ABSTRACT
CHEKAI and his companion shepherds living in the koutan were clad in rags that were extremely dirty, their faces red, unshaven and wild, and their feet and legs bare, except of dirt. They were extremely apologetic. “You are clean,” said Gudaev, “but God has given us to work in filth, as you see, but we are men and Christian Ossetines.” I put them at their ease with a smile and went to inspect the koutan. It was an extensive dwelling, for the most part dug out of the mountain side. The walls were made of boulders plastered wind-tight with stable filth, the roof of pine branches, peat and hay. There were no windows, and so the whole had no light beyond what came in at the door, or from the hole in the roof; but what light there was sufficed to show that the house was divided by fences into a number of compartments for the reception of horses, cows, sheep and goats.
