The birds Sirin and Alkonost are clearly not Russian names, but for some reason popular rumor attributes them to living in a Slavic paradise.
For centuries in Russia there has been an unshakable faith in these creatures.
Such an authoritative religious leader as Archpriest Avvakum, obviously, was on a short foot with the Sirin bird, because he gives quite accurate geographical coordinates of its habitat:
Well, with the "bird of sorrow" everything is more or less clear - this is an image borrowed from ancient mythology.
This is the same sweet-voiced Siren that Odysseus and his team fought against:
Odysseus and the sirens.
True, by the time of Habakkuk the Siren-Sirin began to behave much more decently and settled in the heavenly booths.
Alkonost, "the bird of happiness", flew in, ringing wings, from the same antiquity - this is a distorted "Alcyone".
Promotional video:
This name was borne by the wife of an ancient king, who, because of grief for her husband, threw herself into the sea, but was turned into a kingfisher by the merciful gods.
The tenth century Bulgarian writer John Exarch in his book reports that "Alcyon is a sea bird."
So the Greek queen received a permanent residence permit on Russian soil, changing, however, her appearance, name, and biography.
There is a version that it was Vasnetsov who made the feathered maidens opposite in character: researchers believe that the "division of labor" occurred thanks to the famous painting and has no direct relation to mythology.
Sirin and Alkonost. Birds of joy and sorrow.
In the Slavic paradise, however, not only birds with a female head lived. Some of the inhabitants were, as they would say now, "non-photogenic" - none of the artists dared to depict them, because they looked like this:
(That's for sure: "sorry for the bird.")