To match the marsh inhabitants and shishigi - according to Slavic mythology, "small, humped creatures, bellied, cold, with knotty hands." It was believed that shishiga walks naked, with tousled hair, pounces on gape bystanders and drags them into the water, bringing trouble to drunks. Unlike the water one, the shishiga lives in the reeds, preferring small streams and reservoirs, while being distinguished by the "pettiness of its dirty tricks." This creature got its name for the fact that the hair on its head is in a bunch, that is, in a bunch, in a heap.
Shishiga plays an important role in the Komi mythology. It was believed that sometimes she got out of the water, and she was seen sitting on the steep bank of the Kama, above the whirlpool, combing her long black hair. They frightened and still frighten children with her, warning them against swimming in the pools with the threat that they will be "carried away by shishiga." In Slavic and Finno-Ugric folklore, she is considered either a kind of kikimor or mermaid, or an independent character. According to various versions, it is an inhabitant of forests or is found in ponds, small rivers or lakes, and thickets of reeds are its favorite habitat.
Shishig were presented in the form of naked women (sometimes hunchback) of normal size with disheveled hair, which they unsuccessfully combed with a comb, and sometimes even with a tail. In particular, you can read in AM Remizov that if a shishiga "covers" a person with its tail, then he will certainly disappear, and irrevocably. Forest shishigs attack people, eat and gnaw bones. Aquatic - they play naughty, sneak up on the swimmers and begin to tickle them, but they can drag them into the water from the shore. The traveler who saw her was soon to drown or die for some other reason.
However, they tell a story that doesn't quite fit into such assumptions. A certain fisherman, once going out to the shore of the lake, saw a shishiga sitting on a hummock and braiding her hair in a braid. She, noticing the man, dived into the water, and left the comb with which she was combing her hair on the very hummock. The fisherman swam to the hummock in a boat, took the comb and brought it to his hut. On the same day, as soon as it got dark and the whole family went to bed, there was a knock on the door and the voice of a shishiga, plaintively pleading with the fisherman to return her comb. The fisherman opened the window and threw out the comb - the shishiga grabbed him and disappeared.
In Samarskaya Luka, old-timers still say that shishigs willingly settle under the footbridge on the Askula River. It is noteworthy that the local spirit is especially disliked by drunks, and if one of the local residents, being "under the degree", decides to go to the shore, he will be lost. In addition, shishigi are punished for hooliganism. They tell a story about how a drunken company of young people from a neighboring village, driving cats on motorcycles, went to barbecue and, for lack of firewood, turned the well. But then, returning home, everyone was frightened to death by the ugly-looking naked woman who appeared on the way and hastily retreated.
Sometimes a mermaid was called shishiga, who looked like an old woman with green hair and tickled swimmers. During the day, this evil spirits are not dangerous, they sleep off after nightly mischief. With the onset of twilight, she begins to be active and look for victims either on the shore or in the forest in order to drag them to the bottom of the reservoir.
Shishiga, similar to a kikimora-hollow, was represented by mummers during Christmas time: she was portrayed in a woman's sundress, but without a headdress, with her hair loose; and a guy dressed like an old woman, in rags, with a pot on his head instead of a kokoshnik, could also play it.
Shishiga and folk sayings are abundantly represented: "Yes, so that the goblin strangle her in the forest, so that the shishigs drown in the river"; “Yagabikha is terrible shoshychiha. Baba Yaga is the same shoshychiha”; "Shishiga plays a wedding" (devil's wedding); "Wine is eaten like shishigi."
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