Wikipedia: “Tsar Gorokh is a character in Russian phraseological units of a humorous nature(under Tsar Gorokh - “in ancient, legendary times”; to remember Tsar Gorokh and a number of works of folk and author’s creativity, in some (usually pseudoscientific or satirical) publications he is considered a legendary ruler of antiquity. There are similar phraseological units in others Slavic languages: Belor. for punishment Garokham, Ukrainian. for King Pea, for King Pea. However, why the ruler is called Pea remains unclear.

A. N. Afanasyev in his work “Poetic views of the Slavs on nature” (1865-1869), talking about Pokatygoroshka, connects Tsar Gorokh with Perun through the connection of the words “peas” and “roar”; prof. Zhuravlev objects to this connection that peas are not threshed, but shelled, and the roots in the words “peas” and “roar” are initially different - praslav. *grox- and *gorx-. According to one version, in its original form the phrase sounded “in Tsaregorotska”, that is, “in Constantinople”, and dates back to the time of the existence of Byzantium. Professor Zhuravlev cites similar mocking names of rulers for small household items in proverbs and fairy tales different nations, and also does not exclude the presence of a connection with the phraseological unit “pea buffoon”; Thus, in his opinion, this phrase is the fruit of folk humor, “Rabelaisian philology.”
Unlike “Old Grandfather Cole” in English proverbs (English Old King Cole), there is no broader text behind King Pea. However, similar texts appear regularly, in particular:
Lebedev, Kastor Nikiforovich. About Tsar Gorokh: when Tsar Tsar Gorokh reigned, where he reigned, and how Tsar Gorokh passed on in the legends of peoples to distant posterity. (1834). A parody of a scientific debate, the participants of which are recognizable as famous professor-historians of that time.
P. A. Vyazemsky. King Pea (1856). A poem about the "golden age" that existed under Tsar Gorokh."

Unlike traditional history, which vaguely answers the question of where and when King Pea reigned, within the framework of my version of world history I can say specifically.

Tsar Peas is an image of Poniatowski, the Russian emperor who reigned from 1824 to 1834.

Friedrich Wilhelm III (German Friedrich Wilhelm III.; August 3, 1770, Potsdam - June 7, 1840, Berlin) - King of Prussia since November 16, 1797. Son of Friedrich Wilhelm II and Friederike Louise of Hesse-Darmstadt, great-nephew of Frederick II the Great, grandfather of the Russian Emperor Alexander II.

Frederick William III is the image of the elder brother of the Usurper (1783-1868). His wife (1783-1871) had a sister (1780-1844), whose husband Poniatovsky (G.A. Potemkin, A.D. Menshikov and other images) after the death of his son, the Usurper (1806-1824), declared himself the Russian Emperor. His reign (1824-1834) was reflected in the reign of Anna Ivanovna, Catherine I, Catherine II, and Elizaveta Petrovna.

And in traditional history it was reflected as follows: “On November 9, 1824, Friedrich Wilhelm III was united in a morganatic marriage with a representative of the Harrach family, Augusta. The marriage remained childless.
The youngest line of this family, Harrach-Bruk, belongs to Ferdinand Bonaventura Harrach (1637-1706). His mother was descended from the Counts of Novellara (a branch of the Gonzaga family). When he was an envoy to the Spanish court before the War of the Spanish Succession, he tried in vain to bring victory to the Austrian line of the House of Habsburg. His memoirs were published in The Hague in 1720. Ferdinand's son married the heiress of the Swabian county of Tannhausen, and his grandson Friedrich August (1696-1749) a short time ruled the Austrian Netherlands on behalf of the Empress. His daughter Maria Josepha von Harrach (1727-1788) is the wife of the 6th Prince of Liechtenstein. Thanks to the imperial status of the County of Thannhausen, the descendants of Frederick Augustus were mediatized at the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. The modern Harrachs of the senior line, descended from the parliamentarian Johann Harrach (1828-1909), live in Vienna, where they returned from Chile in the second half of the 20th century. One of Friedrich August's grandsons, Count Ferdinand Joseph von Harrach (1763-1841), twice married ordinary noblewomen. As a result, his descendants, who settled in Klein-Krichen (Silesia, modern Poland), lost their mediatized status. When his daughter Augusta von Harrach (1800-1873) married the widowed Prussian king Frederick William III, their union was considered morganatic. The bride was given the title of Princess Lignitskaya."

Http://www.aif.ru/society/history/1448861: "In February 1740, the Russian Empress Anna Ivanovna held wedding celebrations, which became a symbol of her ten-year reign. Somehow, at the end of 1739, Anna Ivanovna noticed that Avdotya Ivanovna Buzheninova (the Empress gave the firecracker's surname in honor of the Kalmyk woman's favorite dish) became sad. Having asked what was the matter, she learned that Avdotya Ivanovna was dreaming of marriage. The Kalmych woman at that time was about 30 years old, which by the standards of the 18th century was considered a very respectable age. Anna Ioannovna was inspired by the idea of ​​marrying off her favorite and throwing a grand party on this occasion. The empress quickly found a groom - another court jester, Mikhail Alexandrovich Kvasnik, was assigned to this role. Unlike the Kalmyk Buzheninova, Kvasnik was a well-born nobleman who fell into terrible disgrace. Golitsyn became Anna Ioannovna's sixth jester and, like the other five, had a personal basket in which he was supposed to hatch eggs. During feasts, he was ordered to pour and serve kvass to the guests, which is where his new nickname and surname came from - Kvasnik. The Empress took up the matter in a big way, creating a special “Masquerade Commission”, which was to prepare the celebrations. It was ordered that no money be spared for the wedding. It was decided to organize the celebrations in a specially built Ice House, similar to those that were erected under Peter the Great, but on a much larger scale. The plan was facilitated by the weather - the winter of 1739/40 was very severe, the temperature constantly remained below 30 degrees below zero. The place for the house was chosen on the Neva between the Admiralty and Winter Palace, approximately on the site of the modern Palace Bridge. From time immemorial, in Rus' they loved to go out on a grand scale, regardless of their means, which often surprised foreigners. However, this time the “wedding in the Ice House” amazed not only foreigners, but also the Russians themselves. The expenditure of such enormous resources and effort on such an insignificant goal outraged many. Anna Ioannovna’s undertaking was called a “disgrace,” and the mockery of Kvasnik and Buzheninova was considered humiliating even by the standards of that far from tender time. Of course, this muted murmur worried Anna Ioannovna little, but it turned out that the “buffoon wedding” became the last noticeable event of her reign.”

The jester's wedding was arranged not by Anna Ivanovna (sister of the Usurper's wife), but two years after the murder of her husband Poniatowski (1783-1834) in 1836 by the Usurper himself (1785-1861). Thus, the Romanovs repaid their relative for ten years (from 1824 to 1834) of humiliation and celebrated the beginning of their real accession to the world throne.
The photo shows a fragment of the painting by Valery Ivanovich Jacobi “Jesters at the Court of Empress Anna Ivanovna”, 1878.

Who is King Pea?

© A. F. ZHURAVLEV, Doctor of Philology

Phraseological expression under Tsar Gorokh "a very long time ago, in time immemorial“Everyone knows it well. But how many can say how it arose?

Attempts to explain its origin have been made many times.

Usually they immediately remember that this name is found in Russian fairy tales: in ancient times, when the rivers flowed with milk, the banks were jelly, and fried partridges flew through the fields, there lived Tsar Pea, a rather stupid ruler, but, as befits a fairy-tale monarch, kind . However, references to such narrative folklore texts do not provide anything to understand the origins of the expression: why the ruler is called Pea remains unclear. Involving fairy tales with the common plot of the “war of mushrooms” does not help either, in local versions of which the mention of King Pea is involved, perhaps after its composition.

The famous folklorist of the century before last, Alexander Nikolaevich Afanasyev, in his fundamental cultural work “Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature,” proposed a comparison of the name of the fairy-tale king with the word roar (which, in addition to “thunder,” also means “large sieve”). The logic of his reasoning is as follows: metaphorical language brings together heavenly thunder with threshing grains; the thunder god Perun was also revered as the giver of earthly fertility, hence the commonality of the words peas and rumble. We can conclude that behind the figure of Tsar Gorokh there is a reduced image of the supreme god of the Slavs. The weakness of such an explanation is, as they say, in plain sight: peas, unlike bread,

they do not thresh, but peel, therefore all the etymological connections and semantic parallels that Afanasyev offers to support the stated version, as well as the very reading of the ancient mythological motif of “heavenly threshing,” turn out to be in vain. But first of all, a linguistic moment forces us to reject his assumption - the improbability of historical-phonetic relationships: the onomatopoeic root of the word rumble for the Proto-Slavic state is reconstructed as *grox-, while the name of the pea at the Proto-Slavic level is restored as *gorx- (cf. Russian rokhot , Polish grochot, Bulgarian rochot - but Russian peas, Polish groch, Bulgarian grach - like Russian cow, Polish krowa, Bulgarian krava).

Other guesses about the origin of phraseological units under Tsar Gorokh, put forward by various authors, look equally unconvincing.

It was seen as sound “distortions” of the Greek. presbyteros Kodroy "more ancient than Kodroy (according to historical legends, the last ruler of Attica)." This rapprochement is intended to emphasize the meaning of “long ago”: the figure of Codrus has sunk into such a distant past that no one knows anything about him except his name. However, the Russian Gorokh and the Greek Kodros, also, as in the case already discussed, cannot be connected by any patterns identified by historical phonetics, and this rapprochement should be left as extremely strained and unpromising.

They also proposed the following logic: the name of Tsar Gorokh resembles the name of the fairy-tale hero Pokatygoroshka, who is nothing more than a degraded image of the pagan thunder god Perun, ideas about which, in turn, are associated with the appearance of a bear (one of the characters in Russian fairy tales, a “variety” Pokatygoroshka, has the name Ivashka Medvedko), and in the Scythian language, which in ancient times was in contact with Slavic languages, the bear is called arsa, from where it is supposedly very close to Gorokh (from *gorx-). The reproduced chain of reasoning is clearly overcomplicated, and its individual links, from the influence of the Scythians to the interpretation of g- in the proper name Gorokh as a necessary addition before the initial vowel (similar to what we find in the pair Ukrainian gostriya - Russian acute), are by no means serious justified.

Finally, they tried to deduce the name of King Gorokh from the name of a certain, unfortunately not yet known to history (!), Slavic leader who resisted the raids of the Cimmerian steppe people around the 10th century BC (!) - an unprovable hypothesis of one venerable archaeologist (academician) , who was famous for his tendency to see real (or, often reconstructed, but very dubious) historical events and persons in folklore motifs, characters and names...

Not only amateur, but often scientific etymologization of phraseology suffers from the fact that the linguistic fact is considered separately, without

correlation with other indications of both this and other languages, and even completely outside of any cultural and linguistic context. Meanwhile, it is phraseology that, first of all, for its interpretation, needs to identify and show parallel facts.

Let's turn to them.

Interpreted Russian expression not alone, our closest relatives and neighbors know him well: in the Belarusian language there is a phraseological unit for the punishment of Garokham, in Ukrainian - for the king of Peas, for the king of Peas (in those distant times, ... as there were troshka people, as stg goriv, ​​and They put out the fire with straw, as they set out on a hike, ... as bast, the sky was cloudy, and they went to skin pennies).

In folk phraseological units with the same meaning “long ago” there are many funny names of sovereigns: under Tsar Kosar (apparently, fitting the borrowed word Caesar into rhyme), under Tsar Kopyl (this word in dialects has numerous “technical” meanings - “riser” , “clip”, “hook, crutch”, “axe handle”, “block”, “heel”, etc., serves as a replacement for the names of prominent parts of the body - “head”, “nose”, “legs”, “hooves” ", "tooth", the designation "bastard, illegitimate child", etc.).

The Poles have the expression za króla Cwieczka - literally “under King Gvozdika”, za króla Swierszczka - “under King Cricket”; among the Czechs za krále Cvrcka - “under King Cricket”, za krále Holce (kdyz byla za gresli ovce) - “under King Golysh (when a sheep was worth a pittance)”, za Marie Teremtete (borrowed from Hungarian: Hungarian teremtés “creation, being ", cf. a teremtésit "a thousand devils!, damn it!"); Ukrainians also speak for Tsar Timg, for Tsar Tomga, for Tsar Pansh, for Tsar Khmel...

If we go beyond the Slavic world, we will find among the English in the year dot, which can be roughly translated as “in the time of (a certain?) Tyutelka,” among the Spaniards en tiempo de maricastaña “a long time ago, under Chestnut,” and the Germans Our expression is matched by the formula Anno Tobak, literally “in the summer of Tabakovo”, a redrawing of the Latin anno Domini... “in the year of the Lord (such and such), that is, in (such and such) year from the Nativity of Christ.” Most of the formulas in which these strange and funny ones are written proper names, in the original standard primarily refers to the names of the rulers (as we say: “under Catherine,” “under Nicholas,” “under Khrushchev”).

It is easy to see that the listed funny names of fairy-tale and proverbial kings and kings, as a rule, are based on the use of the names of small objects ("Carnation"), insects ("Cricket") - similar to small child we affectionately call it a button or a bug. Czech holec, motivated by the idea of ​​“golizna”, is used in the sense of “mustacheless youth, boy, undergrowth”, holecëk - “child, child”.

The name Kopyl in this case can mean “short man” - cf. a nickname based on the small stature of Kopylok, recorded on the Northern Dvina (however, the meaning of “illegitimate” should not be completely discarded: it also contains a semantic element of inferiority, a certain social “smallness”). Real human names in the affected phraseological units (Timko, Panko, etc.) are also marked with diminutive (and, in addition, clearly fall out of the established monarchical names: kings named Timofey or Pankrat Slavic history does not know). Probably the reason for including “peas” in this series is the small size of its seeds - peas.

Already the German parallel with the mention of tobacco (in addition, this phraseological unit arose relatively recently, no earlier than the 17th century, since tobacco was imported to Europe from America) shows how inappropriate assurances about the dedication of the pea plant to the god of thunder are, and hence the fortune-telling that the expression King Pea is a euphemistic replacement for the name of the Thunder God. In addition to the name of peas, as we see, the names of plants become folklore “monarchist” names - chestnut, hops, tobacco, and in Russian folk life also oats: when a child asks to tell a fairy tale, they shy away with a playful excuse Once upon a time there was a king of oats, he took away all the fairy tales.

All the expressions mentioned are tinged with frank but good-natured ridicule. It is unlikely that one should look for deep traces in them ancient mythology. It makes more sense to see here the healthy fruits of folk “Rabelaisian philology” - play with meanings, deliberate alogism, verbal experiments in combining incompatible things, a humorous reduction in the image of the ruler, that is, what cultural historians call the conscious profanation of the sacred.

Yet it would be wrong to say that real story is not reflected in this phraseology. The search for authentic historical persons and events behind certain expressions of the series under consideration may not be without reason. For example, the Ukrainian for the king of Sibka (yak bula land is thin, scho prob "esh with your nose, ta y vody sya nap"esh) is associated with the name of the Polish king Jan Sobieski. The Polish phraseological unit za kgo1a Sasa is explained by the memory of the Polish king Augustus II, Elector of Saxony (Polish saski - “Saxon”); it was also adopted by Ukrainian folklore: For Tsar Sas... the people were given bread and meat; and as Poniatovsky [the last Polish king] instructed, then everything went like hell...; For Tsar Sas, then it was good: izh bread , khochrosperezhi pasa ["let loose"] etc. Let us not forget that in the Ukrainian language the Polish borrowing sas, literally "Saxon", also means "cockroach, Prussian" (naming these annoying insects after the names of neighboring ethnic groups is extremely widespread - and among us, and in Europe).How far is it from here to the Polish and Czech “cricket” we mentioned?

ANDREEVA LARISA ANATOLYEVNA - 2013

Under the king of peas

"It was under Tsar Gorokh” they say, meaning “in ancient times,” a long time ago. But what is this King Pea, why peas and not radishes, for example?

Unlike many other phraseological units and stable expressions that have a clear origin, the phrase Under the king of peas there is no clear interpretation. There are about a dozen versions, of which two look the most plausible

1. The expression is associated with the name of a stupid king from a Russian folk tale

“In that ancient time, when God’s world was filled with goblins, witches and mermaids, when the rivers flowed with milk, the banks were jelly, and fried partridges flew across the fields, at that time there lived tsar by name Peas".

2. During the formation of the Russian state, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, the city of Constantinople in Rus' was called Tsar-grad. Perhaps, when explaining some things, actions, fashion, customs, the Russians spoke “in Tsaregorod style.” Byzantium disintegrated and finally collapsed in the 15th century. And when later they talked about something connected with Constantinople or the times of Byzantium, they used the characteristic “in Tsaregorod style,” that is, a long time ago, when Byzantium still existed. The expression simply turned into, due to its similarity of sound, under Tsar Pea. That is, a long time ago, in the old days, who knows when long ago...

(1856, how relevant!)

Other interesting expressions from Russian speech:

Newspaper duck This is obviously false information published in the newspaper. Simply put, lies, fiction, untruth. Goals newspaper ducks may be quite

Fortune telling on coffee grounds arose almost simultaneously with the advent of coffee as a drink. Did you know that the birthplace of coffee is Ethiopia, a country in the northeast

One of the myths about the exploits of Hercules (a giant from Greek mythology, who migrated to the Etruscans and Romans under the name Hercules) tells that during

N. Yu. Shvedova, "Tsar")

Under Tsar Gorokh(joking) - in the immemorial past, a very long time ago. ( Dictionary(1935 - 1940), "Peas")

It was once common in Rus' pea porridge. Then they began to use it less often, since it appeared (late 18th century), and they also began to use other products. Then the expression “under Tsar Gorokh”, “from the time of Tsar Gorokh”, began to denote ancient times (when they still ate pea porridge).

In Russians folk tales King Pea even appeared:

“In that ancient time, when the world of God was filled with goblins, witches and mermaids, when the rivers flowed milky, the banks were jelly, and fried partridges flew across the fields, at that time there lived a king named PEAS” ( (1826 - 1871) . Russian folk tales).

Examples

(1860 - 1904)

“Trouble” - the magistrate complains to the doctor:

"I serve in justice since the time of King Pea and during the entire time of his service he never had an honest and sober clerk, although he drove them out in his lifetime, apparently or invisibly."

"In the apiary lives a grandfather who remembers King Pea and Cleopatra of Egypt."

Markevich

"Child of Life", 2, 1:

"You have furniture there under the king of peas she’s built, there’s nothing comfortable to sit on or lie down on..."

(1818 - 1883)

"King of the Steppes Lear", 1:

“(My ancestor) left Russia... “under Tsar Gorokh” - no, not under Tsar Gorokh, but under Grand Prince Ivan Vasilyevich. “And I think that your family is much more ancient and goes back even to the times of the antediluvian ".

(1826 - 1889)

"Chizhikovo Mountain" (1884):

“The hawk himself wanted to be the bride’s father, but the parents, under a plausible pretext, shied away from this honor and invited the deaf black grouse, the same one who under Tsar Gorokh, due to his decrepitude and loss of memory, he was placed in the Senate."

P.I. Melnikov

"In the Woods", 1, 15:

“When was this? - “Long time ago... Under Tsar Gorokh how milk mushrooms fought with mushrooms""

Marlinsky

"Volga region robbers":

"Where are the exploits ( king of peas), his capital, his grave, no one knows. He was alive a long time ago, when the honey mushrooms fought with the saffron milk caps - that’s just what legend tells you.”

(1826 - 1871)

"Poetic views of the Slavs on nature", 2, 757:

"About the fabulous hero Roll the peas born from a pea swallowed by the queen."

Attempts to explain its origin have been made repeatedly.

They usually remember that this name is found in Russian fairy tales: in ancient times, when the rivers flowed with milk, the banks were jelly, and fried partridges flew through the fields, there lived Tsar Pea, a rather stupid ruler, but, as befits a fairy-tale monarch, kind. However, references to such narrative folklore texts do not provide anything to understand the origins of the expression: why the ruler is called Pea remains unclear. Involving fairy tales with the common plot of “the war of mushrooms” does not help either, in local versions of which the mention of King Pea is involved, perhaps after its composition.

The famous folklorist of the century before last, Alexander Nikolaevich Afanasyev, in his fundamental cultural work “Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature,” proposed a comparison of the name of the fairy-tale king with the word roar (which, in addition to “thunder,” also means “large sieve”). The logic of his reasoning is as follows: metaphorical language brings together heavenly thunder with threshing grains; the thunder god Perun was also revered as the giver of earthly fertility, hence the commonality of the words peas and rumble. The weakness of such an explanation, as they say, is obvious: peas, unlike bread, are not threshed, but shelled, therefore all the etymological connections and semantic parallels that Afanasyev offers to support the stated version, as well as the very reading of the ancient mythological motif of “heavenly threshing”, turn out to be in vain. But first of all, the improbability of phonetic relationships forces us to reject his assumption: the onomatopoeic root of the word rumble for the Proto-Slavic state is reconstructed as *grox-, while the name of the pea at the Proto-Slavic level is restored as *gorx- (cf. Russian rokhot, Polish grochot, Bulgarian. rumble - but Russian peas, Polish groch, Bulgarian grakh - like Russian cow, Polish krowa, Bulgarian krava).

Other guesses about the origin of phraseological units under Tsar Gorokh, put forward by various authors, look equally unconvincing.

Not only amateur, but often scientific etymologization of phraseology suffers from the fact that the linguistic fact is considered separately, without correlation with other indications of both this and other languages, and even outside of any cultural and linguistic context. Meanwhile, it is phraseology that, first of all, for its interpretation, needs to identify and present parallel facts.

Let's turn to them.

The interpreted Russian expression is not alone: ​​in the Belarusian language there is a phraseological unit for the punishment of Garokham, in the Ukrainian - for the king of Peas, for the king of Peas (in those distant times, ...as there were a few people, like snow, and they stewed with straw, like pigs). They went on a campaign, ...as the sky was cloudy for the Lubyans, and the Shkurateans were walking around with pennies).

In folk phraseological units with the same meaning “long ago” there are many funny names of sovereigns: under Tsar Kosar (apparently, fitting the borrowed word Caesar into rhyme), under Tsar Kopyl (this word in dialects has numerous “technical” meanings - “riser” , “clip”, “hook, crutch”, “axe handle”, “block”, “heel”, etc., serves as a replacement for the names of prominent parts of the body - “head”, “nose”, “legs”, “hooves” ", "tooth", designation of "illegitimate child", etc.). The Poles have the expression za krоўla Cўwieczka - literally “under King Gvozdika”, za krоўla Sўwierszczka - “under King Cricket”; among the Czechs za kraўle Cvrcvka - “under King Cricket”, za kraўle Holce (kdyzv byla za gresvli ovce) - “under King Golysh (when a sheep was worth pennies)”, za Marie Teremtete (borrowed from Hungarian: Hungarian. teremtеўs “creation, being ", cf. a teremtеўsit "a thousand devils! Damn it!"); Ukrainians also speak for Tsar Timka, for Tsar Tomka, for Tsar Panka, for Tsar Khmel...

If we go beyond the Slavic world, we will find among the English in the year dot, which can be roughly translated as “in the time of (a certain?) Tyutelka,” among the Spaniards en tiempo de maricastana “a long time ago, under Chestnut,” and the Germans Our expression is matched by the formula Anno Tobak, literally “in the summer of Tabakovo”, a redrawing of the Latin anno Domini... “in the year of the Lord (such and such), that is, in (such and such) year from the Nativity of Christ.”

It is easy to see that the listed funny names of fairy-tale and proverbial kings and kings are mostly based on the use of the names of small objects (“Carnation”), insects (“Cricket”) - just as we affectionately call a small child a button or a bug. Czech holec, motivated by the idea of ​​“holiness”, is used in the sense of “mustacheless youth, boy, undergrowth”, holecek - “child, child”. The name Kopyl in this case can mean “short man” - cf. a nickname based on the small stature of Kopylok, recorded on the Northern Dvina (however, the meaning of “illegitimate” should not be completely discarded: it also contains a semantic element of inferiority, a certain social “smallness”). Real human names in the affected phraseological units (Timko, Panko, etc.) are also colored by diminutiveness. Probably the reason for including “peas” in this series is the small size of its seeds - peas.

Already the German parallel with the mention of tobacco (in addition, this phraseological unit arose relatively recently, no earlier than the 17th century, since tobacco was imported to Europe from America) shows how inappropriate assurances about the dedication of the pea plant to the god of thunder are, and hence the fortune-telling that the expression King Pea is a euphemistic replacement for the name of the Thunder God. In addition to the name of pea, as we see, the names of chestnut, hops, tobacco, and in Russian folk life, also oats, become folklore “monarchist” names: a child’s request to tell a fairy tale is evaded with a playful excuse: Once upon a time there was a king of oats, he took away all the fairy tales.

All the expressions mentioned are tinged with good-natured ridicule. It is unlikely that one should look for traces of ancient mythology in them. It makes more sense to see in them the healthy fruits of folk “Rabelaisian philology” - play with meanings, verbal experiments to combine incompatible, humorous reduction of the image of the ruler.

And yet it would be wrong to say that real history is not reflected in this phraseology. The search for authentic historical persons and events behind certain expressions of the series under consideration may not be without reason. For example, the Ukrainian for king Sibkaў (as the earth is thin, what you taste with your nose, you drink water) is associated with the name of the Polish king Jan Sobieski. The Polish phraseological unit za krula Sasa is explained by the memory of the Polish king Augustus II, Elector of Saxony (Polish saski - “Saxon”); it was also adopted by Ukrainian folklore: For Tsar Sas... the people ate bread and meat; and when Poniatowski [the last Polish king] came to rule, everything went according to the devil...; For Tsar Sas, then it was good: “Hedgehog bread, you want to rosperezhi pass [“let loose”] and so on. Let us not forget that in the Ukrainian language sas, literally “Saxon,” also means “cockroach, Prussian” (naming these annoying insects after the names of neighboring ethnic groups is extremely widespread both here and in Europe). How far is it from here to the Polish and Czech “cricket” mentioned above?

In Russian phraseology, peas are scattered generously. Let's remember another expression: the clown of a pea. There is no reason to dispute the idea that initially it was synonymous with the phraseological unit “scarecrow in the pea field” (that is, directly “the scarecrow in the pea field”). However, phraseology is often multi-layered, allowing multidirectional connections and later semantic intersections. We can cautiously assume that in an indirect way, in a secondary rapprochement, the pea jester and Tsar Gorokh are associated: the figure of the witty jester under the monarch is too popular for associations of this kind not to be possible.

Anatoly ZHURAVLEV, Doctor of Philology, Head of the Department of Etymology and Onomastics, Institute of Russian Language, Russian Academy of Sciences