Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/27

Rh of Murom, is always referred to as "the old Kazák." But in ancient times, as any peasant of the far-away localities in the North where these Epics still are sung, will explain, heroic deeds were performed indifferently by men and women, the men being called "bogatýri" and the women "polyánitzi." So perhaps Marfa Durov ranks— by courtesy, at least—as a Polyánitza. At any rate, she was more or less distantly related to Taras Bulba!

The Kazakdom of Little Russia—which is, in general, the region dealt with in Gogol's story—bore the same general character as that of Great Russia which acknowledged the authority of the Kingdom of Moscow. The Epic Songs, and "The Old Kazák, Ilya of Murom," originated there. Kazák and fugitive serf came to be, practically, synonymous terms.

The term "kazák" is ancient,—and the most rational of the explanations of it is, that of old, among the Turks, it was applied to a mounted warrior, lightly armed,—and somehow inferior as a soldier. In the Polovetzk Dictionary of the year 1303 the word is written "kozak." Among the Tatárs, with whom the Ukraina was compelled to live in such close contact, on such close terms of enmity, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, "kozak" has the meaning of a fine man, an