Byliny Book: Hero Tales of Russia
9781465665430
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
This is a Byliny Book. What does “Byliny” mean? It is a Russian word, and it means stories aboutWhat-has-Been, what happened in Russia in the old days long ago. We all read about the Greek heroes Jason and Perseus and Theseus and Heracles. The Russians had splendid heroes too, who met with wonderful adventures. Russia and France and Italy and England are fighting side by side a great fight for freedom, and these old heroes of Russia fought for freedom too, against great barbarian armies of Huns and Tartars. The Russians are our brave friends, our “Allies,” as we call them now, and it is good to get to know about their heroes of olden times. We all know and honour our French Allies, and most of us try to speak French. We are proud to read in history how our William the Conqueror came over from France and brought with him many good laws and customs, and, best of all, beautiful French words that have now become English—why, the very wordbeauty came to us from France. But Russia is much further away than France, and very few of us learn to speak Russian, or even to read it. Far the best way to get to know people is to learn their language, but it is not quite so easy to learn to read Russian as it is to read French, because the Russians use different letters. You will see Russian letters in the pictures1; they are beautiful, delightful things and some of them are like English, so it is exciting to try and make them out, but some of them are like Greek, for the Russians always liked the Greeks better than the Romans. The Russian names of the heroes look a little strange at first, but they are not really hard to pronounce. There are a great many Russian heroes, but this book only tells about four of them, Volgá and Mikúla and Svyatogór and Ilyá. The Volgá is quite short and easy, and so is Mikúla, which is pronounced as if it was written Mikóolla. Svyatogór looks rather hard, but you only have to remember to say it like this—Svyătăgórr, and you must roll the r’s as if you were a Scotsman. The Russians put the accent on the end of their words much oftener than the English. We say Ī́-văn and they say Eeváhn. And so it is with the last hero, Ilyá; he is pronounced Eelyā́h. Besides the heroes, there is Vladímir the king, and he is called Vladéemir. The only really hard word to say right is Byliny itself, and that you can call Bwĭléeny, but our English lips do not make quite the Russian sound.
