Translation queries: Ipatyevskaya letopis, 1184

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Ralph Cleminson wrote:

> Aha!  I can't open the link below, 

If you copy/paste everything between the angle brackets (but excluding
the brackets), I think you'll find it works fine -- unless, of course,
Novell GroupWise Internet Agent 7.0.3 is one of the very few email
programs that disrespects angle brackets and insists on inserting a
space or other character in the middle to split it between two lines. In
that case, you will have to reassemble the two pieces.

> but I can read "vasilii-tati6ev" in the URL, which gives the clue to
> the origin of the non-Hypatian material, namely V. N. Tatiščev's
> "История российская". Notoriously, this contains a lot of material
> that is not to be found in the primary sources, and the question is
> whether he found it in documents that were still available to him,
> working in the 18th century, but are no longer extant, or whether he
> made it up.

Your recognition is correct, and I thank you for the additional
background on the source.

> It appears that the creator of the document that this link is
> supposed to lead to also had difficulty with his sources. The
> "самострельные туги" are evidently a corruption of the "лоуци тоузи 
> самострѣлнии" of the chronicle, which in Modern Russian would be
> "луки тугие самострельные", and are the antecedent of the pronoun,
> which should therefore be сими.

Aha! So the bows were throwing rocks, not living fire. OK.

> The only way out of the translation difficulty, therefore, is to
> consult an actual copy of Tatiščev's history (not some garbled
> internet version), and cite what he says -- with the usual caveat
> regarding "Tatiščev's material".

Provided, of course, that our author, after careful consideration of the
issues raised in this forum, decides that this is the best source to use.

I also have one more paragraph, all of which I can follow but the last 
word of the quote:

Крещение Руси (988-989 гг.) Константинопольскими патриархами скорее 
всего не обошлось без договоренности о праве на использование 
новообращенными "греческого огня". Когда камские булгары захватили 
древний русский город Устюг, великий князь Владимирский Георгий отправил 
своего брата Святослава с сильным ополчением обуздать захватчиков. В 
1219 году русские атаковали город камских булгар Ошель: «... а наперед 
шли пешцы с огнем и с топорами, а за ними стрельцы... ко граду 
приступиша, отовсюду зажгоша его и бысть буря и дым велик на сих 
потяну...», сообщает летописец.

Can anyone tell me what this "потяну" is?

MTIA

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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