Mermaids cannot be called characters of exclusively Slavic mythology. Legends about beauties with fish tails date back to ancient Babylon. And at a later time they spread to Western Europe. True, Slavic mermaids differed significantly from beautiful foreign women: they did not have tails, which allowed them to leave the water for a short time.
The word "mermaid" is originally Russian in origin. It is based on the word "fair-haired", which the ancient Slavs called everything pure and light. Perhaps this name arose because mermaids have always lived in water, and then the water was unusually clean and transparent.
Who are mermaids?
According to ancient Slavic beliefs, mermaids are fantastic inhabitants of all waters and sources of the Earth. It was believed that girls who died before they had time to marry, especially brides who were betrothed, become mermaids; or babies who died unbaptized.
Distinctive features of mermaids are smooth, snow-white skin and long green hair. In the light of the moon, they sing amazing songs with their magically beautiful voices and lure unwary fishermen and shipbuilders to them. They can lure mermaids and a casual passer-by, especially when they swim out of the water on a moonlit night, sit on a branch of a weeping willow and comb their wonderful green curls with a scallop carved from a fish bone. Only one thing a mermaid needs from a person: tickle him to death and drown him.
Encounters with mermaids
In the summer, starting from Trinity Day, mermaids walk the earth. At this time, not a single girl will dare to go into the forest alone, because if mermaids meet her, they will lure her, lure her to her, and there will be no way back.
In the forest, mermaids live on weeping birches, so the girls went to the forest during Rusal Week to curl birches. They tied birch branches with multi-colored ribbons, making swings for mermaids.
If, nevertheless, you happen to meet a mermaid in the forest, you can ward off her with the help of wormwood. You need to have time to throw this grass in the eyes of the mermaid, and then she will forever leave a person alone.
In more recent times, the concept of mermaids has changed significantly. The merry river girls turned into very unsightly, vicious and vengeful creatures.
Beliefs about mermaids are also reflected in Gogol's story "May Night, or the Drowned Woman". True, in it the beautiful lady, who has turned into a mermaid, brings only good to the main character Levko. In gratitude for the fact that he helped to find and punish her stepmother-witch, the lady helps Levko to marry his beloved girl Hanna.
Mermaids also became characters in paintings by Russian artists - Ivan Kramskoy, Konstantin Makovsky and Konstantin Vasiliev.
Whatever mermaids are - beautiful or repulsive, good or evil, beliefs about them, like many other poetic beliefs of the Slavs, have significantly enriched Russian culture.
