On the Mythological Background of the Bylina “Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber”

Abstract

The bylina “Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber” is one of the most popular Russian epics. Several interpretations of this bylina and of the image of Nightingale the Robber have been proposed: a reflection of the Indo-European storm myth, an Iranian borrowing, the image of a monstrous guard on the border between the two worlds, a reflection of the principal Balto-Slavic myth of Perun and Veles. Each of these points of view is partially grounded but does not exhaust the complicated nature of this narrative. Its mythological background survived three development stages: from the primitive myth based on the zoomorphic image of death to the later dragon-fighting legend and the mixanthropic picture, naturally corresponding to it, which, in its turn, gained its final shape under the influence of the stadially related Iranian epic. The most archaic variant of the plot is represented in a Belarusian fairy tale, in which Ilya Muromets kills Snake the horned Falcon and the tsar Pražor ‘Glutton’, who eats 10 humans (supplying by Falcon) a day. This role of Falcon refers to the mythological notion of a bird that brings the souls of the departed to the god of the underworld. The transition from this original image to the mixanthropic Snake the horned Falcon and Nightingale as well as the echo of the dragon-slaying theme belongs to the later epoch of statehood and the class society. Besides, different versions of this legend consequently correspond to almost all the general plot elements and the basic traits of the demonic characters of the epic of Ferēdūn and Ẓaḥḥāk and of some episodes concerning Karšāsp.Keywords: Slavic folklore, Slavic mythology, bylina, “Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber”, image of a bird, mixanthropic image, Iranian epic, borrowing.