Its the 12th day of Christmas, and the "real" Christmas, according to most Slavic countries who follow the old calendar. I could have made a whole big old blog about this day, and how we Ukrainians celebrate it, but the wizard over at the Wizard of Oz http://othersiderainbow.blogspot.com/ has done a fine job of doing just that! Its worth the trip over the rainbow to visit....I promise. Tell him I sent ya.
The illustration? Oh just some old book that I just can't read......my folks never saw fit to teach me Cyrillic. Pretty neat armour though huh? Very Narnia like... Interesting, the heels on the boots. Clearly horse people.....
as usual, click on the image to enlarge...if anybody wants more like that, email me, and I'll send 'em to you. I have about 4 or 5 engravings like that one.
Merry Christmas everybody.
3 comments:
I can't believe you don't know Cyrillic!
Well....there ARE some things I don't know!
Saint Cyril went north from Constantinople, and founded a church in Kiev. At the time, he was welcomed by the warrior cultures in the area because they had been taking service for hundreds of years with the Byzantine Empire....even Harald Fairhair and Harald Blue Tooth (well known for their attempts to conquor England back in 1066) got their training in Constantinople. Trouble was, the Slavic language was just too difficult to swing the tongue around for a Latin speaker like Cyril, so he translated the gospels using letters more suited to a Slav than a Romeish speaker. The rest is, as they say...history.
My grand parents were Ukrainian. Actually, they called themselves something else which escapes my mind at the moment, but is essentially "Western Ukraine". Their dances were more like Austrian Waltzes than Cossack kicks, and their decorative embroidery and such are more reminicient of Hungarian and Transylvanian than modern Ukrainan.
The whole area is full of really neat stories and peoples which all in all are pretty much salt of the Earth.
Did you drop into the Wizard's site?
Bill
12 days of Christmas would have broke all of us parents and made WalMart happy.
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