Mavka of the Forest, Rusalka of the River, Domovyk of the Home: the Spirits of Ukrainian Folklore

Girls who lure young men to dance by the river at night, a forest lord who leads people astray in the woods, a small lord who guards the household hearth — Ukrainian folklore is full of named spirits and demons. Folklorists group these together under “demonology” (демонологія, folk belief in demons and spirits).

Drawing on the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta — CIUS; hereafter IEU) and Ukraine’s national encyclopedia, Velyka ukrainska entsyklopediia (VUE), this article sets out what the main spirits look like, how the folklore was recorded, and how it entered literature.

The gods vanished, the spirits remained

IEU’s entry on “Demonology” states that once Christianity became the state religion at the end of the 10th century and paganism was officially banned, the names of “higher” gods such as Perun, Dazhboh, and Veles survived only in written records. By contrast, the “lower” mythology — the belief that spirits inhabit every part of nature — survived into far later times, since it needed no special festival site or priest and its rites could be performed by the head of a family.

According to IEU, this belief was not destroyed by Christianity but instead overlapped with church holidays to become “dual faith” (двовір’я). IEU writes that Perun, the god of thunder, was replaced by St. Elijah, and Veles, the god of livestock, by St. Blaise. The overlap of the summer solstice festival with the feast of John the Baptist follows the same pattern (see our article on the summer solstice festival of Ivan Kupala).

IEU characterizes the “lower mythology” as older in origin than belief in the higher gods. This, however, is the encyclopedia’s own framing; records do not let us trace directly how long individual spirit stories had already been told. Most of these stories were first written down only after folklorists carried out interviews in villages from the late 19th to the early 20th century.

Girls of the water and forest: Rusalka and Mavka

Rusalka (русалка) is, according to IEU’s entry, a water spirit. She was thought to be the soul of a drowned girl or of a child who died unbaptized, and is described as a beautiful young woman with long flowing hair and a wreath of sedge on her head. Rusalky were said to live together at the bottom of the river in crystal palaces, coming ashore around the spring holidays of “Green Thursday” and “Rusalka’s Easter.” Until the feast of St. Peter (in summer), they were said to play by the riverbank all night, swing on tree branches, sing and dance, and lure young men out to tickle them to death. It was also said that rye grew well wherever a rusalka danced, and IEU writes that people carried wormwood or lovage for protection. In some regions, rusalky were said to inhabit fields and forests as well as rivers.

Mavka (мавка; also navka, niavka) is a forest spirit. According to IEU, the name comes from an old Slavic word for “the dead” (nav), and she was thought to be the soul of a girl who died an unnatural death. She is described as tall, round-faced, and long-haired, living in groups in forests and mountain caves, spinning thread from stolen flax to weave thin cloth, and decorating her hair with flowers. She was said to indulge in play and dancing at Pentecost (“Mavka’s Easter”). VUE likewise defines mavka as a spirit in East Slavic folklore that takes the form of a beautiful young woman.

Comparing IEU’s two entries, Rusalka and Mavka closely resemble each other as “the spirit of a girl who died young.” IEU’s “Demonology” entry also lists several other spirits that share features with Rusalka and Mavka, such as Bohynia (a goddess figure) and Nichnytsia (a night witch). Which name was used for which story varied by region.

Lords of the forest, field, and water

• Lisovyk (лісовик, lord of the forest): rules over the forest and its trees, animals, and birds. One is said to exist per forest, appearing as a human, a horned giant, a tree, or an animal, and identifiable by having no shadow. He may lead people astray in the forest, or help hunters by driving animals toward them. In the Hutsul region he was described as a shepherd (IEU, “Lisovyk”).
• Polovyk (польовик, lord of the field): lives in fields and takes human or animal form (IEU, “Demonology”).
• Vodianyk (водяник, lord of the water): lives in rivers, lakes, and wells, and takes drowned girls as wives. In some regions he was identified with a drowned man. There is also Bolotianyk (lord of the marsh), who lures people into the swamp (same source).
• Chuhaistyr (чугайстир): a giant of the Hutsul forests, dangerous to mavky (same source).

Household spirits and shapeshifters

The home has its spirits too. IEU lists Domovyk (домовик, lord of the house), and VUE defines domovyk as “the household god who guards the home’s hearth.” According to IEU, there were also Hovanets (“the one who hides”), who guards the home and helps its residents but can also cause harm; Dolia (fate), the soul of an ancestor honored through particular rites; and Pasichnyk (beekeeper), who protects the bees.

Some spirits approach people by disguising themselves. Perelesnyk (перелесник), according to IEU, flew through the sky as a fiery dragon or a young man, entering homes through the chimney or door and seducing women by taking the form of a dead husband or lover. Mara (мара) was said to take many forms — animals, plants, objects, monsters, ghosts — to cause people harm, and the same name was sometimes used for a devil or for domovyk (IEU, “Mara”).

On the witch (відьма), IEU writes that she was blamed for hail, drought, cows failing to give milk, illness, and poor harvests, and was believed to fly on a broom to gather on Bald Mountain (Lysa Hora) near Kyiv after major Christian holidays. It also notes, however, that Ukraine saw no large-scale, organized persecution of witches, and that the church showed no interest in mounting such a campaign. IEU further states that the belief in the Bald Mountain gathering originated in Germany (the German Kahlenberg).

IEU also notes that beings common in Western European folklore, such as dwarves, fairies, and trolls, are largely absent from Ukrainian folklore. The exception is the Lemkos, among whom household spirits were said to take the form of dwarves.

The people who recorded these traditions

The Galician folklorist Volodymyr Hnatiuk (1871–1926), according to IEU’s biographical entry, developed tuberculosis in 1903, which made fieldwork difficult, so he built a network of about 800 correspondents to gather folklore. He also wrote about beliefs concerning spirits and demons, and IEU’s “Demonology” entry cites, among its sources, Hnatiuk’s Znadoby do ukrainskoi demonolohii (Materials for Ukrainian Demonology), published in the Shevchenko Scientific Society’s Etnohrafichnyi zbirnyk (Ethnographic Collection), volumes 33–34 (Lviv, 1912). How the same Hnatiuk compiled a collection of animal folktales is covered in our article on the 1916 animal tales.

The same IEU entry also cites, among others, Ivan Franko’s “Folk Beliefs of Pidhiria” (Etnohrafichnyi zbirnyk, volume 5, 1898). This shows that, in Galicia from the late 19th to the early 20th century, folklore was systematically recorded in the publications of scholarly societies.

Spirits that entered literature

IEU cites the following works as examples of folk demonology appearing in Ukrainian literature.

• Taras Shevchenko’s poems “The Bewitched Woman” (Prychynna) and “Rusalka”
• Lesia Ukrainka’s play The Forest Song (1911), whose protagonist is the forest spirit Mavka (see our article on Lesia Ukrainka and The Forest Song)
• Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s novel Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, which features mavka (niavka), chuhaistyr, and shcheznyk, among others (see our article on Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors)
• Nikolai Gogol’s short stories set in Ukraine
• The works of Oleksa Storozhenko, and the 18th-century passion play The Harrowing of Hell

IEU’s “Rusalka” entry states that the figure of the rusalka recurs frequently in Ukrainian literature, music, painting, theater, and film. The same spirit can be a fearsome being who lures young men to their death in folklore, and, in literature, a protagonist embodying the very nature of the forest. Reading these works with an eye to what each writer borrowed from folklore and what they changed brings the differences into view.