Of Ukraine's national symbols, the Cossack is perhaps the most enduring - and endearing. Today, he's often rendered as a caricature and used to sell frozen pelmeni, endorse restaurants and promote casinos. Cossacks are invariably drawn as burly, happy yokels whose heads are shaved, except for the oseledec - a single long lock of hair.
The folklore inspired by the Cossacks has lead to their present-day status as near-mythic figures. Mitsik says that portraits of Cossacks - particularly of Cossack Mamai - were handed down from generation to generation, and were often displayed in ordinary homes.
Like most myths, there is a nugget of truth to the stories told about the Cossacks of long ago. In fact, the Cossack people encourage the use of legend and mythology. They created it, embellished it, sang about it and took the stories into battle.
In many ways, they used the myths they wove about themselves as a secret weapon to be used against their foes.
They represented a culture that thrived on strong emotions. The Cossack cried as easily as he laughed, and grief was as important to the Cossack way of life as was celebration.
The early Cossacks considered themselves to be Knights of Malta and crusaders for Christianity, according to Miroslav Popovich, an academician at Ukraine's Academy of Sciences, citing written accounts by Joseph Vereshchitskyi, the bishop of Kyiv and founder of Fastiv.
The Cossacks were free-spirited and not prone to domination by authority outside their culture, historian Vitaly Shcherban said. When Poles wanted to govern the Cossacks, establish schools teach them job skills, and enlist them in the Polish military. The free-spirited 'knights' would not be subdued.
In fact, Zaporizhiya Sich was a symbol of freedom as early as the 15th century, said Shcherban, who contrasted it with Kripatstvo, an area where people were enslaved.
The Cossack myths took hold and were perhaps amplified as they were repeated as poetry and in song. Historian Yuriy Mitsik said that knighthood first gained a romantic cache in Western Europe and found favor as it expanded to the east. The Cossacks of Zaporizhiya Sich fashioned their version of the warrior knight to be a defender of the Orthodox Christian faith.
After the Cossacks divided into two bands, they adopted very different customs. While the Reestr Cossacks married and established households, the Zaporizhiya Cossacks lived like monks, an affectation that added to the mystique.
Cossacks underwent a symbolic baptism that included the adoption of a new name. The often humorous names - "kick the nose," "cut by sword," "louse," "Don't drink beer" - reinforced their sense of brotherhood and camaraderie.
Another aspect of the Cossack myth is that these were people of strong emotion. The sense of humor reflected by the baptismal names they adopted continued in the songs they sang and stories they told.
They also cried freely. Many of the poems and songs reflected the loneliness of battle, or solitary travel and separation from others. The Cossack often was only accompanied on his travel by a stringed musical instrument, or kobza.
The tales they told often gave Cossacks super-human abilities. Whether these tales were intended to embolden Cossack warriors convinced of their own invincibility, or to unnerve foes is uncertain. Possibly both.
In the book, Notes about South Rus, author Kulish Panteleimon wrote that, among other attributes, Cossacks claimed invincibility to the effects of fire, Earth, bullets or water. Only a silver bullet could kill them, they said.
They claimed the magical ability to telekinetically unlock locks, walk on cloth laid atop the water and to turn into cats. They boasted that they could live at the bottom of rivers and could see for miles. They talked about their unique bohatyri, Cossack supermen like nothing anyone else had ever seen.
These mythic supermen were said to exist between two worlds. Popovich said that wasn't terribly hard for people to believe in the days of Kyivan Rus, when the Dnipro was revered as a kind of Styx, which ancient Greeks believed divided the worlds of the living and the dead. On one bank of the Dnipro lay the civilized world in the days of Kyivan Rus. On the other side lay lands known best to nomads and Zaporizhiya. Popovich described Zaporizhiya as a place where contact with a mystical world was thought possible. Socially and culturally, he said, the Zaporizhsky and Kyivan Rus worlds couldn't have been more different.
The influence of Eastern Islamic culture was evident in Sich, especially in the celebrations held by its people. Celebrations welcoming newcomers frequently involved rituals that legend maintains including walking on a log over a ditch after drinking horilka, or demonstrating an ability to laugh and tell stories.
When Cossacks began their military lives, they were given a few square meters of land in payment. That land, they were told, was to be for their grave.
Retirement was unusual, for most Cossacks did not survive the years of battle to see old age. The few who did rarely returned to their familial homes, preferring to enter monasteries. Some entered the monastic life quietly, while others were escorted to the monastery gate by well-wishers in a final "going-away" party.
That party symbolized the end of the Cossacks life of laughter, and opened the way to his redemption as a knight-monk.
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