According to Slavic mythology, water is the spirit of the water element. Actually, in addition to its main "name" - water, this creature has such names as crowberry and water grandfather.
Most often he is represented as a shaggy old man, covered with marsh grass. River pools are considered to be the habitat of this creature, especially near watermills.
It was believed that the merman is on friendly terms with the devil and the field, but is at enmity with the brownie. Like its fellow goblin, in winter the watermaker goes into hibernation and wakes up only on Nikitin's day (April 3, old style).
Among the fishermen it was considered necessary to appease him on this day, since being hungry after wintering, he began to rampage (breaking the ice, frightening fishermen, chasing and crushing fish).
Miracle Yudo
In Polesie, wherever you look, there are lakes everywhere. Therefore, there are countless legends about mermaids and mermaids. But Mikhail Khodakevich, a resident of one of the villages of Polesie, claims that he saw the miracle of the lake in reality. Once he walked home along the lake shore, absolutely sober.
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Suddenly I heard the splash of water. Mikhail came closer, parted the reed thickets and froze in surprise: someone sits on a stone naked (and this is in September!), As if a man, but he looks rather strange. The back is smooth, convex, without a ridge, overgrown with fat. The head is bald, and the skin is off-white or even gray, as if he was very cold.
Apparently, the creature noticed that it was being watched. It turned its head to Mikhail, and he saw that instead of a face he had some sort of mug, seemingly human, but either swollen or smoothed, as if covered with a gray stocking. So he looked at Michael the water, slipped off the stone and dived into the water. The man did not notice his legs, instead of them the miracle had a fish tail.
Mikhail told about the water godfather, and he said that his wife had seen him like that once on the lake.
Water-rescuer
This story happened to a man who until recently did not believe in the existence of various inexplicable creatures, considering the stories about them to be women's tales.
Four years ago, he traveled along the Cheremosh River in Western Ukraine (Carpathians). On one of the high rapids, his kayak capsized and the tourist was pulled under large smooth stones. The strong current did not allow him to get out from under them, but the man did not panic and decided to fight to the last.
Suddenly something cold wrapped around his chest. Turning around, the unfortunate man saw a white creature resembling a man, more like a man. The merman was all white with a grayish tinge, without fins. His entire skin was like a swimmer's wetsuit.
Pulling the drowning man out from under the stones, the waterman grabbed him by the arm and rushed upward with very high speed, and then, pushing him to the surface, disappeared.
Merman in woolen socks
Three eighteen-year-old boys, Ivan, Vladimir and Valery, went on a duck hunt. It was in Azerbaijan, in the Caspian Sea.
The meaning of this hunt was that during the day the ducks were fattening on the shore, and as soon as the sun went down, they flew over to spend the night in the sea bay, where they were shot.
In those years, this bay was very shallow: it was possible to walk for whole kilometers from the coast along paths in the reeds, and the water barely reached the top of the hunting boots.
The farther from the coast, the thickets of reeds and reeds became less and less frequent and, finally, turned into separate hummocks, behind which clear water began. Ducks flew here for the night.
It was not easy to shoot in the dark, and even three of us from the same bump. This attracted young people. As soon as it began to get dark, the friends went to the shore of the bay and walked about two kilometers along the reed thickets, which were taller than human growth. The thickets gradually thinned out. Friends got to the bumps, chose one of them, higher and drier, settled on it and began to wait for the ducks.
As soon as the sun went down, the birds flew at first one or two, and then in flocks. Gripped by the passion for hunting, the young people forgot about everything in the world and were busy only with shooting. It quickly began to get dark, it was more and more difficult to distinguish the silhouettes of ducks in the night sky, so the friends kept looking around, fearing to miss the game.
Suddenly Valery quietly said to Ivan: “Look, an old man has appeared from behind. A fisherman, I guess. Shoot carefully, don't catch him. And I will warn Volodya."
Ivan looked around and also saw his grandfather with a gray beard. He stood on a nearby bump and silently looked at the hunters. The old man was dressed somewhat strangely: in a white long shirt and dark trousers tucked into white woolen socks. He was not wearing boots.
But then the sky overhead literally sang from the whistle of wings. The old man was forgotten. Only one thought flashed through Ivan: “Grandpa found a place for fishing! Here six trunks are banging in all directions, and he is with his fish! There is nowhere else to catch, or what? Well, at least Valera warned him."
But suddenly Ivan felt a gaze on himself. He looked at Valery and saw black eyes wide open with surprise. And then Ivan himself was struck by the thought: “How did this grandfather get here? The boat won't get through here, and where's his boat? And you can get to that bump only through ours!"
The guys, as if on cue, looked back and froze with fear: the grandfather had disappeared as silently as he had appeared. If only one person saw him, one could say that he just imagined.
But two people witnessed the same vision, and this cannot be attributed to the playing out of imagination.
The guys jumped up and began to gaze intently into the darkness, but there was no one around except them. Vying with each other, Ivan and Valery began to tell the bewildered Volodya about the old man.
All three of them suddenly had the feeling that someone was watching them from the thicket. The unpleasant feeling grew stronger every minute. The guys in a hurry packed their things and almost ran through the reeds. Only when they got to the shore did they feel calmer.
So the friends could not find a reasonable explanation for how the bearded grandfather was able to get to the hummock in his woolen socks and where he disappeared later, although all three, of course, did not believe in the stories about goblin and water.