Episode Details

Semetey is grown, and the forty friends his father left him are old men. When he calls them to ride, they saddle for him one last time and do not come back. He overtakes them on the road and pleads with them as a son pleads, with the strap around his own neck and his head bowed low, and still they ride on. He comes home alone, and that same hour the wives of two of the forty give birth to twin boys, one born holding a rose, the other a dark clot of blood. Semetey names them Kul Choro and Kan Choro and raises them as his own companions. Then come the wooing of Ai Chorok, the night raid that drives off six thousand horses, and Kul Choro alone against six companies to win back the racer Tai Burul. And at the end, enemies sit down together and make kinship: Umutoy becomes the uncle, Semetey the nephew. From the earliest written Manas, recorded from Kyrgyz singers in 1862–1869 and published by Wilhelm Radlov in 1885 (Proben der Volkslitteratur, Part V), in a fresh English translation made for KacheliTV. This is the Manas of the first singers ever written down, not the later giant tellings.

Chapters:

00:00 The Forty Ride Away

03:44 Semetey Pleads with the Forty

05:46 The Twins Are Named

08:12 The Wooing of Ai Chorok

11:46 The Herds Are Driven Off

15:12 Tai Burul Won Back

19:41 The Meeting on the Road

22:36 The Field Is Held

25:30 Uncle and Nephew

KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.