Legends of Pleskavia. Panic

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

Therefore, it is not surprising that everyone has a strong opinion that almost all the languages of the world are descended from Greek. And nobody cares that in the 17th century the "Greeks" themselves traveled to Rome and Florence to study their "ancient Greek", supposedly lost language.

So what scientists tell us:

Now, who is PAN?

Pan and Siringa. 1679. Paris Jean Francois de Troyes

Well, it is clear … And where, then, in the remote places of Russia, there are so many toponyms with the root "pan"?

Here, for example, is a village located a couple of tens of kilometers from my house. Panikovichi is the volost center of the Pechora district of the Pskov region. No matter how much I asked local ethnographers about the history of the name, no one answered anything intelligible. There are two versions:

1) (Unlikely, according to the local historians themselves) - I would have founded the village by a Polish pan. The version does not stand up to criticism. In the north-west of the Pskov region, no one has heard anything about the Poles since they defeated the troops of Stefan Batory at the end of the 16th century. True, the words "Pole" and "Pan" then hardly anyone heard. The Poles were called at that time simply - "Litvins". And no "lords".

2) The second version says that "PANikovichi" is because before the war there was a large branch of the Estonian agrarian bank, and in Estonian "bank" is spelled and pronounced like this: - "PANK".

The bank really was. It existed as a loan office for peasants who could afford to take out loans, and there were quite a few of them. I even visited the house of the former manager of this bank; now my friend lives with his family.

Here I can not help but tell a curious story with this manager. It was witnessed by the father of this friend of mine, who in 1939. was about 10 years old.

The USSR then returned the territories of the Baltic countries, which had been alienated from Russia after the First World War. The Red Army soldiers entered the city in trucks, and quickly, in an orderly manner, they began to arrest officials, soldiers, policemen and bankers. We came to the house of the bank manager in Panikovichi. They walk along an alley of poplars from the dirt road to the house, and towards the peasant in a cap with a beard, belted with a simple rope. They ask: "Is this the road to the manager's house"? "Uh-huh, uh-huh, manager, sons."

The sons come to the yard, there are several local peasants. They ask in menacing voices: - "Where is the manager? Well, inject quickly, counter!" "Contras" answer: - "So you just talked with him on the alley!"

A dumb scene. The Red Army men were convinced that bank managers wore tailcoats, top hats, white gloves, and a cane. In the teeth, there must certainly be a thick cigar, and a gold chain of Breguet should stick out of the pocket of the vest.

The manager, meanwhile, flew away through the forests and swamps, and his further fate is unknown. Most likely he managed to escape to Estonia. because. that the border was only a couple of kilometers from the house.

In general, as you can see, the second version also cannot pretend to be impeccable.

Now the funniest part.

I had a conversation with one of my acquaintances, who serves as a simple firemaster in the Emergency Situations Ministry. He talked about how, in the early sixties, he and his brother found in the attic of his grandfather, who lived on a farm in the wilderness of the Palkin forests, a whole warehouse of Nazi army uniforms. There were soldiers' boots, gray greatcoats, trousers and a tunic. There was even an officer's leather cloak with SS braided shoulder straps. In general, a whole company could be equipped. But this is a topic for a separate story, and one slip of the tongue from a friend struck me. He said that when his grandfather handed out slaps to the pioneers dressed in gray fascist tunics and boots, he threatened that if they talked about the find, he would tie them both to a birch at the edge of the swamp, so that PAN would teach them wits.

- Kohl, and what kind of pan is that? - I interrupted the narrator, believing that this is some hero of local folklore.

- Haven't you heard of Pan?

- Well, about the Polish lords only …

- And about kikimor, water, goblin heard?

- You are offended. Who has not heard about them!

- Well, Pan is also the same evil. He lives in a swamp, loves to scare mushroom pickers who scamper along the edge of his possessions in the forest. Ka-a-ak will jump out from under the driftwood, or from behind a tree, but as soon as he gags on the whole forest, a person will pop, and faint. And that's if you're lucky. Usually, people die from a ruptured heart on the spot. And if he wakes up, then he already remains dumb until his death. Our grandmother always told us not to come close to the swamp. Otherwise we will die, or remain dumb.

It turns out what a pan is and what a PANika is, respectively. The peasants in the Pskov outback not only could not hear about the fauns, they only heard about Greece at school, and even then they forgot.

It turns out that in Russian mythology, at least in certain territories, the Pan is the same familiar character, known from time immemorial, as a brownie or a goblin. And it has nothing to do with Greece. recaptured us the memory of generations, made us forget who we are and where we are from, what kind - tribe. We study our traditions from miserable borrowings that have returned to us from emigration.

Someone, once, composed the mythology of "ancient Greece", and simply stole most of the characters from ancient Slavic folklore. He betrayed his own cultural heritage, is proud of what was stolen, and now he teaches us, the true heirs of a great culture!

And we, like fools, believe …

Teach children correctly!