Ethnologia & Folkloristica [antikvár]

Saiikt-PetersbiirgUral mythological tales about taming foul weatherUral mythological tales about taming foul weather are remarkable for their distinct magic character. The bearers of the Ural tradition still believe that telling such tales influences the weather. The circumstances and purposes of telling such tales are similar to the rituals taming foul weather, which may indicate to the inherent relationship to the rites influencing weather.The performer of both tales and rituals tries to tame undesirable weather by influencing a mythological personage: the North Wind, the Old Woman Snowstorm combing her long grey hair, the giant blowing Bull, which throws down his hair (snow) and so on. Most evident are ritual roots of the myths about using force on the cause of foul weather directly. The performer of some rituals uses resorts to some weapon against the cause of foul weather threatens it. Willing to stop the wind, the performer shoots an arrow at it, puts an axe with the blade turned toward the cloud for the prevention of a thunderstorm (Kulemsin), or he catches the wind with a basket, and having caught, it places the turned over basket on the ground so, that the wind cannot get out of it. (Maltseva). The same rituals take place among the other Siberian peoples as well. So V. Anuchin observed how the Kets threw a wooden image of wind and "furiously beat it with stones and then flung it into Enisey saying: Go home." The Mansi myth, the hero of which shoots an arrow against the North Wind and breaks half of its jaw, obtaining warmth this way (Chernetsov), could be understood as one of variants of the ritual for taming foul weather, as the retelling of the ritual action, that was forced by some circumstances (for example, by the unwillingness to go out in bad weather for performing the ritual).More complex is the issue of the genesis of mythological tales about an indirect influence made on the Master of bad weather. This influence manifests itself in distracting its attention from the actions bringing about foul weather. For example, in the Nganasan myth the dyamaku bird lulls seven daughters of the God of the Sky hiding in their bags the clouds giving warmth, and then it steals one of the bags (Dolgich). It can be compared with the Koryak plots, where the Big Raven feeds the woman, combing her hair and thus bringing about rain, with flyagarics for her to get drunk and stop doing it (Stebnitskiy) or the mice of the Big Raven gnaw thi'ough the harness of the sledge of the Man-Wind (Johelson). But most popular is the plot about getting a wife to the Wind. There is even an idea that "the Master of weather informs people with hard frost that he wants to marry" (Alekseenko). In Palaeoasian mythological tales the bad weather is tamed by bringing, for example, the Master of the Sky and the Woman-Rain together (Johelson). But in the Ural mythological tales ordinary girls are sent to the Master of Weather in the capacity of wives. And only those of them, who obey all the orders given to them by the elders, are able to achieve their goal and not to perish in vain. One can suppose that the explanation of the ritual meaning of this plot can be made24