Cossack Tales. Николай Гоголь

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СКАЧАТЬ Zaporoghian Ssiecha to their help, began those wars with Poland which continued uninterrupted till the middle of the seventeenth century. The history of those wars, on the part of the Poles, is but a repetition of the horrors perpetrated by the Spaniards in the New World, by the Inquisition in Spain, &c., in a word, by savage fanaticism everywhere when led by the priests of Rome. On the part of the Cossacks the reprisals were not less terrible, although the latter, while exterminating every Pole, male or female, young or old, put them to immediate death by the sword, fire, or water, and never attained the Popish refinements of torturing their prisoners, of flaying them alive, boiling them in oil, roasting them in brazen oxen, &c.

      The Zaporoghians, who had parted from their brethren, when these latter had submitted to the Poles, united themselves again to those brethren, now once more free, now once more Cossacks, and from this time the existence of the Ssiecha as a separate community seems to have ceased; it became incorporated in Little Russia and remained nothing more than a standing encampment of Cossacks, ever ready at the command of the hetman of Little Russia. With Little Russia, it submitted itself to its co-religionary Russian Czar Alexis (1654), and, with Little Russia, it remained true to the Emperor Peter I. when on the field of Poltava (1709). Hetman Mazeppa proved traitor to him. But by degrees, as the civilization of Western Europe spread in Russia, and a more regular mode of administration was enforced in Little Russia, the Zaporoghian Cossacks began to grow disaffected. At last, when Catherine II. annexed to her empire the kingdom of Poland, and achieved the conquest of the Crimea and all the north-western part of the sea-board of the Black Sea, the Ssiecha had no longer any reason to prolong its existence, as it lost its position of an outpost against the foes of the country, and became surrounded by Russian possessions. Some of the Zaporoghians were loth to submit to the legislature and administration which the Czarina framed for her empire. Headed by their Ataman Nekrassoff, they fled to Turkey, and the existence of the Ssiecha ceased with the sound of their horsehoofs dying away in the distance.

      This brief sketch sufficiently proves that the Zaporoghian Cossacks had nothing in common with the Cossacks of the present day. The latter form a standing militia, living on their own lands situated oh the southern and eastern borders of Russia. They are bound to maintain at their own cost a fixed number of regiments of horse and foot, and are governed by their respective atamans. The principal of these Cossacks are, those of the Don, whose ataman was the renowned Platoff; those of the Black Sea (Czernomortzy); of the Caucasus; of Astrakhan; of Orenburg; and of the Ural, one of whom was Poogachoff, the pseudo-Peter III.; of Siberia; and a recently formed corps of the Trans-Baikalian Cossacks, having the guardianship of the Russian frontier towards China.

      "THE NIGHT OF CHRISTMAS EVE," is a series of comic scenes taken from the life of the peasants in Little Russia in the last century.

      "TARASS BOOLBA," is a graphic, lively, and, what is more, a historically true picture of the state of the Zaporoghian Ssiecha at the beginning of the religious wars with Poland.

The original tales were written in Russian, mixed up, especially in the conversations, with the native idiom of the author, who was a Little Russian. Now, although, as Sir Jerome Horsey[7] reports, Queen Elizabeth boasted, when speaking of the Russian language, that "she could quicklie lern it," yet it has always proved a stumbling block to foreigners, and few, if any, Englishmen can appreciate at its full value the peculiarities of "this famoust and most copius language in the worlde," especially in conjunction with the Little Russian idiom, which even some Russians do not understand. In a translation, of course, many of the beauties of the original must disappear, particularly those which depend upon elegance of style, and this was one of the qualities of Gogol. But Gogol had one quality besides, that gave him a prominent place amongst authors, makes him till now the most popular writer in Russia, and caused his death to be lamented as an irretrievable loss to Russian literature: it was his art of making his reader join him in laughter whenever he laughs, in sorrow whenever he weeps, and to influence the feelings of his reader with every feeling he feels himself, and, above all, with that one which predominates in his heart-enthousiastic love of his native country.

      The translator will be happy if, in remaining faithful to the original, he has been so fortunate as to give even a faint outline of its beauties.

[1] "Free as a Cossack" is a common phrase in Russia.

[2] Zaporoghian means "beyond the rapids." Ssiecha has two meanings: first, a place in a forest where trees have be en cut down; secondly, a slaughter, the thickest of a fight.

[3] Ataman (a rank still preserved amongst the Russian irregular troops and signifying chief) is a title quite different from that of hetman, who was the elective prince of Little Russia. The last who bore the title of hetman was the favourite and supposed husband of the Empress Elizabeth, Count Razumoffsky. Count Platoff, who led the Cossacks in the war against Napoleon I. is miscalled hetman by foreigners: he was in fact only ataman.

[4] Kooren is derived from a word signifying "to smoke." It designated the abode of a company whose fires smoked in common, and who had one common store of provisions.

[5] A koorennoï ataman was the chief of a kooren, and had to superintend the distribution of the victuals, and the division of the spoil taken by his kooren.

[6] Literally, "Chief of the encampment."

[7] Sir Jerome Horsey, originally a clerk of the "Company of English Merchants Adventurers," trading with Muscovy, had been occasionally employed as diplomatic messenger by Queen Elizabeth and by Czar Ivan (the Terrible), and his son Czar Theodore. His travels, published some years ago, contain much highly interesting information about the commercial intercourse between England and Russia in the latter part of the sixteenth century.

COSSACK TALES.

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THE NIGHT OF CHRISTMAS EVE:

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      A LEGEND OF LITTLE RUSSIA.

      BY NICHOLAS GOGOL.

      The last day before Christmas had just closed. A bright winter night had come on, stars had appeared, and the moon rose majestically in the heavens to shine upon good men and the whole of the world, so that they might gaily sing carols and hymns in praise of the nativity of Christ. The frost had grown more severe than during the day; but, to make up for this, everything had become so still that the crisping of the snow under foot might be heard nearly half a verst round. As yet there was not a single group of young peasants to be seen under the windows of the cottages; the moon alone peeped stealthily in at them, as if inviting the maidens, who were decking themselves, to make haste and have a run on the crisp snow. Suddenly, out of the chimney of one of the cottages, volumes of smoke ascended in clouds towards the heavens, and in the midst of those clouds rose, on a besom, a witch.

      If at that time the magistrate of Sorochinsk[1] had happened to pass СКАЧАТЬ