Crimean Legend - Kara-Dag - the Black Mountain

Long, long ago, in the entrails of Kara-Dag - the Black Mountain - there dwelled a terrible Monster - one-eyed Giant-Ogre. In the day-time the Giant used to sleep, but even his peaceful snoring frightened the dwellers of surrounding hamlets. Towards the evening the Giant would wake up and get out of his lair. Menacingly flashing his single eye, he would begin to bellow deafeningly.

Then gripped by fear all the dwellers - children, old men, women - would hide, and men, to gain the Monster's favour, would bring a bull or a couple of sheep to the foot of the Black Mountain. But in autumn, when the wedding month would come, the Giant demanded a great sacrifice. He would roar incessantly, hurling stones from the mountain that buried the vineyards and destroyed the buildings. Frightened to death, the people chose one of the brides, brought her bound to Kara-Dag and left her there on a high cliff...

He brought the people so much grief, and nobody knew the way to get rid of him. But then one courageous youth volunteered to kill the Monster.

The wedding month came. The young man went to the Giant on Kara-Dag. "How beautiful it is here," he thought. "And I do want to live! But it's better to be killed in an unequal fight than endure such a monster..."

The young man thought of his sweetheart, sat down on a stone and broke into a love song.

- Your singing is not bad at all, however. I like it. - The youth threw back his head and saw the Giant. - Sing me your song again, - roared the Giant. - I also want a bird of love to come flying to me and penetrate into the depth of my heart.

And the young man promised to bring him the one who sent love.

The next day he set off to Kara-Dag with his betrothed, the beautiful Elbis. Her beauty was so dazzling that the Giant, wonder-struck, opened his single eye wide. And the girl took a bow, drew its tight string and shot a poisonous stone arrow into his shining eye.

In unbearable pain the Monster howled, stumbled over a stone and fell into his deep burrow...

At daybreak people came out of their houses, looked in the direction where only yesterday there was the Giant's lair, and stood astonished. The Black Mountain no longer existed. It had tumbled down in pieces, burying the Monster. And in that very place, high up to the sky, new cliffs and rocks of whimsical shape, resembling wild animals, had risen.

Kara-Dag (the Black Mountain) - a mountain massif situated between Sudak and Feodosia.

Crimea is temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation. For now it is not a place for tourism.