From: joe_f@verizon.net   
      
   henry999@eircom.net (Henry) writes:   
      
   > Joe Fineman  wrote:   
   >   
   >> ...a gang of Volga boatmen (I suppose they were pirates of some   
   >> kind)...   
   >   
   > Actually, the Volga boatmen were the labourers who pulled the boats   
   > through unnavigable stretches of the river.   
      
   Well, then those weren't Volga boatmen.  They were Cossacks who   
   infested the Volga in some manner.  Aha!  Wikipedia to the rescue.   
   Razin was a 17th-century brigand who took advantage of the vexed   
   political situation to become ruler, for a while, of the Volga   
   region.  The song, and the story it tells, are later inventions.   
   --   
   ---  Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net   
      
   ||:  A lot of what people do doesn't make sense even as  :||   
   ||:  foolishness.                                        :||   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)