Russian Fairy Tales
Rusalka
The
Rusalkas are female water-spirits, who occupy a position which
corresponds in many respects with that filled by the elves and fairies
of Western Europe. The origin of their name seems to be doubtful, but
it appears to be connected with rus, an old Slavonic word for a stream,
or with ruslo, the bed of a river, and with several other kindred
words, such as rosá, dew, which have reference to water. They are
generally
represented under the form of beauteous maidens with full and
snow-white bosoms, and with long and slender limbs. Their feet are
small, their eyes are wild, their faces are fair to see, but their
complexion is pale, their expression anxious. Their hair is long and
thick and wavy, and green as is the grass. Their dress is either a
covering of green leaves, or a long white shift, worn without a girdle.
At times they emerge from the waters of the lake or river in which they
dwell, and sit upon its banks, combing and plaiting their flowing
locks, or they cling to a mill-wheel; and turn round with it amid the
splash of the stream. If any one happens to approach, they fling
themselves into the waters, and there divert themselves, and try to
allure him to join them. Whomsoever they get hold of they tickle to
death 6. Witches alone can bathe with them unhurt.
In certain
districts bordering on the sea the people believe, or used to believe,
in marine Rusalkas, who are supposed, in some places, as, for instance,
about Astrakhan, to raise storms and vex shipping. But as a general
rule the Rusalkas are looked upon in Russia as haunting lakes and
streams, at the bottom of which they usually dwell in crystal halls,
radiant with gold and silver and precious stones. Sometimes, however,
they are not so sumptuously housed,
but have to make for
themselves nests out of straw and feathers collected during the "Green
Week," the seventh after Easter. If a Rusalka's hair becomes dry she
dies, and therefore she is generally afraid of going far from the
water, unless, indeed, she has a comb with her. So long as she has a
comb she can always produce a flood by passing it through her waving
locks.
In some places they are fond of spinning, in others they
are given to washing linen. During the week before Whitsuntide, as many
songs testify, they sit upon trees, and ask for linen garments. Up to
the present day, in Little-Russia, it is customary to hang on the
boughs of oaks and other trees, at that time of year, shifts and rags
and skeins of thread, all intended as a present to the Rusalkas. In
White-Russia the peasants affirm that during that week the forests are
traversed by naked women and children, and whoever meets them, if he
wishes to escape a premature death, must fling them a handkerchief, or
some scrap torn from his dress.
On the approach of winter the
Rusalkas disappear, and do not show themselves again until it is over.
In Little-Russia they are supposed to appear on the Thursday in Holy
Week, a day which in olden times was dear to them, as well as to many
other spiritual beings. In the Ukraine the Thursday before Whitsuntide
is called the Great Day, or Easter Sunday, of the Rusalkas. During the
days called the "Green Svyatki," at Whitsuntide, when every home is
adorned with boughs and green leaves, no
one dares to work for fear
of offending the Rusalkas. Especially must women abstain from sewing or
washing linen; and men from weaving fences and the like, such
occupations too closely resembling those of the supernatural weavers
and washers. It is chiefly at that time that the spirits leave their
watery abodes, and go strolling about the fields and forests,
continuing to do so until the end of June. All that time their voices
may be heard in the rustling or sighing of the breeze, and the splash
of running water betrays their dancing feet. At that time the
peasant-girls go into the woods, and throw garlands to the Rusalkas,
asking for rich husbands in return, or float them down a stream, seeing
in their movements omens of future happiness or sorrow.
After
St. Peter's day, June 29, the Rusalkas dance by night beneath the moon,
and in Little-Russia and Galicia, where Rusalkas (or Mavki as they are
there called) have danced, circles of darker, and of richer grass are
found in the fields. Sometimes they induce a shepherd to play to them.
All night long they dance to his music: in the morning a hollow marks
the spot where his foot has beaten time. Sometimes a man encounters
Rusalkas who begin to writhe and contort themselves after a strange
fashion. Involuntarily he imitates their gestures, and for the rest of
his life he is deformed, or is a victim to St. Vitus' dance. Any one
who treads upon the linen which the Rusalkas have laid out to dry loses
all his strength, or becomes a cripple; those who desecrate the
Rusalnaya (or Rusalkas') week by working are
punished by the loss of
their cattle and poultry. At times the Rusalkas entice into their
haunts both youths and maidens, and tickle them to death, or strangle
or drown them.
The Rusalkas have much to do with the harvest,
sometimes making it plenteous, and at other times ruining it by rain
and wind. The peasants in White-Russia say that the Rusalkas dwell amid
the standing corn; and in Little-Russia it is believed that on
Whit-Sunday Eve they go out to the corn-fields, and there, with joyous
singing and clapping of hands, they scamper through the rye or hang on
to its stalks, and swing to and fro, so that the corn undulates as if
beneath a strong wind.
In some parts of Russia there is
performed, immediately after the end of the Whitsuntide festival, the
ceremony of expelling the Rusalkas. On the first Monday of the "Peter's
Fast" a figure made of straw is draped in woman's clothes, so as to
represent a Rusalka. Afterwards a Khorovod is formed, and the assembled
company go out to the fields with dance and song, she who holds the
straw Rusalka in her hand bounding about in the middle of the choral
circle. On arriving at the fields the singers form two bodies, one of
which attacks the figure, while the other defends it. Eventually it is
torn to pieces, and the straw of which it was made is thrown to the
winds, after which the performers return home, saying they have
expelled the Rusalka. In the Government of Tula the women and girls go
out to the fields during the "Green Week," and chase the
Rusalka,
who is supposed to be stealing the grain. Having made a straw figure,
they take it to the banks of a stream and fling it into the water. In
some districts the young people run about the fields on Whit-Sunday
Eve, waving brooms, and crying, "Pursue! pursue!" There are people who
affirm that they have seen the hunted Rusalkas running out of the
corn-fields into the woods, and have heard their sobs and cries.
Besides
the full-grown Rusalkas there are little ones, having the appearance of
seven-year-old girls. These are supposed, by the Russian peasants, to
be the ghosts of still-born children, or such as have died before there
was time to baptize them. Such children the Rusalkas are in the habit
of stealing after death, taking them from their graves, or even from
the cottages in which they lie, and carrying them off to their
subaqueous dwellings. Every Whitsuntide, for seven successive years,
the souls of these children fly about, asking to be christened. If any
person who hears one of them lamenting will exclaim, "I baptize thee in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," the
soul of that child will be saved, and will go straight to heaven. A
religious service, annually performed on the first Monday of the
"Peter's Fast," in behalf of an unbaptized child will be equally
efficacious. But if the stray soul, during seven years, neither hears
the baptismal formula pronounced, nor feels the effect of the divine
service, it becomes enrolled for ever in the ranks of the Rusalkas. The
same fate befalls those babes
whom their mothers have cursed
before they were born, or in the interval between their birth and their
baptism. Such small Rusalkas, who abound among the Little-Russian
Mavki, are evidently akin to our own fairies. Like them they make the
grass grow richly where they dance, they float on the water in
egg-shells, and some of them are sadly troubled by doubts about a
future state. At least it is believed in the Government of Astrakhan
that the sea Rusalkas come to the surface and ask mariners, "Is the end
of the world near at hand?" Besides the children of whom mention has
been made, women who kill themselves, and all those who are drowned,
choked, or strangled, and who do not obtain Christian burial, are
liable to become Rusalkas. During the Rusalka week the relatives of
drowned or strangled persons go out to their graves, taking with them
pancakes, and spirits, and red eggs. The eggs are broken, and the
spirits poured over the graves, after which the remnants are left for
the Rusalkas, these lines being sung:--
Queen Rusalka,
Maiden fair,
Do not destroy the soul,
Do not cause it to be choked,
And we will make obeisance to thee.
On
the people who forget to do this the Rusalkas will wreak their
vengeance 7. In the Saratof Government the Rusalkas are held in bad
repute. There
they are described as hideous, humpbacked,
hairy creatures, with sharp claws, and an iron hook with which they try
to seize on passers-by. If any one ventures to bathe in a river on
Whit-Sunday, without having uttered a preliminary prayer, they
instantly drag him down to the bottom. Or if he goes into a wood
without taking a handful of wormwood (Poluin), he runs a serious risk,
for the Rusalkas may ask him, "What have you got in your hands? is it
Poluin or Petrushka (Parsley)." If he replies Poluin, they cry, "Hide
under the tuin (hedge)," and he is safe. But if he says, Petrushka,
they exclaim affectionately, "Ah! my dushka," and begin tickling him
till he foams at the mouth. In either case they seem to be greatly
under the influence of rhyme.
In the vicinity of the Dnieper the
peasants believe that the wild-fires which are sometimes seen at night
flickering above graves, or around the tumuli called Kurgáns, or in
woods and swampy places, are lighted by the Rusalkas, who wish thereby
to allure incautious travellers to their ruin; but in many places these
wandering "Wills o' the Wisp " are regarded as being the souls of
unbaptized children, and so small Rusalkas themselves. In many parts of
Russia the Rusalkas are represented in the songs of the people as
propounding riddles to girls, and tickling and teasing those who cannot
answer them. Sometimes the Rusalkas are asked similar questions, which
they answer at once, being very sharp-witted.
The Servian Vilas are evidently akin to the Rusalkas, whom they equal in beauty, and generally
outdo
in malice. No higher compliment can be paid to a Servian maiden than to
say that she is "lovely as a Vila." But once upon a time, says a story,
a proud husband boasted that his wife was "more beautiful than the
white Vila." His vaunt was overheard by the spirit, who exclaimed,--
"Show me thy love who is fairer than I, fairer than the white Vila from the hill."
So
he took his wife by the hand and led her forth, and what he had said
was true. She was three times as beautiful as the Vila, and when the
Vila saw that it was so, she cried out,--
"No great vaunt is it
of thine, O youth, that thy love is fairer than I, the Vila from the
hill. Her a mother bare, wrapped her in silken swaddling-clothes, and
nourished her with a mother's milk. But me, the Vila from the hill--me
the hill itself bare, swaddled me in green leaves. The morning dew
fell--nourished me the Vila; the breeze blew from the hill--rocked me
the Vila 8."
Another spiritual being of the same class is the
Poludnitsa. Among the Lusatians, under the name of Prezpolnica or
Pripolnica, she appears in the fields exactly at mid-day (in Russian,
Polden or Poluden--"half-day"), holding a sickle in her hand. There she
addresses any woman whom she finds tarrying afield instead of returning
home for mid-day repose, and questions her on the cultivation and the
spinning of flax, cutting off the head or dividing the neck of an
unsatisfactory
answerer. She seems to be akin to the dćmon Meridianus, "the sickness
that destroyeth in the noonday 9." It is worthy of remark that the
Russian peasants make use of a verb, Poludnovat', to express the action
of drawing one's last breath--"His soul in his body scarcely
poludnoet," they say. In the Government of Archangel tradition tells of
"Twelve Midnight Sisters (Polunochnitsas), who attack children, and
force them to cry out with pain 1."
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