Traditions of Ancient Rus. Part 5

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Fragments of the book by Y. Medvedev "Traditions of Ancient Rus"

Heat color

One peasant was looking for a lost cow on the eve of Ivan Kupala; at midnight he accidentally caught a flowering fern bush, and a wonderful flower fell into his bast shoe. Immediately he became invisible, the whole past, present and future became clear to him; he easily found the missing cow, found out about many treasures hidden in the earth and saw enough of the witches' pranks.

When the peasant returned to his family, the household, hearing his voice and not seeing him, were horrified. But then he took off his shoes and dropped the flower - and at that very moment everyone saw him. The peasant was simple-minded and himself could not understand where his wisdom came from.

Once the devil appeared to him under the guise of a merchant, bought a bast shoe from him and, along with the bast shoe, carried away the flower of the ferns. The man was glad that he had made money on an old bast shoe, but the trouble is that with the loss of a flower his all-vision ended, he even forgot about those places where he had recently admired buried treasures.

When this fantastic flower blooms, the night is clearer than the day and the sea sways. They say that its bud bursts with a crash and blossoms with a golden or red, bloody flame, and, moreover, so bright that the eye is not able to endure the wonderful brilliance; this flower is shown at the same time at which the treasures, coming out of the earth, burn with blue lights …

At dark, impenetrable midnight, under a thunderstorm and a storm, the fiery flower of Perun blooms, pouring around the same bright light as the sun itself; but this flower flaunts for one brief moment: before you have time to blink an eye, it will flash and disappear! Unclean spirits pluck him and carry him to their den. Whoever wants to get the fern color, on the eve of the bright holiday of Kupala, go into the forest, taking a tablecloth and a knife with him, then find a fern bush, draw a circle around it with a knife, spread the tablecloth and, sitting in a closed circular line, keep his eyes on the plant; as soon as the flower lights up, immediately pluck it and cut the finger or palm of the hand and put the flower into the wound. Then everything secret and hidden will be known and accessible …

Unclean power in every possible way prevents a person from getting the wonderful Fire-color; snakes and various monsters lie near the fern on the cherished night and greedily guard the minute of its heyday. On the daredevil who decides to master this miracle, the evil spirits induce a deep sleep or tries to bind him with fear: as soon as he picks a flower, suddenly the earth shakes under his feet, there will be thunderclaps, lightning flashes, the winds howl, violent screams, shooting, devilish laughter and the sounds of whips, with which the unclean slammed on the ground; he will overwhelm a person with a hellish flame and a suffocating sulfur smell; before him will appear bestial monsters with protruding tongues of fire, the sharp ends of which pierce to the very heart. Until you get the color of a fern, God forbid you to protrude from the circular line or look around: as you turn your head, it will remain forever! - and you step out of the circle, the devils will tear you apart. Having plucked a flower, you need to squeeze it tightly in your hand and run home without looking back; if you look back, all the work is gone: the heat color will disappear! According to others, one should not leave the circle until the very morning, since the unclean ones leave only with the appearance of the sun, and whoever comes out first, they will pluck out a flower from him.

Living and dead water

There lived a king, and he had three sons. But the trouble is: he began to go blind in old age. And he sent his sons for healing living water. They parted in different directions.

For a long time, for a short time - the youngest son, Ivan Tsarevich, turned out to be near two high mountains, those mountains stand together, lying close to one another; only once a day do they part for a short time, but soon converge again.

And between those mountains, living and dead water gushes out of the earth. The tsarevich waited and waited by the crushing mountains when they began to disperse. Then a storm began to rustle, thunder struck - and the mountains parted. The prince flew between them like an arrow, drew two bottles of water - and instantly turned back. The hero himself managed to slip through, but the horse's hind legs crumpled, crushed into small pieces. He sprinkled his good horse with dead and living water - and he got up in nothing unharmed.

On the way back, the prince met his brothers and told them about the pushing mountains, about the sources of living and dead water. And at night the brothers killed him asleep - and they went with the cherished vials to their kingdom.

Ivan Tsarevich is lying lifeless - a crow is already spinning nearby. But his faithful horse, who remembered goodness better than other people, went for help and met the maiden who lived at the edge of the forest with things. She understood the speech of animals and birds. The horse brought her to the dead master. The maiden set the snares, and the little crow was caught there. Then the raven and the raven prayed:

- Do not destroy our child, for that we will bring you dead and living water.

The birds flew in pursuit of the villainous brothers and at night, when they fell asleep, they took both the vials. The prophetic maiden sprinkled Ivan Tsarevich, first with dead water, then with living water - and the hero stood up unharmed.

And the brothers woke up in the morning, noticed the loss - and decided to return to the pushing mountains, to get water themselves. Then the storm rustled, thunder struck - the mountains moved apart. The brothers flew between them like an arrow, scooped up water, turned back, but hesitated: no one wanted to let the other go ahead, each strove to be the first! The mountains managed to close up and killed the brothers.

And Ivan Tsarevich came to his kingdom with his clothes as a virgin and returned his sight to the sovereign. He soon married a virgin. They began to live and live and make good money.

In ancient times, a myth arose, common to all Indo-European peoples, about living water: it heals wounds, heals the body with strength, makes chopped wounds heal and even returns life itself. It is also called heroic water.

Dead water is also called "healing", it splices parts of the body, cut into pieces, but leaves it breathless, dead. The rest is completed by living water - it returns life, endows with heroic strength.

Mysterious phenomena

It was hot at times, at the beginning of the glowing month, the son of the governor himself, the youth Vsevolod, disappeared in the town of Slavensk. I went with a friend to the forest for berries, but in the evening a thunderstorm broke out, which even the old people would not remember, and it raged fiercely and for a long time. By midnight the children returned, but without Vsevolod - he disappeared into no one knows where.

Almost three years have passed. And a week before Kupala, a vision was revealed to the city of Slavensk. At midnight, the whole eye suddenly lit up, and above it appeared the semblance of four temples, trimmed with gold and precious stones. The entire Slavensk contemplated a great miracle.

Meanwhile, one of the temples approached the city.

- Father! Mother! I have arrived! - the voice of Vsevolod was heard in the sky.

From the temple, like a serpent, a winding, transparent pipe, shining with a greenish light, crawled out and crawled in the sky towards the city of Slavensk. When the serpent approached, everyone saw Vsevolod in its mouth. Soon he was already embracing the household. The temples suddenly disappeared in the heavens, and the glow on the okoem went out.

And the next morning, and a month later, and a year later, and a quarter of a century later, Vsevolod surprised the audience with his wonderful stories. It turned out, according to him, that, fearing a thunderstorm, he climbed into a crevice under a dumpy oak tree, and when he crawled out, he saw a marvelous temple in the clearing. There was a jagged hole in the side. Immediately a voice was heard: someone begged Vsevolod to enter the temple in order to save its inhabitants from a terrible disaster.

Inside the temples, people lay in huge transparent coffins, but not dead, but sleeping. A voice, coming from nowhere, told Vsevolod which iron wheels to turn and which sticks and shafts to move in which direction. After a while, strangers - and they were all in shining robes, like angels - began to renounce sleep. First of all, they repaired a hole in the side of the temple, and then thanked Vsevolod for his help and offered to fly over the Slavic land, as if on an airplane carpet.

- I was afraid, obviously the case, it was to agree, - said Vsevolod. - But where did not ours disappear! And then, like a swan, this temple took off, and I saw the whole Slavic land, and a little later - the homeland of heavenly foreigners.

- And where is it, that homeland? - asked Vsevolod.

- This is unknown to me. I will say one thing - in those parts, even the stars are different. And everything is not the same as ours. People live there in tall houses, right up to heaven. They ride on roads as hard as ice in horseless scooters. They look into wonderful mirrors, in which everything is visible, that in the world there is something white.

Soon after the boy's return, the Slavs called him the Omniscientist. And for good reason. He began to predict the future for people, to dissuade from dashing and secret affairs, even tried to build a self-propelled carriage, but she did not want to go horseless.

Descriptions of amazing, miraculous phenomena are often found in Russian chronicles.

We have to admit that at all times people have come across the inexplicable, unknown, admired these phenomena, being afraid of them and forever capturing them for posterity.

Traditions of Ancient Rus. Part 1

Traditions of Ancient Rus. Part 2

Traditions of Ancient Rus. Part 3

Traditions of Ancient Rus. Part 4