A miracle from Kosmach
How can one attract tourists to a village? This is not something that Mykhailo Didyshyn, a resident of famous Kosmach, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast, has to ask himself. People from all over Ukraine come to Mykhailo’s house. In Kosmach he is called the “head of the museum.” Indeed, an improvised museum stands in Didyshyn’s yard, with ten times more interesting items located on every square meter than in any official museum in Ukraine. Everything started when Didyshyn met Anna Malynkiv, who is related to Shtefan Dzvinchuk — the one who killed the opryshky (rebels) leader Oleksa Dovbush in 1745.
Says Mykhailo: “For shooting Dovbush he received a noble title. The woman lived in a winter house where the terrible murder took place. She lived there for 106 years, gave birth to three girls. They all grew up, married, but none of them gave birth to a child. She told me, ‘See, Mykhailo, our family is cursed because Dovbush’s murderer belonged to it.’”
After the old woman’s death Didyshyn bought this house and brought it to his yard in Kosmach. In 1975, an expert analysis proved that the yew house with cedar doors, claimed to be built in 1724 without a single nail, was indeed 250 years old.
Mykhailo created Dovbush’s museum in it. However, he was not allowed to do so at once. The dismantled house is kept in the host’s house since Soviet times. Now Ukrainian travellers know that at Didyshyn’s place one can see things that once belonged to the opryshok. In addition, the host adorns the house with his own chimerical creations made of tree roots.
There is a stove, small like a stool. Mykhailo shows us a bartka (an old Hutsul axe) with a date engraved on it, “1734,” with which Dovbush punished the greedy brothers Mochernak. There is also a horn that Dovbush used to call together his sworn brothers, a tarred hat that the opryshok wore, and the gun with which he was shot. Incidentally, to get this gun, Didyshyn had to cut wood in Mykulychin for six months, as one should not sell it, because it may bring a curse on all the residents of Kosmach. Mykhailo showed us huge albums with pieces of modern embroidering, as well as others embroidered in Dovbush’s times. He said that professors from the US and Germany, as well as Ukrainian scholars, had come to his place. They all asked him to sell the albums. “To which I replied: let us print the albums, then you will be able to carry them with you throughout the world. If you remove them from the village, I will have to go to America to see my mother’s embroideries.”
“The most interesting thing is this fossilized piece of wood. There was a landslide in Kosmach, I saw it. It was studied by geologists, who said that the wood lived ten million years ago. They all want to take it from me. Interestingly, the wood was chopped by a steel, not a stone axe,” said the host proud of his finding.
He showed a Nicholas the Wonderworker statuette, given to him by the late Patriarch of Kyiv and All Rus’ Volodymyr (Romaniuk). He says that it stood in the Dovbysh Church in Kosmach.
“The church burnt down in 1983. It started to go to ruin when the shooting of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors was underway. The movie-makers took away the iconostasis, but never returned it. You can hold Nicholas’ three fingers and wish something from God. The wish will come true for sure.”
The rarities also include the opryshky leader’s ring. However, 12 rings are hanging of the beam, because Dovbush had 12 friends. But only one of them is real.
“Today, when you go anywhere you show your passport. In those times when a messenger from Dovbush came he showed the ring. And the master knew what it was, because nobody else had such rings at the time. I have only one such ring. I was lucky to find the great great grandson of the man who made these rings for Dovbush. One of them was left. There is even a year engraved on it, ‘1724.’ Once I was going to Ivano-Frankivsk to the academic Hrabovetsky. I decided to surprise him, so I put on Dovbysh’s ring. I forgot that I had a ring on my finger and got on a bus. I heard everyone whispering, then they asked me, ‘What is on your finger?’ All passengers paid attention to it,” the narrator smiled.
He established a monument to Dovbush in his yard. After it was unveiled in 1988, many renowned people came to Kosmach, including Viacheslav Chornovil.
The regional ethnographer told that he wants to write a book on how to live long. He is 76 now and says, “Everything will be good as soon as you know what you need and what you can easily live without.”
Viktoria KOBYLIATSKA
7 September 2010, Day
