Male Mythological Beings Among the South Slavs

Abstract

The South Slavs have a long tradition of belief in protective domestic spirits and in malevolent demons of the field, forest and water.(1) Such mythological creatures were prevalent among all Slavic peoples and are part of the common Indo-European heritage.(2) Whereas most beliefs of this type receded among the East and West Slavs by the end of the nineteenth century, they were maintained in many areas of the Balkans until the beginning of the Second World War.(3) Ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the 1960s-1980s has shown that many farmers and stockbreeders in the more remote villages (of former Yugoslavia) have not abandoned their traditional beliefs. For example, the protector housesnake,(4) mischievous forest and dangerous water spirits, and many lesser mythological beings have been reported in several South Slavic territories in the last forty years. Many traditional domestic rituals have their origin in the conviction that the family ancestor's spirit resides under the threshold or near the open hearth and, if properly cared for, will ensure happiness and good fortune for the family. In Russia that spirit was manifest in the domovoj, spirit, but as this name itself was taboo, he was referred to in euphemisms such as ded or deduska, grandfather, and xozjain master. Offerings of food, especially bread and salt, the traditional symbols of hospitality, were routinely left for the domovoj at night before the family retired. The corresponding belief in a protector-ancestor spirit in the South Slavic territories saw the male founder of the family incarnate in a housesnake which was euphemized most commonly in Serbo-Croatian as cuvarica cuvarkuca protector, and kucarica household one, and in Bulgarian stopanin or stopan master of the house; compare English stoop, i.e., the threshold, the resting place of this spirit.(5) The South Slavs' perception of mythological beings was based on a dualistic view which incorporated both positive and negative features. This was true of snakes as well. Most snakes were considered incarnations of demons living in the Underworld (Donji svet) and were to be killed on sight, poisonous or not. Yet the white snake rarely seen, but thought to live under the threshold, in the foundation, or near the house was considered to embody the spirit of the family's first male ancestor. In Serbia the protector snake was sometimes believed to live in the foundation wall near the threshold, but in most areas it was said to dwell in, behind, or under the hearth. Likewise, both locations were thought to be the dwelling place of the domovoj in pre-Revolutionary Russia, and each has been the site of domestic rituals in all parts of the Slavic world. The family's albino protector snake not only caught