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In other words, "tenth water on kisiel" refers to a very distant relation. The saying is still used in modern Polish, just as ''kisiel'' is still a popular dessert. It's also a very ancient one, although originally it wasn't sweet at all. The very word "''kisiel''" comes from the verb "''kisić''", "to make sour". The ancient Slavic ''kisiel'' was a mouth-puckering white jelly made from a fermented mixture of water and oat or rye meal. A similar concoction is still used in Poland as the basis for ''żurek'', or white borscht, one of the most popular Polish soups. It was made just as Mickiewicz described it: by pouring water on oatmeal and leaving the starchy solution to ferment until it becomes sour and gelatinous enough to be cut with a knife. For ancient Slavs, this was one of the principal staples. A mythical land of plenty is described in Russian fairy tales as rivers of milk between banks of ''kisiel''. ''The Tale of Bygone Years'', a 12th-century chronicle of Kyivan Ruthenia (or Kievan Rus'), even tells a story of how ''kisiel'' saved the city of Belgorod from an invasion by the nomadic Pechenegs. During the siege, a respected old Belgorodian man advised his compatriots to dig a deep well, fill it with water and oat starch, and wait until it went sour. Then they invited Pecheneg envoys into the city to show them the well, let them try the ''kisiel'' and convince them that they were getting their food straight from the ground, so any further siege made no sense and it would be best for the Pechenegs to go back to the steppe and leave Belgorod alone.<ref>{{Cyt