In 1901, Dorofey Bokhan's book "Minsk Traditions and Legends" was published. Some of them he heard from the old-timers, some, apparently, invented himself. He presented some of the legends in poetic form. All the legends are terrible, mystical, these are stories about the most mysterious places in Minsk.
What places in the city were Minsk residents afraid of? First of all, it is the Sviloch river
A whirlpool on the Svisloch, from which a mermaid emerges. The girl seemed to be drowned here by her own mother when they fell in love with the same guy. Here - Vodyanoy, not funny, as in the famous cartoon, but scary: crying at night, remembering his unfaithful wife, with whom he once rushed into the pool so that she would not go to another.
The Svisloch River at the beginning of the 20th century
This fear of the Svisloch is quite understandable. Suicides and careless bathers drowned in it every year. Svisloch threatened even those who were afraid to swim in it. During spring floods, the territory of the current Pobediteley Avenue near the Sports Palace (the former Tatar gardens and Ludamont) was flooded. The Rakovskoe suburb, part of the Upper Town and the central avenue also flooded.
The current carried through the city old huts, outbuildings, dead cattle, poultry, rats. The press of that time wrote that some of the owners, returning home a few days later, saw pigs in the house, who were fleeing the water on the master's beds.
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Once the Minsk photographers, whose houses, apparently, did not touch the trouble, joyfully photographed a wooden toilet, which was brought out by the water for the citizens to see. Joyful things, however, were few in those days. “There is salvation from fire - water, but there is no salvation from water,” an old woman from Minsk always said in her family.
Komarovskoe swamp - another unhappy, mysterious place
Devils and evil spirits lived in the swamp, people disappeared in the swamp. Bokhan dedicated two legends to the Komarovsky bog in his book.
One - about the old monk from the castle monastery, who, having managed to distance himself from all passions, only could not get rid of - the craving for gold.
During prayers, the ghost of a robber began to appear to him. Once again seeing the ghost, the monk Anthony decided to disassemble the floor of the temple in that place. And he found a coffin, and next to a chest of gold. At that moment, a cry rang out in the church: the holy fool Fedka Komar made his way into the church.
Anthony was forced to promise Fedka half of the gold for his silence, but, above all, the gold had to be hidden from the brethren. We went to bury the box in the swamp: we crossed Nemiga, Svisloch, passed through Storozhevka - and turned into thickets of acacia, hazel and fern.
At the last moment, when the pit for the casket had already been dug, the monk regretted giving Fedka the promised gold. Then Fedka Komar suddenly turned into that very ghost from the church, laughed demonically, and the monk Anthony began to sink into the ground with his casket. And so it disappeared. And the Komarovskoe swamp was named after the mysterious Fedka.
Another legend is associated with the old tavern on Komarovka, at the exit from the city, which had already been abandoned by the end of the 19th century, writes Dorofey Bokhan. Behind the inn was an unknown grave.
Rumor associated her origin with a Jewish sorcerer, Itsko inn, a peasant girl and her fiancé. Old Itsko fell in love with a peasant daughter Anna, began to woo, and when she rejected his advances
(Do not be equal, you nasty Jew, With Vanya dear, You won't buy poor Anna
With your gold) -
with his charms drove her mad. The unhappy madwoman was buried in Komarovka: at the Borisov tract, behind the Komarovskaya inn.
The anti-Semitism of the Belarusian peasants, fueled by the Russian Black Hundreds, "settled" in the swamp next to the traditional demons and spirits - other "strangers", i.e. Jews.
The locals explained with unhappy love another memorable sign that stood in the area of Nemiga Street, between the current streets of the King to Collectornaya.
The monument is solid, made of slabs, the origin of which, however, has evaporated from the memory of Minsk residents. At the end of the 19th century, they talked about him as if it were a monument on the grave of brothers who killed each other, falling in love with one girl.
Another eerie place for our ancestors is, of course, the cemetery. The legend about "the best of the local Christian cemeteries" - Zolotoy Gorka - was written down by Dorofey Bohan from the words of a local resident, "without vouching, of course, for the historical fidelity of what he was telling."
This is a legend about the cruel tycoon Z., who instilled fear in all the surroundings, but over time began to repent and donate to the construction of temples to save his soul. He decided to decorate the old wooden chapel in the cemetery on Zolotoy Gorka.
I ordered the icon to a local artist, completely forgetting how unfairly he once offended him. The artist painted an icon, and on it there is an all-seeing eye of incredible beauty with a tear on the eyelashes. The magnate liked it so much that he regretted giving the icon to the church and hung it up in his bedroom.
I did it in vain: one night the icon lit up, and when the count began to run away, flew after him and pursued him until he stumbled on the bridge and fell into the Svisloch, where he drowned. And the icon seemed to be in a chapel at the Zolotogorsk cemetery.
In legends, as in a mirror of time, his fears, vices, needs are reflected. Modern Minskers will not be frightened by the mystic of a century ago, many ideological images of that time are outdated for us. But places with an extraordinary aura associated with mysterious stories remain in every modern city. And for us, educated and well-read, all the same, there is something that remains beyond understanding. What we are afraid of, what we cannot explain.
Pavlina Kuprys, Nasha Niva newspaper.
