Russian fairy tales in which there are three roads. If you go to the right, you will lose your horse; if you go to the left, you will find your wife. East is what

A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it.

Here is the epic stone, which sooner or later necessarily appeared in front of any self-respecting hero - not such an invention.

Whatever road you take, sooner or later there will be a fork, and above the fork there will be clouds and black crows, in front of the horse there is a stone: take off, hero, helmet and scratch your heroic patylica properly ...

"Knight at the Crossroads". Vasnetsov

There are times - entire states find themselves in front of a fabulous fork: where to turn, right or left?

And our land with you is a fork in itself: with whom to be, with the West or with the East? Lose a horse or find a wife (a grumpy and demanding wife, by the way, and not even once Vasilisa the Wise) ...

An unenviable fate: to find yourself between great civilizations and always face the choice of who to be with. And the choice is really serious.

East - what is it?

community ideology. The unit in the East does not solve anything and does not affect anything. Even an eastern tyrant - he cannot tyrannize alone, he definitely needs a clan, a family, like-minded people, whom he will put around his throne with a dense wall and will severely punish for betrayal, because there is no way in the East alone.

And the eastern people - all the more they do not understand how it is, alone? The East has always taken in bulk: both when thousands of Mongol-Tatars burned the Russian steppe to the ground, and when they bought spoiled Europe for silk and spices, and then when a red regime was established by all the people, and then when sparrows were beaten with sticks all over China - and sparrows also died en masse, as it should be in the East.

And even the wise men of the East, who are as lonely as any wise men in any part of the world, they always try to solidarize with at least someone, well, at least with nature, to become at least one with something, to join the community.

Quite a different thing-West

Every person there is an individual. Separate. Independent. Having the right. Raising your voice. Solving issues of any kind on its own: from the most everyday to the most global.

Only in the West is it possible to elect the president of a huge country by a margin of only seven votes - in the East, for the sake of seven votes, nothing would be counted.

Western man is full of awareness of his own human value and importance. That is why the West is always arguing, always fighting for something, always wanting something in return - because it is arguing, fighting and wanting its constituent personalities.

Even the gods are different.

In the East - many-sided, multilingual, sending prophets to Earth, living either several lives or several deaths.

In the West, this is necessarily a Personality, alone changing the whole world.

What to choose: Eastern unity or Western individuality?

Lose a horse or gain a wife?

VELVET: Anna Sevyarynets

Stone, like earth, water, air, fire, is one of the primary elements of the world. From numerous written sources, legends, mythological stories, it is known that the Slavic peoples have long worshiped stones, especially those that were large in size, unusual in shape and in a special location. Stones were considered sacred, in which one could see an anthropomorphic or zoomorphic silhouette, marks resembling the footprint of a person or animal, as well as stones rising from the water. In Lake Ladoga, on one of the islands, a huge Horse-Stone was revered, near which, according to local residents, spirits lived, protecting the herds grazing on the island from diseases and wild beasts. It is known that back in the 15th century, a live horse was annually sacrificed to the Stone Horse and guardian spirits, which died in the winter, and according to the belief of the peasants, served as food for the stone spirits.

The emergence of unusual in shape and size of stone blocks, boulders is associated in legends and traditions with the petrification of giants - representatives of ancient generations of mythical creatures, people or animals, those who were cursed or punished for sins. The mythological motif of petrification, which entails the final or temporary death of heroes, is widespread in epic epics and fairy tales. One of the characters with such a fate is the hero Svyatogor, who has so much power that the earth cannot bear him. Death befalls him during the struggle with the earth's thrust: Svyatogor's feet go into stone or a stone slab, and he turns to stone. In the Orenburg region, not far from the village of Grigorievka, there is an unusually shaped large blue stone, about the occurrence of which there is the following legend: the parents did not give their daughter a blessing for marriage, but despite this, she decided to get married; but no sooner had the trainees left the village than, as a punishment for disobedience, the entire wedding train, petrified, remained forever on the road.

In cosmogonic ideas, a stone is perceived as a support, a foundation, an earthly navel, a border between worlds. In this regard, it is no coincidence that the image of a stone is very often found in mythopoetic texts, where it turns out to be both one of the essential spatial landmarks and a magical object that are associated with changes in the fate of a particular folklore character or person. In conspiracies, for example, he acts as a sacred object, to which a mental journey is made in order to achieve the desired goal. The sacredness of the image of a stone is determined by its spatial fixation on the border between "one's own" and "alien" worlds. Therefore, the motif of locks is often associated with it: “Does the white Alatyr stone lie in the Mori-Okiyan, the circle of that stone is thirty iron locks?” Sometimes the stone itself acts as a castle: “The Kazan Mother of God applied her seal with her golden ring. Always from now until forever. Castle stone. Amen, amen, amen."

The centuries-old use of stones in magical rituals of healing and protective practice is explained by the characteristics of this natural phenomenon and their understanding in mythological representations, starting from ancient times. Significant signs of a stone include such as hardness, strength, durability, heaviness, immobility, coldness.

In case of illness or misfortune, people made pilgrimages to revered stones, made sacrifices to them in the form of bread, woven things - towels, scarves, ribbons, as well as money that they left nearby or hung on trees growing nearby. As early as the 19th century, the custom of leaving gifts on sacred stones was preserved on the territory of Belarus. Russians still leave coins in depressions on the surface of such stones. The water remaining in the depressions on top of the stones, the fragments of the destroyed shrines, were, according to popular beliefs, healing. In healing magic, elongated belemnite stones were also used, called "thunderbolts" or "thunder arrows", archaic ideas about which were discussed above. Near the sacred stones, rituals were performed aimed at protecting against diseases: for example, not far from Tula, a stone was known, around which, in the event of a loss of livestock, a rite of ploughing was performed. In the Ukrainian tradition, in order not to have a headache, at the first clap of thunder they tried to touch their head with a stone three times. In Polissya, on Maundy Thursday, before sunrise, they jumped on a stone three times to be healthy. In household magic, they tried to communicate a sign of the strength of the stone to some garden crops: for example, so that cabbage heads grow large, dense and hard, a stone was placed on the bed when it was planted. So that wild animals would not touch the cattle during the grazing season, stones brought from three pastures were buried in the ground, with the words: “These stones are in the teeth of a wolf.” It is interesting that the shepherd's professional knowledge included magical tricks, during which, in the event of a bear appearing on a pasture, a dangerous beast instead of cows saw, according to legend, stones.

The use of stones in funeral rituals was of protective importance for the living. According to mythological ideas, the hardness, heaviness and immobility of the stone do not allow the dead to freely enter the world of the living. Therefore, for a long time, among many peoples, including the ancient Slavs, stones were widely used in the practice of burials. Here is how, for example, they built a grave among the Bodrichs, one of the ancient West Slavic tribes: a huge hill was erected from the earth and stones over the ashes of the deceased, surrounded by regular rows of protruding stones, and a huge stone was placed on top of the grave. Features of this design of the graves are reflected in the funeral lamentations of Russians:

They closed our hope from the mountains with yellow sand,

White pebbles rolled up here.

The custom that came from ancient times to install tombstones and slabs exists to this day in the cultures of many peoples.

Defining the boundaries between worlds or "kingdoms" is one of the most important functions of the image of stone in folklore. In a fairy tale and an epic epic, the appearance of a stone on the path of a hero who is testing his fate almost always means that he will have to visit the kingdom of death, come into contact with it. So, in the epic about the three trips of Ilya Muromets, the hero at the crossroads meets an unusual stone, which seems to predict different fates:

A good fellow rides in pure poly,

And I saw a good fellow and a latyr pebble,

And from the pebble lies three rosstans,

And the stone was signed:

“Go to the first path - to be killed,

To go to another path - to be married,

To go the third path - to be rich.

In this case, the stone acts as a border, beyond which the hero must find one of the three destinies. However, as it turns out later, all three roads lead to death. Robbers are waiting for the hero on the first road; on the second - a meeting with the queen-deceiver, who plants all the passing young people in the "cellar of forty fathoms", and the details of the description of this cellar leave no doubt that it is a grave space. Only Ilya Muromets is able to cope with the obstacles of these two roads. Going along the third, he finds a treasure, with the funds from which he builds a church, after which he still dies.

In fairy tales, the “foreign” kingdom for the hero - the “thirtieth” - is usually located behind a stone fence, the height of which is sometimes referred to as “from earth to sky”, so that “neither the beast will run, nor the bird will fly”. To get there and get an outlandish item or a bride, to return a mother, sister or wife stolen by the enemy, the hero needs to jump over this wall, which is possible only with the help of a magic horse. In some fairy tales, when the hero returns from the thirtieth kingdom, the horse, jumping over an obstacle, touches the wall with one hoof and turns to stone. Penetration into a foreign state often requires not jumping over a stone wall, but testing the strength of a hero associated with a heavy stone: it must be moved, thrown over your shoulder, or thrown up a mountain. In one of the fairy tales, the hero sets off to look for the kidnapped mother: “I drove up the mountain to the cast-iron stone of one and a half hundred pounds, on the stone there is an inscription: whoever throws this stone up the mountain, Ivan Tsarevich will throw it up the mountain with one fell swoop - and immediately in grief stairs appeared.

In mythopoetic texts, the stone becomes a symbol of barriers in general. This is especially well seen in fairy tales, where the hero, fleeing the chase when returning from the Far Far Away kingdom, throws a stone given by a magical assistant behind his back, and mountains grow up behind him, blocking the path of the pursuer.

According to the boundary position of the stone within the framework of the spatial structure of the mythological system, it is the center around which all kinds of magical powers of an otherworldly nature are concentrated. In conspiracies, characters are often depicted sitting on a stone who are turned to for help: diseases (pinches, aches, damage, commotion), longing, a pike and a snake of a chthonic nature, hellebore-red maiden, fiery maidens, an old mater man, and also the characters of the Holy Scriptures - the Mother of God, Jesus Christ, St. Nicholas, evangelists, angels. Under the stone, from where there is no way out, forces dangerous to humans are sent in conspiracy texts, for example: “You go all sorts of damage into the blue sea, into the depths of the sea, under a white stone, under a white island, and there you will get out.” In the fairy tale, magical opponents live under the stone - a snake, Baba Yaga, a man with a fingernail, a beard with an elbow and others, as well as the hero's helpers, which indicates their alien origin in the perception of the bearer of mythological consciousness. The appearance of an assistant, which is worth only thinking about, may be, for example, the result of the hero’s contact with a stone: “Ivan Tsarevich is walking along the road and weeping bitterly. I sat down on a pebble to rest and thought about Divi's husband. He looks, and Divy's husband stands in front of him, as if he has grown out of the earth.

In fairy tale and epic texts, under the stone there are magic items necessary for the hero for his journey:

Elijah was leaving for the capital city of Kyiv.

I came to that immovable stone,

The stone was signed:

“Elei, Elijah, remove the stone from the place of the motionless,

There is a heroic horse for you,

With all the armor of the heroic,

There is a sable coat,

There is a silk lash,

There is a damask club there.

In fairy tales, these magical items, including an unusual horse, as a rule, turn out to be "grandfather's", that is, a gift from an ancestor for the hero.

Just as in healing practice a stone plays the role of a healing agent, in fairy tales a stone acts as a magical object that gives the hero heroic strength or unusual knowledge. So, in the Siberian fairy tale “About the Three Bogatyrs - Vechernik, Polunoshnik and Svetovik”, the heroes meet a magical opponent who offers: “here a white fuming fireplace emerged from the rocks, lick here, and the strength will come in two.” In a Samara fairy tale, the hero Stenka kills the monster Volkodir and licks the stone found in his stomach. This gives Stenka the knowledge of everything that is in the world.

The coldness, immobility, long-term immutability of the stone led to its perception in traditional culture as a symbol of inanimate nature and, accordingly, death. In fairy-tale reality, death can materialize directly in the form of a stone; So, in one of their fairy tales, the snake says: “There is a stone on the island, and in that stone there is a hare, and in that hare there is a duck, and in that duck there is an egg, in that egg there are reapers, and in that reaper there is a stone: that is my death!”

In order to deprive a fairy-tale or epic hero of movement and the ability to act, his opponent, endowed with magical powers, temporarily or permanently turns him into stone. Temporary petrification is one of the main motifs of the epic about the hero Mikhail Potyk. He is petrified when his wife-opponent Marya Lebed Belaya, who has magical powers, touches him with a stone from an open field:

I took him to the open field,

I grabbed here and a white combustible stone,

She pounded him on the right cheek:

Petrify you, Mikhaila, for exactly three years

As three years pass, go through the earth!

Turned it with a big stone.

When magical assistants wrap the hero of stone, he, like fairy-tale heroes cut into pieces and then animated by dead and living water, says: “How long I slept.”

The natural properties of stone - hardness and durability were widely used in the construction of houses. The stones laid at the base of the building served as a solid foundation. At the same time, according to popular beliefs, a stone can be offended by a person and take revenge for the fact that he was moved from his native place. Here is how this is described in one of the North Russian bylichka. The owner, to build a barn, took a large stone from the field and broke it into pieces for the foundation. After the barn was built, the stone began to appear to the owner in a dream and asked to pull its fragments out of the foundation, threatening with punishment. The owner, not believing his dreams, did nothing until the cattle began to die in the barn. He then had to return the fragments of the stone to the place where he lay before.

In mythological representations, a stone, on the basis of hardness, correlated with the masculine principle, which was reflected in the Belarusian belief: if there is a stone in the ground under the matrimonial bed, then a woman will certainly become pregnant with a boy. It was also customary for Belarusians to cut the umbilical cord of a newborn boy with a stone, which, according to the popular worldview, contributed to the formation of masculine qualities in him and, in particular, strength.

The church condemned the veneration of stones, as well as other natural elements and objects. Later legends claim that demonic spirits hostile to the Christian faith live in the stones. One of the old teachings against paganism contains a call: "Do not call yourself a god in stone." However, the worship of stones continued to persist for centuries after the adoption of Christianity, acquiring the so-called folk-Orthodox character. Under the influence of Christianity, the veneration of stones in the folk tradition began to be associated with the names of the Lord, the Mother of God and saints, both common Orthodox and locally venerated. Especially widely Christianized veneration of stones is widespread in the Russian North, where shrine stones are called "worshipping". Often, crosses were erected near such stones, on which towels, details of clothing, and money were brought “according to the covenant”. There are quite a lot of stones in Kargopol, the veneration of which is associated with the name of St. Alexander Oshevensky, who founded a monastery near Kargopol. Legends correlate the features of the form and marks of these shrines with certain actions of the saint.

In the Pskov region, which is also full of revered stones, there is, for example, a “stone-chair”, on which, according to local legend, God fell, and for many decades the first collected wild berries are placed on the shrine as a sacrifice. Far beyond the borders of the Pskov region, a stone with footprints of the Virgin, located in a stream, is located here on the territory of the Gdovsky district. Many pilgrims still come to the stone to honor the shrine and drink healing water from the traces for health and healing.

From time immemorial, in the Pskov region, in the Nikandrovskaya hermitage, a stone has also been revered, which, according to popular beliefs, served as a headboard for the bed of St. Ni-kandra. In a local written document reflecting information for 1735, it is reported that during religious processions this stone was worn along with icons.

With many revered stones, ideas about the fulfillment of cherished desires were associated. So, in the Novgorod region there is a stone on which, according to legend, St. Anthony Leokhnovsky at the entrance to his dwelling. To fulfill a wish, according to popular belief, you need to put your foot in the recess left on the stone from the time of the hermitage of St. Anthony. In Tikhvin, in the monastery, there is also a stone on which people have long sat down, making their innermost desire, in the hope of its realization.

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In fairy tales, there are two types of signs with inscriptions: a stone and a pillar (sometimes a tree). Information on them is of various kinds, sometimes like modern announcements about the loss: “These days, signatures went on each pillar: “Whoever finds the king’s daughter gets half the kingdom ...” (Zelenin D.K. No. 105), or hotel signboards: “There is a tower by the sea, there is a pillar near this tower, on the pillar there is an inscription: “Spend the night for three nights!”” (VSVS, p. 48).

There are indicative inscriptions - in the plots of "Three Kingdoms": "Walked, walked, ... there is a stone, on the stone it is written:" Whoever lifts this stone, he can go down to the underworld "" (VSVS, p. 63). There are warning ones - in the plot “The Battle on the Kalinov Bridge”: “... walked, walked and caught up with the brothers near the Black Sea at the Kalinov Bridge; there is a pillar by that bridge, on the pillar it is written that three snakes are leaving here” (Af. No. 136).

We will consider only waypoints at intersections and forks in the road. In the plots of “Rejuvenating Apples”: “... he rode for a long time, you never know, he drives up to the mountain ... There is a pillar on the mountain, three roads are signed on the pillar: go along one road - you will be full, the horse is hungry; according to another ... - the horse is full, he is hungry; according to the third ... - they will kill themselves ”(Af. No. 310). This message looks quite true if you look at it from the point of view of the realities of the first millennium AD.

We see that both stones and pillars are encountered by the hero far from home, but close to the mountains and the sea, that is, again, in the Northern Black Sea region. In order to travel to the mountainous Crimea to the warlike Taurians, or to the “thugs” Serbs, in whom travelers rarely escaped death, it was necessary to cross the wide steppe, which was climatically heterogeneous and graduated from meadows to semi-desert. In fairy tales, territories with abundant grass cover are called "reserved meadows" of the Tsar Maiden, the leader of the maiden army.

Just like today, in those days it was impossible for strangers to hunt in the reserves, that is, in such a place the rider was hungry, and his horse was full. But in non-reserved salt marshes, for example, in the Sivash region or in the arid central Taurica, the horse was hungry, and the rider had the opportunity to feed himself by hunting small animals.

Our hero, by the way, does not always choose the most difficult path.
It is remarkable that a visiting Russian traveler is able to read the inscriptions on the pillar. In this regard, let us recall the story from the Life of Constantine about some “Ruos” writings discovered by Cyril in the Crimea, as well as an earlier, IV century AD, message from John Chrysostom that the Scythians translated the holy scripture into their own language.

Some researchers consider this writing to be Armenian or Georgian, some - Gothic, since these peoples adopted Christianity earlier than others in these places and, therefore, already at that time had a need for church literature in their native language. And we again run into the question of which ethnic group the name "Rus" refers to. In the previous chapters, with the help of the discoveries of O.N. Trubachev, we found out that one of the Indo-Aryan tribes of the Northern Black Sea region was originally called Rus.

In Tavrida, not far from the “Russian Nova City”, Kirill had another reliable case of communication with this mysterious population: “Better, in Foulst, the tongue is doubled, grown together with cherries, below it the demand is deahou, calling the name Alesander, the female polo does not give a ploy to mute, nor to his demands" (Life. Const. XII)... Naturally, the pagans could not call their sacred tree the cross name "Alexander", which appeared here only as a record by the consonance of the native (Indo-Aryan Taurus?) * alaksa-dru - "oak-protector" or "forbidden tree" (cf. Old Ind. raksati - "guard", ... d(a)ru - "tree"), which could not be either Iranian or Gothic" (IA pp. 58).

Constantine decided to cut down the sacred oak of the Taurians and remained safe and sound, apparently because some of the Indo-Aryan tribes of this region - probably those who translated the gospel into their own language - were on his side. So, there is reason to believe that the Aryan tribes of Taurida had a written language, but have not survived to this day.

The most terrible thing in this story is that a hundred years ago science had a chance to get acquainted with it (Indo-Aryan writing), but somehow it didn’t work out, no one was interested in a stone with an incomprehensible inscription standing alone on an abandoned Crimean road. If this inscription had been Greek or Latin, the stone would certainly have been sent to a museum, since that was the time of the craze for antiquity, any educated person knew these languages, they were taught in gymnasiums ... What kind of stone is this?

There is a village in the Crimea, until recently called Nikita (now - Botanical, where the famous garden is), and even earlier, in the Genoese lists of Kafa five hundred years ago, it was called Sikita, which is not read either in Greek or in Tatar. On the other hand, in Indo-Aryan * cikita - “sign, designated” (IA. C. 90).

In "Crimean collection. On the Antiquities of the Southern Coast of the Crimea and the Tauride Mountains, published in 1837, P. Keppen reports: “Above Nikita there is a plateau ... Nikitskaya Yaila, ... on Yaila, on the road from Nikita to Buyuk Yozenbash, there is a tract called Gramata, or along -Tatar: Yazly Tash, i.e. stone with an inscription. O.N. Trubachev visited in 1977 the territory of the Yalta forestry and the Gramata tract and made sure personally that the inscription no longer exists. “But it definitely existed, because it was definitely shown to me on Gramata ... vaguely resembling a stele, but completely chipped sandstone, on which the previous generation of foresters still remembered an incomprehensible inscription ... Gramata is a fairly large expanse of land, rocks and forests, and the fact that it got its name from one inscription speaks of the significance of this fact, and most importantly, of its antiquity. The Greek and Tatar-Turkish population of the Crimea closely communicated with each other and was covered by bilingualism. In any case, there is no need to talk about uncertainty here. Nevertheless, the trace of the forgotten ancient local population has come down to us in the form of the name Chiquita, which turned out to be stronger than a stone and a crumbling inscription on it” (IA. P. 90-91).

“The Taurians apparently had close relatives in the Satarchs, who occupied the north of Crimea; both of them piracy at sea and had shelter in caves”, Pliny called them Spalaeos – “cavemen”. The name of this tribe is translated from other Ind. as: satta - "seven" and argha - "price, value". In later times, the territory of the Ottoman Empire, adjoining the Crimea from the north, was called Edisan, that is, literally "seven (large) numbers." Again we see that "the Türkic form turns out to be a translation of an older local designation" (IA. p. 105, 272).

The concept of value, the ability to count to large numbers, reflected in the name of the Indo-Aryan tribe of the Satarchs, give reason to assume that they have a developed trade and, consequently, a large attendance of these places and the availability of roads with the necessary signs.

In Chersonese Tauride, where the cult of the Taurus goddess Virgin predominated, presumably in the 3rd century BC. the text of the civil oath was written down. Written down in Greek, but with one incomprehensible, untranslatable word: "...SASTER I will protect the people and will not convey in words anything secret to either the Hellenic or the barbarian ...". Modern historians do not read this word, leaving it without translation, - writes Trubachev, - or explain from other ir. (Avest.) sastar - "ruler, ruler." “But Chersonesos from the time of the oath did not know either a prince or autocracy,” the entire oath has a bright democratic flavor. Zhebelev S.A. also noted that the verb in this passage controls only inanimate nouns, and is used most often about mystical cults, and it is necessary to look for an explanation of the word SASTR not in the field of “state antiquities”, but in the field of “sacred antiquities”. The Iranian sastar does not fit, "because it just means an animated person." In the ancient Indian language there is a related word with a special semantics - sastra - "divine, religious book, set", "... which perfectly corresponds to the Chersonese oath: "I will guard the divine set to the people and will not convey (I will not give out) anything secret"... » (IA. S. 103-105).

Despite the fact that it is not clear from the text of the oath whether the book is SASTRA or it is an oral sacred tradition, the very fact that the Taurians have a divine vault and an oath protecting it speaks of the culture and morality of this people, who were known by ancient writers as wild, backward and withdrawn . East Slavic fairy tales confirm that it is really difficult to get into the "underground kingdom", but this kingdom in the mountains by the sea is by no means wild, but outlandish. Paradoxically, our fairy tales more accurately reflect reality, reconstructed with the help of linguistics, than ancient written sources.

Perhaps it was this notorious isolation, combined with culture and morality, that forced the Taurians to erect pillars with warning signs on the approaches to their country.

“A man sat on an eagle; the eagle soared and flew to the blue sea ... They fly up to the other shore ... They flew up to the shore; whether they flew close or far - they see a copper pole in the middle of the field. "Read the inscription on the pillar," the eagle orders the peasant. The man read. “Behind this pillar,” he says, “there is a copper city for twenty-five miles.” - "Go to the copper city; my (eagle's) sister lives here ..." A silver pillar with an inscription is placed near the silver one, and gold - near the golden kingdom ("The Sea King and Vasilisa the Wise" // Af. No. 220).

The local places were really dangerous, and this is confirmed by the annals and archeological data. There is a record that in the 1st century AD. a Roman ship with a military contingent was wrecked on the outskirts of the southern Crimea. From other ships they noticed that people escaped, got to the shore, but no one else saw them. Two thousand years later, in one of the mountain sanctuaries of the Taurians, located opposite the shipwreck, parts of ancient Roman helmets and weapons were discovered. Apparently, the Romans unwittingly ended up in the place where the third fabulous road led, along which "if you go, you yourself will be killed." The fabulous Russian hero not only does not become a victim of the Taurus gods, but also becomes related to this glorious tribe.

Signpost stones with inscriptions in a language understandable to a Slav have been relevant for at least the last two thousand years.

Chapter 12

Paying tribute to the great poet, who drew inspiration from folklore, the "grandmother's tales" of a simple peasant woman, in the light of our topic of geographical localization, we will consider the folklore images of his work - but not all, but only those that are described in a short passage from the poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila" :

By the seaside, a green oak,
Golden chain on an oak tree...

A tree adorned with a golden chain is undoubtedly sacred. The cult of the oak, associated with the Thunderer, can be traced throughout the territory of the settlement of the Indo-Europeans, including the Northern Black Sea region. Above, in chapter 12, we have already said that the Life of Constantine mentions the Oak-“protector” fused with cherries, to which pagans, men of the Fulian tribe of Taurida, brought trebs. In "The Miracle of St. Clement about the children” it is reported that idols were crushed for thirty miles around Tauric Chersonesos, temples were destroyed and all “groves” were uprooted (IA. S. 174). In this regard, the information of modern times is not without interest, for example, about a huge oak, fanned with legends, in the village of Biyuk-Syuren, about a thousand-year-old oak in Massandra, until recently hung with votive objects - bells (ibid.).

In East Slavic fairy tales, oaks are quite common, but they do not always grow near the sea, which is quite natural:

“Walked, walked along it (stream) and now he sees a large oak tree. Everything is covered under it. So he climbed that oak tree. ... Demons began to fly under that oak tree from all sides ”(Af. No. 115).

“A woman came, fell down in front of the oak tree, prayed, howled: “Oak oak, grandfather talkative, what should I do?...” (Af. No. 446).
“On the river the waters were agitated, on the oaks the eagles screamed ...” (Af. No. 137).

But in Belarusian fairy tales with a plot like “Tsar Saltan” (SUS 707) there is an oak hung with decorations, and this plot is always associated with the sea, mountains, island:

“In a certain kingdom, in a certain state ... there is an oak Starodub with twelve girths. On that oak tree there are twelve boughs, on each bough there are twelve boxes, in each box there are twelve brothers, each brother has twelve sons, each son has twelve bells, for each bell there are twelve different birds. Well done sing, nightingales play, fractional birds chirp, bells ring - you won’t hear enough! (Charadzeyny kazki. Minsk, 2003. No. 63. P. 283. Translation - mine).

“My mother, in a distant kingdom, in a distant land, has an oak tree near the city, neither think nor guess! There are twelve boughs on that oak tree, twelve cats on those boughs: as they go up - fables are heard, as they go down - they play the harp ”(Ibid. No. 65. P. 304).

And day and night the cat is a scientist
Everything goes around in circles.
Goes to the right - the song starts,
To the left - tells fairy tales ...

Surprisingly, A. S. Pushkin, creatively reworking folk tales familiar to him, always hit "right on target." What I mean? Here, for example, are the lines that say that the cat walks on an oak tree growing near Lukomorye. Lukomorye ("onion of the sea", that is, bend) is the real old Russian geographical name of the area, covering the north-west of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov with an arc.

Lukomorye of Ancient Rus': bends of the coast in the north-west of the Sea of ​​Azov

Not a single East Slavic fairy tale says that cats are found in Lukomorye. However, the analysis of fairy tales with the presence of the “scientist cat” shows us a very definite connection between the cat and the sea.

In Afanasyev's collection, in the fairy tales of the plot "The Wise Wife" (Nos. 216, 217 and 218), a cat is bought by a hero in his homeland almost for nothing and is sold dearly by the sea. “And in that state they didn’t know about cats, but the mouse and the rat strongly overcame everyone ... The orphan took a bag of gold, said goodbye to the merchant and went to the seaside to the shipbuilders” (No. 217). In fairy tales of this type, it is not clear which sea is meant, but in fairy tale No. 216 there is a vague hint of mountains: after selling a cat in a foreign land, a miraculously obtained wife during the hero’s absence, so that the king would not be seduced by her beauty, turns herself into stone , and their dwelling with a fool - in a stone mountain.

In fairy tales No. 146 and 147, "Seven Simeons", the southern sea looms quite clearly: walk around, give things, throw out different German things ... At that time, the princess was sitting at the window and saw an unknown beast, which they had never seen before. It is clear from the text that teaching a cat “German things” gravitates towards the Baltic, and selling, respectively, near the distant southern sea, however, maybe also near the Caspian.

In fairy tale No. 138, “Ivan is a peasant son and a peasant himself with a finger, a mustache for seven miles”, the hero is far from home, by a fiery river, high rocks and “a mouth wide open from earth to sky” (that is, an abyss), kills three snakes, the elder snake and her three daughters-in-law, gets a horse and a princess, in the course of action turns into a cat and "makes friends with the local cats." Although there is no sea in this tale, but, as discussed above, the fiery river, mountains and abysses point us to Taurida, and note that it already has local cats.

In fairy tale No. 215, the hero "... reached the blue of the sea, saw a glorious big house ...", in which thirty-three sisters lived, he hides a dress with one of them and marries her. Further in the story, he gets a bayun cat in the thirtieth kingdom. This is an aggressive monster, more like a large animal of the cat family: “... for three miles he began to overcome his sleep, he puts on three iron caps ... The cat-bayun jumped on his head, broke one cap and broke the other, took it for the third - then a good fellow grabbed him with tongs, dragged him to the ground and let's whip him with rods; first of all, he cut it with an iron rod, broke the iron one - he began to treat with copper ... "This tale belongs to the type" Go there - I don't know where, bring it - I don't know what. Afanasiev cites four such tales. In Nos. 212 and 213 there is the sea and swan-maidens with removable wings, from which the archer chooses his wife; in number 214 there are swan maidens. Above, we have already considered the confinement of swan maidens to the Northern Black Sea region.

The cat is also found in the plot "Knee-deep in gold, elbow-deep in silver." In fairy tale No. 284 (similar to an epic) there is a sea, but the animal is mentioned in passing: “Another sister says: “If Ivan Tsarevich took me, I would bring a bayun cat with me: the bayun cat tells a fairy tale - you can hear it for three miles” . Ivan Tsarevich stands, listens: “This is not merit! I can buy a bayun cat myself.” (The girls live far from the prince, but when he gets married near the sea, he stays with his wife, that is, the cat is by the sea, however, in this story it is not clear which one.) In No. 286 from the same series about “three girls under the window” : ""Goy, merchants, merchants, experienced people! - says Ivan the King. - You have traveled many seas ... have you heard any news anywhere?" The merchants answer: “On the sea-ocean, on such and such an island ... there is a golden pillar, a golden cage hangs on it, and a learned cat walks along that pillar; it goes down - sings songs, rises up - tells fairy tales ".

In No. 315 (a fairy tale similar to an epic), in Kiev, Vladimir the Prince says to Baldak, the son of Borisovich: “Do me a great service: go for three nine lands, to the thirtieth kingdom, to the Sultan of Turkey; take the golden-maned horse away from him, ... kill the bahar cat, spit in the eyes of the Turkish saltan himself.

We have not considered here fairy tales with a plot such as "The Magic Ring", in which a dog, a cat and a snake help the hero marry a princess and become a king, because the cat is the main character in them. These are fairy tales, by and large, about friendship. There are only 4 of them in Afanasiev's collection (Nos. 103, 190, 191, 566).

There are more fairy tales in which the cat is a minor character and in which it is said about a successful marriage to a foreign princess (9), and they contain different plots, but they are always confined to the sea, and mostly to the mountains, that is, to the Northern Black Sea coast , Tavrida and Lukomorye including.

There the forest and vale are full of visions,
There, at dawn, waves will surge
On the sandy and empty shore
And thirty beautiful knights
A series of waves come out clear ...

If you think that we are talking about mythological underwater inhabitants, you are mistaken. Such a phenomenon could be observed on the shores of Azov for many centuries.

In the Slavic languages, the word Lukomorye was called not only a bend, a bow, a bay, but also elongated plains, swampy meadows, and low-lying shores. Fog lies in such places for a long time, vapors accumulate, which may well cause visual illusions - visions. It is for the combination of these qualities that the coast in the region of the Rotten Sea - Sivash - was called Lukomorye.

Photos from WWII: Sivash, ancient Lukomorye

".... and thirty beautiful knights emerge from the waters in succession..."

The entire Northern Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov has a low, sandy coast, you wander for a long, long time, and the water is all knee-deep to plunge, sometimes you go so far that the coast is barely visible. Of course, ships and boats in such a place cannot come close to the shore, they anchor almost beyond the horizon and people from their sides wade to the shore. Who could land on a deserted shore early in the morning? Pirates, of course, since merchants and regular troops preferred the city's marinas. Ancient authors tell us about such pirates, and they were mostly local, native, that is, Aryan tribes.

The coast of the Sea of ​​Azov, "Sandy and empty shore"

The Scythian-Iranians failed to subdue the Taurians of the mountainous Crimea and the related Azov Meots, whom Herodotus called "farmers", and Starbon specified: "Meots, farmers, but no less warlike than nomads" (IA. S. 29, 44).

However, on the other side of the Crimea, the same picture was observed: “Olbia’s normal commerce and communication with Scythian Naples was bothered by“ pirating Satarchees ” who struck from the dangerous shallow Karkinitsky, or Tamiraksky Gulf” (IA. S. 153, 154). That is, the return of the Satarheys, whose name Trubachev translates from Indo-Aryan as “seven destinies”, and who occupied the entire north of Crimea from the Black to the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov - and from the side of the Black Sea it looked the same as in Lukomorye - the soldiers walked ashore in shallow water (IA. C. 272).

However, from the side of Lukomorye, the picture was more grandiose, majestic. The sun rising in the east beat into the eyes of the observer standing on the western shore of the Sea of ​​Azov. Tired knights slowly emerged from the sea, and a huge shining Luminary rose behind them...
Pushkin visited these places, but there is no doubt that he did not know all the tales discussed above. He could not know for sure that many magical stories describe this particular coast. But a genius is a genius because he intuitively feels the truth and chooses the right path.

(cartoon "At Lukomorye...")

Conclusion.

Perhaps some readers will decide that I needlessly "grounded" fairy tales, deprived them of the charm of mystery, and this should not be done.

Insisting on the need for such an approach to folklore, I will quote the words of the Russian philosopher P. A. Florensky: “The attitude to the shrine seems to me in this way: like a tenacious ivy winds around a tree, so a myth wraps around a shrine. And just as ivy, having curled the entire trunk with its flexible lashes, then withers and chokes it, taking its place itself, so the myth, having entangled the shrine with itself, hides and destroys it. The myth makes the perception of the shrine indirect. And because of this, it loses its own life, loses its meaning in itself, highlighting its meaning, objectifying it in myth. The shrine rots under the myth that has strangled it, caressing it, growing ever larger, and perishes, destroying with it the myth, now devoid of the juices of life. But just as ivy grows on the ashes of trees in the forest and on the ashes of fallen trees, without the support of trees, ivy - trees, so in religion: myths, devoid of support, themselves fall, decay, turn into the soil of new shrines ”(Florensky P. A. Cult , Religion and Culture, Theological Works, vol. XVII, Moscow, 1976, p. 54).

Indeed, East Slavic tales (in a sense, myths) are currently only of interest to specialists and children, the oral tradition of transmission from generation to generation is almost dead. What new shrines will grow on the ashes of our mythological fairy tales, under which ancient shrines are buried, depends on us, our memory and knowledge.

That amazing skill, that is, the language with which our ancestors reflected their mythopoetic and many other knowledge in fairy tales, is appreciated. The time has come to evaluate this knowledge itself, including geographical, ethnographic, widely represented in East Slavic fairy tales.

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Pereslavl-Zalessky seems to be waiting for a sensational discovery. It is possible that it is here, not far from the city, that the very epic crossroads is located, at which Ilya Muromets stopped in thought! The story is dark, and it walks with might and main on the expanses of the Internet. It's hard to say if this is true or just fiction. But nonetheless, it's interesting. After all, there is a story behind every story. So I want to believe - but suddenly ...

According to stories on the Web, a mysterious stone was discovered by a certain Astrakhan crossroad specialist Kirill Ostapov.

For several years, a dream gnawed at me - to find that very legendary intersection with a stone and an inscription: “If you go to the left, you will lose your horse, if you go to the right, you will lose your life, if you go straight, you will be alive, but you will forget yourself,” he says. - In fact, such pointer stones really existed in ancient times. As a rule, they were installed at the crossroads and at the borders.

According to Kirill Ostapov, his grandfather inherited the profession of "cross-section specialist". Now there are only a few such masters - people who can "hear" crossroads and determine whether they are spoiled by evil people and curses (there were definitely such cross-bearers). Apparently, due to lack of demand. But in ancient Rus', these masters were in great demand, they were specially invited to check urban and rural intersections. The master installed a wooden pole with a crossbar at the crossroads and hung three bells, and then beat them in a special way. By the sound of the bells, he determined: a good crossroads or an evil one, happiness awaits a person here or trouble.

Ostapov explored many crossroads so as not to lose the gift. And it seems that even traffic cops listened to his advice - additional road signs were put up in the most dangerous sections. But the master went to the Yaroslavl region to look for an epic crossroads.

Since in epics this pillar is most often associated with the name of Ilya Muromets, I thought that it was necessary to look for the sign near Pereslavl-Zalessky, - says Kirill Ospapov. - According to legend, the hero Ilya served in the army of Vladimir Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky from 1157, defending the possessions of the Rostov-Suzdal princes. Their Pereslavl lands were the most restless because of the frequent raids of nomads, and it was here that the prince erected his heroic frontier outposts. The stone with the inscription, obviously, was not far away and stood in a deadly place for any horse and foot.

Arriving in Pereslavl, Ostapov carefully studied the traffic police reports and the criminal situation in the area and began to search. I immediately determined the approximate location of the sign stone - away from the M-8 highway, the road to the Nikitsky tract. With his bells, he walked several kilometers and, finally, in the thickest oak forest, he stumbled upon a strange place. No matter how the master beat the bells, they categorically refused to make sounds. And suddenly Ostapov noticed a small mound, all overgrown with moss. Having cleared the fallen column from the ground, I saw half-erased images on the edges of the stone: horsemen, a spear, a raven and a half-closed eye. Only at the very base of the stone did he see the inscription: “Deco according to markush”, which among the ancient Slavs meant to conjure against evil.

Probably, they have already tried to perform a purification ceremony at this stone, but it was not possible to completely remove the curses, - the “crossroad specialist” is sure - This was confirmed by my bells.

One arrow on the sign - the one to the left - just points to the Moscow-Kholmogory highway and the most emergency section, a half-closed eye points the way to the right - the road to the boulder known in Pereslavl - the Blue Stone near Lake Pleshcheyevo. The pointer is straight - to the city of Pereslavl itself, where nomad raids took place. And although this intersection is no longer used, Ostapov still intends to remove the curse from this place. And he is going to come to the Yaroslavl region again this year.

The turn from the federal road to the Nikitsky Monastery is indeed one of the emergency ones, - confirmed the senior inspector for propaganda of the traffic police department of the city of Pereslavl Lyubov Khokhlova. - Cars here fight regularly, pedestrians are knocked down. A cyclist died last year. But it cannot be said that the causes of these accidents are associated with some kind of magic. As a rule, everything is to blame - the human factor. Drivers exceed the speed limit, and pedestrians run across the road at their own risk in the dark.

However, as it turned out, traffic cops do not shy away from magic and also believe in miracles. According to traffic police officers, quite mysterious accidents happen on the M-8 highway. For example, an absolutely sober driver in a serviceable car, for some unknown reason, suddenly leaves for an oncoming lane and gets into a terrible accident. Horror! As for the master crossroads specialist, they promised to think about his services in the regional department of the traffic police. For the sake of road safety - all measures are good.

MEANWHILE

The most emergency intersections of Yaroslavl:

1. Leningradsky Prospekt and Volgogradskaya Street.

2. Moskovsky prospect and South-Western ring road.

3. Bolshaya Oktyabrskaya and Tolbukhin Avenue.

Stone at the crossroads
(narrative)

“... Traveling along the way - on the road, whether it’s close, whether it’s far, whether it’s low, whether it’s high, soon the fairy tale is told, but the deed is not done soon, finally, the hero arrived in an open field, in green meadows. And in the open field at the crossroads stands a gloomy gray stone, overgrown with moss. On it is an ominous inscription: “Whoever goes straight from this stone will be hungry and cold; whoever rides to the right side will be healthy and alive, but his horse will be dead; and whoever rides to the left will be killed himself, but his horse will remain alive and well.”

From time immemorial, I have been standing at this crossroads, ever since I broke away from a block of Knowledge flying in the infinite space of the Great Cosmos and fell on this planet. I stand like a stone idol, I talk to myself and show the way - the way for travelers. One road approaches me, and three leave me. At first, I just watched what was happening around, looked and studied incomprehensible, then, for me, creatures on two legs, passing by and stopping for a while nearby. I understood their thoughts well, but I did not immediately learn to understand their words that they uttered, it seemed that it was not difficult; they called themselves people and were also part of the Cosmos, and their wave vibrations and impulses had the same ranges and frequencies, but often their thoughts had the opposite meaning and did not coincide with what they said out loud, and this was not clear to me, since did not fit into the straightforwardness of cosmic existence. Later I learned that it was insincerity and deceit. People did not understand that by deceiving another, they themselves remained deceived. And then people left on different roads, some came back, and some I didn’t see anymore, because they died, having chosen the wrong path.
And then He appeared, a tall and thin old man, dressed in long and light clothes, with a white beard and blue eyes. He stopped next to me and, hiding in my shadow from the scorching rays of the sun, sat in silence from evening to morning, pressing his back against me, looked at the night sky and bright stars and his thoughts filled me with the purity of the Universal mind and I also thought with him. It felt the great power of knowledge and wisdom. I felt pain and clearly understood his thoughts about what is happening in the world: about human greed and betrayal, about lies that eat a person, about the bird's eternal search for happiness and justice. He mentally told me a lot about what he saw on his life path, and I shared with him part of my knowledge and told him about the three roads that lie behind me and go into the distance, beyond the horizon.
- Can't people live in friendship and love for each other? - I asked him, trying to give my question - thoughts the appearance of the elder's own thought.
- They can, - as if the elder answered himself, - only for this they must study the laws of the Universe and believe in them, and they must understand the essence of their existence and the purpose of their destiny.
- But, it's so easy!
- No, it's not easy, you need to learn this all the time, and constantly work on yourself and your consciousness, and people don't want to study for a long time, they need everything at once and now. They have a lot of envy and little virtue, so they don’t even want to learn from their mistakes! Not to mention Vera!
- What if we try to show them the Way? Yes, to indicate the path that they will have to choose themselves, here, at least from these three, coming from this stone. It will be like a "stumbling block" - the starting stone on the Path to Creation! Maybe then believers and non-believers in Good, observing and not observing the Universal Law, will choose their own path, correct or not. And they will pass it. And if not, then no.
- Let it be so! And on the stone I will write wishes for those who wish and seek!
And the elder took a fragment from me and began his great righteous deed - to write WORDS on my stone body. It was our joint work with him - the embodiment of human desire and heavenly consciousness. For several days and nights, under the rays of the Sun and by the light of the Moon, he carved the truth prompted to him by reason and me, a particle of the cosmic block of Knowledge. A few days later I had this inscription:
"- How to go straight -
I live not to be -
there is no way for a passerby,
nor a passerby
nor flying...
- Go right -
being married...
- Go left -
rich being…”
And then He left, leaning on a staff and his tall, slightly stooped figure was visible for a long time against the background of a clear blue sky, until it disappeared beyond the horizon, forever.
Since then, many people, on foot and on horseback, stopped in front of me, read the inscription, and then moved on. Many tried their luck, but not many found it: some went the wrong way, others came with the wrong idea, others were looking for the wrong thing. How many of them, heroes and different crooks, stood near me, bowing their heads and reading the words. Many, oh many! They read the words, but they didn’t look for the meaning and went in different directions, but mostly not in the right place! And I couldn’t help them in any way: I don’t know how to speak, I don’t have arms or legs, I can only do one thing - from the inside on myself, from the outside, words - tips to write, and only the traveler to choose.
How much water spilled from the sky, how much grass around me grew and died. I have grown almost half into the ground, and how many times have the winds and rains completely erased my inscriptions, and I renewed them again. It takes a lot of time to write them. Only those words in the inscription that have gone into the ground are no longer updated, so the last two lines are no longer visible. Nobody.
Nobody wants to dig deep. They read everything from above, they do not look deep into. You have to bend over. Apparently the old man was right then:
“... you need to learn this constantly, and constantly work on yourself and your consciousness, but people do not want to study for a long time, they need everything at once and now. They have a lot of envy and little virtue, so they don’t even want to learn from their mistakes! Not to mention Vera!”
06/06/2016