We were told tales that lizards or dragons are mythical creatures. However, the chronicles say that these were real animals that were found in medieval Russia.
Let's collect information about what we know about this and speculate a little …
If you carefully read the ancient chronicles, you can find facts in them that would do honor to any science fiction novel. These facts reveal to us an unfamiliar and incredible reality.
Many, of course, know that our ancestors during the times of paganism worshiped Perun, Svyatovit, Dazhdbog and other idols. But few know about the worship of living "gods".
ZMEY GORYNYCH
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Russian epics tell that the winged seven-headed dragon Gorynych lives on the Sorochinskiye mountains in a deep cave. There he keeps various treasures and abducted maidens, for whom he flies to Holy Russia.
The appearance of Zmey Gorynych is accompanied by a menacing noise, like "rain is raining" and "thunder is thundering."
As soon as he gets closer, darkness sets in, the wind rises, and mother earth groans in suffering; Like the classic dragon, the Serpent Gorynych is a guardian. He guards the boundaries of the witchcraft "thirtieth kingdom beyond the distant mountains." You can get to the named thirtieth kingdom through the Kalinov Bridge, thrown over a wide, sometimes fiery river. But it is this very bridge that is guarded by the Serpent Gorynych, it will not let anyone through - neither a bird, nor an animal, nor a foot, nor a horse, it devours everyone.
In other versions, the Serpent - again similar to the classic dragon - guards not the border, but the very core of this magical country, “keeps watch” despite the fact that in the “thirtieth kingdom” the most valuable things are treasures, golden apples, living water, or something and a beautiful princess, local or kidnapped. The hero - Ivan Tsarevich or Ivan the Fool - must defeat Gorynych in battle, chop off all three of his heads, and burn his body. And quickly retreat, because the Snake usually has very vengeful relatives.
The epics of the XI century say that the dragon, nicknamed the Serpent Gorynych, devastated the outskirts of the city for many years until the knight Dobrynya Nikitich, who served under Prince Vladimir, killed him. In the battle with the Serpent Gorynych on the Puchaya River, Dobrynya frees the niece of Prince Zapeva Putyatichna.
FIRE SNAKE
In different regions of Ancient Russia they called him differently: Lyubak, Volokita, Lyubostay, Letun, Letavets, Nosak.
In 1092, the chronicler wrote: "The clouds became dark, and a great serpent stretched out because of them, a head on fire, and three heads, and smoke went from it, and a noise like thunder began."
The snake got its nickname from its many-meter fiery tail, which wriggles during flight (this is where the nickname "snake" came from), and this "reptile" did not possess fire-breathing, since it was literally a flying ball of fire, very similar to ball lightning.
The fiery serpent is the embodiment of serpentine cunning and strength that flies over villages and penetrates the huts of lonely girls and women. If he falls in love with a girl, then sweetness is incurable forever. Nobody undertakes to reprimand, speak, or give a drink to such a sweetheart. Everyone sees how the Fiery Serpent flies through the air and burns with an inextinguishable fire, and not everyone knows that as soon as he descends into the chimney, he will find himself in the hut as a young man of unspeakable beauty. Without loving, you will fall in love, without praising, you will praise, the old women say, such a fellow. The Fire Serpent has a head with a ball, a back with a trough, and a long, long tail - sometimes up to five fathoms. Arriving at its place, it scatters sparks that fly out as if from a sieve, and it flies so low that it can be seen from the ground no more than a fathom. He only visits women who long and deeply yearn for their absent or deceased husbands. The visitor himself is not visible to outsiders, but his voice is heard in the hut; he answers questions and begins to speak himself. Moreover, his visits are noticeable also because his beloved begin to grow richer in front of people, although at the same time every woman, to whom the Serpent has got into the habit, certainly begins to lose weight and wither.
Fireman
This winged South Slavic dragon lives on rocks, sometimes in caves, and sometimes right on a cloud. Flying, he spews fire. The body of the firefighter is covered with shining scales, shimmering with all colors. Fire is reflected in it, and the flight of the dragon looks like a flash of lightning. He falls to the ground with noise and thunder, scattering sparks.
Undoubtedly, the popular consciousness identified a thunderstorm with the image of a firefighter.
Tradition ascribes to the dragon heroic strength, knowledge of healing and love herbs, possession of untold riches and the ability to seduce women. I just want to warn: “Girls! Fear the love of the fire: it brings sorrow, illness and death."
As in the city of Lukorje, a fireman flew in, he sees the girl and seduces. But the fireman himself is subject to charms - you just need to find out the secret of the lapel potion and give it to the dragon to drink. This way you can get rid of his harmful love.
Serpent
A fantastic creature, a monster that combines the features of a reptile, bird, animal, man. Tales of the Snake King, the serpent king, whose trail points to the location of the treasures, were popular among treasure hunters and miners.
One of the most legendary and mysterious creatures in the Urals can be called the giant snake world - the snake. The first information about him appeared in the second half of the 19th century, when the mining engineer Lebedinsky was in those places on business. One day he saw a huge snake crawling along the road. The engineer rushed to a nearby village and asked the locals to help him catch the monster. When they refused, Lebedinsky himself tracked down the snake and killed it with a shot in the head.
The specimen turned out to be about 16 meters long and as thick as a good log. The skin of this snake was allegedly sent to England by Lebedinsky. Struck by Lebedinsky's story about this event, the outstanding naturalist of that time, Sabaneev, began to collect eyewitness accounts of the unique snake.
The scientist spent many hours wandering around the habitats of this miracle. In 1870 he wrote: “… The main feature of the vicinity of Lake Sinarskoye is undoubtedly a giant snake. He first appeared here in June of this year near the village of Voskresenskoye. A multi-meter snake was discovered by a peasant plowing in a field. In horror, he rushed to the village where I was at that time. Arriving at the indicated place, we did not find the runner, probably, he crawled into the jungle of the forest. They told me a lot about this snake, including about its bloodthirstiness - on the Chusovaya river, he ate one barge haule …"
Later, in 1889, an article by L. Ushkov was published in the journal Priroda i Okhota about the Ural snake: "… Since the beginning of spring, a snake up to ten arshins in length (arshin - 71.12 cm) has appeared in the vicinity of the village of Povarni Bobrovskaya. Then few people believed this, but at this time the fact of the existence of such a snake has been fully clarified. The back of the snake is light gray with a steel sheen, the eyes are large, protruding, as if silver rubles are inserted … ".
The famous Ural storyteller Pavel Bazhov wrote a lot about the giant snake: “… And now the body of the enormous snake began to roll out of the ground. The head rose above the forest. Then the body bent right over the fire, stretched out along the ground, and this miracle crawled to the Ryabinovka River, and from the ground all the rings come and go. There is no end to them. In the Middle and Southern Urals, this fantastic snake is often called the Great Snake and is considered the master of not only all snakes, but also gold. For some, he facilitated access to gold, indicating places, and even brought gold to them. He drove others away, frightened or even killed …”.
Sacred Beast: For a long time, nothing was heard about this snake, and all stories about it began to be mistaken for hunting tales. However, in the 30s of the XX century, the Great Snake crawled out of folklore legends and again reminded of himself. Researcher Valery Chernetsov, according to the stories of the Mansi hunters, described the snake in detail: it lives in or near the water, sleeps only on a tree. Its length reaches 16 meters. The Mansi called him "yalpin uy", which means "sacred beast". They believed that the snake does not die, but turns into ammonite stone.
In the late 1950s, the Leningrad geologist G. Grodensky was in Ilmeny. There was no telephone connection between the cordons and the reserve base at that time, and a message about a rare find was delivered by a courier rider. It said that a giant snake appeared on Lake Argazi, which was well seen by local fishermen. They allegedly fled in fear and did not dare to approach the shore. Groddensky immediately set out on the road. A forester and an observer from the protection of the reserve with local fishermen were already waiting for him by the lake. They demonstrated a wide footprint in the reeds, left by an unusually large creature: "… A big snake, about ten meters …".
The telegraph operator of the post station Bychkov also told a blood-curdling story: “… It was like this: two factory workers arrived at their mowing in a remote place during a bad time. One stayed to unharness the horse, the other went for some reason up the hill, into the forest. Suddenly a desperate cry was heard, and the remaining peasant saw a comrade running from the mountain, followed by a gigantic ball, which soon caught up with the runner. He fell. The lump, turning around, turned out to be a big snake, which quickly crawled into the thicket of the forest. The fallen worker died - either from a blow from the tail of a monster, or from a broken heart ….
The next meeting with the giant took place in the summer of 1961 near Lake Bolshoye Miassovo. He was discovered by a local woman. Here is what she said: "… The head is larger than that of a catfish, the body is a thick tree, gray, about eight meters will be …". Unlike other eyewitnesses, the woman was not frightened, did not run away, but began to throw stones at the monster. In the end, he crawled home.
And here is the story of the beekeeper Vasily Pilatnikov: “… On the bank of the Izyaka River we have a giant snake. During spring floods, the washed-out banks collapse, forming cracks. Our snake lived in these cracks, it had a black color, its body was flat, in the form of a ribbon, and not like other reptiles. And then one time a breathless shepherd came running and shouted: "Grandfather Vasily, let's go to the herd as soon as possible, and you will see who is milking your cow." We came running, and I see: my cow is standing aside, her legs are entwined with a black ribbon, the same ribbon is entwined with her udder. Seeing the people, the boa unhitched from the cow and quickly crawled to the river bank … ".
And the most recent message was from Nyazepetrovsk: early in the morning, two fishermen were at a local reservoir. Suddenly the water mirror seemed to split into small pieces, and a huge sheep-like head emerged 15 meters from the men. The monster's eyes looked at them with some reproach. A minute later, hitting the water with a thick snake tail, it disappeared into the water.
Stories about a "huge, thick as a log" snake lying in a deep hole are also found in the folklore of the Mari. This snake with an enchanting hypnotic gaze is supposedly the queen of snakes and possesses secret knowledge.
Numerous legends, eyewitness accounts, and even material traces of this monster speak of the reality of its existence.
ZMIULAN
Character of East Slavic mythology.
Zmiulan is the god of springs, wells, snakes and clouds. The connection with the water elements indicates his Navi nature (Nav in East Slavic mythology, the spirit of death, as well as the dead).
In the beliefs of the southern Slavs, Zmiulan is a serpentine demon living in the hollow of an ancient oak tree.
He is the king of snakes, has wings.
In the Saratov province, the snake is dark-haired, with a bucket thick, two fathoms in length, with an exorbitant human head. He is working on reduced duty, he says in a human tongue, but ambiguously. In popular prints, the snake has clawed legs and an endless train.
COCATRICE, COCK SERPENT
Cockatrice looks like a rooster with a snake tail.
Cockatrice does not have all the destructive power of the Basilisk, but it has one thing in common with it - if a person looks into Cockatrice's eyes, he will turn into stone. Inherits much more signs of a rooster than a snake (like a lizard-like Basilisk).
SNAKE VELES (HAIR)
God of agriculture and cattle breeding. One of the most ancient East Slavic gods, the cloister god, who covers the sky with rain clouds, drives out cloudy herds to heavenly pastures. As a "scotjago" god, Volos was in charge of the heavenly flocks, was their ruler and shepherd, but then he was credited with the protection and protection of ordinary, earthly flocks. Along with a shepherd's character, Volos is given the importance of a god who helps the labors of the farmer.
Since ancient times, cattle have been considered the main wealth of the tribe and family. Therefore, the god Veles was also the god of wealth.
According to legends, the Serpent God combines furry and scales in his appearance, flies with the help of webbed wings, knows how to breathe fire, although he is very afraid of fire (especially lightning). Snake - Veles is a big lover of milk, hence his middle name - Tsmog (Smog), which means Sosun in Old Slavonic.
ASPID
Asp is a monstrous winged serpent that has a bird's nose and two trunks, its wings are variegated and shine, shimmer like semi-precious stones. According to some legends, however, the monster is impenetrably black. Hence the expression "slate-black color".
Wherever Aspid gets in the habit of flying, those places will devastate. He lives in the stone mountains, and according to other legends - in the gloomy, harsh, wooded north, and he never sits on the ground: only on a stone. It is impossible to kill him with an arrow, you can only burn him …
It is possible to speak and lime the serpent - the destroyer "with a trumpet voice", from which the mountains are shaken. Then the sorcerer or sorcerer grabbed the stunned viper with red-hot pincers and held it “until the snake died”.
Tugarine snake
His other names usually include the "snake" motif - Tugarin the Serpent, Tugaretin the Serpent, Tugarin Zmeevich, Tugarische the Serpent. In Russian epics and fairy tales there is a mythologized image of an evil, harmful creature of a serpentine nature.
The main text in which Tugarin speaks is an epic about the fight between Alyosha Popovich and Tugarin in its various versions. When Tugarin leaves for a duel, his horse neighs like an animal, Tugarin whistles like a snake. Fiery snakes are entwined around Tugarin. He threatens Alyosha Popovich to strangle him with smoke, sprinkle him with sparks, scorch him with fire-flame, and shoot him with brands. Tugarin is also associated with the element of water, and the battle with Alyosha Popovich usually takes place near the Safat River. But at the same time Tugarin and a flying kite. He rushes through the skies on his paper wings, which refuse him when they are soaked in the rain.
CEM
Sem - was known to the entire Slavic world. His images are found on 15th century tombstones. Depicted as a bipedal snake or a bipedal lizard.
He is the patron saint of the house and its inhabitants. Each house had its own Sem, who was burnt kyp in a stove as a gift, so that no one ran away from the house, so that everyone would hold sane and respectful.
Sem guarded the house and people living in his house.
CIRCUIT
Dragon, a dangerous deity. Maybe his name means "black Itra" - evil Itra? (The dragon is the god of darkness.)
SNAKE LIZARD (YUSHA, RYGL, VOLKHOVETS)
In some regions of Russia, the Lizard was a deity of rivers and fishing. In others, it was the underground Serpent, causing earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in the earth. This snake looked like a giant crocodile.
Almost all Slavic tribes who worshiped the Lizard considered him to be an absorber of the sun, which descends beyond the world every night and floats to the east as an underground river. This river flows inside the two-headed Lizard, swallowing the sun with its western mouth and belching out from the eastern one.
The harp was dedicated to the lizard, listening to the game on which he loved and generously rewarded for a good game. In the legend about Sadko, the Lizard gave the maestro FISH GOLD FEATHER for good playing on the harp, that is, the Golden Fish. The sanctuary of the Lizard was located on the swamps, the shores of lakes and rivers. The Lizard Shore Sanctuaries were perfectly round. Black chickens, as well as young girls, were thrown into the swamp as victims to the Lizard, which was reflected in many beliefs. Also, human sacrifices were brought to him during the spring ice drift, when believers in ecstasy threw themselves into the river and drowned themselves, thereby rendering honor to this deity.
The custom of sacrificing a person to the underwater god existed in the north in a transformed form until the beginning of the 20th century. The old men made a stuffed animal and in a leaky boat sent it to the lake, where it sank. Another sacrifice made to the Lizard was a horse, which was first fed by the whole village, and then drowned.
BLACK SERPENT
Chernobog, Koschey the Immortal, is the embodiment of all dark forces, was born from the world Duck at the beginning of creation. Thrown into the underground hellish kingdom. God of cold, destruction, death, evil; God of madness and the embodiment of all bad and black.
Chernobog is depicted in the form of a giant thousand-headed "Fierce Serpent, Black Serpent, many-headed"; "Some Snake has a thousand heads, this Snake has a thousand tails," then in the form of a man or a demon with human features, painted black with a silvered mustache.
The descriptions are too vague and highly mythologized
Sacrifices are made to him before starting the most important things, for example, before going on a military campaign. Sacrifices are often bloody and human, they kill captives, slaves and horses. A terrible deity, the beginning of all misfortunes and pernicious cases. To this terrible spirit, they were sacrificed over horses, not only captives, but also people who were deliberately given to him for this. And how all the national disasters were attributed to him; then in such cases they prayed and sacrificed to him to ward off evil. Strong god, god of bodily strength, courage, god of war, courage and military valor, god of victorious glory.
CHALLAH
In the mythology of the South Slavs, this was the name of a monstrous tailed snake with horse eyes and wings under the knees. He usually has three heads and nine tongues - six-winged, twelve-tailed, with horse eyes. The dimensions of the challah are so large that their heads are in the clouds, and their tails stretch along the ground. Lord of black clouds, hurricanes, hail, tornadoes, fogs, from which fields and gardens suffer. Challahs are warlike, they fight to death with each other for a magic staff - and then lightning flashes, thunder rumbles, snow and hail fall. Having united, hungry challahs attack even the Sun and the Moon, obscure them with wings (this is how eclipses occur), try to devour the stars, then they acquire a blood-red color. Before big human holidays, challahs lead round dances, raising whirlwinds. The trouble is for someone who is inadvertently captured by such a whirlwind - the unfortunate person can go crazy.
Halam happens to turn into invisible people, animals, but even such werewolves can be seen by a person - if he is six-fingered. Those creatures who are born from the marriage of the Fiery Serpent with a woman protect people from challah. These babies are half-humans, half-snakes with tiny wings. As soon as such a creature is born, his mother must in one night weave a cloth onto a shirt, cut and sew it, otherwise the child will not grow up as a protector snake, there will be no one to protect the village from the challah. When a storm comes, the little man with wings immediately falls asleep and his soul - Zdu-khach - flies off to fight with the khalah. It cannot be woken up or even touched, for the soul, returning, must find a body in its previous position in order to enter it. Otherwise, the magical creature will die and the challah will overcome people.
YILBEGAN
In some myths of the Turkic peoples of Siberia, he is a winged dragon, and in some a multi-headed man-eating monster riding a bull with ninety-nine horns.
MIRACLE-YUDO
Miracle Yudo of Slavic folk tales is a terrible, many-headed, mighty dragon with six or twelve heads. In general, the word "miracle" in the old days meant a giant.
He possesses a fiery finger that allows him to regenerate severed heads. Miracle Yudo lives in stone chambers, where he has witch wives and a snake mother. Miracle Yudo owns two magical sources: if you drink from one, you will become a mighty hero, from the other - golden hair.
ENOUGH
The tale says that there once was a dragon called Grabbing. He stole y mortal horses and cows, which he fed, and did not disdain people - he sits on the shore and licks passers-by like a mosquito frog. One kid decided to defeat the dragon. He asked the blacksmith to forge a huge cauldron, ordered the lumberjacks to build a large fire in the square, then took flour from the miller and baked a huge pudding - super-rosy, but raw inside. Then he got into the boat and swam to the dragon, which lay in the middle of the river. I grabbed the pudding and asked what. it smells. The boy suggested trying it. The dragon did not force himself to beg - he swallowed the pudding along with the boat. Meanwhile, the boy ran home. At night, the dragon began to have colic. He was so tormented that he decided to swallow the boy to alleviate the suffering, but he was not taken aback - when the dragon thrust his head into his window,he drew an ax and severed his neck with one blow.
Dragons are everywhere. In painting, in the coats of arms of cities, in seals, in epics and fairy tales. By the way, in Russia the word "fairy tale" is a reliable story.
And here's another version
Many Russian heroes, about whom folk legends tell, chopped off the heads of the Serpent-Gorynych. But not only legends and tales tell about these mysterious monsters, which, by the way, are very reminiscent of primitive dinosaurs.
If we translate into modern language a phrase from the collection of Russian chronicles dating from 1582, then the probability of the existence of crocodiles near Novgorod will turn out to be quite real. “All summer long corcodiles - fierce beasts came out of the river onto the road. Ate a lot of people. People prayed in horror to God. Some of the creatures were beaten with sticks. It happened in Sloboda in the year when Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich passed away."
The skeptic will probably decide that the Russian chronicler could have composed. But the written testimony of a foreigner Jerome Garce, an agent of the English Chamber of Commerce, has also survived. In 1589, on the way from Poland to Russia, he saw on the banks of the river a "adovite dead crocodile" whose belly was ripped open by Garce's servants with spears. The stinking smell of the beast poisoned the traveler, and he even had to lie down in the nearest village, where kind people showed him sympathy and Christian help.
Stories about crocodiles can also be found in the memoirs of the Austrian Sigismund Herberstein, the Vatican ambassador to Russia. He visited our country twice, in 1517 and 1526, and described his impressions in detail. According to him, strange idolaters live in the Russian forests, who diligently feed some huge lizards with four short legs, a long tail and a black plump body. With a kind of reverential fear, people worship these creatures, which now and then crawl out of the water to the food left for them.
In the archives of the city of Arzamas, a document was found dated June 4, 1719, which mentions the "Arzamas Monstruz". It is about a great storm that happened in the district, about a terrible tornado that took many lives. About the fact that a serpent fell from heaven, "scorched by God's wrath," and smelled disgustingly. According to the description, the monster that fell from the sky had four short legs and a huge toothy mouth. Zemsky Commissar Vasily Shtykov, remembering the Decree of Tsar Peter Alekseevich from the summer of 1718 on the collection of all sorts of curiosities, freaks and "monsters for the Kunshtkamera" took this snake and placed it in a barrel with strong alcohol. Unfortunately, the "package" did not reach the St. Petersburg Museum, it was lost somewhere along the way. Therefore, the nature of the "Arzamas monster" has remained unsolved. Either a tornado brought a real crocodile from distant countries,was it one of the descendants of those mysterious crocodiles from the Russian forests that were mentioned in the Novgorod chronicle of the 16th century? Or maybe these mysterious creatures live somewhere now? It is no coincidence that stories about some monsters living in Russian lakes are still passed from mouth to mouth.
More recently, in the summer of 1999, not far from the Russian border, a crocodile scared away vacationers on Lake White in Poland. The toothy monster appeared on the beach in the midst of the swimming season. The local forester reported to his superiors that he saw a two-meter reptile. Everyone was raised to their feet: police, firefighters, divers. But it was not possible to catch the animal in a wooded, swampy area. By the way, biologists examined the tracks and confirmed that they belong to a crocodile.
All sources tell about the same phenomenal phenomenon of nature, which does not fit into our usual picture of the world. But is it worth dismissing the confirmed facts? Thus, cryptozoologists once did not believe the stories of a Dutch pilot, whose plane crashed on Komodo Island in 1912. Returning home, the pilot began to talk about bloodthirsty dragons living on an island in the Java Sea. But only in 1926 an expedition of zoologists was sent there, who really identified relic lizards, called "dragons of Komodo Island".
There were no more than a thousand of prehistoric animals. In length they reached three and a half meters, and weighed 130 - 150 kg. In addition, these giants were very aggressive and often stole livestock from local peasants.
It is possible that such creatures were once found on the Russian land.