a rusalky post for rusalky week. i want to share some ukrainian folk stories about relationships between the rusalky and their living relatives. and if you don't know, rusalka is an undead natural spirit, usually (but not always) of a girl who died a violent death, or died prior or during the rusalka week. recordings of folk texts are taken from the work "ukrainian mythology" by volodymyr halaichuk, translated by me.
• a girl died before rusalka week. and her sister remained. the dead girl was buried in her clothes, but they forgot to give her her favorite skirt, that she wanted. she came back as a rusalka. she came to her sister, and asked: "oksana, can you get me my skirt?". oksana asked: "what do you need it for?" "i will go party". and so for the whole rusalka week, she visited her sister. every evening oksana left her the skirt on the hedge, and her sister took it and partied. but then the mother noticed it, as the skirt was constantly dripping wet. the rusalka sister told oksana to not utter a single word to her mother about what is happening. but once her mother pressured her, and the girl told her so and so. after that, the rusalka stopped coming.
• there was a good girl, and she died. she wanted to be buried in her silk skirt, but the mother didn't fulfill her wish. the girl died before rusalka week. then the neighbors started dreaming that the girl was asking "why didn't mother give me my skirt?". then, when the rusalka week came, the mother placed the skirt in the corner of the house. then, when the next day came, she looked at it, and the skirt was dripping wet. and so they knew that the rusalka girl came
• a girl died on rusalka week. and so a year came by, but the parents still mourned. but during rusalka week, they saw her khustka move, and so the father pounced on it, and hugged it tightly, and didn't let it go. turned out it was their girl. he placed her on the corner of the house. and so she stayed in one place for a whole year. only when the dziady (ancestors' holiday) came, she ate the steam from the food offering, and then again returned to her corner. but then when the rusalka week came, she looked through the window, and clapped her hands, and exclaimed "my people are coming!" — and she was gone.
• there was a dead girl of 15 or 16 years, who's parents catched her, and locked her in the house. she sat at the clay stove in the corner, her face to the wall, as she refused to turn her face to them. then they noticed that when they cook food, she disappears, and so they knew she was eating the steam from the food. from now on, they left the house before eating, so that she could eat the steam in peace. and so she lived here for a whole year. but then pentecost came, and then three days more, and then she jumped from the stove, and exclaimed "oh! oh! my people are here! my people are here!" — and nobody saw her afterwards.
• once a group of musicians returned from the party late at night, and their way was through the fields. and towards them another group of musicians walked on the same road. when they finally crossed paths, the living recognized that the other group was dead. the dead musician spoke "so what are we gonna do now? now we are doing a playing competition. the one who wins gets the girl from the others' group". and so they played, and the living won. the musician who won chose a girl and said "you're going with us". in that village was a mother, who's daughter drowned herself on the pentecost. when the rusalka got to the village, she recognized the girl as her daughter. she stood in the corner of the house for the whole rusalka week, never talking, facing the corner. and when the week passed, they never noticed when and how, but she disappeared.
lol, I just spent 2 minutes panicking because I was writing descriptions for the creatures of folklore that turn up in my story and I was like:
"Oh no... I'm writing all these things... but am I actually sure this is correct? Fuck, am I a fraud? Did I just nab everything off of Wikipedia 7 years ago when I started writing? D:
No, wait... I remember I went to the university library and spent at least two afternoons reading up everything I could on the Näcken, Rusalki, Vodyanoi and Kappa.
Oooooh but am I sure that I remember it correctly...?"
and then it hit me: past me was even more of an anxious mess and wrecked with imposter syndrome than I am now. So she 100% would have written down excerpts on *everything* she read on the topic.
And lo and behold, I found the document:
I even wrote down the year numbers, formatted it nicely and made an index. Fucking nerd.
green week / rusalki week — may 16 through pentecost
"Green Week is connected to Slavic rituals of celebrating the full spring and the reborn greenery (the nature fully reborn after winter) after all the tree branches had already turned green. Its core nature is a form of maintenance of the rhythm of the nature, with magical practices of purifying the surroundings from demons or evil spirits that might have an effect on the further process of growth towards the end of spring. Goal of these rituals was designed to boost nature’s fertility, the ability to grow, and to prepare the soil, crops and livestock for the upcoming summer season and the later (expectantly abundant) harvest."
CUSTOMS
• adorning houses, pathways and shrines with green branches (particularly of the birch-tree), herbs and flowers
• sweeping floors with a green birch-tree branch to ‘purify’ it
• scattering sweet flag / calamus on floors as a protective barrier
• adorning cattle with flowers and incensing them with sacred smoke (more about it here)
• rolling eggs around cattle’s sides in rituals of protection and of boosting the fertility (same ritual was performed for humans)
• burning bonfires around which joyful celebrations with dances and singing were organized
• walking with torches around crop fields to get rid of evil spirits and demons
• walking with so-called ‘gaik’ or ‘maik’ (branches decorated with flowers and ribbons, held on a long stick)
some other ways we can celebrate in current time:
• honor your ancestors, especially the ones that passed away too early or in tragic circumstances (you can also honor Rod, the god of fate, bloodlines, ancestral magic and ancestral knowledge)
• honor the spirits of local woods and bodies of water - you could help clean the woods and waters and give offerings asking for blessings of abundance and good luck
• honor the gods - especially deities connected with spring, fertility, youth and beauty such as Lelya, Dodola/Perperuna, Mokosh, Lada, Jarilo, Vesna, Zhiva, Dazbog, Morana (in her spring-planting-mother aspect), Kostroma and Kupalo
• dress a birch tree, make offerings and perform rirtuals in front of it - you can take a couple of sticks found nearby home, for good luck and success
• while I discourage this course of action this particular year, because of the virus situation normally you’d also want to organize a party and sing and dance with your friends, or go watch/play sports game of some sort
• perform rituals and cast spells connected to wealth, health, beauty, happiness, friendship, love and fertility
• make a bonfire. us slavs love bonfires. slavs also love jumping through bonfires for good luck, but please make sure to spread the kindling around first and try not get hurt while performing your feat of agility.
• get a sword, real or fake and dance with it. don’t get hurt, it would ruin the fun.
°•. ✿ .•°
sources:
The feast of Green Week (Zielone Świątki) is celebrated in Poland around mid-May towards early June – it’s syncretized with the movable cele
in folklore depictions of rusalky, their fatness is sometimes a trait that is emphasized. fatness is, of course, associated with richness and abundance of the earth, something which rusalky are welcomed to share with mortal folk during the green week
a collection of traditional ukrainian rusalka songs, recorded in different villages (each song is titled by the name of the village). these songs are meant to accompany a ritual called "provody rusalok" — escorting the rusalky, that signify the end of rusalka week, and serve as a guide for rusalky to find their way back to the otherworld
in songs prescribed for the rusalka week a common motif is of rusalka asking people to give her clothes. "girls, sisters, give me namitka — if not a thin one, then at least white" (дівки-сестрички, дайте намітки — хоч не тоненької, аби біленької); "girls, sisters, give me a skirt, oh early-early" (дєвочкі-сестрички, дайте мнє споднички, ой рано-рано), "boys, brothers, give me a shirt" (хлопчики-браточки, дайте мнє сорочки)
clothes are considered, among other things, a marker of humanity; dead, as well as beasts, don't need clothes. traditionally, ukrainians buried their dead in linen shirts, which was basically their underwear — and in a traditonal society, being in your underwear is almost the same as being naked. since the point of the rusalka week is to invite them into your space so they can gift you and your household prosperity, to give them clothes is one of the ways by which they can enter the human world. on the other hand, the girls that participate in rusalian rituals may themselves undress and uncover their hair, therefore coming closer to the dead and the bestial. both rusalky and the living therefore can meet halfway through.
