Hmel feather

A year ago, my family and I were lucky to be in Arkhangelsk. From the Moscow Covid-19 pandemic sent to self-isolation, where, of all the entertaining walks under the spring sun, it was only possible to go out with a backpack to a neighboring store, we were taken away by almost random fellow travelers. Honestly, having won a couple of weeks, I started observing the stumps-tonses in the taiga forest on the outskirts of the city: in small Korelas, famous for the museum of wooden architecture.

I was attracted, however, not the neighborhood with a museum closed for a quarantine period, but the presence of a confused network of ski routes, which looked like wide clearings in the summer, along which the tonsils willingly settled. Running through the clearings with a microphone and grids, looking for new males, most of which turned out to be crosses of European and Siberian fabric, I still could not help linger in front of flowers exotic for a resident of the middle lane.

A few years ago, I compiled a commentary on the collection of poems by Professor Nikolai Kholodkovsky, dedicated to the plants of the Northern Flora, and since then, when meeting with each flower, I recall whether there are no poetic lines associated with it.

That is what I thought about when I saw the Siberian Prince ( Clematis Sibirica ). In appearance-grassy liana, whose flowers resemble a flock of snow-white butterflies, frozen with lowered wings, frozen in rainy weather. Perhaps the botanists will be able to explain why this northern flower was officially recognized as a quarantine weed, I would only be glad if my neglected country area was completely thicket to the princes.

Surprisingly, neither to recall nor to find poems about the prince I could not find poems about the Internet. Is there really no place for the prince in poetry, in the shadow of such weeds as cornflowers and buttercups?

It turned out that the people were often called the “wild hop”, distinguishing him from “ardent hops” - in fact, the Humulus lupulus , - used in cooking beer. The ardent hops in poetry, including the folk one, involuntarily “pulls” attention to himself, which could go to the prince. Nevertheless, the mention of the prince, it seems that I had not previously noticed, came across in a book that was opened at random.

The book turned out to be a collection of epics and old people, with a thorough analysis of the epic about Sadko. In this epic there is a plot about how a sadko with a squad throw lots, whom to sacrifice, who to make to the bottom to the sea king so that it let go of the ship. In one of the epic options, which came to us in the record of Kirsha Danilov, the Novgorod merchant makes his lot from the “lightest” material (but this trick does not help him):

Says Sadko-Duke, a rich guest:
< ... >
“And and the cutting of the foal you are flooding,
And and everyone, write to the names
And throw them on the blue sea. ”
Sadko left the Khmelevo feather,
And the signature is signed on EM-Tu.
And Sadko himself is incredible:
< ... >
"Who would be pilaf,
And those would be the darling right,
That which are drowning in the sea
And we will shove them in the blue sea. ”
And all the foal is pilaf,
If the Yar Gogoli is on the vastics,
The only foal in the sea is drowning,
In the sea sinks a hopal pen
Samov Sakom, guest Bogatov.

At least from the 19th century, it is believed that the “hops feather” is a scales of inflorescences, the “cones” of the hops. Meanwhile, such a choice of the easiest material is amazing. In any case, something else comes to the mind of a modern person: “ ... how light a poplar fluff flying over the city! And the fluff of dandelion over the field! Dunes - and light fluffs fly across the sky . " These are the lines of Yuri Koval, which was not without reason that he called his “dandelion” his “lightest boat in the world”. It is the plant fluff-seeds with parachute crests-easily rises above the forests, fields and the city and does not sink, dropping into the water.

Exactly the same paratroopers ripen at the taiga prince. In an old conspiracy preserved in the collection of the XVII century, we find the early poetic mention of the prince's seeds. Lumberjack or hunter, fearing accidental death or injuries from the fall of a tree, was supposed to say: “ Sez, slave b (o) Life name, will say good words, and which the tree on me, slave b (o) Life name, seg (o) will fly, and would fall on me this day, on a slave b (o) Life name, aki kmelly feather <...> ". It was the prince that curly on the trunks of the fir trees that should have been well familiar to those who, behind a drill forest or a fur beast, went to an endless, sometimes hostile taiga.

The prince’s “hopal feather” also fell into a conspiracy that protects against cold weapons: “... how easy it is to shine a hop feather near the stamens, it would so easily fall near me, a servant of God, all different weapons ...” The same conspiracy was shifted by Alexei Remizov:

There is an iron lake,
There is an iron king,
iron, protects against iron,
From saber and spears,
From copper and ax,
From the horn and knife.
Give an arrow away from me -
to wood, in iron,
And glue - in fish,
And the fish is at sea
and feathers - into the bird,
And the bird is in the sky;
fly iron,
Rogatina, spear and saber,
dagger, ax, club -
away! away! away!
The hopal pen of stamens is easy to curl,
So it would be easy to fall about iron around me -
Be dew on iron!

The image, which has survived almost to our time, has ancient roots. In Russian chronicles (in the lists of at least the XIV century), the contract concluded by the Kiev prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich with the Volga Bulgars in 985 is transmitted: “ And ate the world of Volodimer with the Bulgarian and the Rota Bullet] between himself and the decis of the Bulgarian: the felts will not be the interior [when] the stone will begin to swim Tonuti . " In my opinion, prematurely, on the basis of this record, to talk about the spread of the culture of brewing in the Volga Bulgarians, and the “hops” is the same penis, which is identical in terms of the properties of the dandelion of dandelion.

In the above conspiracy from the cold weapons, one can already notice an attempt to interpret the old image: “hops feather” around the “stamens” - support for ardent hops. The far -fetchedness of such an explanation of folklore carriers seemed more distinctly than philologists, and the “hops feather” was replaced by a new, fabulously lightest pen of an exotic bird:

Come out, sister, to Mount Kruta,
Yes, look at Richka Bystra;
And on that reachets Pavino Poro:
Pavino Poro to the bottom of Ne Tone,
And the Bila Stone to the top of the NE market ...

It is noteworthy that we find “ Pavino Poro ” in Belarusian and Little Russian songs, that is, among peoples who are familiar with ardent hops. This confirms the hunch that the image of the lightest hops was associated precisely with the northern prince.

So philological surveys restored justice, and the prince’s quarantine weed “forgotten” by the poets with his lightest seeds turned out to be the prototype of one of the oldest images of Russian folk poetry.

Pavel Kvartalnov