Accounting for helpers One of the most ominous places in Moscow since ancient times is Maryina Roshcha. Historians claim that its name comes from the once-lying village of Maryino. Most of them are inclined to believe that all popular conjectures are associated with the sentimental story of Zhukovsky.
There is still an opinion among the people that this area was named after its unspoken "queen" - the robber Marya, who lived in the local forest.
The glory of Maryina Roshcha in the middle of the 19th century was that: Gypsies lived here, the majority of Moscow thieves and bandits lived, "poor houses" stood for the dregs of society. Mass festivities at Mermaid Week, the center of which has been Maryina Roshcha since ancient times, transformed into violent drinking.
The proximity of the Sushchevsky and Lazarev cemeteries, where, by the way, corpses were transported by carts during periods of pestilence, and in normal times - unidentified bodies of the killed, did not contribute to a positive perception.
Researchers are still arguing over what was primary - Zhukovsky's story or folk legends. But one of the legends says that during the time of serfdom, a girl Marya and a footman Ilya lived somewhere in this area. Their love was unhappy, and Ilya eventually became the chieftain of a bandit gang. As a result, Marya and Ilya settled in a dugout in the forest.
Moreover, Marya was a well-known healer and sorceress. Many people from Moscow came to see her, including the rich, who certainly fell into the hands of Ilya. According to another legend, Manka Rostokinskaya's gang raged in the local area. But, be that as it may, the popular consciousness associated the name "Maryina Roshcha" exclusively with bandits, murderers and the dead. It was not recommended to get here in the dark.
Maryina Roshcha is a district of Moscow about which many legends and mystical tales have been written. Until the 18th century, this area was almost entirely covered by forest (it stretched from the present Garden Ring far, far to the north), after cutting down a part of which, Maryina Roscha was formed, stretching from Sushchev to Ostankino. In 1743, the local village of Maryino went to Count Sheremetev, who changed the appearance of the area beyond recognition.
Soon Maryina Roshcha became one of the favorite resting places of Muscovites. Muscovites began to walk in nature with the initiative of Empress Catherine, whom Voltaire himself incited to do. The public walked cleaner and more decorously in the central parks, and the common people felled behind the Suschevsky Val. It was especially crowded here on Semik, the third week after Easter, when the holiday of mermaids was celebrated in Russia.
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It is not clear why this church holiday of the Holy Fathers was associated among the people with the river evil, but it was on these days that girls went to collect herbs, carried a birch tree dressed by a bride in the streets and threw wreaths into the water, wondering about grooms. All this happened in Maryina Roshcha, and the walkers did not offend her forest spirits either. They sang the song "Today Marya is our birthday girl", drank, and when leaving, they left an Easter egg or a piece of cake on the grass.
But, on the other hand, in Maryina Roshcha they were afraid to appear alone: out of fear of local evil spirits, they preferred to walk in noisy companies. This is understandable: after all, according to popular beliefs, suicides became mermaids, so they went to Semik where they buried the dead without repentance - that is, to Maryina Roscha.
It was here that there was a barn, where they brought unidentified dead, which were always enough in the big city. After an epidemic of plague, Empress Catherine forbade burying the dead within the city, and there, on Miusy, the first plague cemetery in Moscow arose. And in Maryino, there were terrible stories about the dead for a long time, who do not give a passage to a lonely traveler.
Modern district
In the 1880s, the Sheremetevs got rid of the remnants of their possessions, and working people settled in this place. The last trees in the grove were cut down, the mystical meaning of the name was almost forgotten.
However, in the 1920s-1930s, when a lot of bandit rabble accumulated in this area, the name “Maryina Roshcha” again took on a “bad” connotation. On everyone's lips were the names of Kolka Khryashchik, Boris Bondar and other thieves who terrified all of Moscow, but disappeared in the northern camps.
In the 1960-1980s. The district has turned into an ordinary residential area of the capital with standard "Khrushchev" houses, but the rumor about the "terrible Maryina Roshcha" still occasionally pops up in the memory of Muscovites.