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A Spurious Folktale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Extract

Professor G. Vernadsky, well-known as an historian of ancient Russia, recently published an Ossetic folktale, which he had obtained from a Mr. Dzambulat Dzanty, an Ossete by birth, who in his turn stated that he had heard it (and written it down) in his youth, ‘in the village of Great Iron (Bolshoe OsetinsJcoe) at the time of hay-making (xosgärdän), June, 1910’, from an ‘old white-bearded man’ by name of Khulyx [] ‘The Lame One’, who ‘was a poet himself and in some of his own works followed the pattern of the old Ossetian oral traditions’. As the old gentleman was ‘over seventy in 1910’, we cannot hope to consult him now about his sources or about the numerous strange words and expressions in the text presented, after an interval of 45 years, by Mr. Dzambulat Dzanty.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1958

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References

page 315 note 1 Vernadsky, G. and Dzanty, Dzambulat, ‘The Ossetian tale of Iry Dada and Mstislav’, Slavic folklore: a symposium [Journal of American Folklore], 1956, 216–35.Google Scholar

page 315 note 2 Elsewhere (JAOS, LXXVI, 1956, 189, n. 13)Google Scholar Vernadsky mentions a book by Dzambulat Dzanty, , L'empire des Oss-Alanes (Institut d'Ossetologie, Clamart/Seine), I, 1953, which I have not seen.Google Scholar

page 315 note 3 loc. cit., 222.

page 315 note 4 ibid.

page 315 note 5 Supposedly also in the wilful corruption of Rededya, Iry-Dada, which Vernadsky translates as‘ Father of the Iron (Ossetians)’ (p. 217); but’ Daddy of the Ossetes ‘ would be more adequate.

page 315 note 6 As proved by Josaphat Barbaro, who began his travels in 1436 and spent 16 years at Tana, on the doorstep of the land of the Alani: ‘ the cuntrey of Alania is so called of the people Alani, which in their tonge they call As ’ (Travels to Tana and Persia, Hakluyt Society, 1873, p. 5); ‘cuntreys of divers languages… to witt, Elipehe, Tatarcosia, Sobai, Cheuerthei, As Alani …’ (p. 25).

page 316 note 1 Abaev, V.I., Osetinskiy yazïk i fol'klor, I, 1949, 249.Google Scholar

page 316 note 2 V.F. Miller, Os.-Russko-Nem. slovar’, s.v. ; cf. Abaev, loc. cit., 246.

page 316 note 3 If this were an inherited word, its plural should be ٭Alddtd.

page 316 note 4 cf. Th. Reinach, Mithridate Eupator, 73, n. 4. Zgusta, L., Die Personennamen griechischer Städte der nōrdlichen Schwarzmeerküste, 1955, 265Google Scholar, unoonvincingly tried to separate Roxolani and Reuxinali; that Ptolemy should have both names side by side (the latter perhaps as ‘ PαKαλανoi or ‘PEUKαναλoi, reflecting possibly ٭’PEνξαλoi Aoi in his source) provides no argument whatsoever against their identity.

page 316 note 5 Inscr. of Diophantus, i, 23 (e.g. apud Minns, Scythians and Greeks, 647); -λαν- may thus be due to metathesis, and -ναλ- is easily enough explainable, in terms of ‘Sarmatian’, as from Olr. narya-, Oss. näl. Cf. Vasmer, Iranier in Südrussland, 49.

page 316 note 6 In the last two verses Vernadsky gives a different explanation.

page 317 note 1 Vemadsky, G., Ancient Russia, New Haven, 1943, 106.Google Scholar

page 317 note 2 ibid., 83.

page 317 note 3 Nothing is said about explanation (6), which V. may not have considered essentially different from (a).

page 317 note 4 Lines 27, 29, 36, 40, 42, 83; and so ändäston lines 54, 62, 65, which (not mentioned in any dictionary) may be intended as an ‘elegant variation ’, but in that case would be an incorrect form (ändä- being Digor only).

page 318 note 1 One such modification is the change in transcription, into a new kind of romanization.

page 318 note 2 This is not even the first time that the story of Mstislav and Rededya has been supposed to be reflected in Caucasian folklore. Šora-Bekmurzin-Nogmov, the Kabardian author of a history of the Circassians (Istori'a Adïxeyskago naroda, Tiflis, 1861),Google Scholar incorporated it in his work, but Prince N. S. Trubetzkoy proved that it was simply borrowed from the Russian Annals. Vernadsky himself gives an outline of the history of this earlier attempt (p. 217), which was unsuccessful and, one should have thought, would prove discouraging.