Water

Water animals are considered typical representatives of Slavic demonology . According to legend, they are fallen angels, cast by God from heaven and falling into the water ^[2] . Although water has a separate image, ideas about it often merged with mermaids and the devil ^{[4] [5] [6] [7]} .

As a rule, he was represented in the form of a naked flabby old man, a beetle-eyed, with a fish tail or in East Slavic myths - with very long legs. He is entangled in mud or dressed in a red shirt, has a large broad beard and green mustache. It has animal or fish features - a fish or cow tail, goose paws with membranes or cow hooves, burbot skin, a horn on the head. It could turn into a large fish, beast, pig, cow, bird, catfish, pike, carp, big black fish or fish with wings, goose, duck, rooster, log, drowned, child or horse ^[8] . In many beliefs, it looks like a hell overgrown with hair with horns or a gray monster. A waterbird can ride a large catfish, which is why this fish is called the damn horse. He often finds himself with loud laughter, laughter, and in anticipation of a close victim he can clap his hands loudly. Often able to imitate the sounds that people or animals make - he screams, howls, laughs, squeals, quacks and bleats. Usually this is all done in order to scare or lure into their underwater mansions ^[2] .

It is believed that a water man loves deep water, lives in whirlpools, whirlpools, wormwoods , abandoned water mills , and especially likes a place near the wheel ^[9] , under mills or locks, at the bottom of the river, where he has his own palace. The millers preferred to be friends with the waterman, otherwise he could break the mill wheels or ruin the dam. So that he would not harm him once a year they would bring a black pig or other animal as a gift ^[10] . For their relations with water, the millers in the East Slavic beliefs had unkind fame. The people believed that the construction of the mill should always be connected with a bloody sacrifice to the waterman, that the millers sold their souls to the waterman, and also that they lured passers-by to the mill and dumped them into the pool or under the mill wheel. Otherwise, supposedly, a waterman could pick them up themselves. I must say that the millers did make sacrifices in water, throwing dead animals into the water, crumbs of bread, etc., and pouring vodka into the water on holidays ^[11] .

In Ukraine, in order to protect themselves from tricks of the water, a horse skull was buried at the base of the dam ^[10] .

Ukrainians say this. The water man doesn’t live all the time in the water, because God drives him: before the Epiphany, the water man sits in the water, and then goes into the vine, which is why it is called “vine”, then he goes to land, to coastal grass and only after the Savior falls into the water again .

Belarusians believe that on the eve of Epiphany, the waterman comes to the peasants and asks them for a sled in order to take their children out of the water before it is consecrated. And before the Epiphany, sledges and carts were turned upside down so that the waterman could not use them. It was believed among the Russians that in winter the water one sleeps at the bottom of the river, wakes up on April 1 hungry and angry and therefore behaves very violently - it breaks ice and torments fish.

- Levkievskaya E.E. ^[12]

In Belarus, during frosts, fat was often lowered under the mill wheels, otherwise water could lick grease from them. Under the doors of the mill, a black rooster was buried alive, and black animals (a rooster and a cat) were kept in the mill itself ^[11] .

In the Russian North , it is believed that the watermen have a water king - an old man with a club who can rise to the sky in a black cloud and create new rivers and lakes. It is called king Vodyanik or Vodyan king ^[12] . Slavic beliefs about water are comparable with the legend of the sea ​​king ^[3] .

Waterfowl graze on the bottom of rivers and lakes herds of their cows - catfish , carps , bream and other fish.

Of course, the millers suffer and suffer most of all from water devils. Accustomed to dealing with water all their lives, millers achieve such comforts that they are not only not afraid of these evil spirits, but enter into friendly relations with them. They live among themselves according to mutual pleasures, guided by established techniques and agreed rules. Cautious and thrifty owners, during the construction of the mill, under the log where the door will be, they buried alive a black rooster and three “short-breasted”, that is, a stalk of rye that accidentally grew with two ears; now they are just as well treated with a horse skull thrown into the water with a sentence. For the same purpose, all animals of black wool (especially roosters and cats) are still carefully raised in mills. This is the case when the waterman begins to angrily tear off his anger at the owners, breaking through the dams, and rendering the millstone unusable: the millstone will go, knock, whisper and stop, as if it touches something, the Proverb says that “the mill stands, yes, it perishes from water ”, and therefore all thoughts and troubles of the miller are concentrated on the dam, which it erodes and breaks out only by the will and forces of the water line. That’s why every day the miller, even if there’s nothing, doesn’t let him out of the hands of the ax, and, moreover, he tries by all means to please the waterman according to the precepts of his great-grandfathers. So, for example, the rumor is stubbornly held everywhere that the waterman requires victims by living beings, especially from those who are building new mills. For this purpose, in the distant past, they pushed some belated traveler into the whirlpool, and now they are throwing dead animals (certainly in the shoes) ^[13] .

Good luck to fishers is also in the power of the aquatic. The old people still adhere to two main rules: they impose the Petrov cross on themselves on the neck cross so as not to “exhaust”, that is, they would not have an evil spirit and spoil the whole thing, and from the first catch part of it, or the first fish is thrown back into water, as a tribute and a sacrifice. Going fishing, an experienced fisherman will never answer the oncoming question that he is going to fish, since the water fisherman loves secrets and respects those people who know how to keep secrets. Some old fishermen bring their pleasures to the water owner to the point that they throw him a pinch of tobacco (“on you, water, tobacco: give me a fish”) and, for the same purpose of bribing, light a tackle with Bogorodka grass, etc. ^{[13 ]}

- Maksimov S.V. , Unclean, Unknown and Religious Power

In beekeepers, aquatic animals were considered the patrons of bees ^[14] . The custom to plant an apiary by the river is widely known. On the night of Apple Spas, some beekeepers made a water sacrifice - they threw fresh honey and wax into the pond or swamp, a little from each hive, drowned the first swarm or the best hive in a bag. According to legend, as a reward for this, waterbird guarded the bees. Later, the role of the protector of bees was inherited by the Russian saints Zosima and Savvaty ^[15] .

Waterman is in an irreconcilably hostile relationship with the grandfather of the brownie , with whom, in casual encounters, he scrupulously enters into a fight. With good-natured-house-mates, the water men are not similar in character, remaining evil spirits, and therefore, everyone and everywhere are reckoned with these features. The hostility of the water-man to people and the evil character of this demon is expressed in the fact that he tirelessly guards every person who, according to various needs, is in his wet and wet possessions. He takes to his underground rooms, for irrevocable life, all those who choose to swim in the rivers and lakes in summer, after a sunny sunset, or at noon, or at midnight. (He considers these “daytime warriors” to be predominantly beloved and convenient for displaying his evil and powerful strength.) In addition, throughout the vast space of enormous Great Russia, he grabs his tenacious paws and, with the speed of lightning, takes all those who have forgotten, when immersed in water, overshadow themselves sign of the cross. With special triumph and pleasure, he drowns those who do not wear crosses at all, forget them at home or remove them from their necks before bathing. Under water, he turns this prey into enslaving workers, forces them to pour water, drag and wash sand, etc. Moreover, the water tortures and makes his wicked jokes with those who forgot to cross themselves during the passage of unclean places where he has the habit of settling and from the depths of the water vigilantly follow the blame. They only bring harm to people and joyfully meet in their possessions all blundered, accidental and intentional drowned (suicides). They marry the drowned women, and even more willingly those girls who are cursed by their parents, bruises, bruises in the body, wounds and scratches seen on the corpses of drowned men taken out of the water, serve as a clear evidence that these unfortunates have been in the paws of a waterman. He does not always return the corpses of people, guided by personal whims and considerations, but he almost always leaves the corpses of animals for family food ^[13]

- Maksimov S.V. , Unclean, Unknown and Religious Power

• Dropsy - water virgins - are wives of water.

Dropsy - a drowned of baptized , and therefore does not belong to the undead. It is believed that woodworms prefer forest and mill pools, but most of all they love the paddy under the mills , where the rapid muddy the water and washes the pits. Under the mill wheels they seem to usually gather for the night with the water. Dropsy is harmful: when they splash in the water and play with traveling waves or jump on mill wheels and spin with them, they tear nets and spoil millstones ^[16] .

• Swamp - a kinsman of the water and goblin
• Prostitutes - in Slovak and Czech mythology, swamp and water spirits that appear nearby water in the form of wandering lights.

• Watermark is one of the most famous characters in Soviet cartoons. In the cartoon Flying Ship (1979), he is featured in a blue demon in a black boater and with long hair like a hippie . Sitting in a swamp, Waterman sings a song about his loneliness and the need to talk with someone. In the same film, the swamp where he lives is located at least 20 km further from the city where the royal palace was located, and beyond the forest. The animated Watery has 13 sisters (this is Babki-Yozhki ), and they live in a hut on chicken legs .
• In the third part of Tatyana Alexandrova ’s fairy tale “Kuzka’s Brownie” (1977-1986), Vodyanoy looks like this: he has a “huge shaggy head”, “long mustache and beard, clumsy hands and powerful shoulders”, and his voice is coarse. He is "in mud, in algae, small fish tangled in a beard." When Watery goes, water pours from him. He “hates goats, doesn’t want to hear about them, his life is not nice to him under the name of a goat”.

• Slavic mythology / V. Ya. Petrukhin. - M .: Ellis Luck, 1995 .-- ISBN 5-7195-0057-X .
• Dal V.I. Vodyanoy // On beliefs, superstitions and prejudices of the Russian people . - 2nd ed. - SPb. : M.O. Wolf, 1880.
• Ivanov V.V. , Toporov V.N. Vodyanoy // Mythological Dictionary / Ch. ed. E. M. Meletinsky . - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia , 1990. - S. 127–128 . - ISBN 5-85270-032-0 .
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• Madelevskaya E., Eriashvili N., Pavlovsky V. Russian mythology. Encyclopedia - M .: Eksmo, Midgard, 2007. - S. 340–349. - 527 p. - (Secrets of ancient civilizations). - ISBN 5-699-13535-9 .
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• Nikiforovsky N. Ya. Vodianiki // Uncleans: Code of common folk tales of evil spirits in Vitebsk Belarus . - Vilna: N. Matz and Co., 1907. - S. 75-80.
• L.V. Belovinsky . Water // Illustrated encyclopedic historical and everyday dictionary of the Russian people. XVIII - beginning of XIX century / ed. N. Ereminoy . - M .: Eksmo, 2007 .-- S. 95-96. - 784 p.: - ill. with. - 5,000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-699-24458-4 .