Iron Paporzi in The Word of Igor’s Campaign. What Is It or Who Is It?

Despite more than two century’s investigations of the famous early medieval Russian literal memorial “Slovo o Polku Igoreve” (“The Word of Igor`s Campaign”), it has a lot of so called “dark” places and words without accepted interpretations and explanations. Translations and interpretations for one of these words is being considered in this article — the word “paporzy” from the “dark” place of so called “zlato slovo”(“golden speech”) of Sviatoslav the Great Knyaz of Kiev (“Суть бо у ваю желѣзныи папорзи подъ шеломы латинскими”). Refering to the polish version of the word origin, that was used in a speech to knyazia (princes) of the western Russian
lands, neighbouring with Poland, a version of the polish poparcie (assistance) distortion is analyzed and conjecture for “poparzy” with explanation is presented corresponding to the ancient Russian word “pomochy” (help).