Folk Tales of the Russian Empire. Коллектив авторов

and was mixing fat with meat.

      “Kookyl, Kookyl, Kookylin – oh, yea!” The man kept singing and pounding the fat with the meat.

      “Hey, you there, it seems that Kookylin is dead!” shouted the woman inside the nynloo.

      “Oh, no, no! I’m not dead, I am alive! Is that you, honey? Come in, dear, wait for me! I’m filled with ptarmigans, I can’t run quickly. Come on, help me to drag the game birds home,” answered the man.

      He looked out – there was nobody around. Only an arctic fox was running away. Kookylin took some ptarmigans and went home down the road. When he came there, his wife glanced at him, sitting in the yaranga and said:

      “Hey, man, a little bird told me that Kookylin is dead!”

      “No, no, dear, I’m not dead. I have caught many ptarmigans. I myself couldn’t even bring them here. Help me please, we have to bring them home.”

      And they began to drag over his ptarmigans. The man moved back to their yaranga and they continued to live as before. But Kookylin had not lived long; he soon became really ill and then died shortly afterwards.

      Thus Kookylin the Dodger departed to that country, from which no one has ever returned.

      Pugey the Trader

      A Nanay folk tale

      The Nanais revered the same “master” spirits of forest, fire, river, mountains, etc. as the other Amur peoples, and the cult of the bear was an element in their religion. Living as they did within the territory of another even more formidable predator – the tiger – the Nanais, like the Udeghes and Oroches, treated it with even greater respect than the bear, and avoided killing the sacred animal if at all possible.

      A History of the Peoples of Siberia, by James Forsyth

      A long time ago there lived a man, Veliney, in the Nanay village of Buriken. Many years later this village gave birth to the city of Khabarovsk. Veliney was a bold and successful hunter from the tribe of Oninka. A lot of girls wanted to marry him, but he married Sedekey, the most beautiful girl from all over the neighbourhood. The largest bride price paid Veliney! Having become a wife, Sedekey used to keep their house all day long, fetching water and cooking food, sewing and mending clothes, chopping firewood and stoking a fire. Some time passed and they got a son, Surgii. When the son was growing, Veliney loved to play with him, and then little by little he began to teach him how to find tracks of wild animals in the forest, how to recognize birds by their voices, how to find the way home by the sun or the stars. Surgii was a good boy and easily adopted all the skills from his father.

      Then Veliney got a younger son, Pugey. The son was growing slowly and was often sick while a child. His mother was very sorry for the kid that had been with her all the time. She did not want him to be a hunter. When Pugey grew up a little, he was sent to a parish school where he learned the Russian language and got a good understanding of reading, writing and counting.

      When the elder son Surgii grew up, he became a hotshot like his father. In the vast taiga he hunted for wild boars, red and roe deers. From time to time he met a bear or a tiger and none of them was able to avoid his bullet. His fishing rods also were not lying in vain. Surgii was the best hunter and fisherman, and their home became the richest in the village. He married a nice girl and his wife then gave birth to a lovely daughter.

      Thus they lived. A long time elapsed, and Veliney became old and sick. Sedekey attended her sick husband for a long time, but eventually Veliney became very ill and died. After that Sedekey lived with her children, but she did not like the daughter-in-law; she often scolded her and finally decided to find a husband for herself.

      One day it happened that Sedekey befriended a Chinese. She once caroused noisily with the Chinese, and all the people learnt that they became husband and wife. The name of the Chinese was Dyfenty. He had a rank of the big banana – gasanda. With a heavy hand, he ruled the great area from Khabarovsk to Bikin.

      They began to live together. The elder son Surgii would go hunting and fishing. When the younger son Pugey grew up, his stepfather Dyfenty used to take him on trips to the edge of the Amur country. On those trips, they often had to deal with different merchants. With the lapse of time, Dyfenty started a trading business together with his stepson. At the mother’s instigation, Pugey gradually took all the trade in his own hands.

      Then Pugey bought a big boat and began to trade in fish and furs, sailing from one village to another, from one river to the next. In ten years Pugey turned into a “big man”, thick and important. The whole neighbourhood knew him, calling “Pugey the trader”.

      One day, Pugey set off down the river in his boat. In a secluded spot he saw a woman, one man’s wife. He began talking to her, lured her into his boat and stole the woman. Then he sold her to an Udegey, that lived in the village of Chora and who was his friend.

      Pugey came back home, hoping that no one could find out what happened, but his stepfather learned about his trick from a distant relative and decided to abandon Pugey and his mother. However, the woman showed her husband a magical thing that she got some time ago from a local shaman. According to his words, this thing was made from a bird and could cause a black disease and death. When Dyfenty learnt about this, he was frightened and did not dare to leave the woman. And his wife became so brave that laughed at him. They began living together again.

      Time was creeping on and one day the wife of Surgii delivered a baby boy. The father was beside himself with joy when he heard the good news!

      Meanwhile Pugey became “too big for his boots”, that he could afford such tricks as follows. He gathered furs of all hunters and went to a Manchurian city. There he exchanged the furs for all that he needed. Having returned home from there, he took half of the gain for himself and the rest he distributed among the people. In such a way, he would cheat the illiterate Nanay hunters. Pugey became the biggest liar among the Nanay merchants!

      One day, when Pugey went by boat to trade, he took three women with him. On that day he earned a very large income. On the way back, he was drunk and began to stick to one of the women.

      “I saw in a dream that you were my wife,” said Pugey.

      “I do not want to be your wife – you are greedy,” replied the woman.

      “Well then, let’s just sleep together – I’ll give you new beads!”

      “Don’t want your beads!”

      When she refused him, Pugey got angry, then attacked her treacherously and raped her. The next morning he got sober and realized what he had done! He was afraid of retaliation – he thought that relatives of the woman would kill him. Then he decided not to wait for revenge and stabbed all three women with a long dagger – he killed them all! When he returned home, he told everyone that the women stayed with their relatives in a remote village.

      Once on the return from his trip, Pugey got drunk and went wandering around the village, – having the heebie-jeebies. From time to time he stopped in the middle of the road, telling someone that he was a smart and rich trader, but no one wanted to listen to him. In the evening he returned home, when all the people had gone to bed. Pugey sat alone drunk, shouting and showing off. As he was sitting there, a boy, son of the elder brother, woke up and started to weep. The man yelled:

      “Why are you crying? I just got tired! I have no children and don’t want to have!”

      Cursing like this he rushed to the boy. The boy began to cry in fear even harder. The man took the boy’s cradle and threw it on the floor. The cradle, falling to the floor, knocked down the boy. Pugey went to sleep then, as if nothing had happened. The next morning the boy was found dead. Thus Pugey killed the kid of his brother and then escaped.

      The villagers did not want to believe what happened…