Part 1

Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature

COSSACK TALES,

BY

NICHOLAS GOGOL.

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL RUSSIAN

BY

GEORGE TOLSTOY.

LONDON

JAMES BLACKWOOD, PATERNOSTER ROW.

INTRODUCTION.

A historical sketch placed before a work of fiction must seem, to many, a very inconsistent thing, and yet the title of the present volume, "COSSACK TALES," obliges the translator to give a short account of this sometime warlike race. Such an account is the more wanted, as not only in England, but in all Europe, the notion exists that the Cossacks were something like a _Deus ex machinâ_, emerging from space at the moment requisite to put a stop to the triumphs if Napoleon I., to drive back to their respective homes the motley array of the twenty nations he brought into Russia, to pitch their tents in the _Champs Élysées_, to put all things right in Paris, and then to vanish once more into space, where, for more than four centuries, Europe had never so much as perceived their existence.

The invasion of the Tartars in the middle of the thirteenth century took place when Russia was torn asunder by two kindred and yet hostile branches of the house of Rurick: the younger branch had settled in the northern (at the present time the middle) part of the country; the elder, after many struggles and reverses, had succeeded in regaining its inheritance, the ancient metropolis Kieff, and the whole of the southern principalities. Both branches bore a revengeful remembrance of their mutual feuds, and while the elder viewed with jealousy the gradual rise of the northern princes, the latter envied the firm grasp with which the southern princes clutched their long disputed sway. Hence it came that, when hordes of Tartars overran the northern principalities, the princes of the South lent no ear to the entreaties of their northern brethren for help. Hence, also, the reason of these latter remaining inert and submissive to their recent conquerors, the Tartars, when those conquerors laid waste the fertile territories which extended along the south of Russia.

Soon afterwards, the trans-Carpathian parts of Russia, _Red Russia_, i.e., Galicia, Lodomeria, &c., ceased to be any longer accounted as forming part of Russia. The marshy tracts of land to the east of Poland, _White Russia_, formed a new and distinct power, Lithuania, soon destined to merge into Poland. The north of Russia, _Great Russia_, had yet two centuries more to endure the yoke of the Tartars. At this time Southern or _Little Russia_, called also _Ukraine_ (i.e., the borders), gave birth to a new race, the _Cossacks_.

The princes of Southern Russia had forsaken their subjects, and gone into Lithuania to seek for a less disturbed dominion than that over a country exposed to the incessant depredations of the Crimean Tartars, and converted into the battle-field of these Tartars with the Russians and the Poles. Their subjects were thus left behind without anybody to look to for protection, or for guidance, in defence of their homes, and revenge for their country being annually wasted by fire and sword by their Crimean neighbours. Reduced to despair at seeing their homes burnt to ashes, their wives and children carried away by those savage invaders, to suffer all the consequences of their rude slavery, these men, to speak in the words of Gogol, "Left orphans, and seeing their country left like a widow after the loss of a mighty husband, held out their hands to one another to be brothers," and this brotherhood gave rise to the _Cossacks_, whose name for a Russian, even to this day, embodies every idea of the utmost freedom,[1] and who ever since have been ready to fight at the first notice of their country or of their faith being in danger.

At first, they sought a refuge in the wooded islands of the Dnieper, amidst the rapids of this river, and, no doubt, first dwelt under the canopy of heaven amidst the trunks of the trees which they felled for building their huts. This may, perhaps, account for the community assuming the name of _Zaporoghian Ssiecha_,[2] a name which has become inseparable from the idea of fight and slaughter, of deeds of valour and of cruelty. Having no means of livelihood, they, of course, resolved to procure them at the expense of those by whom they were brought to this desperate situation. They had learnt from their own experience that a good sabre was more to be depended upon than a plough, and that labour and industry were of no avail at such times when everything at any moment might be taken by him who dealt the heavier blow. As all who have seen the worst of miseries, and have nothing to lose in the world, whose life is one of incessant peril, they knew no fear--for them death had lost its horrors. No women were permitted to dwell amongst them; no tears were shed in memory of those who fell in battle or were led away captive; but their exploits were repeatedly sung in the Cossacks' circles, and excited revenge in the hearts of the older, emulation in the hearts of the younger.

In a community thus formed, no laws could be enforced, no regular partition into regiments, companies, &c., could take place. They chose for their chief some one amongst themselves, whose hand had been seen to deal the heaviest blows in battle, whose hair had blanched amidst warlike exploits, and who had become remarkable for his daring and his cunning in their unsophisticated mode of warfare. To this chief they gave the title of _Ataman_.[3] Eventually with the increase in numbers of their community, they divided themselves into _koorens_,[4] each of which chose for itself a _koorennoï ataman_,[5] subordinate to the Ataman of the Ssiecha, who was called _Koschevoï Ataman_;[6] to the latter (very often an illiterate man) a _writer_ or secretary, a judge, and some other officers for transacting the public business of the Ssiecha, were appointed. But these dignitaries held their offices only as long as it pleased their electors; at the first summons of any drunken fellow who chose to beat the kettle-drum in the public square of the Ssiecha, and bring a complaint against the Ataman before the _Rada_ (i.e., the whole assembled Ssiecha), the Ataman and his colleagues were sure to be deposed and new ones elected in their stead. Not so during a campaign: then the Koschevoï Ataman assumed dictatorial power, decreed death and granted life at his pleasure, and nobody, under pain of death, might resist his commands or bring a complaint against him till the return to the Ssiecha.

When the Ssiecha had attained this degree of development, the kings of Poland, who, at the instigation of the Jesuits, had endeavoured to enforce upon Little Russia the tenets of Popery under the disguise of the so-called _Union_, had already, under show of protection, garrisoned the most important cities of this country with Polish troops, and sought (though always unavailingly) to make its elective chief or prince, the _hetman_, a delegate of their power and a mere tool of their pleasure. Consequently, the jealousy of the Cossacks (for this name had been assumed by the inhabitants of all Ukraine) was already aroused against the Poles, but when they saw the haughty Polish lords treat their religion with contempt, shut up their churches, and give the keys to Jews, who levied taxes on each baptism, marriage, or burial: then was it that the whole of the Little Russians, summoning their brethren of the 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 EYE," 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.

[Footnote 1: "_Free as a Cossack_" is a common phrase in Russia.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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_.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

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

[Footnote 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.

THE NIGHT OF CHRISTMAS EVE:

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 in his carriage, drawn by three horses, his head covered by a lancer cap with sheepskin trimming, and wrapped in his great cloak, covered with blue cloth and lined with black sheepskin, and with his tightly plaited lash, which he uses for making the driver drive faster--if this worthy gentleman had happened to pass at that time, no doubt he would have seen the witch, because there is no witch who could glide away without his seeing her. He knows to a certainty how many sucking pigs each swine brings forth in each cottage, how much linen lies in each box, and what each one has pawned in the brandy-shop out of his clothes or his household furniture. But the magistrate of Sorochinsk happened _not_ to pass; and then, what has he to do with those out of his jurisdiction? he has his own circuit. And the witch by this time had risen so high that she only looked like a little dark spot up above; but wherever that spot went, one star after another disappeared from heaven. In a short time the witch had got a whole sleeveful of them. Some three or four only remained shining. On a sudden, from the opposite side, appeared another spot, which went on growing, spreading, and soon became no longer a spot. A short-sighted man, had he put, not only spectacles, but even the wheels of a britzka on his nose, would never have been able to make out what it was. In front, it was just like a German;[2] a narrow snout, incessantly turning on every side, and smelling about, ended like those of our pigs, in a small, round, flattened end; its legs were so thin, that had the village elder got no better, he would have broken them to pieces in the first squatting-dance. But, as if to make amends for these deficiencies, it might have been taken, viewed from behind, for the provincial advocate, so much was its long pointed tail like the skirt of our dress-coats. And yet, a look at the goat's beard under its snout, at the small horns sticking out of its head, and at the whole of its figure, which was no whiter than that of a chimney sweeper, would have sufficed to make any one guess that it was neither a German nor a provincial advocate, but the Devil in person, to whom only one night more was left for walking about the world and tempting good men to sin. On the morrow, at the first stroke of the church bell, he was to run, with his tail between his legs, back to his quarters. The devil then, as the devil it was, stole warily to the moon, and stretched out his hand to get hold of it; but at the very same moment he drew it hastily back again, as if he had burnt it, shook his foot, sucked his fingers, ran round on the other side, sprang at the moon once more, and once more drew his hand away. Still, notwithstanding his being baffled, the cunning devil did not desist from his mischievous designs. Dashing desperately forwards, he grasped the moon with both hands, and, making wry faces and blowing hard, he threw it from one hand to the other, like a peasant who has taken a live coal in his hand to light his pipe. At last, he hastily hid it in his pocket, and went on his way as if nothing had happened. At Dikanka,[3] nobody suspected that the devil had stolen the moon. It is true that the village scribe, coming out of the brandy-shop on all fours, saw how the moon, without any apparent reason, danced in the sky, and took his oath of it before the whole village, but the distrustful villagers shook their heads, and even laughed at him. And now, what was the reason that the devil had decided on such an unlawful step? Simply this: he knew very well that the rich Cossack[4] Choop[5] was invited to an evening party at the parish clerk's, where he was to meet the elder, also a relation of the clerk, who was in the archbishop's chapel, and who wore a blue coat and had a most sonorous _basso profondo_, the Cossack Sverbygooze, and some other acquaintances; where there would be for supper, not only the kootia,[6] but also a varenookha,[7] as well as corn-brandy, flavoured with saffron, and divers other dainties. He knew that in the mean time Choop's daughter, the belle of the village, would remain at home; and he knew, moreover, that to this daughter would come the blacksmith, a lad of athletic strength, whom the devil held in greater aversion than even the sermons of Father Kondrat. When the blacksmith had no work on hand, he used to practise painting, and had acquired the reputation of being the best painter in the whole district. Even the Centurion[8] had expressly sent for him to Poltava, for the purpose of painting the wooden palisade round his house. All the tureens out of which the Cossacks of Dikanka ate their borsch,[9] were adorned with the paintings of the blacksmith. He was a man of great piety, and often painted images of the saints; even now, some of them may be seen in the village church; but his masterpiece was a painting on the right side of the church-door; in it he had represented the Apostle Peter, at the Day of Judgment, with the keys in his hand, driving the evil spirit out of hell; the terrified devil, apprehending his ruin, rushed hither and thither, and the sinners, freed from their imprisonment, pursued and thrashed him with scourges, logs of wood, and anything that came to hand. All the time that the blacksmith was busy with this picture, and was painting it on a great board, the devil used all his endeavours to spoil it; he pushed his hand, raised the ashes out of the forge, and spread them over the painting; but, notwithstanding all this, the work was finished, the board was brought to the church, and fixed in the wall of the porch. From that time the devil vowed vengeance on the blacksmith. He had only one night left to roam about the world, but even in that night he sought to play some evil trick upon the blacksmith. For this reason he, had resolved to steal the moon, for he knew that old Choop was lazy above all things, not quick to stir his feet; that the road to the clerk's was long, and went across back lanes, next to mills, along the churchyard, and over the top of a precipice; and though the varenookha and the saffron brandy might have got the better of Choop's laziness on a moonlight night, yet, in such darkness, it would be difficult to suppose that anything could prevail on him to get down from his oven[10] and quit his cottage. And the blacksmith, who had long been at variance with Choop, would not on any account, in spite even of his strength, visit his daughter in his presence.

So stood events: hardly had the devil hidden the moon in his pocket, when all at once it grew so dark that many could not have found their way to the brandy-shop, still less to the clerk's. The witch, finding herself suddenly in darkness, shrieked aloud. The devil coming near her, took her hand, and began to whisper to her those same things which are usually whispered to all womankind.

How oddly things go on in this world of ours! Every one who lives in it endeavours to copy and ape his neighbour. Of yore there was nobody at Mirgorod[11] but the judge and the mayor, who in winter wore fur cloaks covered with cloth; all their subordinates went in plain uncovered too-loops;[12] and now, only see, the deputy, as well as the under-cashier, wear new cloaks of black sheep fur covered with cloth. Two years ago, the village-scribe and the town-clerk bought blue nankeen, for which they paid full sixty copecks the arsheen.[13] The sexton, too, has found it necessary to have nankeen trousers for the summer, and a striped woollen waistcoat. In short, there is no one who does not try to cut a figure. When will the time come when men will desist from vanity? One may wager that many will be astonished at finding the devil making love. The most provoking part of it is, to think that really he fancies himself a beau, when the fact is, that he has such a phiz, that one is ashamed to look at it--such a phiz, that, as one of my friends says, it is the abomination of abominations; and yet, he, too, ventures to make love!

But it grew so dark in the sky, and under the sky, that there was no possibility of further seeing what passed between the devil and the witch.

"So thou sayest, kinsman, that thou hast not yet been in the clerk's new abode?" said the Cossack Choop, stepping out of his cottage, to a tall meagre peasant in a short tooloop, with a well grown beard, which it was evident had remained at least a fortnight untouched by the piece of scythe, which the peasants use instead of a razor,[14] "There will be a good drinking party," continued Choop, endeavouring to smile at these words, "only we must not be too late;" and with this Choop drew still closer his belt, which was tightly girded round his tooloop, pulled his cap over his eyes, and grasped more firmly his whip, the terror of importunate dogs; but looking up, remained fixed to the spot. "What the devil! look, kinsman!"

"What now?" uttered the kinsman, also lifting up his head.

"What now? Why, where is the moon gone?"

"Ah! sure enough, gone she is."