Gothic Story: The Dog and the Corpse
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Gothic StoriesGothic Corpse Story
A moujik went out in pursuit of game one day, and took a favorite dog with
him. He walked and walked through gothic woods and bogs, but got nothing for his pains.
At last the darkness of night surprised him. At an uncanny hour he passed by a gothic graveyard, and there, at a place where two roads met, he saw standing a corpse in a white shroud. The moujik was horrified, and knew not which way to go --
whether to keep on or to turn back.
"Well, whatever happens, I'll go on," he thought; and on he went, his dog
running at his heels. When the corpse perceived him, it came to meet him; not
touching the earth with its feet, but keeping about a foot above it -- the
gothic shroud fluttering after it.
When it had come up with the sportsman, it made a
rush at him; but the dog seized hold of it by its bare calves, and began a
tussle with it. When the moujik saw his dog and the gothic corpse grappling with each
other, he was delighted that things had turned out so well for himself, and he
set off running home with all his might. The dog kept up the struggle until
cock-crow, when the corpse fell motionless to the ground. Then the dog ran off
in pursuit of its master, caught him up just as he reached home, and rushed at
him, furiously trying to bite and to rend him. So savage was it, and so
persistent, that it was as much as the people of the house could do to beat it
off.
"Whatever has come over the dog?" asked the moujik's old mother. "Why should
it hate its master so?"
The moujik told her all that had happened.
"A bad piece of work, my son!" said the old woman. "The dog was disgusted at
your not helping it. There it was fighting with the gothic corpse -- and you deserted
it, and thought only of saving yourself! Now it will owe you a grudge for ever
so long."
Next morning, while the family were going about the farmyard, the dog was
perfectly quiet. But the moment its master made his appearance, it began to
growl like anything.
They fastened it to a chain; for a whole year they kept it chained up. But in
spite of that, it never forgot how its master had offended it in that gothic night. One day it got
loose, flew straight at him, and began trying to throttle him. So they had to
kill it.
From: W. R. S. Ralston, Russian Folk-Tales (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1873), pp. 313-314.
