitment to knowledge and understanding however dearly bought. But I hope that those who could take offence will bear with me so far as to note that even these materials, trifling or irritating though they seem, serve powerful and often positive social purposes. We cannot afford to be ignorant of such purposes, or of how they may be served: or we deny the breadth of life.

VIII. Conclusion

Doukhobors present themselves through narrative forms over a fairly wide stretch of time and place. Folklorists are familiar with ways in which the content of narrative is adapted to local needs and values, but issues of style are more opaque. Time, Place, Character and Event are important themes of these narratives. Doukhobor society defined itself by repudiating or reforming values of its cultural matrix. By embracing an historical world view, it gained a tool with which to register the successes and failures of its self - definition. Perhaps we may consider this historical axiom to be an aspect of Doukhobor narrative style.

I see Doukhobor narrative as something very complex in style, a complexity which should not surprise us when we consider the parallel great complexities of two other Doukhobor art forms, Music and Politics. Like Music, Narrative reflects and represents the life of the community. This community, with its powerful and idiosyncratic ethic and demanding spirituality, has often had to defend its life in subtle ways. It has been driven and has driven itself to a Politics that includes embattled idealism and concealed misdirection: the idealism to sustain its character, the misdirection to ward off destructive external power. Also, being human, it has not always and everywhere met its own highest aims, it passes through good and bad times. But in its passage it continually tells itself and the rest of the world into its stories, as we all do. Such stories are, in some ways, like small animals. We may think small creatures unimportant, but when we look very carefully at them, we find that a great deal is going on under their skins. Some of them nibble at our stores and foundations, while others spread the seeds of great forests further yet.(f.16)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Afamasi'ev, Aleksandr. (1973). Russian Folk Tales. Trans. N. Guterman. New York: Pantheon.

Bonch Bruevich, Vladimir. (1908). Zhivotnaia Kniga Dukhobortsev. Geneva, Materialy k Istorii Russkago Sektantstva i Raskola, 1908 - 1916. Reprint: Winnipeg, Regerhr's Printing, 1954.

Book of Life of Doukhobors. (1978). Trans. Doukhobor Society of Saskatchewan Project (Victor Buyniak). Blaine Lake, Sask.: Doukhobor Society of Saskatchewan.

Mealing, F. Mark. (1972). Our People's Way: A Study in Doukhobor Hymnody & Folklife. University of Pennsylvania, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

I continue in debt to all those mentioned in the footnotes, and especially to Mercedes Cheveldayoff, Roman Piontkovsky, Peter Legebokoff, and Eli A. Popoff.

Footnotes:

(f.1) COHA meeting, Edmonton, October 1977.

(f.2) Coll. Piontkovsky, Saskatchewan 1970. The Leader here should be Kapustin, not Pobirokhin. I am greatly indebted to Roman Piontkovsky for givin me free access to his materials.

(f.3) Cecil Maloff, 13/4/71, Thrums, B.C.

(f.4) Private communication, Summer 1979.

(f.5) Coll. Piontkovsky, Saskatchewan 1970.

(f.6) Coll. Piontkovsky, Saskatchewan 1970.

(f.7) Field Notes, Castlegar, B.C., 22/11/70. I disguise family names conventionally.

(f.8) Private communication, mid - 1980's. Penticton is a town in the Okanagan orchard district; 'what was going on here' was the period of terror and imprisonment in the West Kootenay.

(f.9) Bonch - Bruevich Index numbering. Mercedes Chevaldayoff notes that the portion of the grace including and following this phrase has passed out of current use in Saskatchewan, but it is still used sometimes in British Columbia.

(f.10) Ambiguous idiom.

(f.11) Unidentified.

(f.12) Coll. by Daniel Tomlinson from John N__,~70yrs, 27/3/94, Castlegar, B.C.

(f.13) Vid. Afanasi'ev, Aleksandr, Russian Folk Tales, tr. N. Guterman. New York, Pantheon, 1973, pp. 439 - 447.

(f.14) Private Communication, Vi Popoff, Castlegar, B.C., Spring 1974. The place names are within about 10k of each other.

(f.15) Narrated to Kootenay Committee on Intergroup Relations at Castlegar, B.C., 9/12/82; first presented in English in Kelowna, B.C., 6/5/78. Krestova, B.C., is the major centre of Freedomite settlement.

(f.16) This paper is slightly adapted from a version presented as a part of the proceedings of a special joint session of the Canadian Ethnic Studies Association and the Canadian Society of Slavists at the Conference of Canadian Learned Societies, Calgary, Alberta, Summer 1994 honouring the coming Doukhobor Centennial of the Burning of Arms. Thanks are due to Koozma Tarasoff and Kenneth Peacock for advice during revision.