fortune-telling. They come here on Vasilyev’s evening, at midnight, between the second and third roosters (the most convenient for conspiracies).»
Earlier, grain pits were used as warehouses for communal grain, which were arranged in the threshing floor. Ovin (or threshing floor, riga) is a place where grain was dried and stored.
And where grain is stored, mice will appear. And where mice appear, owls appear. And in this case, owls are welcome guests.
The owl that flew to the granary is still a gift for the farmer today. She saves the crop by killing the mice. No cat can compare to an owl here. In general, even in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the attitude towards the barn and the owl in the Russian folk tradition was special.
And here are some examples.It was believed that if an owl flies into a village, sits under the roof of a house and screams, then a big fire will happen in this house, or even in the whole village.
But at the same time, the owl screams to the newborn.
A. V. Gura in his work «Symbols of animals in the Slavic folk tradition» noted that «in the Owl they see the embodiment of the devil… According to the ideas of the Poles and Serbs, witches often turn into Owl. Poles have a belief that an owl is dead during the day and only comes to life in the dark. Everywhere, by its appearance near the house, the Owl portends death… There are known beliefs about the Owl as the embodiment of the soul of the deceased…
With its cry, the Owl cries out the souls of the dead (among the Poles), lures children out of the house and deprives them of life (among the Serbs). The owls guarding the treasures are the souls of the longtime owners of buried treasures (among the Poles).»
But with all this, «the scream of an owl is also perceived as a prediction of the birth of a child… The image of the newborn in connection with Sova appears in some Belarusian reaping songs in which women urge each other to catch the Owl in life. «An owl appears as a celibate, widow, or dissolute (unfaithful wife, promiscuous girl).» And here it makes sense to recall Lilith – Ishtar – Astarte – the Goddess Owl of ancient Sumer (2 thousand BC).
«Cry of the Owl and some subtle songs about the Owl, writes A.V. Gura – promise the birth of an illegitimate child from a widow or a girl. The Belarusian abusive expression «Smaked Sava» is addressed to the girl who gave birth before marriage… The Russians called the owl a «dissolute» inn «woman».
The image of the Owl develops erotic symbolism. In Polish riddles, the Owl is directly related to the female genital organ. Marriage and erotic symbolism is inherent in the image of the Owl in the wedding ceremony. For example, in Ukrainian songs performed before the wedding night, the Owl symbolizes the bride. «And, finally, «as a talisman for the people of the city, the Owl is nailed to the door of a house to ward off illness and misfortune. For Poles – to the gates of the barn, to frighten mice, for Ukrainians they hang Owl in the stable so that the brownie does not torture the horses».
And how can you not remember the «Owl-Mother-in-law», which herded horses in the Vologda ritual song:
Turu-turu, shepherd, do you sound far off?
From sea to sea, to Keyeva town
There is our homeland, in the homeland there is an oak tree,
An owl is on the oak, an owl is my mother-in-law, she grazed horses.
And further. «The owl has extraordinary properties. If the heart of this bird is put together with the left leg or at least one claw on a soundly sleeping person, he will immediately tell what he thinks to do in the future, and will reveal all his innermost secrets».
Researchers of the «owl question» also note the following about the Owl: «Since she is afraid of daylight and flies out only at dusk or at night, lives mainly in old or destroyed buildings, she is credited with demonic significance… takes the form of an owl (here it is appropriate to recall the Russian: «I went to the devil’s grandmother!»)…
An owl feather is worn by people who roam at night and want to get rid of the fear of darkness. Obviously, the owl was once a symbol of the ability not to feel fear and move freely even in the dark, that is, to be initiated into the secrets usually hidden for mortals».
For all the vices and virtues attributed to the patriarchal Sowa, in the Vologda and Vladimir ritual songs that survived until the 80s and 90s of the 20th century, she appears before us as:
«Owl – Mother-in-law», that is, the Foremother;
«Lady of the Horses», that is, the Great Mother Goddess of Indo-European peoples;
«Little telly motley», that is, Mother Earth of Indo-Iranians (Aryans).
B. A. Rybakov in «The Paganism of the Ancient Slavs» speaks of the essence of the worldview of primitive farmers «in the form of the formula: grain + earth + rain = harvest and the reflection of all links of this formula by means of a female figure… Woman and earth are compared and equalized on the basis of the ancient idea of fertility, fertility… supposed to sculpt a female figurine, then grain and flour were added to the soft clay, merging the agrarian and female principles».
Draga Garashina, and after her Maria Gimbutas, expressed the idea that in the Eneolithic figurines (such as the clay goddesses of Tripoli), the Great Bird Goddess appears before us. B. A. Rybakov writes the following about this: «one should warn against some insufficiently substantiated propositions of M. Gimbutas. These include, first of all, the hypothesis of the great Bird – Goddess. The author often relies on the primitive stylization of sculptures, but the avian features attributed to them do not seem convincing. Perhaps a retrospective analysis should also be applied: from the later winged sirens – Sirins, to go deeper into the origins of this image».
Our North Russian ritual song about «Owl-Mother-in-law», recorded by A. M. Mehnetsov in 1974 in the Vologda Oblast, seems to have put an end to this discussion. The favorite plot of M. Gimbutas was confirmed.
But to talk about where, the origins of this image, should be based not only on the Neolithic images of women with owl heads found in the Russian North (6—4 millennia BC), and Trypillian owl-headed goddesses of the Eneolithic (4- 3 millennium BC). We will have to descend into those depths of millennia when agriculture was born on the territory of the Russian Plain (and the Russian North, in particular).
50 – 48 millennia BC is the beginning of the warm Mologo-Sheksninsky interglacial. As the atlas monograph «Paleogeography of Europe for the Last Hundred Thousand Years» (1982) and «Paleolithic of the USSR» (1984) testify, this was a time when in the territory of most of Western Europe it sharply became colder. The Wurme (Valdai) glaciation led to the prevalence of the tundra with birch-spruce woodlands on these vast expanses. But unlike Western Europe and Siberia, the territory of Eastern Europe was warm. And this warm Mologo-Sheksninsky interglacial period lasted, with small intervals, almost 27 thousand years – up to 23 millennium BC.
For those who find this unbelievable, I advise you to refer to the «Paleolithic of the USSR» (Publishing House «Science») published in 1984 in the series «Archeology of the USSR» Here on page 30 is placed «Comparison of the development patterns of the natural process of the Valdai (Wurm) time of Western Europe (A), Eastern Europe (B) and Siberia (C).
Authors write: «The relatively mild climatic conditions of the Molo-Sheksna interglacial allowed the population to spread widely throughout the Russian Plain, up to the Urals and the Pechora basin… In the north-east of Europe, which includes the vast expanses of the Volga and Ural regions, outstanding monuments of the early Paleolithic period have been found over the last mountains, and a turning point towards intensifying the work on their study. Certain areas of the Russian Plain (northwest) in the Molo-Sheksna time may not have been inhabited. It should be emphasized that from the south to the north of the Russian Plain, during the formation and development of the Upper Paleolithic,