swirled up,
Nine vertical white skies
Rocked like water
In a birch-bark bucket,
White clouds gathered,
Black clouds clustered round,
Dark-grey clouds came together…
Nothing was seen
In the white sky.
The black stormy wind
Of the sky
Yowled and growled,
Like the guffaw
Of the ilbis’s daughter,
The spirit of war,
Like the nicker
Of the ohol son,
The spirit of discord.
The tempest rose,
The ground could not be seen.
Has the base
Of the Under World cracked?
Has the crown
Of the Middle World been punched?
Has the axis of the Upper World broken?
Four rumbling thunderbolts rolled in,
Four bright flashes of lightning struck.
Thick fog came down so that even a shadow
Could not be seen…
A rain of stones
As big as a four-year-old cow,
A hail of stones
As big as a three-year-old bull-calf,
Banging and rolling,
Fell like an icy storm
Upon the dazzling land
Saidaryky Ebeh Khotun,91
Where hoar frost was never seen,
Where the summer was year-round.
A heavy snowfall
Began to swirl and whistle,
Prickling thin ice
Began to circle and clink…
The loud, deafening sound
Would have torn to pieces
A bear skin with the paws and the head,
Would have shaken
Three grinning nether worlds,
Would have split the sky
And made the earth yawn.
That spacious, red and rosy
Eight-rimmed, eight-brimmed
Uneven and restless
Primordial Motherland
Heaved like water
In a birch-bark bucket.
Cowards rushed to the cattle shed,
The best of them hid in the barn…
Mighty and vigorous
Brave Kun Jiribineh
With the grey horse
Exclaimed joyfully:
‘How long I have been waiting for you,
My children, my sons-in-law!
Have you come down
From above to see me
Because of my famous name,
Because of my glorious reputation;
Or have you come
From below?!
We will play
Like a stallion and mare,
Interlocking our arms and legs,
Like the branches
Of a flexible willow.’
Saying so, he jumped up,
Looked around,
Turning hither and thither…
There he saw a man
On the low edge
Of the western golden sky,
On the opposite side
Of his Mother Earth,
On the top of a copper sky
With eighty-eight pillars:
The man was wearing
A coat made of demon’s skin,
Which reached down
To the middle of his legs,
A lion-hide tie was tightly wrapped
Around his throat,
He wore a flat, iron hat,
On which he put a deer cap inside out,
Looking like nine eagle nests,
Brims upwards,
And he wore six iron armours.
He moved his ugly face up and down,
Looking like a cave
In a river bank.
He stared blankly
With his bloodshot eyes,
Looking like undercooked fish soup.
His eye sockets
Were like cleft rocks.
He opened wide his narrow mouth,
