I. Тіні минулого
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Volhynian legends of castles and Cossacks
Shadows of the Past Тіні минулого
Klym Polishchuk, 1919
The complete Ukrainian text of Klym Polishchuk’s Тіні минулого (“Shadows of the Past”), a book of Volhynian legends printed in Kyiv in 1919, not an adaptation, and not to be confused with Kotsiubynsky’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Polishchuk, a Volhynian writer and journalist who was shot at Sandarmokh in 1937, travels his region by cart and on foot and writes down what old men, a coachman and a blind lirnyk (a wandering hurdy-gurdy singer) tell him about Cossack graves, haidamak camps and the palaces of Polish magnates. It is for C1 learners, and for strong B2 readers ready for an older spelling, who want Ukrainian folklore together with its history. About 22,800 words in 13 chapters, one legend each; one of the book’s 14 legends is left out, as the questions below explain.
- C1
- 22 820 words
- 4-6 hours
Will this text hold?
B2
Earlier
At B2 the folk tales Дід-Голод and Дівич-Гора are within reach, but the long descriptive openings, the historical vocabulary and the 1919 spelling will stop you on most lines. A retelling of seven of the legends in simple modern Ukrainian is in the catalog at A2.
B2C1
This text
At C1 you can read a legend in a sitting, tapping words such as лейстровики or гульбище, and after the first pages се and люде stop slowing you down.
Check this passageC2
With room to spare
At C2 the legends read freely; only the 1919 forms (сей, кождий, єсть) and a few Polish words such as ксьондз make you pause.
Start readingThe average sentence has 17 words, one of the longest averages among the Ukrainian originals in the catalogue (Kvitka-Osnovianenko’s Конотопська відьма has 27, Olha Kobylianska’s Царівна 18), and 10.1% of words have 9 letters or more, above the one-in-ten line that separates C1 originals from B2 ones. Ivan Franko’s Захар Беркут, another tale of old Ukraine against invaders, has 15 words per sentence and 10.4% and is rated C1; Dniprova Chaika’s Дівчина-чайка та інші оповідання, with 16 words per sentence but 8.5% long words, is B2. The long sentences are narration: only about one paragraph in five is dialogue, and the old men’s tales run on for hundreds of words. The 1919 spelling adds its own layer: се, сей, сього where today one writes це, цей, цього (158 times), люде for люди (76 times), кождий for кожний (14 times), єсть for є (8 times), and particles joined with a hyphen, як-би, було-б, вже-ж (53 times). History brings words a modern textbook lacks: лейстровики (registered Cossacks, today реєстровці), гульбище (a haidamak camp in the woods, 16 times in its various forms), ксьондз (a Catholic priest, 27 times), конфедерати. The legends are uneven: Дід-Голод and Дівич-Гора have 6.4-6.5% long words, Біла панна 12.8%. Hence C1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 22 820
- words
- 17
- words in an average sentence
- 4-6
- hours of reading
- 1919
- Сяйво
Сяйво, 1919. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
The narrator, a collector of antiquities, wanders through Volhynia, the forested north-west of Ukraine, with the Teteriv river and the small town of Krasnopil at its heart. On the cliffs of the Teteriv near Zhytomyr an old boatman shows him a rock shaped like a human head: the head of Colonel Chatsky, who stood against a Crimean khan with a handful of registered Cossacks. Old Parkhom, a church watchman, explains why a mound with a white cross is called Дівич-Гора, the Maiden’s Hill: a peasant knight, a Polish young lady and a small bottle of poison from the Jesuits. On Easter night the bell-ringer Semen goes to the site of a town that sank into the earth, hoping to hear its bells ring underground. By a night fire on the field of Berestechko, where the Cossack army was crushed in 1651, an old man tells of Colonel Dzhedzhalii and the lights of Cossacks who are still looking for the ford. The haidamaks of Yakiv Shvachka celebrate Easter on a river island with a runaway priest, and one young man among them will neither eat nor drink. A blind lirnyk on the road to Pochaiv recalls the Virgin’s miracle against the Tatars; two stone knights stand before a town hall in Berezhtsi; a well on the castle hill of Kremenets hides a treasure guarded by a lady in black; the beautiful Countess Janina loves the Cossack Ostap, who will not speak of his own love; a poor peasant who has sold his last cow meets Hunger himself at a spring; an old Polish organist writes a new carol every Christmas for the girl he lost forty-two years ago; and the palace of Krasnopil keeps its ghosts from the days of the haidamaks into the years of war and revolution. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Misprints of 1919
The 1919 typesetting leaves traces here: останього for останнього, соняшного for сонячного, орлинии for орлиний (“aquiline”), вуси for вуса. Read them as the modern words; the meaning does not change, and a tap still translates most of them.
Се means це
Се був здоровий кремезний человік: се is the old form of це (“this, he”), and человік is an old variant of чоловік (“man”). Се, сей and сього turn up on almost every page of the book, so it pays to learn them here.
Chapters
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
In Дівич-Гора, translating the whole sentence in Reader helps with the old man’s account of how the mound was raised: Сорок день носили фартухами землю і насипали могилу, заким не насипали такої могили, що навколо всю Україну було видно (“For forty days they carried earth in their aprons and heaped up the mound, until it was so high that all Ukraine could be seen around it”); заким is an old word for “until”.
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 an adaptation. Тіні минулого. Волинські легенди (marked “book one”) was printed in Kyiv in 1919 by the publishing house Siaivo (Сяйво); each legend carries the author’s date and place, from 1911 to 1918, mostly Krasnopil, Zhytomyr and Kyiv. The text comes from Wikisource, which transcribes a scan of that edition, and keeps its spelling: се and сей for це and цей, люде for люди, кождий for кожний, єсть for є, particles joined with a hyphen (було-б), and the misprints of a wartime printing. The book has 14 legends; 13 are here. Казка руїн is left out because pages 45-46 are missing from the only available scan, so that legend cannot be given complete. In Чудо віри the scan shows one page twice; the repeated passage has been removed. The author’s seven short footnotes, signed Авт., are not included. A few period names for Poles, Russians and Jews that are offensive today occur a handful of times, and some legends describe cruel executions.
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audiobook on MovaReader: the legends are read on screen, and a tap on a word shows its translation. You will need it for words of history such as лейстровиків (“registered Cossacks”, in the first legend) and гульбище (“a haidamak camp in the woods”, in Зрада), which few learners’ dictionaries include.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps with Colonel Chatsky’s speech in the first legend: Смерть нам, браття, неминуча! Так нехай-же вона не буде нам страшна, бо страшнійша буває неволя (“Death is certain for us, brothers! So let it not frighten us, for captivity is more terrible”), where нехай-же and страшнійша are 1919 spellings of нехай же and страшніша. Single-word taps work without the plan too, up to a daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 4-6 hours at a learner’s pace, reading with translation of new words. The 13 legends run from about 1,000 words (Дід-Голод) to about 2,500 (Зрада); the others fall between about 1,200 and 2,400, so each one fits a single sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
It does not get steadily easier or harder; it changes from legend to legend. The lightest are Дід-Голод (6.4% long words), Дівич-Гора (6.5%) and Сліпе щастя (7.6%), folk tales told by old men with short exchanges of dialogue: a good place to start. The densest are Біла панна (12.8%), Два лицарі (11.5%) and Зрада (11.4%). Sentences are longest in Було колись (about 22 words) and Великодні дзвони (21), shortest in the first legend (14). Across the book about one paragraph in five is dialogue.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. After you sign in, the reader remembers your place, so you can stop in the middle of a legend. The contents on this page open any chapter, for example VIII. Зачаровані скарби, where the narrator throws stones into the old castle well of Kremenets and never hears them land.