Slavic archive

The bathhouse and the fire serpent

The bannik, spirit of the bathhouse, was described as a huge black figure carrying a dirty broom. The bathhouse after midnight was his domain; its uncanny smell and its isolation made it an especially unsafe place at night. A story from the district tells of a trader who encountered this being and was badly harmed.

Read full article: Folk Demonology of Kozelsk Peasants. Part 3 →

In fairy tales about the selection of a king among birds, the wren plays an important role. Tale types ATU 221, 221A, and B tell a story in which birds decide to choose as king the one who can fly the highest. In Ukrainian and Polish variants, the eagle wins; in the West Ukrainian, the crane; and in the Lusatian, the stork. However, a small bird, having hidden in the plumage of a large bird, flies out at the last moment and ends up higher than all the others. It is thanks to this feat that it gains the right to become the tsar (king) of birds. Hence, the wren is also known by names such as "little king", "little tsar", and "bird king".

Gura. Symbolism of Animals in Slavic Folk Tradition, p. 710

Illustration: Arthur Rackham — The Wren and the Bear — 1902

Possession (hiccuping sickness and shrieking sickness) in Russian tradition is, as a rule, a female ailment, however, there are exceptions. For instance, N.I. Mikhailov in "Biblioteka dlya chteniya" (Library for Reading) for 1859 describes the case of the peasant Khomenko.

According to him, a peasant bewitched him because Khomenko had slighted him by not offering him a glass of wine.

Morozenko gave me a glass of wine to drink. I drank it and choked, as if a nail had lodged crosswise in my throat. I felt somehow afraid. Such a fever came upon me. I lay down, fell asleep, and saw before me a white cat, and its muzzle was exactly like Morozenko's, it fixed its green eyes on me... I would wake up in fright - it wasn't there. I would fall asleep again, again the white cat, it looks, and then suddenly it would pounce on me, and sink its teeth into my throat, while scratching my stomach with its claws... So it tormented me the whole night. I got up in the morning, such anguish, I wander here and there, cannot find a place, and the demon kept driving me to the river, forcing me to seek death, but as soon as I remember where I am, I make the sign of the cross and it becomes easier.

Then something started beating me like that, the demon within me began to shout, I fell down and don't remember what happened to me. My brother-in-law found me in the steppe and brought me home. So since then it beats me from time to time, and when you go to church, there it starts to shout even louder.

Mikhailov N.I. Folk Superstitions. Belief in Bewitchment and Healing. // Biblioteka dlya chteniya (Library for Reading), 1859, VIII

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN SUPERSTITIONS
THE BLUD

A malevolent spirit (blud) is an unclean force.

On the Tersky Coast of the White Sea, the term "blud" is recorded for an unclean force that derails the proper course of life and abducts people and livestock (the term "blud" can also mean "thief"). An example is given: "I lived in Pyalitsa as a nanny. One day, the master and mistress went to dig for berries. Deer ran up to them. The master told his wife, 'You finish digging, and I will go look at the deer.' He left his wife—the wife waited; she called out, but Ivan was not there. So she went home—maybe he had gone home. But he was not there.

They began performing rituals to bring him back. Evidently, he had stepped on an unclean path; the devil had snatched him. They performed the rituals. His wife then had a dream: 'He will be brought to the window and shown at seven o'clock. Take him at that very moment!'

I started playing with the child, and the mistress went to milk the cow. I was playing with the child on the floor. I looked: the master was brought outside the window! His arms were stretched out like that! But the mistress was not there—I couldn't grab him. And they were too late. When they came out of the house, he was already torn entirely into matchbox-sized pieces.

Another time, a cow was led away. He brought the cow—you had to take it at that very moment, as instructed. They did not take it at that very moment—it was torn into pieces!

That's how the blud can play such malicious tricks!"

Marina Vlasova

An interesting point: mint and parsley are plants that attract rusalkas:

"A rusalka rushes at a maiden and asks her: 'Wormwood or parsley?' If she answers: 'Wormwood,' — the rusalka will run away; but if: 'Parsley,' — the water beauty will tickle the earthly one to death and drag her into the river. At the word: 'Wormwood,' the rusalka usually responds with annoyance: 'May you yourself vanish!' And if she addresses a man, then: 'May you yourself vanish; you are not mine.' — At the word 'parsley' the rusalka says: 'You are my darling!' and then tickles."

Such dialogues are also possible: "What did mother cook?" — "Borscht and wormwood… here is wormwood for you, may you yourself perish!"; "Here is parsley for you!" — "You are our darling!"; "Here is mint for you!" — "You are our mother!" (variant: "here is a home for you!").

(cited from: Kolosova V.B. Lexicon and Symbolism of Slavic Folk Botany. Ethnolinguistic Aspect. — M., 2009.)

A Lubny-district tale tells of a woman whose husband had died while away in military service. Longing to see him once more, she said so to her mother. That night he came to her house and asked whether she wished to see him beside her.

She clutched her small child. The dead man stopped at the ceiling beam and said that her soul had been saved because she had taken an angel in her arms; otherwise she would have learned what it meant to wish for his return. He left like wind, opening the doors behind him.

V. P. Miloradovych, Ukrainian Witch: Essays on Ukrainian Demonology (Kyiv: Veselka, 1993), “The Dead.”

Shape-shifting. Compared to a common witch, the witch less frequently uses her shape-shifting abilities, and her range of metamorphoses is less diverse. Most often, she assumed the form of a night moth, butterfly, or bird (hens, turkeys, geese, black birds), less frequently she transformed into a toad, cat, dog, or wolf; her manifestations could also include sparks, fire, or glowing bodies.

The typical manifestation of the witch as a butterfly, which in folk consciousness is perceived as the embodiment and symbol of the soul (of an evil spirit, or the soul of a deceased ancestor), aligns with widespread notions of dual-souled beings.

Read full article: Witches in Slavic Belief. Part 4: The South Slavic Veshtitsa →

In Zhitomyr Polesie, shepherds tease the oriole, attributing to it the role of a mare. Such dialogues often occur between two orioles: "Oriole, oriole, suck the sow!" — one oriole replies: "And you, the mare! And you, the mare!" In some cases, the word "basket" is present in the oriole's cry. For example, Luciya might ask: "Luciya, go pick mushrooms!" — and the oriole will answer: "I have no basket! Go ask a neighbor." If Luciya does not want to go, the oriole adds: "If you don't want to go, then lick my ass!"

Accusations of theft are also present. For example, in the Gomel region, the oriole says: "You stole the axe!" Among Russians, the oriole persistently asks: "Do you see?" And among Poles, it slyly reproaches a person: "Ah, you see!"

Gura. Symbolism of Animals in Slavic Folk Tradition, p. 736

In the folk legends of the South Slavs, the eagle plays the role of a leader of hail clouds. This belief is widespread in Bulgaria, Serbia, and other countries in the region. The eagle is considered a protector of fields from bad weather: it fights against clouds, draws them away from the earth, and saves the harvest. Therefore, killing an eagle or destroying its nest is forbidden, and those who violate this prohibition may face serious consequences — injuries, illnesses, or misfortunes in the family.

These beliefs are connected with the faith in the magical power of the eagle. For example, in Bulgarian belief, the eagle is able to visit the celestial and underworlds. A Russian riddle also mentions the eagle's connection with the heavens: "An eagless flies across the blue sky, spread its wings, reached the sun."

— Gura. Symbolism of Animals in Slavic Folk Tradition, p. 611

In the village of Nikolskoye, a woman bore a son by a serpent. He was black, with hooves and bulging eyes without eyelids. The men deliberated for a while, then killed him and buried him in the earth.

D. N. Sadovnikov, Tales and Legends of the Samara Region (1884), no. 71c, p. 237; recorded from A. V. Chegodayev in Simbirsk

A husband and wife went to the bathhouse. The husband finished washing and wanted to leave. He called his wife, but she would not come: she lay on the bench, enjoying the steam.

Suddenly a devil cried outside the window like a peacock. The husband ran out, then remembered his wife and rushed back. But the unclean spirit would not let him in. It threw only his wife's skin out of the window.

‘Here's your face,’ it said, ‘and here's your wife's skin!’

D. N. Sadovnikov, Tales and Legends of the Samara Region (1884), no. 69b, p. 230

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN SUPERSTITIONS
VAMPIRE

VAMPIRE — a blood-sucking shape-shifter; a ghoul (upyr), a sorcerer (vedmak).

This term is not widespread in Russia. According to V. Dal, it "is attributed to a fairy-tale shape-shifter who, after death, flies about as a blood-sucker, gnawing people to death" <Dal, 1880>.

"The concept of the bloodthirsty vampire penetrated from Western Europe only into Ukraine and Belarus (Ukrainian upir, Belarusian vupor). <…> The vampire, like the 'unquiet dead' (zalozhniy pokoynik — someone who died an unnatural or premature death), is not subject to decay. He lies in the coffin face down, his face red. At night, he comes to the house of his former enemy, and sometimes even a friend or relative, lies on the chest of his victim, presses his lips to their heart, and drinks hot blood. His tongue is as sharp as a snake's stinger. A person who has become a victim of a vampire develops only a small, barely visible wound, yet they become increasingly pale and perish. Just as with the unquiet dead, an aspen stake is driven into the chest of vampires lying in the grave, and after this, their nocturnal wanderings cease. In some places, Ukrainians believe that a living person carries the dead vampire on their back. It is believed that vampires of both sexes <…> bring and spread various epidemic diseases" <Zelenin, 1991>. In Great Russian beliefs, creatures that resemble vampires to some extent are heretics and ghouls.

Marina Vlasova

Malevolent Actions. Without a doubt, stealing milk from cows occupies the first place. For this purpose, the witch collects dew from field boundaries and pastures by dragging a linen cloth, apron, or shirt across the grass, then wrings out the fabric to feed her own cow, or simply hangs the item used to collect the dew inside her house, and milk flows from it.

Among other, rarer ways of stealing "abundance" (that is, prosperity or profit), the witch might steal fat from pigs, causing pigs in neighboring yards to waste away while their fat is mysteriously transferred to the witch's pigs. She might also twist knots in rye or flax to steal the harvest or otherwise harm the owners of the field, or pluck feathers from chickens to steal their egg-laying capacity..

Read full article: Witches in Slavic Belief. Part 2: The Polessian Witch →

Among the enduring theories in Russian ethnology is one advanced by D. K. Zelenin, according to which East Slavic peasant culture distinguishes more or less strictly between “two categories of the dead”: roditeli (“ancestors who died of old age,” “the honoured and respected dead”) and zalozhnye (“those who died before the natural end of their lives,” “the unclean dead … often even harmful and dangerous”).

Zelenin did, in fact, accurately describe peasant beliefs and customs concerning “those who died unnatural deaths,” as well as sorcerers and witches. His attempt to interpret such beliefs in terms of a supposedly existing category of zalozhnye dead in peasant culture, however, appears to have been mistaken.

First and foremost, the scholar misinterpreted the dialect term zalozhnye. Zelenin believed that this word from the Vyatka region derived from the verb zalozhit’ (“to cover over”), and that an older designation for these dead was the participle zalozhennye (“covered over”), since their bodies were not buried in the earth but covered with boards or stakes.

I believe that this peasant term derives from one of the dialect meanings of the verb zalozhit’: “to forget” or “to abandon.” It thus refers to the “forgotten” dead—those left without ritual commemoration.

Alexander A. Panchenko, “The Dead: ‘Good’, ‘Evil’, and Something In Between” (Otechestvennye zapiski, no. 5, 2013).

The White Grandfather is a spirit dwelling in the forest; a leshy.

In the beliefs of peasants from Olonets province, the White Grandfather is a kind, righteous forest spirit. He is described as "a tall, grey-haired man, wrapped from head to toe in white clothes." He "does only good and helps people. They feel a special reverence and fear towards him, rarely uttering his name."

Read full article: ЭНЦИКЛОПЕДИЯ РУССКИХ СУЕВЕРИЙ →

In Perm mythological stories, the words "demon" and "devil" (usually in the plural form) and their suffix-derived variants are traditionally used to designate a sorcerer's helper spirits, which he sends into a person to cause illness or other harmful effects: "There is one sitting inside me already, and not just one either.

I didn't wear a cross back then, so the sorcerers gave me something to drink and bound me. They were envious of our family. And now the demon Egorka lives inside me. He has lived here for thirty years. The sorcerers slipped him to me in some kvass.".

Read full article: Bes and Chort in the Mythology of Perm Krai →

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN SUPERSTITIONS

BADAY, BADYA, BADYAY, BADYAYKA

Baday, Badya, Badyay, and Badyayka refer to a bogeyman used to frighten children.

"Don't cry, Badya will take you away!" (Vologda)

The appearance of Baday is vague and mysterious. It is a dreadful being, often mute, armless, and sometimes lame. It abducts children.

According to O. A. Cherepanova's observations, Badya in some contexts is "a lame beggar, in others with a withered arm, in yet others, a speaker with a nasal voice. He speaks poorly, always mumbling 'badya da badya'." (Vologda)
<Cherepanova, 1996>

Marina Vlasova