The mistress of the waves is harsh, crazy …
For hundreds of years, fairy tales, legends and stories about mermaids have been walking around the Nizhny Novgorod land. However, the true mistresses of the waters in our region are not at all mermaids, because according to the ancient mythology of the indigenous population of the region, the Volga Finns - Erzi, Moksha and Teryukhans, who have disappeared to this day, in every reservoir in the south of the Nizhny Novgorod region lives the Mordovian mistress of waters - Vedyava.
Little mermaid, yes without a tail
This incident took place in the Erzyan village of Akuzovo, Sergach region. An elderly healer Zoya Semyonovna Sorokina told me about him. It was after the war. Her godmother walked along the bank of Piana. She looked at a naked woman sitting on a high bank and combing her hair with a comb. Her face can not be seen, and her hair is long, very long. The curious godmother was about to approach the woman, but she, seeing her, suddenly jumped up, laughed loudly and jumped from the high cliff into the pool. And the splash was such that the water overflowed the banks. Only then did the woman understand that it was not a mortal woman at all, but the Erzya goddess, the spirit of the waters - Vedyava.
Indeed, the Mordovian pagan deity - the spirit of the waters - In fact-ava (“after all” - water, “ava” - mother, woman) in the religious beliefs of the Mordovian people is represented as a tall, beautiful, naked woman sitting near a pond and combing long blond, white or green hair. The neighboring Mari also have a similar character - Wood-ava. Unlike the Slavic drowned woman with a fish tail - a mermaid, Vedyava appears with her legs and has a more privileged - divine status.
By the way, a gray-bearded male spirit lives with her in legends, Vy-atya, a water-old man who is considered the husband of a female deity. Nevertheless, the dominant role in Mordovian mythology is assigned to female deities, and all because archaic beliefs in these deities arose in the era of matriarchy.
Extensive ethnographic materials from Erzi, Moksha and Teryukhan testify that man identified gods and spirits with those natural objects that, first of all, were worshiped by him. And one of the most necessary and at the same time dangerous environments in people's lives, of course, was water. Since ancient times, this element has frightened people. In addition to the fact that they could drown every hour, spills washed away dams, demolished and flooded mills, houses, flooded the crops of farmers with rains. And vice versa, water was necessary for a person for life, economy, agriculture and fishing: people fished, hunted beavers, waterfowl. That is why the cult of the spirit - the patroness of water - enjoyed special reverence.
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She was distinguished by her strict temper …
Often in legends, fairy tales, songs, stories of Erzyans and Mokshans, Vedyava is described as a harmful, dangerous, evil spirit, a chance meeting with which promises people big trouble, and often - a quick death. In these stories, the imperious patroness of water appears as an inevitable punishing force or as an evil spirit prophesying great misfortunes to mortals. According to Vedyava's will, adults and children die, livestock perish, households and forestry are in decline. The inevitable punishments of the Mordovian water mistress extended to people who violated the ancient commandments. So, according to the traditional religious beliefs of the Mordovians and other Volga Finns, people were forbidden to wash in reservoirs with stagnant water (in lakes and ponds), cut down trees close to water bodies, allow dirt to enter sacred springs and street wells.
It was believed that Vedyava and her husband Vedyatya live in deep pools and can drown a person: according to the Moksha, Erzya and Teryukhan beliefs, they take to the bottom exactly as many people as they need. Until recently, children were frightened with the spirit of water: "Don't go swimming, otherwise Vedyava will drag you to the bottom."
True, sometimes the water spirits allegedly spared the people who were drowned, pushing the poor souls to the shore with their cold hands. Therefore, if a drowning person still remained alive, he was immediately obliged to bow to the water deities, and then thank them with money - 5 or 10 kopecks, and also with millet and hops for making “puré” - a Mordovian national alcoholic drink prepared on the basis of honey and bee bread. “They (the spirits of water - Auth.) Are painfully happy with the brew and the wine too,” - say local old-timers. If, somehow, a drowning young girl swam ashore, she also thanked Vedyava - threw it into the river or lake or ring, or scarf, or earrings.
The same Zoya Sorokina told me about the case of the miraculous rescue of a drowning man. According to her, one evening a guy from her fellow countrymen went fishing on the Pianu River. But the trouble is - he was drunk, and therefore stumbled, fell into a deep seething pool and began to sink. As soon as the poor fellow begins to swim to the surface, he takes a breath of air, but it was not there, someone's cold tenacious hands again pull him into the river abyss. When the unknown grip loosened, the guy with all his strength pushed off the viscous bottom and, having swam to the river surface, began to scold angrily. His curses were so terrible that the invisible creature was frightened and swam away.
An unusual story was told to me by a Moksha woman from Saransk - Marina Ageeva, a correspondent for a national radio program. Her uncle, Nikolai Syatkin from the Moksha village of Atyuryevo, told her about this. “A little child drowned there in the river. The men searched the bottom. Well, no, they can't find the body anywhere. Then the mother of the drowned child came to the shore with a cup containing sacrificial food - homemade rye bread and a candle stuck in it. Veden Kirdi prayed - Vedyate (to the holder, the owner of the water - to the old water man) and Veden Kirdi - to Vediava (the mistress of the water). And finally, the woman says: "Since you have already taken the soul of the child, then at least return the body to us in order to bury it in a human way." And she put the bowl into the water. She swam, swam, whirled, whirled, and drowned near the shore. There the body was found."
… And she did not spare water
There were other beliefs among the Mordovians. They say that Vedyava can not only drown a person, but also send serious illnesses, any ailment to him. It was believed that the Vedic disease and suffering sent to people could not be cured: a person bathed himself, fell into the water, fell under the ice, caught a cold … Or for a long time after the wedding, the young could not conceive a child, and then poor women went to the banks of the springs and performed mysterious prayers there, turning to the water mistress with requests to send them "childbirth".
And once Vedyava was considered the goddess of fertility. And the farmers irrigated the fields with water taken from her palaces, which means that she alone should have asked for rain in a drought. But if in the Russian villages of the Nizhny Novgorod Territory a petition for rain took place with a mandatory procession around the village, at the head of which the villagers, and often priests, carried Orthodox icons, then, being Orthodox for a long time, the Mordovians preferred to conduct the “prayer for rain” in a completely different way. Although in her pagan prayers, there were many Orthodox motives.
In dry years, the Moksha and Erzya farmers, gardeners, gardeners, as in the old days, turned to water spirits, asking them for rain.
Dmitry KARABELNIKOV, ethnographer. Photo obozrevatel.ua.
Meanwhile
At the notch line, on the primordial river
I swam with a reed in my hand.
Start up the whole creek, ringing with a loud laugh,
I swam naked in broad daylight.
The traveler who passed by, called the Weddog, He quickly increased his pace and disappeared more often.
I was left to play naughty on a beautiful river, Singing songs in a wild steppe language.
Julia MATROSOVA (Nizhny Novgorod).
By the way
Tongue will bring to rain
The place of the unique ritual in the village of Akuzovo was the local cemetery. The witch doctor assured that the last time they performed this ceremony was in the 1990s. In addition to her, about ten Erzyan women were also participants in the ritual. Women went up to their chests into the Piyanley-Pyanu river, took water from it into their mouths and went to the cemetery. The entire path had to be passed in silence, without turning around and in no case spilling water from the mouth. If any of them had it splashed, the rite had to start over. At the cemetery, women spat out water on the tombstone with the Orthodox cross of the senior ancestors, the guardians of the churchyard, with the words (in Erzya): "Righteous parents, we brought you a drink, save us, pray for us …". Most likely, at the initial stages of this rite, the Mordovian goddess of waters Vedyava participated in this magical chain. And in this way, through the transmission of information through their deceased ancestors, the Erzans turned to the goddess with requests for rain.