If I have my liturgics correct, when an Orthodox bishop precesses into church to begin a service, the choir chants "Eis pola eti despota"---many years to the bishop (cognate with "despot" in English)

http://muzyk.ru/narod/gos_ak_rus_hor-ne_shumi_ty_mati_zelionaya_dubravushka.mp3

Miram: Thanks very much! Wow, that 3:27 clip only covered the first three lines -- performing the whole song would take almost half an hour.

The story about how the song got in the book is also quite interesting.
Pushkin's manuscript explicitly refers to a book of Russian songs compiled by Chulkov [] and edited by Novikov [] in 1780. However, it is believed that Vladimir Dal (author of the best-known dictionary of spoken Russian and almost a family member to LH) sang it to Pushkin, bringing it to the poet's attention and therefore to glory.
Even more interestingly, Dal states that the song ("both the words and the voice") was written personally by the famous bandit Ivan "Cain" Osipov (quite expressively nicknamed after the Biblical first murderer). This would of course explain the familiar conversation with the tsar.

Vanka (diminutive to Ivan) began his crime career around 1732, at the age of 14, by robbing one of the monarch's palaces of his golden ware. He rapidly rose through the ranks, turned double agent and soon became so influential with both officials and criminals that he got a another nick - "the Moscow boss". Finally putting him on trial required direct intervention of the Crown; Vanka was tortured and sent to Siberia for life.

What a great story -- I'm certainly glad I mentioned the song! (I'll have to ask Uncle Volodya to sing it for me...)

I am very fond of "The Captain's Daughter" - not least because there are so precious little truly good adventure stories in Russian litterature.

Speaking of Greek-to-Russian borrowings, I was vaguely surprised to learn that the Greek word for bed (κρεβάτι) had a cognate in Russian (кровать). Not sure how that one happened...

No mystery, I'm afraid; the Russians simply borrowed the Greek word.

Well, in a way, кровать is not so usual, because most borrowings from Greek have some Orthodox significance. Ever seen a bed in a church? ;)
Although there are probably scores of Biblical passages featuring the word, I think this may be one of the rarer cases when the borrowed word describes a borrowed object (кровать vs. полати, коник).

Don't forget Latin /grabatus/! Lewis&Short [Ludovicus et Brevis] claims it's Macedonian.

Кровать seems to appear only twice in the Synodal translation, in the Gospels, and I strongly doubt it is found in the Slavonic Bible. According to Vasmer, the word comes from Middle Greek κραββάτι(ο)ν yet not via Church Slavonic. Russian has other words for "bed" such as ложе, постель, одр. Кровать sounds too modern and specific -- it has to have legs, for one.

That's interesting. Serbocroatian: bed = krevet.