What was the name of the uncle of the heroes from Pushkin's fairy tale?

The famous fairy tale of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin about Tsar Saltan includes the mention of such an interesting character as the uncle of 33 heroes. Let us discuss some historical roots of the appearance of his name.

The vicissitudes of word formation

To begin with, let us recall the name of the uncle of the heroes. The answer, by the efforts of the great poet, is familiar to all readers - from small to large. Yes, he was called Chernomor. However, few thought about the true origin of this simple, seemingly 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 kind of sea do we associate with black color? The answer is to the surface.

But ... If you go a little deeper into the history of the Russian nation, and also inquire about Pushkin's knowledge of these very depths, then very unusual details appear, which I would like to dwell on.

Plague

So, the name Chernomor, as the uncle of the heroes, goes back to such an important and catastrophic phenomenon of Russian reality as the epidemic of the bubonic plague that visited our venerable homeland in the distant 1352. Which in Russia was called, as is known from the annals, black morrow.

Contradiction

However, consider the whole incredibly entertaining sequence, from which appeared in the fairy tale this name, incidentally, introduced there clearly ironic pen of the great creator. 33 heroes and uncle Chernomor are an interesting contrast, since in the presence of a clearly heroic plaque, the last character, at least in this fairy tale, shows a contradiction with his prototype. After all, Chernomor in the folklore works is clearly negative. Known is his incarnation, as an evil sorcerer, abducting women of fairy-tale heroes. So here's the first hint with a bunch of subtexts from the child prodigy of the Russian literary shop.

Origin of the name

But we return to the bubonic plague. Answering the question about the name of the uncle of the heroes, one should remember the historical path of the given name in folklore. So, the plague was brought from China to Italy by the Great Silk Road. Having first peopled the population of this proud country, she set off on her black route to Germany, covering almost the whole of Europe. It even got to Sweden, from where it safely reached Novgorod, Pskov and rushed through the territory of our vast camp.

And now the very salt of history. During the siege of the fortress of Kafu - the one now called Theodosia - our response to the Trojan horse was used . For the walls of the fortress, with the help of a catapult, the corpse of the deceased from this very bubonic plague was abandoned. Defenders of that time Genoese, of course, contracted a terrible disease. As a result, the survivors had to leave the fortress, and "Uncle Chernomor", remained in the folklore as a symbol of the weapon successfully used to win the next conquest of the flow of history.

Finally one can note another interesting allusion used by Pushkin. So, "in the scales, like the heat of grief" is an absolutely obvious hint of a fever arising in a patient with a plague, well, scales are nothing but buboes or ulcers that arise on the body that has become infected with this terrible disease.

In general, the whole work about the glorious Tsar Saltan can be considered from the point of view of the numerous interesting allusions used by the unsurpassed master of metaphors. Take at least a hint of the peninsula Crimea (Bujan Island) and the raging war 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 way the uncle of the heroes was called in Pushkin's unpretentious tale, one can draw out a whole historical elephant.