The Romance of the Woods

by Frederick Whishaw

In the matter of their belief in and dealings with those Beings with which they have peopled the spiritual world, the Slavs are probably the most superstitious of all the European families, or at least they have clung with more pertinacity than any of their neighbours to the old-world traditions and beliefs which were the common property, centuries ago, of all. During these centuries the Church, hand-in-hand with education and civilisation, has done its best to stamp out and destroy the innumerable relics of purely Pagan and Christianised Pagan traditions which abound in the country; but neither priest nor schoolmaster, nor yet the common-sense of the community, have made much appreciable headway against the ineradicable superstition of the Russian moujik:—and the air, the forests, the waters, the very houses are as full of their spiritual inhabitants to-day as they ever were in the days when men looked to the elements and the forces of nature for the gods whom they must worship, and before whose irresistible power they realised their own insignificance. When St. Vladimir, in the zeal of his recent conversion to Christianity, cast into the waters of the Dnieper at Kief the huge wooden, silver-headed, golden-bearded idol of Perun the Thunderer, and in baptizing his twelve sons set an example which was quickly followed by the rest of the population of his grand duchy, he was very far from convincing his people that thunderings in the future were to be regarded as merely impersonal manifestations of the forces of nature. It might not be Perun who thundered, they argued—and since Perun had gone to the bottom of the Dnieper this was probably the case—but if it were not Perun it clearly must be some one else, for the thunder could not roar by itself! Elijah fitted into the gap very neatly. Did not the Church teach that Elijah the prophet went up in a chariot to heaven? The thundering then was undoubtedly the rumbling of Elijah's chariot-wheels, and that, to this day, is the explanation which any Russian peasant will give if asked to account for the noise of the thunder. This is one of many examples of the manner in which Pagan beliefs have survived in Christianised forms. In certain parts of Russia, however, even the name of Perun or Perkun is still preserved in connection with the roar of the thunder. When the familiar rumbling and crashing noise is heard overhead, the peasants in some of the Baltic provinces still remark, "There is Perun thundering again!"

Hand-in-hand with the worship, in Russian Pagan days, of the elements and the forces of nature, went the adoration of the dead; and while Perun and his fellow deities of that age have practically become extinct, or have been Christianised out of all recognition, the superstitious regard of the Russian peasant for the spirits of his departed ancestors has withstood the attacks of time as well as the teachings of Christianity, and is as marked now in some of the remoter districts of the empire as it ever was in the days of heathenism. Sometimes it is actually the spirits of the rodítyelui, or forefathers, themselves, who are cherished and invoked by the peasants; sometimes the rodítyelui have become merged in the personality of the domovoy, or house-spirit, of whom I shall presently have much to say. It is a comparatively common belief that the soul, after leaving the body, remains for a period of six weeks about the house, or at all events in the neighbourhood of its old home, watching the mourning of its relatives, and seeing that its memory is receiving at their hands fitting veneration. During the time that the body remains in the house the soul sits upon the upper portion of the coffin. As it has a long journey to perform before reaching its final home, money is frequently placed in the coffin in order that the departed spirit may be enabled to defray possible charges for being ferried across rivers and seas; food is also provided, to sustain the rodítyel upon his way, together with small ladders made of dough, in seven rungs, for scaling the seven heavens. In case the steep should be slippery and difficult to climb, the parings from the nails of the dead man, if these should have been cut shortly before death, are placed close to the folded hands—the talons of some bird of prey being occasionally added, in order to render the business of climbing as easy as possible to the traveller. The coffin itself is sometimes made in the shape of a boat, in order that if Charon or his representative should refuse to convey the traveller across the dark river, or should charge an exorbitant price for so doing, the latter may be independent of the services of the ferryman. All these ancient customs are observed in the letter in many of the remoter villages throughout the empire; but it is doubtful whether the significance of the observances is realised by the peasants who thus perpetuate the ancient traditional customs of their forefathers, as handed down to them, probably, without explanation. It is certain that the belief is very general that numbers of rodítyelui, i.e., the spirits of the fathers of the family, still reside in and watch over the establishments of their posterity not yet quit of the infirmities of the flesh. These spirits are supposed to have their abode in the wall behind the ikon, and food for their use is occasionally placed on certain days close to the holy picture. The spirits may, very rarely, be seen in the form of a fly, sipping sugar-water or honey from a plate; or in the guise of a sparrow or other small bird, gobbling up crumbs upon the window-sill. In the case of a witch, the soul may occasionally take an airing during the lifetime of the hag, choosing the time when the latter is asleep to assume the form of a moth, which issues from the mouth of the witch and flutters about the room. This offers an excellent opportunity to get rid of the vyedma altogether. To this end all that has to be done is to conceal the mouth of the hag, so that the moth, when it returns to the body, cannot find its way home again. Repulsed in this fashion, the moth-soul easily becomes discouraged, and giving up the idea of returning to its prison-house, flies out of the window and disappears, and the witch is no more. It should be mentioned with regard to the rodítyelui who live behind the ikon, that when the time approaches for a member of the family to be gathered to his fathers the spirits gently tap-tap within the wall, as a signal to the living members of the household that it is necessary for one of them to come and join his friends behind the ikon. This is, of course, the "death-watch," as we know it: and the wonder is that the entire household does not succumb to the terror which must be caused to a family in which the little tapping creature responsible for these summonses to the next world may have taken up its abode.

As for the domovoy, or house-spirit, it seems uncertain whether this strongly marked individuality is the embodiment, in one person, of the entire company of the rodítyelui, or a separate and distinct personality. He is named, together with the spirits of the air, water, and forests, as one of those who accompanied the evil one on the expulsion of the latter from heaven, and as such he would appear to be a distinct individual. But, on the other hand, there exist certain ceremonies in connection with the domovoy, and to which I shall refer again later on, which seem to associate him with the spirits of the departed. However this may be, it is quite certain that the domovoy is a recognised and permanent inhabitant of every peasant household throughout Russia, and it is doubtful whether there exists from end to end of the realm a single such household which would venture to express a doubt of his personal existence among them. Nevertheless, he is rarely seen, though his appearance is accurately known according to the particular notions with regard to that appearance as held in the different portions of the empire. In these he is variously described as a tiny old man—he is always a man, not a woman, and always old—no larger than a five-year-old child; as very tall and large; as having long hair; as hairy all over, even to the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet; and as having the extremely disagreeable habit of passing his hands over the faces of sleepers. If his touch is soft and warm all will go well for some time with the establishment over which he presides; but if, on the contrary, his hand is cold, like ice, and rough to the touch, then woe will betide the sleeper or his household in the near future. The domovoy lives within the pechka, or stove, and is, when properly treated, benignantly disposed towards the members of his own particular family, protecting these from all harm and from the evil machinations of the neighbours, with whose domovoys he is always at enmity, quarrels between himself and these latter being of very frequent occurrence, and resulting in great damage to the crockery and other wreckable property of both establishments. The natural consequence of this rivalry between the guardian spirits of neighbouring families is that the reputation of the domovoy outside his own family circle is always very bad; for only one's own domovoy is admittedly a benevolent spirit, every one else's is a demon. Thus the domovoy presents the unusual spectacle of a being who is an angel at home and a devil out of doors, in direct contradistinction to members of the human race, who are, as I have been informed, frequently angelic in the presence of strangers, though quite "the other thing" at home.

But in spite of this zeal on behalf of his own folks—zeal which so sadly often gets him into trouble with the neighbours—the domovoy must be kept in good humour by the members of his own family, or he is liable to show in whose company he was obliged to hurriedly leave the Realms of Light, which are asserted to have been his original habitation—in other words, he may become mischievous and troublesome even at home. At such times he will take to throwing the furniture about during the night, breaking the crockery, ill-treating the domestic pets, and so on. Under these circumstances it is best to be bold and upbraid the invisible offender loudly, when he will generally recognise the error of his ways, and desist, on the following night, from throwing the dog and the tea-cups about: he is generous enough to cherish no malice or ill-will against those who have thus been courageous enough to remonstrate with him, which proves that the domovoy, in spite of his antecedents, is more or less in a state of grace. The tastes and peculiarities of the domovoy may with advantage be studied by those desirous of ingratiating themselves with him. Especially in the matter of the colouring of his surroundings it is easy and well worth while to study his idiosyncrasies, and to carry out his ideas in this respect by adapting the hue of the feathered and furred animals about the establishment to his known tastes in that direction. The way to find out the favourite colour of the domovoy is so very simple that it would be almost an insult to the guardian spirit to neglect to pay him this little compliment. All that need be done is to hang a small piece of meat by a string to a nail and to leave it (well out of range of the family nose, let us hope), for a month. At the expiration of that period it will be found to be covered with maggots, and the colour of these maggots is the favourite tint of the domovoy. If the cows and the horses, the cocks and the hens, are not of the particular colour indicated by the above test, they had better be sold at once, and others bought which correspond with the ideas of the domovoy in this respect.

The ceremony to be performed by a peasant family removing from one house to another is full of significance, and is, or was, universally recognised as a most important function. In this ceremony there seems to occur that confusion between the domovoy and the spirits of the departed to which I have already made allusion in the course of this chapter. The whole function centres in the stove, or rather in the embers burning within it. When the family have packed up and are ready to go, the old grandmother, if there be one, or the oldest woman of the establishment, carefully rakes up the red-hot embers still glowing within the stove at the moment of departure, depositing these in a pan which is then quickly covered up. That these embers are supposed to be in some way connected with the spirits of the departed is evident, because the tradition specially enjoins that the greatest care must be observed lest any of them slip through the aperture and into the grate; for if this calamity should happen, it would signify that certain of the rodítyelui had slipped through the barrier and fallen into the fires of hell. When the whole of the glowing coals have been raked out and collected, the old woman carries the pan across to the new house, chanting over and over again as she goes, the words, "Welcome, little grandsire, to the new home." Arrived at the house, the old woman knocks three times upon the wall, and is admitted. The whole family have assembled meanwhile and are ready to greet the old woman and her pan and embers. "Welcome, little grandsire, to the new home" is the cry, repeated over and over again, while the embers are taken out one by one, and placed, still alight, within the new stove. Thus the rodítyelui perform their "flitting," after which they are as much at home in the new abode as they were in the old haunts. I should mention, before leaving the subject, that previously to the occupation of a new house, a cock and hen are let loose in the living room, which is not entered until after the cock has crowed. No evil spirit can bear to hear a cock crow, and the rite is doubtless performed with a view to ridding the house of any evil spirits which may have previously taken possession of the edifice. Domovoys do not object to the crowing of cocks—another proof that the domovoy is in a state of grace.

Holy Church has stepped in and substituted for the ceremonies which I have just described, special services for those about to occupy new premises, and these Christian functions now largely take the place of the Pagan rites; but the change of ceremony has not dethroned either the domovoy or the rodítyelui, who still reign, and will doubtless reign for the next thousand years, over the imagination of Ivan Ivanovitch, as the personal and permanent and undoubted guests and guardians of his establishment. There is a special domovoy in charge of the bath-house which forms a feature in every Russian village. This domovoy has a strong objection to the villagers bathing themselves late at night, specially if they do so without having first prayed aloud. It is not very clear what form his displeasure takes when his wishes in this connection are disregarded; but it is known that he dislikes the practice of late bathing. Probably it keeps him up. However, if the moujik be impious enough to disregard his objections and to take a bath at an unseasonable hour of the night, when all good moujiks, and banniks also, should be asleep, a can of warm water and a birch-rod-swisher should be left by the untimely "ablutioner" in propitiation of the bannik (who is the domovoy of the bath-house) thus kept from his rest by the thoughtless and unselfish conduct of the former. Whether the bannik ever utilises the opportunity thus offered him of enjoying a comfortable scrub, tradition does not say. If the bath domovoy is a good Russian, and has imbibed anything of the nature of the moujik during his long connection with that unsavoury member of society, probably he does not use the warm water and the swish; for he will not wash himself unless he is forced to do so by circumstances over which he has no control, such as popular opinion, or the customs or the bye-laws of the village in which he has his habitation.

I have already mentioned that when the Prince of the Spirits of Evil descended from the abode of light and took up his dwelling in the realms of darkness, which are his habitation to this very hour, there accompanied him certain other spirits, inferiors and followers. Among these, according to Slavonic folk-lore, were the vodyánnuie, or water-spirits; the vozdúshnuie, or spirits of the air; and the liéshuie, or wood-demons. There were many others in his train—such as the karliki, or gnomes—beings of little or no interest in the everyday life of the peasant because they rarely interfere in human affairs, if they can avoid it, and have no special connection with humanity; whereas the domovuie, as I have shown, and the water and wood spirits, as I intend now to describe, are constantly in contact with members of our race, either for good or for evil. Many of the followers of the Chief demon accompanied their leader into his new home and there remain with him to this day; but it will be better to leave these bad characters where they are, and to concern ourselves solely with those whom common interests have brought into connection with our race. The spirits which I have named did indeed accompany their former leader as far as the portals of his new realm, the nether regions; but they did not actually enter its confines, or if they did do so, did not stay longer than just so much time as was required to arrive at the conclusion that the atmosphere of the place was not such as to suit their private ideas of comfort—which did not take them long—after which they quickly turned their backs upon the front gates and made off as rapidly as possible; the liéshuie hiding themselves in the forests, the karliki burying themselves in the earth, while the vozdúshnuie remained in the cool air—finding it refreshing after the heated atmosphere to which they had been lately introduced; and the vodyánnuie, who had perhaps stayed a moment or two longer beside their chief, or who were possibly more sensitive to the discomfort of a warm temperature, plunged headlong into the water in order to cool their parched frames, and have remained in the pleasant depths ever since—taking over the management of all springs and rivers and pools upon the surface of the dry land. These same vodyánnuie are a tricky race of beings and require much propitiation at the hands of millers, fishermen, and others who have dealings with them or with the waters within their jurisdiction. Millers, especially, require to be careful to keep in touch with the vodyánnuie; for each mill-race possesses its own particular water-spirit, and the miller will have no luck, and deserve none, if he does not cast into the race at least one black pig per annum as a gift to the spirit which has its habitation in his waters. The ordinary annual offering to the water-spirits is, however, a horse, whose legs have been previously tied together with red ribbons, and who has been smeared for the sacrifice with honey. A heavy stone is attached to the unfortunate animal's neck and he is thrown into a deep pool. The vodyánnuie, who have in all probability shown their displeasure for some time before the sacrifice by causing the river to overflow its banks, or the ice to carry away the bridge, having now received their rights as by custom established, at once settle down in peace and quietness for a whole year. But they are, as I have said, a tricky lot, and they must not be depended upon by bathers, or by peasants who would fain cool their horses' heated flanks in the deep pool after a hard day of work in the fields. The vodyánnui of the place may be of a malicious disposition, and though everything may have been done in order to secure his benevolent neutrality towards bathers, yet he is just as likely as not to pull down by the leg his very warmest admirer, or the horse of his most sincere follower.

Here, again, the Church, anxious to substitute for the Pagan observances which I have mentioned in connection with the vodyánnuie her own orthodox functions, has ordained for the use of the faithful solemn services for the "blessing of the waters." These services are now performed twice each year all over Russia, and have largely ousted the ancient rites and sacrifices which were considered necessary in honour, or in propitiation of the water-spirits; but though the sacrificial observances are discontinued, the belief in the existence of the vodyánnuie, as active and malevolent beings whose dwelling-place is in the pools and streams, still retains its hold upon the minds of the people with much of its ancient intensity. Before quitting the subject of water-spirits, I should mention that the nymphs and mermaids of our own and universal folk-lore are represented in that of the Slavs by beings known as rusalki, an entirely distinct species from the surly and malicious vodyánnuie. The latter are of the male sex, while the rusalki are all females, and frequently very beautiful. They employ their good looks unfortunately to the ruin of our race, too frequently luring young men to their doom, by enticing them into the deep waters and there either tickling them to death or else drowning them; for the rusalki are of a mischievous and frivolous nature and have very little good feeling about them. Many of the rusalki are supposed to be the spirits of stillborn or of unbaptized children, or of women who have committed suicide or who have been for some other reason deprived of the privilege of Christian burial. When a child dies unbaptized, its spirit is said to wander through the world for seven years, longing and entreating to be baptized. If any person sufficiently pure in spirit to discern the pleading soul-voice has the presence of mind, on hearing it, to pronounce the words, "I baptize thee in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost," then the forlorn soul is satisfied and flits away to Paradise; but if the seven years go by and the soul remains unbaptized, it becomes a rusalka. Annual prayers are offered in Russian churches for the unbaptized, and if the wandering spirit is fortunate enough to be close at hand and to overhear the words of the priest during one of these services, its object is attained: it is considered to have come within actual range of the working of the baptismal rite, and Paradise is won for that soul. There are some who believe that the spirits of the unbaptized, in their wanderings through the world, assume the form of a cuckoo; and these make a point for this reason of baptizing every cuckoo they hear, or even of performing the rite in effigy if no living cuckoo should be available. The fishermen of the Caspian have a pretty legend with regard to the rusalki. They declare that these water-maidens are frequently greatly troubled as to the nature of the future state and their own probable destiny therein. The mermaids, to give them a familiar name, are represented as occasionally appearing at the surface of the water to inquire whether the fishermen can tell them whether the end of the world is still far off?

The rusalki vary in size, as do all the spirit forms of Russian folk-lore. Sometimes they are spoken of as tiny beings floating in the cup of the water-lily; sometimes as huge female forms which haunt the cornfields and steal the grain of the peasants. When caught thus misbehaving themselves the rusalki are punished in effigy, straw figures, representing the robbers, being tossed about by companies of girls, who eventually cast them into the water. When this has been done the cornfield is safe from further plunderings at the hands of the beautiful but dishonest water-maidens.

The vozdúshnuie, or spirits of the air, have but little to do with man, their realm being outside his usual "beat." There are no doubt as many spirits dwelling in the air as inhabit the waters, woods, and houses, but until man shall have taken to journeying in balloons or shall have mastered the science of flying, it is probable that he will not be molested to any great extent by this branch of the spirit family. I will therefore pass on to consider the wood-goblins, whom I have left until the last, because, with the sole exception of the domovoy, the liéshui is by far the most important of the spirits who engage in dealings with mankind, as well as the most picturesque. In a country whose woods and forests cover thousands of miles of territory, it is only natural that the spirits whose home is in the fastnesses of those pine-grown regions should play a great part in the imagination of a poetic and superstitious people living beneath the shadow of the pine trees. The liéshuie are, without doubt, by nature evil spirits, or demons; but, like their brethren of the waters and of the air, they may be propitiated by the observance of certain rites and ceremonies, and by this means rendered friendly or at least neutral towards those who are desirous of living in their good graces—a most necessary condition of existence for those whose flocks and herds wander day-long in the wilds and moors and woodlands of the interior of Russia. The liéshui is, in the estimation of his friend Ivan Ivanovitch, a shocking bad character. He is generally an old man, very hairy and wild in appearance, as might be expected. He is a terrible drunkard, and is frequently quite incapacitated and helpless after his bacchanalian excesses; on such occasions he is watched over and protected from the assaults of his enemies by his chief friend and henchman, the bear. But not only is he a drunkard, he is equally a slave to another vice, the indulgence of which seems to strike one as unexpectedly sophisticated in a denizen of the forest: he is a gambler and a card-player, speculating to a tremendous extent, and staking all his possessions frequently enough at a single coup. When the village ochotnik, or sportsman, finds to his annoyance that the hares, the blackcock, or the tree partridges within his district have become so scarce that it is no longer worth his while to tramp the woods after them, the apparently unaccountable circumstance is plain enough to his enlightened intelligence: the liéshui of the place has gambled them away to his next-door neighbour. The same explanation accounts for the migration of squirrels and birds from one part of the country to another—they are in the act of going over to swell the possessions of the fortunate liéshui who has won them from their former owner. I should mention, however, that clubs are never used in the packs of cards with which the liéshuie carry on their games of speculation, since these, to a certain extent, resemble the shape of a cross, an emblem which neither wood-goblins, nor any other evil spirit dares to look upon. But besides these gamblings with one another, and perhaps as the outcome of these very transactions and the ill-feeling and bad blood which operations of this kind so frequently engender, terrific encounters occasionally take place between the rival liéshuie of a district, when the forest is devastated for hundreds of yards around, the pines lying prone and uprooted in every conceivable position and in every direction, just as though a hurricane of wind had passed by and torn them up, hurling them right and left as it went. Many a time have I encountered such a scene of desolation in mid-forest, and have found the greatest difficulty in forcing a way through the chaos formed by this lom, as it is called. Ignorant as I was in those days of the true origin of these patches of devastation, I used fondly to imagine that the ruin I saw had indeed been wrought by the agency of the tempest, though it was always a puzzle to me to account for the limited sphere in which the whirlwind had conducted its destructive operations; the theory of a wood-goblin duel, of course, satisfactorily accounts for the circumstance. When a liéshui marries—for he does take to himself a wife in his own good time—his bridal feasts and processions create terrible disorder in the forest; birds and beasts rush frightened and screaming from the neighbourhood, trees are knocked down and strewn about the ground, and the place becomes a pandemonium. It is not very apparent whom this unprincipled goblin finds to marry him. Perhaps the Erl-King has an unlimited supply of those deceitful daughters of his! The peasants naturally have much to do with the spirits whose habitation is in the forests which surround their dwellings, for their flocks and herds must wander free over the outlying pasture-lands, and if the goblin of the district has not been propitiated, the position of such herds, entirely at the mercy of every marauding wolf or bear, is wretched indeed. When the favour of the liéshui has been gained over, then neither bear nor wolf will be permitted by that all-powerful sylvan authority to injure cow or horse, let it wander where it will, even within the actual confines of the forest. In these days there is a special church function, known as the "blessing of the herd," for use on the first occasion, in each spring, on which the village cattle are allowed to go forth to pasture, this service being designed to take the place of more ancient ceremonies for the propitiation of the wood-goblins.