Sorbian-Eastern Slavic Parallels from the Field of Folk Demonology

Abstract

This article examines the demonological beliefs of the Lusatians that correspond with beliefs among the Eastern Slavs. In the East Slavic region, there is a chain of related beliefs all the way to the Russian North-West. This is a chain of archaic areas: Carpathian, Polesie, and Belarusian-West Russian. One such Lusatian-North Russian parallel is demonstrated by the image of Lady Midday (Noonwraith, Noon Witch). Among the Lusatians and Russians, this female mythological character has a number of common features, and some of the similarities noted four hundred years ago by the Dutch scientist Marcus van Boxhorn have survived to our time in the North Russian tradition. The second parallel is connected with a fl ying fi ery serpent. The varying colour symbolism of the snake, dependent on the gifts (money, grain, milk) that it carries to its owner, is represented in the lower Lusatians, in Chernigov Polesie, some areas of Belarus, and neighbouring southern Russia. In the area of the Russian- Ukrainian borderland, the colour loses its signifi cance or loses its variability, becoming a characteristic of the objects that snakes scatter as bait for women, and only sometimes does the colour of the snake itself appear in these tales. In the West- and Northwest Russian tradition, the colour loses its variability and dependence on the gifts brought to the owner, and colour becomes a constant characteristic of the serpent (in one case, while maintaining a relict connection with grain as one of the types of gifts), or, while maintaining the same set and variability, is transferred from the snake to the hidden legs of the snake where it receives new symbolic meanings. The third parallel concerns some of the details related to the stealing of milk by witches in the fi eld: they collect grass for their cows from nine other people’s borders and collect dew using horse harnesses according to the Lusatians, as well as in western Ukraine, in western Polesie, in the Smolensk province, and further, in a modifi ed form, among the Russians of the Oryol and Kostroma provinces. Owing to its position on the outskirts of the Slavic world, the Lusatian folk tradition retains a number of features that are invaluable for historical, cultural, and ethnogenetic reconstructions.

Keywords

• folk demonology
• lusatians
• eastern slavs
• lady midday
• noonwraith
• noon witch
• flying serpent
• witch
• stealing milk
• poaching milk