The miners themselves speak differently about this old man, winking from beer labels. For some he is a kind defender, for others he is an evil joker, for others he is generally a stranger. My father, who had worked at the Dimitrovskaya Tsentralnaya mine for thirty years, never talked about the mountain spirit and never heard of it from his comrades. But this, of course, does not mean that Shubin does not exist …
Perhaps the nickname "mine owner" comes from the word "fur coat", hinting at the thick wool with which he is supposedly covered. But there are other options as well.
“This spirit is something like our version of European gnomes and other underground creatures,” the Stakhanov artist and writer Yevgeny Konovalov told me, who created the wonderful Tales, Tales and Wastes of Old Donbass, where Shubin also appears. “Its prototype is the greedy mine owner of the past. He remained in the memory of the miners as a negative personality: he constantly watched the workers (no matter how they pulled something) and eventually died in the rubble, thereby becoming a spirit. There is a version about the evil drunkard-binder Shubin, and they also claim that in Kharkov there was a manager of a whole series of coal mines with the same surname.
Researcher Vladimir Podov from Lugansk in the book "Legends and Donbass Was" tells the following story of the appearance of this character.
Ignat Shubin and the hauler Christina worked at the salt mine. They loved each other, were going to get married. But as a result of an accident, Christina died. The mine owner was found guilty of her death. In despair, Ignat killed him, and he himself threw himself into the pit. He now wanders in the dark drifts, looking for his beloved …
The famous writer Boris Gorbatov heard the legend that Shubin is a former miner who quarreled with a foreign chief and blew up mine workings out of revenge.
There is an assumption that Shubin is the soul of a dead gas burner worker. There used to be such a terrible specialty: to perform work on burning methane in mine workings, which prevented its accumulation and explosion. Gas burners walked along the drifts with a candle or torch and provoked small flashes of gas. And in order not to get scorched, they put on … a sheepskin fur coat outside and periodically doused it with water.
Brownie's underground relative
Shubin is portrayed as a shaggy old man with brightly glowing eyes and "hairy hooves." Most likely, we are talking about the fact that the body of the mountain spirit is covered with long hair, which descends even on its hooves. A similar sign makes the Donbass representative of demonology related to the same brownie who was painted in the Voronezh province as follows: "Similar to the appearance of a man of the most advanced years, with a long, gray, disheveled beard … The whole body is covered with coarse hair … Horse's legs, with hooves …"
Gorbatov, who drew information about an underground old man in the mines of Makeyevka, Gorlovka, Kadievka (now Stakhanov) and Krasnodon, cites evidence that Shubin was periodically seen by a gray-haired old coughing miner "with a hook in his hands, which is used to drag trolleys." To whom he meets - "that means soon amba: will fill up". However, according to other sources, "the owner of the mine" saves …
Shubin lives allegedly in distant or long-abandoned mine workings. Like other representatives of Slavic mythology, such as the aquatic, the goblin, the mermaid, the brownie, he has supernatural powers, combining kindness and generosity with extreme irritability and malice. Moreover, he is benevolent to honest workers, and cruel to greedy and insolent people.
There are recorded stories about how Shubin warned hardworking miners about the danger with a knock, made them rich overnight; as the "owner" he drove trolleys with "black gold". And the tyrant, the owner of the mine, who shouted: “I am the owner! I do what I want!”, The goat-footed bearded man proved“who is running the show,”having ruined the enterprise with firedamp explosions, landslides and floods.
The underground spirit is not averse to pampering: it frightens the miners, suddenly bursting into laughter in the darkness, or grabs them by the leg, twists them along the workings, and somehow tickled the old trunk man half to death in the mine yard. But at a dangerous hour, he helped the miners more than once. Donetsk writer and ethnographer Ivan Kostyria gave such a story.
“Somehow a hard worker was cutting a strong layer in a narrow face (“stove”). I got carried away so much that I forgot about everything in the world. Suddenly "someone pulled him from behind." The slaughterer thought that these were his comrades joking, and continued to diligently wield the butt. He was pulled again. The miner swore, but did not become distracted. When he was tugged a few more times, he turned angrily, and behind … no one. And then something pushed the miner with such force that he rolled head over heels into a longitudinal course. At the same hour, something crackled at the seam, rumbled … Columns of black dust escaped, large pieces of coal began to roll out of the "stove" in a continuous stream, and soon a huge pile of them piled up. So, thanks to Shubin's care, the miner himself escaped and earned solid money …"
In April 2007, a mining foreman from the Luhansk region said: “I heard that it began to crackle. We stopped working with jackhammers, but the hum continued to grow. It sounds like someone is stamping their feet on the ceiling. We say that it is Shubin (the guardian spirit of the coal mines) runs and warns of trouble. Realizing that everything would collapse now, we rushed to the exit. And then we were crushed."
It is a personal matter for everyone to believe in the existence of Shubin or not … But as long as the stories about him live, the spirit itself, pacing the labyrinths of the Donbass mines, is still alive.
Andrey Krivtsun.