When she recovers, she makes her lament, and her _plakh_, or wail, beginning: "O, my dear son, why didst thou not obey thy mother ?" Christ comforts her, telling her that he shall rise again, and bidding her: "Do not weep and spoil thy beauty." A form of the ballad which is common in Little Russia reverses the situation.

It is the Jews who inquire of Mary what she has done with her son.

"Into the river I flung him," she promptly replies.

They drain the river, and find him not.

Again they ask, "Under the mountains I buried him." They dig up the mountains, and find him not.