houses in the villages, but within these houses there is also greater poverty and misery. The people are wretched, downtrodden, gloomy, towards strangers diffident and self-effacing. Each thinks only of himself without understanding that such a way of life disrupts their unity and causes the disintegration of the whole community.
That was not the way it had been here a long time ago! Though there were less people, what a valiant spirit they possessed! How courageously they lived amidst the inaccessible, primeval fastnesses, high up within the shadow of the mighty giant, Mt. Zelemenya. But for centuries misfortune has been tormenting them. Repeated onslaughts have uprooted their good life, and poverty has broken their freedom-loving spirit. Today only fragmentary accounts of those days remain to remind their descendents of that more fortunate life of their forefathers.
When sometimes an old granny, sitting on the hearth spinning wool, begins to relate stories to the little grandchildren about those times long ago, about the attacks of the ferocious, dog-faced Mongols and about the Tukholian leader Berkut, the children listen fearfully and tears glisten in their grey-blue eyes. But when the marvelous story ends, young and old sigh and remark, “My, what a wonderful tale!”
“Yes, yes!” grandma will say nodding her head. “Yes, my children! For us it is only a story, but long ago it was really so!”
“I wonder if those times will ever return?” some elder might remark. “The old sages say they WILL return again, but perhaps only before the end of the world?”
Cheerless indeed, it is in our Tukhlia today! Only legends endure to remind us of old times and the old life. The people of today, brought up in misery and subjugation in the thousand
