III. Думи і думки
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Galicia’s first book in living Ukrainian
Rusalka Dnistrovaia Русалка Дністровая
Markiian Shashkevych, Ivan Vahylevych and Yakiv Holovatsky, 1837
The complete Rusalka Dnistrovaia (“The Mermaid of the Dniester”), the almanac that the three young seminarians of the Ruthenian Triad printed in Buda in 1837, in Ukrainian and in its own phonetic spelling of that year, not an adaptation. It is for C2 learners who want to read a historical stage of the language: about 16,600 words in 21 chapters of Galician folk songs, poems, two tales, translations from Serbian and Czech, old manuscripts and a 15th-century charter. It was the first book in Galicia written in the speech of the people rather than in Church Slavonic or Polish, and the Lviv authorities thought it dangerous enough to confiscate most of the print run.
- C2
- 16 634 words
- 3-5 hours
Will this text hold?
C1
Earlier
At C1 you will manage the folk songs, but ѣ in every eighth word, the Galician forms and the Church Slavonic of the last chapters will stop you on every line. Read a C1 book with old spelling first, such as Kvitka’s Marusia or The Witch of Konotop.
C1C2
This text
At C2 the almanac opens up: the songs and poems move quickly once ѣ and ў stop looking strange, and the prefaces and old documents become what they are for a Ukrainian reader too, a slow and rewarding look at how the language was written before it had a standard.
Check this passageC2 here means what Shakespeare means to a learner of English or Cervantes to a learner of Spanish: reading Ukrainian before the modern standard existed. The 1837 spelling is the first obstacle: ѣ appears 2,302 times, in about one word out of eight (поѣхаў, свѣт, дѣвчина for today’s поїхав, світ, дівчина), ў stands for в 693 times, ся stands apart 434 times and after a hyphen 283 times (смеркло-ся), є spells the sound je (єго, єдин), and the old conjunction и (and) appears 299 times. The second is the language itself: Galician dialect forms such as дожџик and наряџают, old case endings (руской, староѣ), and in the last five chapters Church Slavonic book titles and a charter of the 15th century with ъ (35 times) and ы (28 times); 73 words are in Latin script, from Polish, Czech and Latin epigraphs and titles. The average is 17 words per sentence, but most of the book is verse, where that figure means little; the prose is far longer: 29-30 words per sentence in the prefaces, 36 in the closing review and 42 in the tale Олена, against 27 in The Witch of Konotop, the C1 book with the longest sentences. Long words make up 9.1% overall, but 13-15% in the last three chapters of old documents, above the 13.8% of Pidmohylny’s The City. A modern dictionary will often fail, and tap translation may miss old spellings. Hence C2. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 16 634
- words
- 17
- words in an average sentence
- 3-5
- hours of reading
- 1837
- Друкарня Королівського університету в Пешті
Друкарня Королівського університету в Пешті, 1837. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
The almanac opens with a short preface in which the editors send their “little Rusalka from the Dniester” out into the world and explain their new spelling. Then come the folk songs, introduced by Ivan Vahylevych’s essay on the Ukrainian people and their songs: twenty dumy and dumky about Turkish raids, Cossacks, the outlaw Dobush and unhappy love, a lullaby, Christmas carols, spring songs and wedding songs, each with the village or rite it comes from. The second part holds the authors’ own work: Shashkevych’s poems Згадка, Погоня, Туга за милою and Сумрак вечерний, Holovatsky’s Два вѣночки, and Vahylevych’s verse tales Мадей and Жулин и Калина; Shashkevych’s prose tale Олена follows a village wedding, a band of outlaws in the hills and a young man, Semen, walking alone through the dark forest to find them. The third part translates Serbian folk songs and pieces of a Czech manuscript, and the last, Старина, prints Cossack songs from an old manuscript, a boundary charter of the 15th century, a list of manuscripts in a Lviv monastery and a review. What happens in the tales is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Русалка Дністровая
XIV. Олена
— — , , , , , ; , , , , , , , — „ .
Choose an underlined word.
Reading the 1837 letters
Read ѣ as і, or as ї after a vowel (поѣхаў is today’s поїхав), and ў at the end of a syllable as в (шоўковіѣ is шовкові). The plural ending -іѣ of adjectives is the old long form of today’s -і: вороніѣ, золотіѣ are вороні, золоті. Each line is one breath of the singer, so read line by line.
One sentence, one forest
The whole passage up to the first full stop is a single sentence: the narrator strings the night, the wind, the trees and the animals together with commas, semicolons and dashes. Take it clause by clause. Смеркло-ся and величаючи ся are today’s смерклося and величаючись: ся still stands on its own here.
Where the text gets harder
I-VIprefaces and folk songs
VII-XVIpoems, tales, translations
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
Reader
€1 a month
The preface opens with a line that sums up the whole project, and translating the sentence in Reader helps with its old forms: “Судило нам ся послѣдним бути” (“It was our lot to be the last”), meaning the last of the Slavs to write in their own language.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
All books at this levelBefore you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s version: the complete almanac Rusalka Dnistrovaia, first published in 1837 in Buda by the printing house of the Royal University of Pest, with the preface, the folk songs, the poems, tales and translations of Markiian Shashkevych, Ivan Vahylevych and Yakiv Holovatsky, and the old texts of the last part. The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces that first edition page by page; the authors’ own footnotes are not included. The spelling is the almanac’s own phonetic one: ѣ, ў, є for je, ся written apart, and even the printer’s slips, such as the heading Беснівка for Веснівка. The chapter titles are ours, in modern Ukrainian.
Is there an audiobook?
Rusalka Dnistrovaia has no audio on MovaReader; you read it on screen. A tap on any word shows its translation, which you will want for words like ладканя (wedding songs) or перемѣтка (the headdress of a married woman), though old spellings are not always recognised.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in the prefaces, where one sentence can run for many lines, and with old forms, as in “Не журися Русалочко з над Днѣстра, що-сь не прибрана” (“Do not grieve, little Rusalka from the Dniester, that you are not dressed up”) in chapter I. Single words are translated without the plan, within a daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
Reading with translation of new words, the whole almanac takes about 3-5 hours. The 21 chapters are very uneven: from about 120 words (chapter X, two short poems) to about 4,400 (chapter III, the twenty dumy and dumky), so most of them fit into a few minutes.
Where does the text get easier?
It is not even. The hardest parts are the beginning and the end: the prefaces in chapters I-II have 11-12% long words and about 30 words per sentence, and the old documents in chapters XIX-XXI reach 13-15%. The middle is easier: the carols in chapter IV have 4.9% long words, the Serbian songs in chapter XV 4.3% and the Czech ones in chapter XVI 5.0%, in short lines of verse.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. After you sign in, MovaReader remembers where you stopped, and the almanac opens at that place next time. The contents on this page open any of the 21 chapters directly, for example XIII. Жулин і Калина, Vahylevych’s verse tale.