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In education too the Ukrainian women of Cossack times seem to have been at least the equals of their sis ters in other lands. Among the gentry literacy was the norm and women seem to have taken a special interest in religious literature. During the mid-seventeenth cen tury, the Arab traveller, Paul of Aleppo, who was jour neying through Ukraine to Muscovy on behalf of the churches of the East, remarked upon this fact. “Begin ning from Rashkiv,” he writes, “throughout all the Cos sack lands we noted a strange but wonderful fact: all of the Cossacks with only a few exceptions are literate; even a majority of their womenfolk and daughters can read and they know the order of the church services and church songs.” A few years later a West European traveller through Poland and Western Ukraine remarked that “you will find the greatest courtesy in word and deed in Ruthenia (as Western Ukraine was then called), especially among the women. The cause of this is the Ruthenian language which is not as hard as Polish. Thus they say that in Lviv live such pretty, delicate, and seductive women as can be found nowhere else on the globe. There I met an ordinary woman from whom I wished to buy something, and she was able to pay me a polite compliment in Latin and do so in a most delicate idiom.” Once again, though we may allow for a certain amount of exaggeration on the part of the traveller, the overall impression of his testimony is very positive and should not be ignored. Of course, in Ukraine as elsewhere, certain person alities drew special attention to themselves and soon became almost legendary. In the case of Cossack Ukraine he legendary folk poetess and composer of folksongs, Marusia Churai, is worthy of note. So well known is her story, in fact, that she is generally referred to as “the Ukrainian Sappho”. Her fame was already widespread as early as the seventeenth century and we are told that in many a Ukrainian cottage at that time there hung a portrait of young Marusia next to the tradi tional figure of the Cossack Mamai. Village wells with the finest drinking water were called “Churai’s tears” and especially beautiful things were named after her. The historical Marusia Churai, it seems, was born in In te rio r o f a Ukrainian village household. Painting by Belousov; litograph by Lem ercier, 1843. Credit: Kyivska starovyna (K, 1991). НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, БЕРЕЗЕНЬ 1995 19
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