The Slavic Myths, page 17
Some Balkan rituals involve making cakes and then bringing them to running water. Part of the cake is thrown into the water and the rest is taken back home, where it is distributed to children, provided they eat it only inside the house. Smooth, egg-shaped stones can be taken out of a river or stream, then ‘washed’ in a cloth brought from home; the stones represent the souls of the deceased, and each is named after one of them. Candles are then lit for them all. In other variants, water is splashed when a journey begins or when a dead person is taken out of the house, and graves are occasionally splashed with water. Pouring or splashing water is also used to summon rain in times of drought, and to bring luck. Whenever I left home to take exams at university, my grandmother in Belgrade used to ‘pour water’.
Water birds can also have magical properties, particularly in connecting the living with the dead. Swans, cranes and other waterfowl appear not only in traditional fairy tales but also in relatively recent popular culture: Mark Bernes, a Soviet singer, recorded the song ‘Zhuravli’ (Cranes) in 1969. Based on a text by the Dagestani poet Rasul Gamzatov, it tells of unburied soldiers on the battlefields who turn into white cranes. Bearers of souls, healers – these are the roles of water birds, preserved in the collective memory.
All of this makes sense when we consider that water is the primary material in many mythical contexts. The beginning of the world sees land emerge from water; in Greek mythology, the dead cross the River Styx to reach the land of the shadows.61 Water provides boundaries and borders to territories. Etiological and cosmological myths of all Slavic cultures include rivers and oceans that surround the world.62 That is why Slavic myths are so full of watery elements, from sea kings to giant fish to floating cities. Every spring, well, river and lake has its inhabitants, real and mythical.
BANNIKI
Among the anthropomorphic inhabitants of the waters and their immediate surroundings, we find she-demons who protect traditional Russian steam bathhouses. These little structures, called banya, take the form of log cabins.63 They resemble saunas, with a wood-fired stove to provide steam and heat the water, and wooden benches around it. Sometimes women would give birth there, lending them an association with vital force. There are specific rituals associated with bathing in a banya. Hats made of felt are often worn to protect the head from the intense heat, as well as felt mitts – temperatures inside can surpass 90° Celsius, approaching 200° Fahrenheit. A mat is brought to sit on, so one’s skin does not come into direct contact with the heated wood. Herbs can be added to the steaming water. Dried wormwood was traditionally hung on the walls and bunches of dried leaves, particularly white birch, called banny venik, were used to fan or massage the body, or dipped in water to soothe the skin.
Banya are found in various northern Slavic countries and are popular places of divination in myths thanks to the interaction with a bannik, a bathhouse spirit. These are either she-demons or small, impish old men who should be invited to share the hot bath the third time that wood is added to the fire to warm the waters. They can help and heal, but also cause harm: black hens are sacrificed to appease them, and if a would-be bather inadvertently disturbs a bannik while bathing, they will be scalded by boiling water or drowned in the bath. In order not to offend them as pagan beings, no Christian images are allowed in a banya.
A good reason for inviting a bannik to share your bath is that they can predict the future. One version of the tradition involves first stoking the fire that heats the waters a third time, then turning one’s back to the water while standing in the doorway. The bannik will softly caress your back if your future is bright, and scratch you with clawed fingers if not.
RUSALKAS
Slavic creatures have lately made their way into pop culture beyond the Slavic world. The folklore-inspired video game Black Book allows the player to take on the role of Vasilissa, an apprentice witch who does battle with a bannik. And the hugely popular Witcher novels by the Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski – adapted for a video game series as well as a Netflix TV show – are packed with Slavic monsters for the titular character, a mercenary monster-slayer, to battle. Among them is a rusalka, a nymph associated with water.
Rusalkas are demonic creatures found in forests, especially among conifers, in fields at night, and around water. In appearance and behaviour they are broadly similar to the nymphs of other ancient cultures. Aquatic rusalkas, capable of living in or out of the water, are presented as near-nude beauties with long hair, sometimes tinted green. Their beauty and song, siren-like, attract men, whom they then drag into the water and drown by tangling them up in their long hair. In rare cases they might take a man underwater and keep him alive, enthroning him as a king of the underwater world. They have the power of foresight and healing, but sexual seduction is what they are most associated with.
Russian researchers have noted that the conceptualization of the rusalka changed significantly during the Romantic period owing to the influence of Western culture. Motifs of guilt and sin, typical of Christianity, appeared where they previously had not. According to more recent myths, rusalkas are created when someone drowns, whether by accident, murder or suicide, especially pregnant unmarried girls, or children. Rusalkas sometimes marry a beloved man who stays on land, but as wives they are unstable, often running away with their child or leaving it for their husband to raise alone.
Rusalkas appear in numerous works of literature, art and music. Pushkin, Gogol, Shevchenko, the Czech composer Anton Dvorak (who wrote an opera called Rusalka) and many others reference them.64 The Slovenian philologist Franz Miklošič believed that the name originated from the ancient Roman summer holiday of Rosalia, when roses and violets were woven into wreaths and set upon the figures of household gods and on the graves of ancestors. Russian customs preserve the hanging of wreaths on the branches of trees by the water and the ritual ‘leading’ of a girl, representing a rusalka, who wears a wreath adorned with flowers. The rusalka’s day is Thursday, especially the Holy Thursday before Easter.
VILAS
Unlike rusalkas, vilas (roughly translated as ‘fairies’) in southern Slavic cultures have not changed much as a consequence of Western influence.65 They inhabit the same areas as rusalkas, and those near or in the water behave similarly to rusalkas, but they are less overtly sexualized. Rather than being naked they are often lightly dressed in white, and sometimes they have hooves like a goat’s rather than feet. They are talented singers and dancers and they don’t like to be spied on: they will severely punish a covert observer when they find him, or if he accidentally sees a ‘fairy ring’ (a group of vilas engaged in a ritual dance). That said, vilas have also been said to cure madness by dancing around a patient, as mental illness was sometimes thought to be caused by a vila entering someone’s body – she could then be tempted out of the body in order to join the fairy dance.
Vilas do not take kindly to being outsung, and they’ll punish someone who sings better than they do. But they are not evil. They willingly take in lost or abandoned infants and even breastfeed them, conferring special powers and strength upon the child. They can become ritual siblings to humans: the terms for this, pobratim and posestrima, incorporate the words for brother, brat, and sister, sestra.66 This special relationship, based on a kind of oral contract, guarantees that the vila will provide sisterly protection and aid to the other sibling, defending him or her against violence, the law or any other authority. Ritual siblinghood is an Indo-European institution, characteristic of a warrior society in which there has historically been a real need for strong alliances. It is widely present across many Slavic cultures, but is best known in the Balkans.67
Vilas symbolize women’s freedom and independence, their resistance to partisanship and to rules – especially restrictions on mobility. While most women in Slavic societies historically wore their hair back, often in long braids, vilas wear theirs loose as a symbol of freedom. This symbolism remained strong even in the 20th century. During the Second World War, women in Bosnia ritually unravelled their hair to ensure safe passage for the partisans, Yugoslav guerrillas battling the Nazis. In the vocabulary of ritual, unbound hair represents the pouring of water, flowing down one’s back like a waterfall.
Water vilas have special knowledge about medicinal plants, so they can help with diseases and injuries. The healing they provide may take place in a dream experienced while sleeping beside a body of water. Their punishment for anyone they catch spying is to take away the offender’s legs or arms, or blind them – conversely, they can also cure blindness. Sometimes it is enough to wash one’s eyes with water in which a vila has bathed.
WATERMEN
While dragons are prevalent in most world myth systems, they are few and far between among the Slavs. Where they do appear, they take the form of a male aquatic creature. All Slavic dragons are male and live exclusively in water, only emerging to catch and eat cattle, or sometimes people. The dragon regains strength when he dips his head back into the water.
Although the dragon is largely a syncretic demon, influenced by biblical representations of monsters and the legend of Saint George slaying a dragon, it does partly originate in the water demons of Slavic cultures. A dragon is a guardian of the water, especially of mountains that are supposed to maintain the reserve of water. There are many such myths in Slovenia.
Male watery creatures, unlike seductive rusalkas and vilas, are described as green, slimy, monstrous beings with scales (rather like the Creature from the Black Lagoon), but they know how to transform into handsome men to seduce and kidnap a girl. Such is the theme of Slovenian poet France Prešeren’s poem ‘Povodni Mož’, on which the legend that accompanies this chapter is based. In it, a conceited young beauty from the city of Ljubljana, who refuses all suitors, is punished by being kidnapped by the Waterman (‘Vodni mož’). This may originally have been Prešeren’s revenge fantasy against the object of his unrequited desire, Julija Primic.
Watery creatures have a special relationship with sailors and fishermen. They can sink a boat, but they are also vulnerable to being caught in fishermen’s nets. With the entwinement of pagan beliefs and Christianity, the traditional functions of a water creature began to be taken over by Saint Nicholas. According to legend, he was martyred by having an anchor hung from his neck and then being thrown into the ocean. As a consequence he was considered a patron saint of sailors, protecting travellers on seas and rivers. In an old Serbian oral ballad that offers a complex tapestry of Christian, pagan Greek and pagan Slavic beliefs, Saint Nicholas is invited by God to go to the forest and prepare boats to transport souls of the dead across the river to the underworld.
7
FIREBIRD
SLAVIC MAGIC
FIREBIRD
And in my dreams I see myself on a wolf’s back
Riding along a forested path
To do battle with a sorcerer-tsar
In that land where a princess sits under lock and key,
Pining behind massive walls.
There gardens surround a palace all of glass.
There firebirds sing by night
And peck at golden fruit.
From Yakov Polonsky, ‘A Winter’s Journey’ (1844)68
There once lived a sorcerer-tsar with thirteen adopted daughters and thirteen adopted sons. They all dwelt in a castle – and it was no ordinary castle. The keep was shaped like an egg and made entirely of glass, which the sorcerer-tsar’s magic protected against hail and lightning. The glass caught the fire of the sun to keep warm his most prized possession: a tree that bore golden apples.
Golden apples that someone had been stealing.
The sorcerer-tsar set his guards to watch the golden apple tree in the orchard all night, but they found no one. After all, how could someone from outside get into the enchanted glass castle?
Not long afterwards, the youngest of the sorcerer-tsar’s children, Prince Ivan Tsarevitch, a clever lad just emerging into manhood, was playing in the orchard when he came upon an enormous feather like nothing he had ever seen before. It glowed and was warm to the touch, and its colour was a mixture of every hue of orange and red with flickers of blue here and there, shimmering and shivering in the gentlest breeze.
He brought the feather to his father, who sat brooding on his throne, playing with a golden egg pendant that he always wore around his neck.
‘But this is a feather from a firebird! The firebirds were once my pets, living happily enough, it seemed, in the glass garden. I’ve not seen them for centuries and I would dearly love to once more feel the burning of their song in my ears. Ivan, if you can find and bring me a firebird, I will reward you and make you my heir.’
Prince Ivan, who had never imagined he had a chance at inheriting the kingdom, what with twelve older brothers in line before him, accepted the challenge and set off on his horse, Alexander. Together they wandered through the forests of the kingdom, but nowhere did Prince Ivan see any sign of the firebird.
One day he was feeling hopeless and spoke, to himself, really, about his plight, as he brushed Alexander’s mane.
‘It seems I’ll never find a firebird,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I should give up, but I fear that my father will have me thrown into a pot of boiling water if I return empty-handed. He can be grumpy that way…’
‘You’re not going to become soup,’ said someone in reply.
Prince Ivan looked around, surprised.
‘Over here. You missed a spot behind my ear.’ It was his horse, Alexander.
‘I didn’t know you could speak,’ replied Prince Ivan.
‘You’d never held a firebird’s feather before,’ replied the horse.
‘I don’t suppose you’d know how I can find the…you know, the entire firebird?’ Ivan asked sheepishly.
‘I do,’ said the horse.
‘…And?’ encouraged Ivan hopefully.
‘Let’s share a bag of oats, and I’ll tell you.’
Alexander explained that to catch a firebird, Ivan would have to sow an untilled field with kernels of corn. When the light of the full moon hit the corn, it would spark into blue flames that would draw firebirds to them.
And so Prince Ivan did as his horse instructed. He sowed kernels of corn in a field and waited in the shadow of the forest until the full moon rose. Sure enough, the light of the moon struck the corn and the corn reflected back a blue flame. From over the treetops behind Ivan, a shadow swooped and settled down upon the field.
It was an enormous bird, far larger than an eagle, and with feathers that appeared to dance in every tone of red and orange, as if the bird were engulfed in flames that did not harm it. Ivan sprang forward and tackled the bird from behind. They rolled through the field, wrestling as the bird sought to shake him off. The heat from the firebird singed Ivan’s clothing, but he held on.
At last the firebird stopped struggling and turned its raptor head to look Ivan straight in the eye.
‘This is not the way to win the kingdom,’ she said.
‘But my father asked that I bring you to him,’ Prince Ivan replied, still breathless from the fight and afraid that the bird would slip like mist from his grip. ‘If I bring you back he will make me his heir. And if I don’t, I fear that he will make me into soup.’
‘You might be his heir, but you will never be tsar,’ the bird said. ‘Your father is Koschei the Deathless. Have you ever wondered why he is called this?’
‘Because he hasn’t died yet?’ Ivan asked.
‘Because he cannot die,’ said the bird. ‘He has already lived for centuries and will live for centuries more. He is not a good man.’
‘I sensed that,’ said Ivan, ‘what with his frequent threats to make me and my siblings into soup.’
‘If you let me go, I will help you to inherit the throne. And I will bring you the princess of your dreams.’
This sounded like a better deal to Prince Ivan, and so he released his grip on the firebird. She launched skyward and, for a moment, he feared that he had been tricked. But the firebird turned in the air and swooped back down towards him. Then he feared he had been tricked again and was about to be torn to shreds by her talons. However, the firebird landed on the ground beside him with one of her own feathers in her beak, which she offered to him. A single tail feather, still radiating heat.
‘With this feather, you can call on me to help you once,’ she said. ‘Up ahead, the path splits into three ways. Choose the proper way and one of my kin will tell you how to capture the kingdom.’
Then the firebird disappeared beyond the clouds.
Prince Ivan tucked the feather into the band of his hat, mounted Alexander and set off in the direction the firebird had indicated. Soon they came to a huge boulder standing at a point where three distinct paths stretched out before them. The stone was carved with ancient letters that Ivan could not read, but which he somehow understood.
‘Choose a path,’ the stone letters stated. ‘The one on the left will lead you to hunger and cold. The one in the middle will lead you to live, but your horse will die. The one on the right will lead you to die, but your horse shall live.’
Prince Ivan looked down at Alexander, to reassure himself that, while the horse could talk, he could not read, and he set off down the middle path.
Not far along the path the woods closed in, blotting out the moonlight, and a howl sent shivers through Ivan’s body. Suddenly a giant grey wolf leapt upon them, knocking Ivan off Alexander’s back. Ivan leapt up and drew his sword, but too late – Alexander was no more. The great grey wolf, twice the normal size, glared at Ivan with gore-soaked jaws. She looked ready to spring but saw the feather on Ivan’s hat and smiled. Not an I’m-going-to-eat-you smile, but a friendly one.
