The famous fairy tale of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin about Tsar Saltan includes a mention of such an interesting character as uncle 33 heroes. Let us discuss a little historical roots of the appearance of his name.
The vicissitudes of word formation
To begin with, we recall the name of the uncle of the heroes. The answer, through the efforts of the great poet, is familiar to all readers - from small to large. Yes, his name was Chernomor. However, few thought about the true origin of this seemingly straightforward proper name. The simplest association, of course, is the Black Sea. Indeed, 33 heroes and uncle Chernomor in a fairy tale rose from the sea. What sea is associated with black in our country? The answer is on the surface.
But ... If you go a little deeper into the history of the Russian nation, and also take an interest in Pushkin's knowledge of these very depths, very unusual details appear that I would like to dwell on.
Plague
So, the name Black Sea, as the uncle of the heroes was called, goes back to such an important and catastrophic phenomenon of Russian reality as the epidemic of the bubonic plague that visited our venerable Motherland back in 1352. Which in Russia was called, as is known from the annals, a black sea.
Contradiction
However, we will consider the whole incredibly entertaining sequence, from which this name appeared in the fairy tale, by the way, made there by the obviously ironic pen of the great creator. 33 heroes and uncle Chernomor are an interesting contrast, since in the presence of a clearly heroic raid on the last character, at least in this tale, a contradiction with his prototype is revealed. After all, the Black Sea in folklore is clearly painted negatively. His incarnation is known as an evil sorcerer kidnapping women of fairy-tale heroes. So here we have the first hint with a bunch of subtexts from the prodigy of the Russian literary workshop.
The origins of the name
But we are returning to the bubonic plague. When answering the question about the name of the uncle of the heroes, one should recall the historical path of this name to folklore. So, the plague was brought from China to Italy by the Great Silk Road. Having mowed at first the population of this proud country, she set off on her black route to Germany, covering the territory of almost all of Europe. Even Sweden got from where it safely reached Novgorod, Pskov and swept through the territory of our vast camp.
And now the very salt of history. During the siege of the Kafu fortress - what is now called Theodosius - our answer was used by the Trojan horse. The corpse of a deceased from this same bubonic plague was thrown over the walls of the fortress with the help of a catapult. The Genoese, who were defending at that time, naturally became infected with a terrible disease. As a result, the survivors had to leave the fortress, and "Uncle Chernomor" remained in folklore as a symbol of the weapon that was successfully used to win the next conquest of the stream of history.
Finally, one more interesting allusion used by Pushkin can be noted. So, “in scales, like the heat of grief” is a completely obvious hint of a fever that occurs in a patient with a plague, but scales are nothing more than buboes or ulcers that appear on the body of the person infected with this terrible disease.
In general, the entire work about the glorious Tsar Saltan can be considered from the point of view of numerous interesting allusions used by the unsurpassed master of metaphors. Take at least a hint of the Crimean peninsula (Buyan Island) and the war raging on it for the right to own territory in the distant fourteenth century. But this is a completely different story. And we can only marvel that from the name of the uncle heroes in the uncomplicated fairy tale of Pushkin, you can draw a whole historical elephant.