3. The Zaporozhtsy under the leadership of Sagaidachny (see note 2 to 'St. John's Eve') campaigned against the Crimean Tartar khanate, remnant of the Golden Horde of the Mongols, and fought them on the shore of the Sivash (the 'Salt Lake') in 1620.
4. See note 1 to 'St. John's Eve.'
5. The Uniates are adherents of the so-called Union of Brest (Unia in Latin), declared at the church council at Brest in 1595, by which western Russian churches were placed under the jurisdiction of the pope of Rome, with the understanding that, while accepting the dogmas of Roman Catholicism, they would retain the rites of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Unia aroused great dissension at the time, and has been a cause of struggle in the Ukraine and elsewhere to this day.
6. The Pospolitstvo was the combined nobility of Poland and Lithuania, united under one scepter in 1569.
7. See note 8 to 'The Night Before Christmas.'
8. The enemy of Christ whose appearance in the 'last days' is prophesied in Revelation (11:7), and of whom Saint John writes in his first epistle: '… and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come…' (1 John 2:18).
9. See note 4 to 'The Night Before Christmas.' It is a popular belief that the soul does not leave this world until forty days after death.
10. See note 2 to 'St. John's Eve' and note 3 above.
11. See footnote (author's note) on p. 15.
12. The Liman (an inlet of the Black Sea near Odessa) and the Crimea are in the very south of the Ukraine, as far as possible from Kiev; Galicia, extending to the northern slopes of the Carpathians, is now divided between the western Ukraine and eastern Poland; geographically, it is to the right, not the left, looking south from Kiev.
13. See note 10 above. Bogdan Khmelnitsky (1593-1657), hetman of the Ukrainian Cossacks, rose up against the Poles in 1648.
14. That is, Stefan Batory, a Hungarian prince who was king of Poland from 1575 to 1586.
Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt
1. Pirozhki (plural of pirozhok) are small pastries with sweet or savory fillings.
2. A tax farmer was a private person authorized by the government to collect various taxes in exchange for a fixed fee.
3. Latin for 'knows,' meaning that the student has learned the lesson.
4. A concentrate produced by allowing wine to freeze and then removing the frozen portion.
5. See note 1 to 'St. John's Eve.'
6. Adult male serfs were known in Russia as 'souls.' Censuses for tax purposes were taken at intervals of as much as fifteen years, between which the number of souls on an estate might of course increase (or decrease).
7. The feast of Saint Philip falls on November 14 and marks the beginning of the Advent fast.
8. A book entitled The Journey of Trifon Korobeinikov, an account written by the Moscow clerk Trifon Korobeinikov of his journey to Mount Athos with a mission sent by the tsar Ivan IV ('the Terrible'). First published in the eighteenth century, it went through forty editions, testifying to its immense popularity. Korobeinikov also wrote Description of the Route from Moscow to Constantinople after a second journey in 1594.
Old World Landowners
1. Mythological symbol of conjugal love, Philemon and Baucis were a Phrygian couple who welcomed Zeus and Hermes, traveling in disguise, when their compatriots refused them hospitality. In return, they were spared the flood that the divinities sent the Phrygians as a punishment. Their thatched cottage became a temple in which they ministered, and they asked that one of them not die without the other. In old age they were changed into trees.
2. Ukrainian (Little Russian) names frequently end in 0, which would be Russified by the addition of a v.
3. Peter III (1728-62) became emperor of Russia in 1762 and was assassinated at the instigation of his wife, the empress Catherine II, who thereafter ruled alone.
4. Louise de La Baume Le Blanc, Duchess of La Valliere (1644-1710), was a favorite of Louis XIV. She ended her life as a Carmelite nun.
5. A volunteer defense force in the Ukraine during the war with Napoleon in 1812.
6. See note 1 to 'Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt.'
7. A dish made from grain (wheat, buckwheat, oats, rye, millet) boiled with water or milk.
8. See note 1 to 'St. John's Eve.'
9. The armies of Catherine II fought successfully against the Turks in the latter part of the eighteenth century.
10. It was customary in Russia to lay a dead person out on a table until the coffin was prepared.
11. See note 5 to 'St. John's Eve.'
12. The final hymn of the Orthodox funeral service.
13- 'Small open,' a French card-playing term.
14. Patties of cottage cheese mixed with flour and eggs and fried.
Viy
