Interesting Moscow: you are flooding! bell
“Is there no conversation in Moscow?” asks matchmaker Akulina Gavrilovna Krasavina, a merchant widow languishing with boredom and loneliness “thirty-six years old, a very full woman, a pleasant face” Domna Evsignevna Belotelova. To which the matchmaker replies: “It is not enough to talk, but you can not believe everything.” Sometimes the bell is poured, so deliberately empty rumor is let out to make it sound better.”
In this scene from the play "The Marriage of Balzaminov" A.N. Ostrovsky talks about the oldest and most beautiful Moscow custom, a kind of magical amulet. In Moscow, bells were poured in the Balkans, this is such a place behind the Sukharev Tower. It was convenient (as it is now to repair the car trough): hills and ravines that you can climb up. In itself, the Balkan is a big ravine.
When the bell was cast, it was called. And here... People were scratching their tongues! If the bell turned out to be successful - there was a refutation of the hearing, if not - the hearing turned into a legend.
As Milyukov wrote in his memoirs in the 1830s: Our side was for the whole of Moscow the source of the most eccentric gossip and fiction. From time immemorial, bell breeders have established a belief that for a successful casting of a large bell, it is necessary to let some deliberately invented fairy tale into the people, and the faster and further it disperses, the more sonorous and sweeter the bell will be cast at this time. That is why the well-known saying “bells pour”, when it comes to some ridiculous rumor. I do not know who was engaged in the writing of these fantastic stories in the factories and in what way they spread throughout the city, but the bell tales testified to the living, poetic imagination of their authors.
There was a rumour: "Once there was a man with horns, furry. He doesn't want to eat. We saw the tail a couple of times. There were interesting ones: “The bride and groom were married once, and the crowns as they flew off and flew away to the crosses. It turned out to be brother and sister! So those brother and sister took kinship for love.” People gathered on the cover. Indeed, on the crosses of the church hung gilded crowns. They saw, were surprised, and, of course, they did not realize that this is a decoration of crosses, and in the size of a crown - about one and a half meters. I mean, it's gonna be a little big.
But it's all nonsense. There were some very interesting rumors. Quote: Did you hear that this morning? Under the Stone Bridge, a whale stranded... People over there!
In 1878, a huge bell was poured for the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and at the next meeting of the commission for the construction of the temple, the governor-general Prince Dolgorukov joked: "It would be necessary, according to the ancient Moscow custom, that the bell bell was ringing, to let some rumors ..." Everyone laughed, and P. N. Zubov approached Dolgorukov and quietly whispered something in his ear. The prince looked at the sitting dimensionless Baron B. and laughed. "What is it? “What happened?” the commission asked. "The secret... “It is a great secret,” replied the prince. And then secretly the members of the commission told the rumor, and they passed on, the rumor flew through the taverns and clubs, balls and living rooms. Rumor has it that Baron B is about to be born, for he is nine months pregnant! The bell turned out beautiful! And Baron B. for a long time still wondered why these people laugh at his sight.
In the Russian language, there is our Moscow word "to pour" ("Yes, you seem to pour now!"), that is, to lie, to speak nonsense. It came from the ancient "bell cast"... It seems like the truth, at least a little! :
Maxim Shvedov