Kojoke Mambetaliev, Those who come to Chui are fed well, and thin people grow stout (legend)

Kojoke Mambetaliev, 91 years old, Talas province

In ancient times there lived a man named Kydyr-ake. He would often say: “Solto people are the most well-fed people, Sayak people are very smart, and it is better to have neither Sarybagysh nor Bugu”. When asked why he said such a thing, Kydyr-ake replied that Solto live in Chui valley, and whoever goes to Chui  are fed well, and thin people grow stout. He called Sayak people smart because they had people like Dyikanbai and Akmat. In the early morning they had a person play a surnai for them at sunrise (a musical instrument like a trumpet but with a long neck). Akmat had a beautiful wife named Apar. Once she invited the surnai player and ordered him to play a surnai the next morning for her and Akmat. The surnai player refused and said that Akmat would kill him for that. She replied: “If you don’t do it, I’ll kill you”. Fearing Apar, the surnai player played a surnai the following morning, letting Apar and Akmat know about the sunrise. Dyikanbai got up in a hurry, thinking that Akmat died. But Akmat was outside washing himself. When Akmat sat down for his meal he called the surnai player and asked him to fetch him the sword that was on the wall. He thought that he would take the surnai player’s head. But his wife came and said that it was not the surnai player that was guilty but her, and she put her head under his sword. Akmat could do nothing but put down his sword.

Akmat told his wife, “There will be a meeting in Duban kechuu, many people will come. Sayak, Kushchu, Saruu, Solto, all of them will come. I will settle in one place and Dyikanbai will settle in another place. We will see how many people would prefer to go to Dyikanbai and how many of them would come to me. You take three or four women and get on one camel and we will see how many days will come to you”. In the past people would solve their problems like this, without fighting. So Dyikanbai went to one place and Akmat went to another. Guests were visiting both of them. Three women settled on the hill. Who would recognize them, nobody went to visit them. So Apar came back with the other two women. “I am satisfied. I accept my fault. I admit that I was wrong. Please forgive me, my hero,” Apar said to the surnai player, and he presented him a nice coat. Akmat told Apar: “Apar you should know only your own duties. Please do not intervene in other men’s business. See what you did, so you do not repeat it again”. In the past, people’s lives were different.

There were many people like this among  the Solto and Sayak tribes. There were Eshkojo and Kanai from the Solto tribe. Jangarach was descended from Eshkojo and Baitik from Kanai. Bugu was from Kyljyr. There were two siblings and hunters named Asan and Uson. While hunting, they found a girl. Asan married that girl. The girl had two horns, because she was a daughter of a goat. Nobody knew about it. She gave birth to two sons. Once, when her brothers-in-law were going to hunting, she asked: “If you kill a female goat, can you please bring me its skin and its udder?”. When her brothers-in-law fulfilled her request and brought her what she asked, she laid it on the ground and started to suck the breast. While she was sucking the breast, with foam in her mouth, her husband came in. He pulled her by her scarf and her two horns were exposed. Since she was already a mother, she began to be called Bugu ene (Mother-Deer). In reality, these people were also Sarybagysh, as Sarybagysh and Kyljyr were siblings. It is just Kyljyr people that were renamed to Bugu.