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the Ukrainian Black Sea Cossacks (the Chomomortsi), on their swift vessel the chaika rescued the French Musketeers and their precious cargo. After a lively and hilarious interaction with Richelieu's seamen, they managed to reach Amsterdam with the Musketeers. Each Cossack received a highly priced blooming tulip with its bulb, quite a reward given the price of tulips at the time. One of the Cossacks, however, felt hesitant to accept such a magnificent reward because in his mind, the mission was only half-completed. He left his blooming tulip with another Cossack and ran through the countryside of Holland and through the rest of Europe, returning with the princess in his arms. Now the mission was completed and the prince could marry his sweetheart. The Cossack got his tulip back but without the bulb; in order to bring the princess to Holland, he had spent his newly acquired fortune. But the other Cossacks approved of his gesture and rewarded it by giving him all their blooming tulips with their bulbs, demonstrating that the motto: all for one and one for all applied to Ukrainian Cossacks as well as to Musketeers. In creating How the Kozaks Helped the Musketeers, the Ukrainian filmmakers remind us that Ukraine in the seventeenth century had a close relationship with Western Europe and especially with France. Because of the Black Sea, Ukraine also had a close relationship with Turkey. It is indeed during that period of Tulipmania (1534-1537) that French geographer Guillaume Le Vasseur; Sieur de Beauplan, came to Central and Eastern Europe and witnessed some of the military campaigns in Ukraine. Between 1642 and 1662 some of his maps were reproduced in France and in 1646 he reproduced a complete map of Ukraine and the Black Sea followed in 1660 by a book, A Description of Ukraine. For the ruling monarchs of that time, maps of Eastern Europe were a novelty; they were interested in areas where they could eventually wage a war and win. When almost a century later Diderot and his team of learned people worked on the Encyclopedie, they were very familiar with Ukraine, its landscape, its seashore, its people's customs and the military organization of the Cossacks' stronghold known as the Sich. The word Ukraine itself appears as being the land of the "Cossack Nation". Should we believe that the Black Sea Cossacks, the Chomomortsi, had a hand in the secret mission of the French Musketeers and that they were rewarded with the outrageously expensive "broken" blooming tulips-with-bulbs? Should we believe the story of the animated film and how the Cossacks may have been responsible for an alleged Dutch prince's marriage to an Ottoman princess? There are no reasons to doubt it. In fact, there is some evidence connected with the tulip which encourages us to believe it. As the Ottoman Empire conquered Europe, the tulip flower was adopted in embroidery patters of the peoples who came in contact with the Turkish occupation. In Slovakia, for instance, the tulip pattern can be found in Easter egg decorations, wall hangings and in the decoration of sheepskin coats, In Hungary, it can be found in patterns for pillow covers, tablecloths and young brides' hope chests. In Croatia, the last country to come in direct contact with the Ottoman forces, folk songs exhort the magical power of the "tulipan" and repeat the theme of passionate romantic love between two people. Ukraine was never part of the Ottoman Empire, but had many encounters with Turks. Patterns of stylized tulips can be found in Ukrainian folk art. In book ornamentation, a variation of the tulip pattern can be found in illustrations of folk tales that happily culminate with a marriage. One such example is the border illustrations for the story "The Frog Princess" in Ukrainski Narodni Kazky (Kyiv: Molod' , 1995). Tulips also appear as ornamentation for folk songs; in the collection Lira Surma (Surma Book & Music Co., 1982), for instance, a border of blooming tulip tops the song "O, A Black Cloud Has Come Upon Us" (p.31). In 1981, the Ukrainian Museum in New York published a monograph entitled Ukrainian Rushnyky. On the cover is a rushnyk with two majestic tulips in an imaginary garden of multi-shaped flowers. A year later, in a book entitled Folk Art from the Ukraine [sic] there is a reproduction of a rushnyk on display at the Kyiv Museum of Decorative Folk Art as well as a close-up of the needlework of a tulip. A perusal of books of Ukrainian patterns for domestic embroidery reveals that tulips are not part of a floral design used in embroidered blouses or traditional pillow covers; the tulip seems to be reserved for traditional match making and wedding towels. Since tulip patterns are present in these forms of Ukrainian folk art, one wants to believe that the flowers are not only associated with love, match making and weddings, but also with a certain episode in history when Cossacks helped French Musketeers finalize a Dutch wedding. Copyright Helene Turkewicz-Sanko John Carroll University March J998 Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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