The lore of graveyard-haunting ghouls is unexpectedly best explained in a seminal work on the subject of werewolves. We hear in this episode from the 1865 volume, The Book of Were-Wolves, by Sabine Baring-Gould, an Anglican priest known for his voluminous writings on folklore, local curiosities, and church history. While our episode is called “Ghouls,” and ghouls are indeed what the author had in mind, Baring-Gould named this chapter “The Human Hyæna.” probably to better harmonize with the book’s theme of human-animal transformations.
Engraving showing François Bertrand, the “Vampire of Montparnasse,” from “Mémoires de M. Claude, chef de la police de sûreté sous le second Empire Paris,” Jules Rouff, 1880
The folklore of Russian vampires describes a creature slightly different than what we’re accustomed. In tonight’s show we share a number of traditional tales from the 1873 volume Russian Folk-Tales by W. R. S. Ralston, a leading light of the Imperial Geographical Society of Russia and author of The Songs of the Russian People.
Tales of animal ghosts are usually relegated to the periphery of ghost story collections, but in this episode, we showcase this class of apparition. Our stories were collected in a volume from 1915 called Human Animals by Frank Hamel. It covers werewolves, animal transformations through witchcraft, possession by totemic animal spirits, and the phantom animals that haunt lonely roads, ancestral homes, and the storytellers’ imaginations.
For centuries, strange births, often sounding like mythological monsters, were regarded as portents of ill omen. We hear a number of these fantastical accounts, including a description of the birth of the”Monster of Ravenna” believed to foreshadow not only the defeat of Louis XII’s forces during the 1512 Battle of Ravenna but also taken later as a sign of God’s wrath and religious turmoil roiling up in the Reformation.
The accounts related are compiled in the 1820 volume, edited by R.S. Kirby, and entitled Kirby’s wonderful and eccentric museum; or, Magazine of remarkable characters. Including all the curiosities of nature and art, from the remotest period to the present time, drawn from every authentic source.
Spirits of the corn (grain) fields from the United Kingdom to Russia have been imagined as embodiments of the harvest and guardians of the fields, sometimes evolving into fantastically cruel fear-figures in the process.
We begin with a look at the Scottish and English ballad “John Barleycorn,” first appearing as a broadside in 1568. The suffering hero of the song, “Sir John,” allegorically endures the brutal process of being buried, harvested, threshed, and eventually turned into beer. We hear some snippets of the song from The Watersons and Fred Jordan.
Some, like the turn-of-the-century mythologist James Frazer, imagined the ballad as an allegorical representation of ancient human sacrifice ensuring good harvest, and while that’s not generally believed now, by way of evidence, Frazer assembled an invaluable and encyclopedic catalog of now extinct agricultural folk customs in his 1890 magnum opus, The Golden Bough.
We examine a number of rituals, documented by Frazer, in which the spirit of the fields is said to take up residence in last grain to be harvested, often as an animal. One such creature, around which a substantial mythology has been spun, is a goat-like being called the Habergeiss. I’ve mentioned this bit of Alpine folklore previously in the context of Krampus and Perchten traditions, but here provide a more in-depth look at the many ways in which it’s been imagined.
Habergeiß at Nicholas play in Tauplitz. Photo by Wolfgang Böhm.
Also from German-speaking lands, the Bilwis, a sort of goblin or witch said to protect fields but more often described as a nocturnal thief of grain, employs small sickles attached at its feet. We also hear some methods of defeating this sort of mischief as described by Jacob Grimm.
Another German bit of folklore discussed is the Rye Wolf, often closely associated with a female embodiment of the grain. While more broadly referred to as the “Corn Mother,” she assumes her most fearful aspect in German rye fields, where she becomes the Rye Aunt (Roggenmuhme).
An extremely comprehensive and grisly catalog of her terrifying traits was compiled in Richard Beitl’s 1933 study, Investigations into the Mythology of the Child. We take a loving and lingering look at some of these horrific aspects and hear the Rye Aunt described in a tale from the Grimms as well as a story from 1926, told as true (even then) by the grandmother of Otto Busch, author of Thuringian Legends.
We also examine a lighter side of this figure, literally lighter, as she only appears at the hour of noon. Particularly common more in northeastern Germany and Slavic lands (Polednice in Czech, Poludnitsa in Russian) in English literature, she is usually called “Lady Midday,” or “The Noonday Witch.” Not only does she function as a fear-figure preventing kids from running into the fields but also serves to warn workers to cease their labors at the hour the sun is hottest lest she strike them down with exhaustion, pains, or madness.
Polednice/Noonday Witch., by Jiří Farský (1938)
A couple Czech films featuring this character are discussed — 2016’s The Noonday Witch/ Polednice and 2000’2 Wild Flowers/Kytice. The latter is based on an 1853 anthology of folkloric tales (Kytice) folkloric by Czech poet Karel Erben. Mrs. Karswell reads for us a recent translation of “The Noonday Witch.”
The show closes with some cinematic scarecrows, primarily a smuggler disguised as a scarecrow created by Russell Thorndike for his 1915 novel, Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh. We hear some clips from adaptations of Thorndike’s work, the 1962 Hammer film (with Peter Cushing) The Night Creatures, and Disney’s 1964 production The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh starring Patrick McGoohan.
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Master of the Wolves: Transylvanian and Balkan Wolf Lore
The Master of the Wolves is a supernatural figure central to Transylvania’s (modern Romania’s) voluminous body of wolf lore, a mythology that extends more broadly into Balkan regions once occupied, like Romania, by the ancient Dacians.
We begin with a snippet from a contemporary recording of the 1857 poem “St. Andrew’s Night,” by the Romanian poet and statesman Vasile Alecsandri. The poem’s association between the undead strigoi and moroi and the Romanian St. Andrew’s Night (November 30) was explored in our Transylvanian Vampires episode last year, but there is perhaps an even deeper connection between the St. Andrew, Romania, and the wolf.
Naturally, this brings us to the topic of werewolves. There are two wolflike monsters in Romanian folklore, the vârcolac and the pricolici, the latter being a closer match to our idea of the werewolf.
We discuss pricolici superstitions, which overlap largely with beliefs about the undead, of which the pricolici is often said to be a member.
The vârcolac, as we see, is rather different. Originally, it seems to have occupied a very limited and specific mythological niche as a creature that rises into the heavens at night to eat the moon, thereby causing an eclipse, or sometimes, the lunar phases. Over time, the vârcolac seems to have merged with more widespread werewolf beliefs.
The animal form associated with both pricolici and the vârcolac, however, is not always strictly defined as wolf-like. While the pricolici is sometimes said to assume the form of any number of “unholy” (but real-world) animals, the vârcolac has sometimes been compared to a dragon.
Dacian draco from Trajan’s Column
This wolf-dragon hybridization can also be found in the draco battle standard carried into by the Romanian Dacians in their wars against Rome. In its original form, the draco, consisted of a wolf head crafted of light metal, trailing a dragon-like windsock body. When in motion, a sort of whistle within the head emitted a shrieking sound that contributed to the Dacian’s fearsome reputation as warriors.
The historian Herodotus commenting on this reputation, also offered some observations on a particularly brutal Dacian rite, that of sending a “messenger” to their god Zamoxis. Mrs. Karswell provides the gory details in her reading of this account.
More modern Romanian myth-making brings together the man-god Zamolxis and the Dacian wolf, in the legend of The Great White Wolf, also read by Mrs. Karswell. This tale of a wolf leader seems to borrow from genuinely old legends describing St. Andrew as the “Master of the Wolves.”
Romanian cave said to have been the home of St. Andrew
In this role, Andrew is said to return to earth on his night to share with the wolves what prey they are to be allotted in the coming year. The gathering of wolves from all quarters and apparition of the saint on the occasion is a sight mortals witness only with dire consequences, as we hear in another legend related by Mrs. Karswell. Nor is it a good time to be abroad with wolves racing off after their pray, especially so as they’re sometimes said to be supernaturally enabled on this night.
The Master of the Wolves myth did not exclusively attach St. Andrew and his day (or night). St. Martin’s on November 11, can be the setting as in Greece and Germany. (Germany is is also home to a folk tradition discussed, Wolfauslassen (“Letting out the Wolves” or “Ringing in the Wolves” in which shepherds returning from the fields for the year parade through towns ringing bells to let the wolves know they are free to roam the pastures.
As well as on St. Martin’s day, the Wolf Master can also appear a bit later, on December 6 when St. Nicholas serves as the Master of the Wolves in Russia and Poland.
While generally associated with the late fall and winter when dwindling food sources makes wolves more aggressive, the Master of the Wolves could also appear in the spring, when the herds would return to pasture, and predators might require a different sort of magical wrangling. The saint controlling wolves in these cases is almost always St. George.
While versions of this figure are found throughout eastern Europe and Russia (and certain parts of western Europe), it is in Romania where the wolf is most prominent — celebrated with no less than 35 designated “wolf holidays,”of which St. Andrew’s is only the most well-known. This season runs from October into January and its observance is marked by an arcane body of superstitious practices designed to keep the animals at bay. These include reciting prayers, locking corrals with charmed locks, and binding scissors to keep shut the predator’s jaws, and the like. A folk figure called “St. Peter of Winter” appears at the end of his season with dire consequences for those who have neglected the requirements of the season.
Strangely, the most dreaded wolf of all during this season, is a lame wolf, who not only attacks livestock but man. Several of Romania’s wolf holidays pay homage to this figure in their name, such as “Lame Philip,” ostensibly named for the apostle Philip, but undoubtedly rooted in older pagan tradition. In Serbia, which shares Romania’s Dacian heritage, a similar figure appears during this season as Lame Daba, a demon portrayed in the company of wolves.
A possible clue to this association between lameness and a dreadful power over human life may lie in Romania’s version of the Three Fates, the ursitoare. The third member of this trinity, the one given the ultimate power to cut the thread of human life, is traditionally portrayed as lame.
We end the show with a look at a wonderfully bizarre 1976 Romanian-French-Russian co-production, Rock and Roll Wolf AKA Mama, a retelling of a Romanian tale also collected in Germany by the Grimms as “The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats.” Here’s a short preview clip of the film, which you can find in its entirety with English dubbing here on YouTube.
The folklore of fairy rings and “star jelly” is strangely connected to celestial phenomena, including lightning and shooting stars.
We begin with a description of a folkloric fairy ring and its dancing population from John Aubrey’s 1690 book Natural History of Wiltshire, following this with a few other folkloric takes on the topic.
The botanical phenomena of fairy rings is then described that is, circular configurations of mushrooms sprouting overnight or ringlike markings of grass in fields.
Mushrooms in early fairy ring formation.
The pseudo-scientific 19th-century notion that these rings were caused by lightning strikes as espoused by Sir Walter Scott and Erasmus Darwin is then discussed with a modern parallel connecting this with flying saucer lore provided by Jacques Vallée’s 1969 book Passport to Magonia.
A more ancient connection between lightning and the fruition of mushrooms is then discussed with examples of this belief provided by the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder and poet Juvenal.
A connection between lightning and the production of a strange slime occurs in a contemporary pamphlet recounting the terrors of 1638’s Great Thunderstorm of Dartmoor England. Mrs. Karswell reads for us this lurid account believed to be the first description of ball lightning.
Rather than ball lightning, however, most accounts of heaven-sent “fireballs” from the early modern and modern era are believed to describe meteors, understood at the time as “falling” or “shooting stars.”
Folklore connects falling stars with the deposit upon the earth of a sort of slime or gelatinous substance known most commonly as “star jelly,” but a dozen or so other names from European folklore are also provided, with the sinister-sounding Welsh term “pwdre ser,” meaning, “rot from the stars” also being fairly common in more modern literature.
Some literary references to this belief are also provided, most of which contrast the beauty or hopeful wishes associated with a falling star and the loathsome heap of jelly it becomes on landing.
A few more modern theories attempting to provide a more scientific account are then provided. Most commonly these include star jelly as frogspawn, jelly fungi, or nostoc, a a single-celled organism that forms into filaments and these into colonies that look like gelatinous piles of dark green (and putrefying) grapes.
The traditional application of nostoc as a food source and medicine are also discussed, as the source of its name in the writings of the 16th-century Swiss natural philosopher and physician Paracelscus who regarded it as something blown “blown from the nostrils of some rheumatick planet.”
Thanks to its seemingly supernatural appearance with the nocturnal dew, the alchemists assigned an elevated role to nostoc, calling it “the water of the equinoxes.” Some illustrations of alchemists attempting to collect nostoc and touting its qualities are provided from the enigmatic Mutus Liber or “Mute Book” of 17th century France, as well as in the work of the modern alchemist Fulcanelli from his 1926 book The Mystery of the Cathedrals. The mystery of the identity of this writer calling himself “Fulcanelli” as well as the claims of his student Eugène Canseliet, who supposedly transmuted lead into gold in 1922 are touched upon.
Charles Fort’s “Book of the Damned”
We then have a look at nostoc through the writings of Charles Fort, whose 1919 volume, The Book of the Damned, provided inspiration for all future writings on scientific anomalies, the paranormal, and (to some extent science fiction.) Fort’s arguments about the identification of nostoc with star jelly are illustrated in his discussion of “the Amherst object,” a particularly weird lump of something-or-other said to have fallen in a field near Amherst, Massachusetts in 1819. We also hear a sampling of his eccentric prose echoing his facetiously posited theory of the “Super Sargasso Sea,” an inter-dimensional repository responsible for occasionally teleporting things (or people) in and out of our world.
A few more choice cases of meteors associated with mysterious gelatinous substances are discussed.
We conclude with a look at the inspiration for the 1958 film The Blob, in which a meteor crashes to earth releasing the titular menace upon a small Pennsylvania town. One possible inspiration is Joseph Payne Brennan’s novella, “Slime” published in Weird Tales in 1953, five years before the film’s release. However there are substantial differences between the storylines, which are discussed.
More interesting (in light of our topic) is the notion that the film was inspired by true events, namely an incident documented in newspaper reports of September 26, 1950, describing something bizarre encountered by Philadelphia police during their patrol. It doesn’t seem likely this story played a big role in inspiring the film, and while the newspaper account attempts to categorize the phenomenon as a particularly weird sort of “flying saucer” (saucers being particularly trendy at the time), eyewitnesses describe the object as something more akin to the fairy world. Mrs. Karswell reads the entire newspaper account.
Folklore of the blacksmith portrays him as a semi-magical figure, a wily opponent of the Devil, a mythic creator in classical and biblical narratives, and an embodiment of occult wisdom within certain secret societies and neopagan groups.
We begin with an audio snippet from the excellent 2017 horror-fantasy Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil, a cinematic elaboration of the Basque folktale, “Patxi the Blacksmith” collected back in the 1960s by the Spanish priest and Basque ethnographer Jose Miguel Barandiaran.
This is one of dozens (perhaps hundreds) of variants of “Blacksmith and Devil” tales found from Russia to Appalachia, all of which involve a smith selling his soul to the Devil in exchange for some reward, then somehow tricking the Devil out of his due. Some variations of the story collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are outlined, and Mrs. Karswell reads passages of an Irish variant from the 1896 volume, The Humor of Ireland, one which also serves as a sort of origin story for a popular seasonal custom.
While most of the blacksmiths in these tales tend to be roguish, England offers a devil-combating smith who is actually quite saintly, namely St. Dunstan, the 10-century Abbot of Glastonbury, who also found time to master the harp and the art of blacksmithing. We hear several variations of his encounter with the Devil.
St. Dunstan and the Devil
We then explore folk customs associated with St. Clement, the first-century bishop of Rome whose particular style of martyrdom led to his being embraced as patron of blacksmiths. A variety of celebrations by ironworkers on St. Clement’s Day (November 23) are discussed; we hear a snippet of a song associated with “clementing” (going door to door to collect donations for the “Old Clem Feast,”) and hear a tale told at these feasts explaining how the blacksmith was declared “King of All Trades” by King Alfred. There’s also a bit about a pyrotechnic festivity known as “anvil firing” associated with these celebrations and a snippet of the traditional blacksmith-toasting song, “Twanky Dillo,” sung by the Wild Colonial Boys.
Moving further back into Anglo-Saxon history, we encounter the figure of Wayland the Smith, one who appears briefly as a swordsmith and armorer in Beowulf and other English narratives but whose story is most thoroughly presented in the Lay of Völund part of the Poetic Edda (“Wayland” being an adaptation of the Old Norse name “Völund.”) We hear a brief summary of this tale, including the particularly gruesome revenge taken by the smith upon the king who takes him captive.
We also hear a bit about Wayland’s Smithy in Oxfordshire, a Neolithic long barrow or stone-chamber tomb supposedly occupied by a ghostly blacksmith.
Wayland escapes from “Myths and legends of all nations” (1914)
We then have a look at the smith god of classical mythology, Vulcan (Roman) or Hephaestus (Greek), his physical traits and fantastic creations, which extend beyond simple smithing into the realm of magic and even the creation of the first human female, Pandora.
Another metalworker associated with mankind’s origins is Tubal-Cain, described in the book of Genesis as the first “forger of all instruments of bronze and iron.”
As a descendent of Cain (who commits mankind’s first murder) and a creator of weapons enabling more deaths, Tubal-Cain’s folkloric reputation tends to be rather black. The apocryphal book of Enoch, presents a truly Luciferian blacksmith seemingly based on Tubal-Cain, the fallen angel Azazel, who utterly corrupts mankind before the flood of Noah.
This flood narrative also figures into the mythology of Freemasonry and the role assigned the figure of Tubal-Cain in its rituals. (I give away a few masonic secrets in this segment and can only hope I will not pay for this with my life.)
Also discussed is the Masonic-inspired Society of the Horseman’s Word whose members were said to exercise supernatural control over horses in rural areas of Scotland and England in the 19th century. The order’s mythological founder was understood to be either Cain or Tubal-Cain, depending on the region.
A blacksmith and son of one of these Horsemen was Robert Cochrane, who in 1966, founded The Clan of Tubal Cain, a coven and spiritual path intended to rival the Gardnerian witchcraft largely defining the neopagan world of the 1960s. We end the show with a particularly strange and tragic tale associated with this group.
Transylvania’s vampire lore inspired the setting of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, if not the character of the Count, and encompasses not only undead monsters, but living beings akin to witches. (The show is introduced with an audio snippet from Maria Tănase, premiere interpreter of Romanian folk song.)
Mrs. Karswell begins the show, reading a passage Stoker wrote for Jonathan’s Harker’s Transylvania travel journal kand its source in an 1855 essay by Emily Gerard, “Transylvania Superstitions.” Originally from Scotland, Gerard developing an interest in the local folklore while living abroad and expand her essay in the 1888 book, The Land Beyond the Forest. She seems to have derived a fair amount of her vampire lore from a German scholar, Wilhelm von Schmidt, who in 1865 article contributed an article on the subject to the Austrian Review.
Illustration from “The Land Beyond the Forest”
While much of Gerard and von Schmidt’s information seems well sourced, the nomenclature used for vampires is incorrect. The word “nosferatu” put forward by the two folklorists and repeated by Stoker in his novel as the common Transylvanian word for “vampire” is not actually a Romanian word — but we sort out the confusion.
In Romanian, there are two words for vampiric beings, which Gerard subsumed under “nosferatu.” They are moroi and strigoi (male forms, plural moroii, strigoii). Strigoi seems to be a more expansive category and is discussed more in the folklore, but both share many traits including behaviors, preventatives, and modes of destruction. Moroii and strigoii tend to blur together along with two other entities, vârcolaci, and pricolici, which might be closer to our concept of the werewolf (something for a later show).
Before diving into the details on these creatures, I provide a note on two sources used for the episode, chose as they seem better grounded than Gerard’s in Romanian language and culture. The first is by Agnes Murgoci, a British zoologist, whose marriage brought her to Romania and into contact with Tudor Pamfile, a well known native-born folklorist, whose tales of vampires Murgoci translates in the source article: “The Vampire in Roumania,” published in the journal Folklore in 1926. The other source is a Romanian language book from 1907: Folk Medicine, by Gr. Grigoriu-Rigo, in which I found a large and unexpected trove of regional vampire lore.
Illustration from “The Land Beyond the Forest”
While living an evil life makes one more likely to become a strigoi or moroi, through no fault of their own, an individual who does not receive proper burial rites, will live on to destroy those who failed to fulfill their funereal duties — namely, his family and relations. We have a look at some of the old burial custom, which includes and audio snippet of bocet, a form of traditional lamentation offered at funerals.
We then dig into the moroi and traits its shares with the strigoi: the tendency to attack family members, similar preventatives and modes of destruction as well as shared methods detection of thevampire in its grave.
The strigoi in some ways is closer to the pop-culture vampire — unlike the moroi, it’s sometime explicitly said to drink blood, and garlic is a primary prophylactic. Alongside its practice of destroying loved ones, we hear of some peculiar incidents in which the strigoi also engages with its family in more neutral or even helpful (if unwanted) ways.
We then have a look at livingstrigoii, that is, strigoii fated to become undead after burial but in life exhibiting supernatural abilities and evil inclinations. In many cases, these beings bear comparisons to witches. Possessing the evil eye and the ability to leave the sleeping body in another form (usually a small animal) are examples of this.
Some methods of preventing a living strigoi from rising from its grave are discussed as well as means of destroying these creatures. Techniques employed against the moroi, while simlar occasionally include additional techniques, such as application of tar or quicklime to the body. Priests’ blessings and spells by benevolent wise women can also be employed (and we hear an audio example of the latter).
The remainder of our show consists of vampire folk tales collected by Tudor Pamfile as provided via Murgoci’s translations. The first pair of stories illustrate the resemblance between living strigoii and witches. These are followed by tales of male strigoii pursuing women vaguely prefiguring the pop-culture vampire Stoker birthed.
Customs of November 29, the “Night of the Strigoi” in Romania, are then described along with its folkloric significance and relationship to St. Andrew, followed by a clip from the 2009 British comedy, Strigoi.
Though no longer common in Transylvania, in rural regions toward Romania’s Bulgarian border, belief in vampires is still part of life. We hear a bit of a Romanian news segment on a poltergeist-like vampire plaguing the largely Romani village of Sohatu followed by a 2004 case from the village Celaru, which made international news when the body of an alleged vampire was disinterred and its heart burned.
The musical closer to the show is by the horror host Zacherley.
Bird-women hybrids of Greek legend and Russian folklore are uniquely ambivalent, sometimes bringing death and destruction and at others, prophetic wisdom and the joy of Paradise.
The two Greek species we treat are sirens and harpies, both at times described as having the bodies of birds and faces or upper bodies of human females.
Beginning with harpies — we hear a bit of audio from the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts, which features a pair of stop-motion harpies created by Ray Harryhausen. While these are more batlike than birdlike, the animator’s tendency to conflate features is actually in line with various classical tales, which tend to disagree sometimes offering winged harpies, others not, and if birdlike, not necessarily featuring the heads of women. We hear some of these descriptions read by Mrs. Karswell.
Harpy from Joannes Jonstonus publication Historiae naturalis de avibus (1657)
As for sirens, while today they are regarded as equivalent to mermaids, originally they were bird-human hybrids. Thanks to the siren’s connection to the sailors they would seduce, an intuitive shift from bird to fishlike portrayals seems natural, but did not occur until late antiquity or the early medieval period. It seems likely that once this transition occurred the harpy’s image consolidated around the birdlike form no longer associated with the siren. Unlike the creature’s form, the siren’s song, which drew sailors to wreck their ships upon the rocks, has always been a defining attribute of the creature.
There’s something of a disconnect between ancient siren and harpy narratives and the creatures’ representation in visual art, with some of their traits more fixed in the latter than the former. In particular, sirens and harpies, along with other hybrids such as the griffin and sphinx, first appear in Greek culture as decorative embellishments on household items. These monsters, as discussed, were borrowings from cultures of the East, with the human-headed Egyptian ba bird being a likely origin for our avian figures.
Funerary statue of a siren, 4th C BC, National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece
The behavior of these creatures is primarily known from two ancient texts. In the third century BC, the behavior of harpies was defined by Apollonius Rhodius’s in his epic The Argonautica, while the actions of sirens were codified in Homer’s Odyssey from the 8th century BC.
The episode from the Argonautica involves the harpies suddenly descending from the sky to torment a the prophet Phineus, repeatedly sent by Zeus to snatch away his food.
Better known is Homer’s episode describing Odysseus tied to the mast listening to the siren song as his crew sails near, their ears providently plugged with wax. What’s not as often remembered, however, is the nature of the siren’s song, which promises not sexual reward, but omniscience.
The sirens’ offer to share the knowledge of the gods, and the danger inherent in hearing their song finds a precise parallel in narratives about the Russian bird-women we discuss, namely the Alkonost, Sirin, and Gamayun, all of which are said to reside in Paradise, or the realm of the dead. They are portrayed like the harpies and sirens as having the bodies of birds and human heads or heads and breasts but with the addition of crowns or halos.
The Alkonost and Sirin are said to be sisters, inevitably appearing as a complimentary pair in art and folk-tales, with the Alkonost presiding over the daylight hours, and the Sirin the night, the Alkonost bringing joy, the Sirin sorrow, etc. While the Alkonost is generally made the more positive symbol, both birds, through their song, can produce dangerous results. The song of the Alkonost shares a knowledge or experience of the divine that can induce ecstatic madness or a deathlike trance state. The same could be said for the Sirin, though in some instances it’s said to more literally said to abduct mortals into the afterlife.
“Sirin and Alkonost. The Birds of Joy and Sorrow” Viktor Vasnetsov, 1896
While the Sirin obviously derives its name from the Greek sirens, the Alkonost too has its origins in Greek mythology, specifically in the myth of the lovers Alcyone and Ceyx, the former lending her name (in Russian derivation) to the Alkonost.
For her effrontery of comparing their love to that of the gods, Alcyone (or sometimes both Alcyone and Ceyx) are transformed into birds, specifically kingfishers. As a bird, Alcyone was said by Roman writers to lay her eggs during a five-day period in the winter during which the winds are calmed — a source of our word, “halycon,” meaning a calm or happy interlude.
The Alkonost likewise is said to lay its eggs in the ocean during an interval during which the seas are calm, and is therefore associated with control over the weather. Superstitions found not only in Russia but further afield in Europe associate the kingfisher and dried kingfisher bodies used as charms to predict the weather.
The Sirin and Alkonost were also assimilated into Russia’s Christian culture, sometimes shown perched upon trees in Eden or as representations of the Holy Spirit. We hear of a particularly strange Russian tradition involving the bird-women called “Apple Savior,” involving the blessing of apples, Christ’s transfiguration in the Bible, and the singing of the Sirin and Alkonost, as well as a folktale involving the lovers Kostroma and Kupelo associated with the summer solstice and St. John’s Night.
The song of the Gamayun, like that of the Alkonost and Sirin, is a form of divine language though is less likely to be destructively overpowering and more associated with prophecy and happiness. For this reason, the creature, is also referred to as “The Bird of Happiness” or “The Bird of Prophecy.”
The Gamayun is also often said to have no legs as it is strictly a creature of the air or heavens and never lands. The source of this belief is actually related to a peculiar trade in preserved bird charms, as explained in detail.
The show winds down with some appearances of the Russian bird-women in 19th and 20th-century art, music, and film, including the 1897 opera Sadko by Rimsky-Korsakov, a musical treatment of a folkloric adventurer, merchant, and gusli-player from Novgorod. We hear a bit of the opera’s most famous aria often called “The Song of India” describing the exotic land where the Bird of Happiness may be found.
Our final segment is about Sadko, a 1952 cinematic adaptation of the opera by “the Soviet Walt Disney,” Aleksandr Ptushko, a film repackaged by Roger Corman in 1963 for American screenings as The Magic Voyage of Sinbad.
