Maria or Marusia Churai (1625–1653) was a semi-mythical Ukrainian

Ukrainians

Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...

 Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, and singer. She has become a recurrent motif in Ukrainian literature

Ukrainian literature

Ukrainian literature is literature written in the Ukrainian language. Ukrainian literature had a difficult development because, due to constant foreign domination over Ukrainian territories, there was often a significant difference between the spoken and written language...

 and the songs ascribed to her are widely performed in Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

.

Very little is known of her life. She was a native of Poltava

Poltava

Poltava is a city in located on the Vorskla River in central Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Poltava Oblast , as well as the surrounding Poltava Raion of the oblast. Poltava's estimated population is 298,652 ....

, and is regarded as the author as well as the subject of the well-known Ukrainian folk song "Oi Ne Khody Hrytsiu Tai na Vechornytsi

Vechornytsi

Vechornytsi are Ukrainian traditional gatherings with music, songs, jokes and rituals. It is derived from the Ukrainian word for evening....

" (Hryts, Don't Go to the Evening Dances) known in the West as the song "Yes, My Darling Daughter

Yes, My Darling Daughter

Yes, My Darling Daughter is a 1941 song by Jack Lawrence first introduced by Dinah Shore on Eddie Cantor's radio program, as well as Shore's first record. The music used by Lawrence is based on a Ukrainian folk-song "Oj ne khody Hrytsju", often ascribed to the Ukrainian songstress Marusia Churai....

".

According to the mythology surrounding Churai, she was in love with a Cossack

Cossack

Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...

 named Hryts. Her love was not returned, and she prepared a poison potion for herself, which Hryts drank by accident before she could get to it. She was accused of murder, and stood trial. The exact verdict was unknown, but she is believed to have spent some time in incarceration, before being released or amnestied, commonly believed due to her reputation as a singer-songwriter.

Influence in literature

The legend about Marusia Churai was formed under the influence of 19th century literary works such as the novel "Marusia, Malorosiiskaia Sapfo" (Marusia, the Littlerussian Sappho

Sappho

Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...

) by C. Shakhnovsky (1839). Many writers used the theme of "Hryts" in their works: M. Starytsky's play "Oi Ne Khody, Hrytsiu" (1892), V. Samiylenko's drama "Churaivna" (1894), Olha Kobylianska

Olha Kobylianska

Olha Julianivna Kobylianska was a Ukrainian modernist writer and feminist.-Origin:Kobylianska was born in Gura Humorului in Bukovina in the family of a minor administration worker of Ukrainian noble decent from the Dnieper region. She was the fourth child of seven of Maria Werner and Julian...

's novel "V Nediliu Rano Zillia Kopala" (She Gathered Herbs on Sunday Morning 1909), I. Mykytenko's drama "Marusia Churai" (1935), L. Kostenko's novel in verse "Marusia Churai" (1979), and others.

Influence in music

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

 composed "Ballade d'Ukraine," a piano piece on the theme of commonly associated with the "Hryts" text.

The song "Oi Ne Khody Hrytsiu" was translated into Polish (1820), Czech (1822), German (1827), French (1830), English (1848) and other languages. However its melody is not of folk origin. It was first documented use was as an arietta from a vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 by a Venetian

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 composer Catterino Cavos

Catterino Cavos

Catterino Albertovich Cavos , born Catarino Camillo Cavos, was an Italian composer, organist and conductor settled in Russia...

.

The melody was used in Yes, My Darling Daughter

Yes, My Darling Daughter

Yes, My Darling Daughter is a 1941 song by Jack Lawrence first introduced by Dinah Shore on Eddie Cantor's radio program, as well as Shore's first record. The music used by Lawrence is based on a Ukrainian folk-song "Oj ne khody Hrytsju", often ascribed to the Ukrainian songstress Marusia Churai....

, a 1941 song by Jack Lawrence

Jack Lawrence

Jack Lawrence was an American songwriter. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1975.- Biography :...

.

Three other song texts that are attributed to Marusia Churai: "Kotylysia Vozy z Hory" (The Wagons Were Rolling Downhill), "Viyut' Vitry" (Winds Are Blowing) and "Za Svit Staly Kozachenky" (The Kozaks Were Ready to March at Dawn). While the texts of these songs may indeed be authentic, the music is not. All the melodies that are attached to her texts date from the late 18th century.
The text of the Ukrainian folk song "Oi ne khody Hrytsiu" was first published in English translation in London in 1816. A Polish translation first appeared in 1822 in Lviv and a German translation appeared in 1848. Evidence exists to the songs popularity in France (1830's), Czech, Slovak lands, Belgium and the United States where it equally well known was the song "Ikhav kozak za Dunai" (the Cossack rode beyond the Danube; music and words by Semen Klymovsky).

In Classical Music

Israeli musicologist Yakov Soroker states that the end of the first melodic phrase of "Oi ne khody Hrytsiu" (Yes my Darling Daughter) contains a "signature" melody common in Ukrainian songs in general which he calls the "Hryts sequence" and gives a list of hundreds of Ukrainian folk songs from the Carpathians to the Kuban

Kuban

Kuban is a geographic region of Southern Russia surrounding the Kuban River, on the Black Sea between the Don Steppe, Volga Delta and the Caucasus...

 that contain this particular sequence. His estimation, after studying Z. Lysko's collection of 9,077 Ukrainian melodies was that 6% of Ukrainian folk songs contain the sequence.

Other scholars have also addressed the unique character and expressiveness of the Hryts sequence such as Alexander Serov

Alexander Serov

Alexander Nikolayevich Serov – was a Russian composer and music critic. He and his wife Valentina were the parents of painter Valentin Serov...

, who stated that "the refrain exudes a spirit of freedom that transports the listener to the steppes and is mixed with the sorrow of some unexpected tragedy."

Soroker states that the Hryts signature was used by composers: Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...

 (String Quartet no. 20, op. 9, no. 2; String quartet no. 25, op. 17, no 1; The Saviour's Seven last Words on the Cross, the Rondo of the D major Piano Concerto (composed 1795), Andante and variations for piano (1793)), Luigi Boccherini

Luigi Boccherini

Luigi Rodolfo Boccherini was an Italian classical era composer and cellist whose music retained a courtly and galante style while he matured somewhat apart from the major European musical centers. Boccherini is most widely known for one particular minuet from his String Quintet in E, Op. 11, No...

 (duet no. 2), Wolfgang A. Mozart (Symphonia concertante K. 364), L. van Beethoven, J. N. Hummel, Carl Maria von Weber

Carl Maria von Weber

Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school....

, Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

 (Ballade d'Ukraine), Felix Petyrek

Felix Petyrek

Felix Petyrek was an Austrian composer. He wrote stage works, songs, piano music in a Romantic style....

, Ivan Khandoshkin

Ivan Khandoshkin

Ivan Yevstafyevich Khandoshkin was a Russian violinist and composer. He has been described as "the finest Russian violinist of the eighteenth century". He studied under Tito Porta with other Italian influences being Domenico dall’Oglio and Pietro Peri...

, and others.

This legendary composer and singer was commemorated on a Ukrainian postage stamp in February 2000.