caused bloody death
In the hostile country
Of deadly Eluu Cherkechekh,37
If you throw a burning noose
With eighty-eight loops
To pull out of the northern swirling sky
Eighty-eight great shamans,
If you tie them up
To push them into the gaping maw
Of that woman:
She wouldn’t be sated.
It was the great woman
Ala Buhrai, Aan Jahin,38 their mistress,
Who was born wearing shackles,
Whose close relatives are covetous and stingy
Khapsa Buhrai and Aan Jahin,
Whose wells are always empty,
Whose deceit is endless,
She was the mother of the Aan-Darahy kin.39
If you want to know
Who was that old woman’s man
Who he was to deserve her love,
To share her bed,
To climb on her,
To quench her thirst for love.
Here he is, her beloved man,
Arsan Dolai, Logayar Luo Khan –
Born wearing a worn-out, ragged fur coat,
With teeth as sharp as weapons.
Made of iron
With a big backside,
With legs that walked with a swing,
With a crooked nose,
Who became the father of evil relatives,
Who became the toyon of the deep abyss.
If you want to know
Who these best men
With yokes on their necks are,
What their future is,
How prosperous they are
Here it is…
Looking down at the land of Cherkechekh,
Out of the corner of my eye,
I see dark, thick-set boys
Who have never loved women,
I see dark, skinny girls
Walking with their heads thrown back
Who have never been pregnant;
I see a short-legged, cross-horned, dwarfish bull
Which has never impregnated cows.
For being deprived of this duty by Mother Nature –
Its herd of cows keep away,
As their hindquarters are too narrow
For a bull to climb on,
To give them posterity.
They have hungry infected calves,
As black as willow bark,
Scraggy and short-legged
All covered with scab,
Starving to death.
After the severe, fiery battle which made
The resounding white sky shiver,
The great greedy misers,
The hot-headed daredevils,
Having created bloody death
Came from the place of Eluu-Cherkechekh,
Settled in the insidious Under World,
In the mouth of Ap-Salbaniki.
They became relatives of Ajarai-Khan40
And there were thirty-six tribes of them…
If one speaks about the vast and wide Middle World,
Where thirty-five tribes settled and lived,
If one repeats the Olonkho41
Sung by the grey-templed olonkhosut,
If one unburdens one’s heart
As the old woman Androsova did,42
If one tells the story in the same words
As the deaf Beken did,43
If one makes up the tale with joy and pleasure
Of how three kins of Sakha
Were created and spread,
Here is how the story goes:
Behind the far and remote side
Of the dangerous ancient times
When the upper greedy tribes
Used to fly like arrows,
Before the changing, awful
Other side of the ancient times,
When the lower terrible tribes
With their mouths wide open, ran everywhere,
When the three kins of Sakha,
Front-faced and straight-nosed,
Had not yet come into being,
At that time with no end in sight,
A terrible trouble began.
Three legendary kins of that country
For several centuries attacked each other.
In
