The family life of epic heroes is usually overshadowed by the main narrative. Stories about battles with all kinds of snakes and monsters, feats of arms seem more interesting to both the storytellers and their listeners. The exception is, perhaps, the epic "Stavr Gordyatinovich", in which it is Stavr's wife who is at the center of the story. This epic is described in the article “Prince Vladimir against the heroes. Intrigues and scandals of the princely court of epic Kiev”.
Vasilisa Mikulichna from this epic also loves her unlucky and boastful husband, and the ending of this story turned out to be happy, which is rather an exception to the rule. Indeed, even a sincerely loving husband, a faithful and devoted spouse, in Russian epics sometimes indirectly becomes the cause of his death. The most touching and sad example - "Epic about Danil Lovchanin and his wife" (see the article "Prince Vladimir against the heroes. Intrigues and scandals of the princely court of epic Kiev").
But the wives of many other Russian heroes are negative characters. Sometimes it seems that the desire to chastise their spouse is almost the only goal of their life.
Two incarnations of Apraksa, the wife of Prince Vladimir
Let's start in order, with the wife of the epic prince Vladimir, who is invariably called Apraksa or Apraksia (Eupraxia). The attitude of the storytellers to her is polar. Most often, she is an absolutely neutral character, whose function is to sit at the feast next to Vladimir and smile at the guests.
However, in some epics, Apraksa acts as the defender of the heroes before the angry prince, it is she who saves Ilya Muromets, who was thrown into the cellar, from starvation. Sometimes her wisdom is emphasized. So, choosing a bride, Vladimir voices one of the requirements for his future wife: "It would be for me, the prince, with whom I think to think." In the epic about Stavr, Apraksa is the only one who recognizes a woman in "Tatar after".
But in other epics, Apraksa willingly accepts "signs of attention" from the enemies of Russia. For example, what is said in “Bylin about Alyosha Popovich and the Snake Tugarin:
[quote How the Serpent-Tugarin goes to the white-stone chambers, May the Sun meet him Vladimir Stolno-Kievsky
With her princess with Apraksa, He does not pray to our images, the Serpent, He does not hit Prince Vladimir with his forehead.
He sits down at oak tables, for sugar dishes.
Yes, he puts the princess on his knees.
Yes, he caresses, has mercy on Apraks the Royal.
As the princess will speak here:
- Now there is a feast and a gazebo
With a sweet friend Serpent-Gorynych! "[/Quote]
The foreign king Idolische Filth also has his own plans for Apraksa:
I will burn out Kiev-city, the churches of God, I will borrow, I will borrow the white-stone chambers, I will only let Aprakseyushka into the chambers, Aprakseyushka the royal light, And I’ll send Prince Vladimir into the kitchen.”
This time, for some reason, the princess does not immediately sit down on the laps of the next invader, but bargains for herself two days to think, but there is no question of suicide.
The king says to her, yes these are the words:
“I respect, Aprakseyushka, two more days, In two or so days, how will you be not a princess, You will not live as a princess, but as a queen!"
As a result, in some records of these epics, Alyosha Popovich and Ilya Muromets do not hesitate in expressions and "call the trough a trough", using in relation to Apraksa a quite appropriate, as it seems to them, word (unprintable).
Note that Princess Apraksa is very often called royal. The fact is that this woman appears to have been of Lithuanian descent. In one of the epics, two heroes - Dobrynya Nikitich and Danube Ivanovich (sometimes also Ilya Muromets) were sent by Vladimir to Lithuania to marry the prince's daughter. Danube began his heroic service in Lithuania, therefore, he knows local customs and customs, it was probably planned that he would become the main negotiator. But the negotiations did not work out. The king, seeing the Danube, asks if he has decided to return to the service, and, having received a negative answer, is offended, calling him "a servile noblewoman." And he calls the new master of the Danube, Prince Vladimir, "the last groom" and "robber". The Danube is daring in response, and for this he is thrown into "deep cellars". The diplomatic mission failed, and Dobrynya, in order to fulfill the prince's order and free his friend, had to “beat the Lithuanian army”.
Danube Ivanovich and Nastasya
On the way home, it turns out that Apraksa has an older sister, Nastasya, who once had a love affair with the Danube (for this reason, the Danube, arrested for insulting the majesty, fled from Lithuania to Kiev). And now the hero is ignoring his former passion. Offended by his inattention, Nastasya catches up with the ambassadors in the field and engages in battle with the Danube. Perhaps, in the original version, it was about an ambush similar to the one that Yaroslav the Wise's wife, Ingigerd, tried to organize, to the Norman condottier Eymund who wished to leave for Polotsk (she decided that it was too expensive for Novgorod, and it would be too dangerous in Polotsk). In the epic, the personal duel of the Danube and Nastasya is described. The Danube wins, Nastasya goes with him to Kiev, where two weddings are played at once - the prince's and the hero's. A happy ending? Where there: soon pregnant Nastasya will die from an arrow of a drunken husband, who then commits suicide (throws himself on the sword) and the Danube River will appear from his blood.
Possible prototypes of Princess Apraksa
But back to the princely palace of epic Kiev. Some historians have tried to identify Princess Apraksa with the wife of "ancient Vladimir", which is mentioned in the Joachim Chronicle:
"Vladimir … had a wife from the Varangians, Advinda, the Velma is beautiful and wise, and much is told about her from the old, and they exclaim in songs."
Especially valuable is the evidence that Adwinda was the heroine of many "old stories" and "songs."
The second version is striking in its straightforwardness: in one of the versions of the epic, Vladimir sent his heroes, including Dobrynya and the Danube, to woo the daughter of the Lithuanian king for him, giving the following instructions:
“You take your strength, but how much you need, Follow Oprax and the royal.
And the king will give good, and you take good, But if he does not give good, take it by force."
The king, as we have already said, does not consider Prince Vladimir to be an equal, he refuses "matchmakers" on the grounds that Vladimir is "a former servant" … Have you already thought about Polotsk and Rogneda? But the fate of the unfortunate Polotsk princess is very different from the fate of Princess Apraksa of Russian epics.
The third version was offered by a very famous and authoritative, but sometimes a little carried away specialist - academician B. A. Rybakov. So, meet Evpraksia Vsevolodovna, sister of Vladimir Monomakh, better known in Europe as Adelheida. She could well become the heroine of a Gothic novel (with an erotic slant), but the action in it will take place too far from Kiev.
At the age of 12-13, Eupraxia was betrothed to Heinrich Long, Count of Staden, before the wedding she was brought up in a Catholic monastery for three years, where she changed her faith and received a new name. The wedding with Henry took place in 1086, and in 1087 the husband died. Already in 1088, she became engaged to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, which caused displeasure in Kiev (this monarch had a too scandalous reputation, and the period of mourning for her husband was insufficient).
In 1089 in Magdeburg, a marriage was concluded between Heinrich and Adelheide, in the same year she was crowned in Cologne. This marriage turned out to be extremely unsuccessful, it all ended with the flight of the former Kiev princess to Canossa, to the famous Matilda of Tuscany, under the patronage of Henry's worst enemy - Pope Urban II.
At the council in Piacenza (1095), the fugitive empress accused Henry of Satanism, adherence to the heresy of the Nicolaitans, as well as a tendency to various sexual perversions. Times in Europe were still "dark", intolerant, therefore, instead of protecting Henry's right to freedom to blaspheme, attend black masses and choice of sexual preferences, he was anathematized. And Eupraxia, having received the complete forgiveness of sins, first moved to Hungary, but at the end of her life returned to Kiev, where she was tonsured into a monastery and died in 1109.
For some reason, I like the first version of the origin of the Apraksa image more.
The strange story of Svyatogor's marriage
The plot about Svyatogor's wife seems very unexpected: his betrothed was a girl, near whose house a golden hair, forged for him by a blacksmith, would fall, woven into a beard. In the house near which this hair fell, there was only a sick girl, whose body was covered with scabs and scabs. According to one version of the epic, Svyatogor struck her, sleeping, with a sword, in another way - before killing, he kissed her (at her request). The result was the same in both cases: the scab of the opal and the girl recovered. In some versions of the epic, Svyatogor took her with him all the time. In others, she remained to live among people and became very rich in trade with foreign countries, but she met Svyatogor several times a year when the hero came to her house.
It would seem a very strange couple, but this nameless girl remained at the coffin, into which Svyatogor recklessly lay, and turned into a rakita, from under the roots of which a spring flowed.
But this is the outer, surface layer of this epic. Supporters of the "general approach" to the study of epics made an interesting suggestion that a sick girl, miraculously recovered after being struck by a sword, symbolizes the non-chernozem lands of Northern Russia, which remained infertile until iron tools appeared. And the fact that Svyatogor's wife became rich thanks to trade with overseas countries allowed them to conclude that they meant the land of Novgorod.
The most beloved bogatyr of Russia, Ilya Muromets, did not get a wife. But he was not a monk either, and therefore in the epics periodically there are indications of Ilya's love relationship with some "heroes" (for example, Polyanitsa Savishna). These stories can sometimes serve as an illustration of the thesis about the perniciousness of extramarital affairs, especially if they are tied up in the territory of a “potential enemy”. The terrible and tragic consequences of one of these "novels" of the hero (with a woman named Zlatigorka or Goryninka) were described in the article The most revered Russian hero. Ilya Muromets
Two attempts by Dobrynya Nikitich
Much more fortunate in this regard was his "godbrother" - Dobrynya Nikitich. His "first pancake", however, also turned out to be "lumpy." The epic Dobrynya and Marinka, which is not very well known to a wide circle of readers, tells about a sorceress, whom many researchers consider the embodiment of the goddess of death Mary (remember also Marya-Morevna of Russian fairy tales). As punishment for the crystal mirror broken by the arrow of the hero, she bewitched him, but did not want to reciprocate. When Dobrynya began to show perseverance and came to her, chasing away the "dear friend Serpent Gorynych", she turned the obsessive boyfriend into a bay tur with golden horns and silver hooves.
But once, having drunk "green wine", Marinka let slip that she had already turned 10 good fellows into tours, including Dobrynya. Dobrynya's mother, who heard about
“Hit Marinka on the white cheek, knocked her off her brisk legs, began to drag the brick-faced one across the floor. She drags her, and she says: I am smarter, wiser than you, but I do not brag! Do you want me to wrap you up with a long tail bitch? Will you, Marinka, walk around the city, will you, Marinka, lead the dogs!"
If Dobrynya's mother does not "bluff" and speaks the truth, she will have to admit that she is also a witch - and not one of the last!
Marinka agrees to return Dobryna to her former appearance, but on the condition that he marries her. But after the wedding, Dobrynya cut off Marinka's head and burned her body.
He met his real wife Nastasya Mikulichna later - “in the field”.
According to one of the options, some kind of force keeps him from the fight (the raised hand does not fall). But more often he is defeated in battle with her. Sometimes Polyanitsa "pulls" him off the saddle with the help of a lasso (in this case - she is clearly a girl of a nomadic tribe, and the name Nastasya gets at baptism). Sometimes - pulls from the saddle by the hair (yellow curls). In both cases, he puts the condition: "Will you take it, Dobrynya, into marriage, I will let you go, Dobrynyushka, in living creatures."
In the future, Nastasya somehow loses her heroic strength and appears before the listeners of the epic as an ordinary woman and an exemplary wife. Another well-known song ("The Failed Marriage of Alyosha Popovich") tells that, going on a princely assignment to the Horde, Dobrynya asks his wife to wait for him for 9 years. Nastasya is waiting for him 12, after which he agrees to marry Alyosha Popovich, who has long been in love with her. Dobrynya returns on time, but for some reason does not announce himself, but comes to their wedding disguised as a buffoon. Nastasya recognizes him in this guise, and the wedding breaks down.
But Dobrynya himself, as we will see below, was not a faithful husband, alas.
The scandalous marriage of Alyosha Popovich
Alyosha Popovich, who so unsuccessfully wooed Nastasya Mikulichna, according to one of the epics, nevertheless got a wife, but the story of his marriage is incredibly scandalous and therefore practically unknown to readers. This song begins with the traditional description of the feast at Prince Vladimir, at which the guests (as usual) boast of some nobility, some of wealth, some of their young wife. And only the brothers Zbrodovich (sometimes Petrovich, Borodovich) are silent. When the prince himself turns to them, they still talk about their beloved sister - Olyonushka, a shy and beautiful woman who sits in the back room, so that unnecessary people do not see her. Alyosha Popovich laughs at them, claiming that he has been living with their sister for a long time "like a husband and wife." The brothers, of course, do not believe him, and then he leads everyone to the Zbrodoviches' house and throws a light through the window with a snowball - it opens, a long white canvas descends from it (sometimes Olyonushka comes out herself - “inappropriately dressed”). The angry brothers are going to take their disgraced sister to the field in order to chop off her head, and then she informs them that the wife of the elder brother is cheating on him with Dobrynya, and the wife of the younger one - with a certain Peremetushka. In general, the family showdown in the epic went almost like on the shameful evening talk shows of Channel 1 of Russian television. Nothing is reported about the reaction of the brothers to such news, but I think that it is easy to guess about it. But it is said that Alyosha Popovich comes to the place of the alleged execution and takes Olyonushka to the church - for the wedding.
The trusting Mikhail Potyk and the insidious Avdotya-Swan White
The other heroes with their wives were even worse. About Mikhail Potyk and his wife Avdotya-White Swan, a little was told in the first article of the cycle (Ryzhov VA "Heroes of epics and their possible prototypes"). We add that, saved by her husband, who followed her to the grave (and killed the Serpent in it), she tried three times to kill him. At first, she turned into stone - Mikhail was rescued by Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich and an unknown wanderer-Kalika. Then she ordered him to be nailed to the wall - this time he was saved by the daughter of the Lyakhetsky king Nastasya (well, the storytellers love this name, there's nothing to be done). For the third time, his wife tries to poison Potyk (she serves up a goblet of wine as a sign of reconciliation), but Nastasya, who was nearby, invited him to look at his hands wounded with nails, and he, not believing this time, kills Avdotya.
Soloman and Solomanida
The wife of the hero Soloman turned out to be no better (in the epic, created on the basis of the apocryphal "Legend of Solomon and his unfaithful wife"). In the absence of the protagonist, the servant of Tsar Vasily Okulevich Ivashka Povarenin (and sometimes the overseas merchant Tarakashka) seduces his wife Solomanida with rich gifts and takes them away by ship. Soloman, together with the squad, goes in search of her, but one goes to the discovered wife - and, given to her, is captured by Tsar Vasily. Soloman asks to execute him in an open field, hanging two silk loops on the crossbar (the insidious wife, just in case, adds a third, saying that her husband will bypass the first loop with the help of cunning, the second with the help of wisdom, but the third will not bypass). As a last wish, Soloman asks to allow him to blow the horn on the turiy - the squad comes to the rescue and the insidious wife, Tsar Vasily and his servant Ivashka, are hung on the gallows prepared for him.
Unsuccessful attempt by Ivan Godinovich
Another hero, betrayed by his wife, is Ivan Godinovich, the nephew of Prince Vladimir. However, given that he forcibly married someone else's bride, this is not surprising. This girl, the daughter of a certain merchant Mitrey, was betrothed, was for “the king of Vakhramishche, Koschey the Immortal” (“Koschey the Immortal” in this case sounds like a title). In other versions of the groom's epics, the name is Odolische Koshchevich or Fedor Ivanovich with a man of Lithuania. The place of residence of the bride bylinas is called Chernigov, the Lyakhovinsky kingdom, the Golden Horde and even India.
The father of the girl, whose name (again!) Is Nastasya, is categorically against the wedding with Ivan:
For the king to give - to her reputation as a queen, For you, Ivan give - to be reputed to be a servant, Hulk revenge, scrape calls.
I have a spliced dog in my yard -
Give for you, Ivanushko Godinovich."
But Ivan smashes his house, bursts into the room of Nastasya Mitreyanovna, who at this time is embroidering a towel for her real groom, and forcibly takes her away, not forgetting to demand a dowry from her parents. On the way to Kiev, Nastasya's fiancé catches up with them, who challenges Ivan to a duel. Ivan wins, but Koschey, who has fallen to the ground, turns to Nastasya, inviting her to make a choice:
"For Ivan to be you - to be reputed to be a peasant, Portwasher at Prince Vladimir, And for me you will be - be the queen."
Nastasya comes to the aid of Koshchei, together they tie Ivan to an oak tree, and they themselves go into the tent - "have fun."
But Koschei is disturbed by two pigeons (two crows in another version) sitting on an oak - they, you see, comment on what is happening, claiming that "not to own Nastasya Koschei, to own Ivan Godinovich." He goes out and shoots them with a bow - the arrow hits the oak, bounces off, and hits Koshchei himself, who for some reason dies, although he is called immortal. Nastasya allegedly tried to kill Ivan, but her hand trembled and the saber cut the fetters. In my opinion, more than a dubious option: the girl probably freed Ivan, deciding that the living nephew of the Kiev prince as a groom is better than the dead tsar. The freed "hero" savagely executes his failed wife: first he chops off her arms, then her legs, lips, and only then her head.
Such serious passions were in full swing in the married couples of heroes of epic Kiev. However, if you look through the pages of the "yellow press" in search of a criminal chronicle, and nowadays, probably, you can find something similar.
