Comment
Recorded from
Anna Shadrina in 1986.
Translation
(33-1) I only know very little about the olden days.
(33-2) We used to make fish traps on the river.
(33-3) We made fish traps and dams on the river. So we lived on the riverbanks and fished for graylings.
(33-4) Graylings are over there, they are being jerked.
(33-5) We jerked them and ate them in winter.
(33-6) This was two kilometers from here. At that time there were no boots, nothing.
(33-7) That's why when the snow fell down and the first ice started on the river Kolyma, our feet were frozen.
(33-8) Sometimes the river is covered with a little first ice.
(33-9) We always used to bring the fish here carrying it on a boat through the middle of that ice.
(33-10) The rivermouth is far away. How could I carry the fish two kilometers? With what could we carry it?
(33-11) When there was little snow, we carried it on a boat.
(33-12) Then our feet became frozen. The blood stopped circulating in them and they became like a hard piece of wood.
(33-13) They were not afraid either of heat or cold.
(33-14) Our feet were like down, like pillows.
(33-15) The ice always made our feet bleed.
(33-16) We carried it like that and arrived in the evening. We had a small house.
(33-17) My mother and the others lived there.
(33-18) When we entered the house, we leant our feet against the warmth.
(33-19) But no! Our feet ached when we started warming them.
(33-20) Our feet got swollen here and there. We warmed them by rubbing them until they got warm.
(33-21) This was very torturing. They were so cold, that it was bad to put them under the blanket or by the fire.
(33-22) Then when the river got frozen, we carried the fish and made traps for the willow ptarmigan and the hare.
(33-23) If the hare or willow ptarmigan were caught, we ate them, and that's how we lived in the winter.
(33-24) There were no gun cartridges then.
(33-25) There was only one gun, it's over there.
(33-26) You need a steel to kindle this gun.
(33-27) You charge it with a stick. We only had this kind of gun.
(33-28) We used it when the elk walked around and - I forgot how to say "wild reindeer" - and when there were a lot of wild reindeer.
(33-29) But there was nothing to shoot with, neither bullets nor gunpowder.
(33-30) We used to kindle the fire with the kindling steel.
(33-31) We kindled fire with it in summer and in winter.
(33-32) We ground down the rotten yellow tree and used it.
(33-33) We kindled it as a tinder, a birch tree tinder with sap.
(33-34) We boiled a bucket of it.
(33-35) My mother boiled it while stirring.
(33-36) She stirred it until it became as good as gunpowder.
(33-37) We used this gunpowder.
(33-38) Do you see cotton wool over there? You stir it and it becomes like cotton wool.
(33-39) It was like leather. They make purses from such leather, such chamois. It won't let air or anything come through.
(33-40) It becomes like that.
(33-41) We used to kindle fire with it.
(33-42) So we lived in the olden days.
(33-43) In half a year it will have been seventy years ago.
(33-44) I had a baby, the Soviet power came.
(33-45) I don't know anymore.
(33-46) Although they say that we roamed and suffered, we had food.
(33-47) So we lived when we were small.
(33-48) My elder brothers said that my father was never hungry and never left us hungry.
(33-49) Then my father got blind, but we did not starve until my brothers with their families left us.
(33-50) They always used to catch something with a trap and bring it to us, hare, willow ptarmigam, or wood-grouse. We ate them and didn't starve.
(33-51) Although we didn't have a gun, we didn't starve because we made traps.
(33-52) We always roamed like that.
(33-53) Seventy years ago came the Soviet power.
(33-54) I don't know about the more recent times, that's enough.
Glosses