Incongruousness was the inevitable result.
The Greek, or rather the Russo-Greek, Church adopted precisely the opposite course: it never interfered, in the slightest degree, with popular poetry, either secular or religious.

Christianity, therefore, merely enlarged the field of subjects.

The result is, that the Slavonic peoples (including even, to some extent, the Roman Catholic Poles) possess a mass of religious poetry, the like of which, either in kind or in quantity, is not to be found in all western Europe.
It is well to note, at this point, that the word _stikh_ (derived from an ancient Greek word) is incorporated into the modern Russian word for poetry, _stikhotvorenie_--verse-making, literally rendered--and it has now become plain that Lomonosoff, the father of Russian Literature, who was the first secular Russian poet, and polished the ancient tongue into the beginning of the modern literary language, about the middle of the eighteenth century, did not originate his verse-measures, but derived them from the common people, the peasants, whence he himself sprang.
Modern Russian verse, therefore, is thus traced back directly, in its most national traits, to these religious ballads.

It is impossible to give any adequate account of them here, and it is especially difficult to convey an adequate idea of the genuine poetry and happy phrasing which are often interwoven with absurdities approaching the grotesque.
The ballads to which we shall briefly refer are full of illustrations of the manner in which old pagan gods became Christian deities, so to speak, of the newly baptized nation.

For example: Perun the Thunder-god became, in popular superstition, "St.Ilya" (or Elijah), and the day dedicated to him, July 20th (old style), is called "Ilya the Thunder-bringer." Elijah's fiery chariot, the lightning, rumbling across the sky, brings a thunder-storm on or very near that date; and although Perun's name is forgotten in Russia proper, he still remains, under his new title, the patron of the husbandman, as he was in heathen times.