The outline of this epic is that Igor, prince of Southern Russia, after being defeated and made prisoner, effected his escape with the help of a slave.

Among the fine passages in this work we note Nature's grief over the prince's capture and the lament of his faithful consort.
It was only in the nineteenth century, after Zhukovski and Batyushkoff had translated into Russian some of the world's great masterpieces, such as Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered and Homer's Odyssey, that Pushkin wrote (1820) the epic Ruslan and Lyudmila, drawing the materials therefore from Russian antiquity and from popular legends.
There are in Russia and Siberia any number of epic songs or "bylinas," dating from legendary times to the present day, which have recently been collected by Kireyevski and others, and which already fill some ten volumes.

The heroes of these songs are either personifications of the forces of nature or favorite historical personages.

They form great cycles, one clustering for instance around Vladimir and the ancient capital of Russia, Kiev, another around the free city of Novgorod, and a third belonging to the later Moscow period.

The principal hero of many of the Russian folk tales, and of the epic songs most frequently sung by wandering bards, is Ilya Muromets, who nobly protects widows and orphans and often displays his fabulous strength by reducing mighty oaks to kindling wood with a few blows! THE KALEVALA, OR THE LAND OF HEROES The national epic of the Finns was rescued from oblivion by Topelius and Loennrot, two physicians, who took it down from the mouth of the people and published it in the first half of the nineteenth century.
It consists in 22,793 lines, divided into fifty runes, and is considered by a great German authority--Steinthal--as one of the four great national epics of the world.
Not only does it relate "the ever-varying contests between Finns and Laplanders," but that between Light and Darkness, Good and Evil, for in the poem the Finns personify Light and Good, while the Lapps are emblems of Darkness and Evil.