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Legends of the Ukrainian Cossacks: Heroic Tales of the Zaporizhian Sich: Freedom, Brotherhood, and Unbreakable Spirit
Paperback
Mythology & FolkloreFiction Anthologies
Publisher: Mountain Mill Editorial
Published: Jul 14 2026
Pages: 134
Weight: 0.42
Height: 0.29 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Twenty-five legends of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, retold from the folk collections of Dmytro Yavornytsky and illustrated with twenty-five full-page plates.
Below the rapids of the Dnipro, on the island of Khortytsia, runaway serfs and steppe fighters built a fortress of sharpened logs and swore an oath to one another: whoever comes here is free, and no man among us will be left behind. Out of that oath came the Zaporozhian Sich and the brotherhood that held the frontier of Ukraine for two centuries.
The twenty-five legends include: the founding of the Sich by Dmytro Vyshnevetsky and the death of Baida; how a man was tested before the brotherhood would take him, and what the forelock and the earring told anyone who could read them; the sea raids that kept the Ottoman Empire awake; the saber, the mace and the Cossack prayer; Otaman Ivan Sirko, whom the Tatars called Urus-shaitan; the reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Sultan of Turkey, the letter Repin painted; the kharakternyky, sorcerer-warriors no bullet would touch, and the greatest of them, Kravchyna; Cossack Mamai; the Cossack who took the shape of a wolf; the serpent's cave on Khortytsia; the hopak danced at midnight, a dance that was also a way of fighting; Bohdan Khmelnytsky's spring; the destruction of the Sich by Catherine II; the blind kobzars who carried the memory of the Cossacks when everything else had been taken from them; and the Cossack who sat down to argue with Fate herself.
These are Ukrainian legends told in Ukrainian terms. The historian and ethnographer Dmytro Yavornytsky walked the villages of the steppe in the nineteenth century and wrote them down from the mouths of old Cossacks and their descendants, saving them from being forgotten. They are retold here in the voice they were told in, close to the fire and the kettle, with the exaggeration and the wonder left in.
A historical introduction explains where the Cossacks came from, what the Sich actually was, and why foreign envoys such as Beauplan and Lassota wrote about them with astonishment. A glossary of twenty-nine Cossack terms opens up the vocabulary of the tales, from kurin, otaman and bulava to kobzar, chaika, zymivnyk and pobratymstvo, the sworn brotherhood. The book closes on the lines of Taras Shevchenko.
An illustrated one-volume collection of Ukrainian folklore in English, written for sophisticated teen readers and adults: for readers of Slavic myth and Eastern European history, for storytellers, for Ukrainian families abroad who want these stories in a language their children read, and for anyone who wants to understand where the Ukrainian idea of freedom was born. A natural gift for the Day of the Ukrainian Cossacks, celebrated with Pokrova, and for Ukrainian Independence Day.
Of interest to public and school library collections supporting Ukrainian, Slavic and Eastern European studies.
Also by Liudmyla Pytel: Ukrainian Mythology: A Guide to Ancient Gods, Nature Spirits, and Slavic Folklore and Legends of Ukraine: Timeless Tales of Myth, Magic, and Heroism from the Heart of Eastern Europe.
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