Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, issue: 56 / 2014 — The Dog, the Horse and the Creation of Man

Folklore 56 

 

       

35

The Dog, The Horse and The Creation of Man 

ants of the steppe. Later this variant was almost completely superseded with 

the Northern (the European–Siberian) tradition and survived only in Taimyr 

which this tradition had not reached.

An argument in favor of the existence of historic connections between all the 

Old World texts that have been discussed is the lack of analogies in the New 

World. One text of the Plains Ojibwa in Canada slightly reminds the Eurasian 

ones. Weese-ke-jak makes a human figure out of stone and steps back to admire 

it. The bear rubs itself against the figure, it falls down and is broken. Weese-

ke-jak makes a new figure out of mud, and that’s why human beings are weak 

(Simms 1906: 338–339). The similarity with the Eurasian texts is, however, 

superficial. Among the Ojibwa the essential detail is not the interference of a 

particular antagonist into the creation of the man but the opposition between 

the durable and the fragile materials to make the man. Such an opposition 

is typical for stories that explain the origin of death in the North America’s 

Northwest (Berezkin 2010: 17–21) but this Plains Ojibwa text alone speaks 

about the breaking of human figure.

THE HORSE IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN WORLDVIEW

It was told above that the replacement of the horse by the cow in the Oirat 

version looks logical. 

Among the Mongolian and Turkic people of Siberia, Kazakhstan and Central 

Asia the horse has an almost sacred status and cannot have any negative asso-

ciations, while the bull or the cow can. In some of the Kazakh, Altai, Tuvinian, 

Mongol (the Oirat included), Yakut as well as the Nenets etiological legends the 

cow or bull is the embodiment of the severe frost, or is considered responsible 

for the existence of the winter. In the Tuvinian and Yakut myths the mean 

bull is directly opposed to the good horse who desired the warmth (Benningsen 

1912: 55–57; Ergis 1974: 149; Katash 1978: 18–19; Kulakovski 1979: 73, 77–78; 

Lehtisalo 1998: 16; Potanin 1883: 203; 1972: 54–55; Taube 2004: 19). 

On the contrary, among the Indo-Europeans of Europe, the Northern Cau-

casus and Central Asia (Ancient Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Gagauz, Ukrain-

ians, Byelorussians, Poles, Czechs, Germans of Mecklenburg, Silesia and East 

Prussia, Norwegians, Danes, Swedes, Lithuanians, Latvians, Ossetians, Tajik) 

as well as in the Middle Persian Avestan tradition the horse is considered to be 

the adversary of God (Balzamo 2011: 78, 85; Balzamo & Kaiser 2004: 104–106; 

Belova 2004: 176; Bulashev 1909: 401; Bulgakovski 1890: 189; Chubinski 1872: 

49; Chunakova 2004: 110, 216; Dähnhardt 1907: 341–342; 1909: 88–94; Grynb-

lat & Gurski 1983: 53; Moshkov 2004: 204–205, 261; Petrovich 2004: 183–184; 

---

36

  

 

 

 

 

 

              www.folklore.ee/folklore

Yuri Berezkin

Pogodin 1895: 439; Shevchenko 1936: 92; Stoinev 2006: 163; Sukhareva 1975: 

39–40; V

ėlius 1981: 263; Vukichevich 1915: 109–111; Zaglada 1929: 12) and 

demonic cannibal horses are described in narratives (Apollod., II, 5, 8; Biazyrov 

1971: 156–173). The Baltic Finns (Estonians, Finns, Veps, Sami of Finland) 

and Komi probably borrowed these ideas from their Indo-European neighbors 

(Dähnhardt 1907: 155; 1909: 91–92; Limerov 2005: 68–70, 74–76; Vinokurova 

2006: 274) but the Ugric groups of Siberia as well as the peoples of the Middle 

Volga were probably not influenced by them. According to Mordvinian beliefs, 

seeing a horse in a dream is a sign of disease (Devyatkina 2004: 113) but oth-

erwise the status of the horse in the Mordvinian worldview is high and associa-

tions are positive. In the Ancient Greece, just like among the Siberian Turks, 

the bull was contrasted with the horse but the signs in this opposition were 

different (Gunda 1979: 398–399). The bull was considered good (bees emerged 

from its corpse) and the horse bad (wasps or drones emerged). Adopted by the 

Christian traditions of Central, Northern and Eastern Europe, the opposition 

between the horse and the bull was used in folktales about the birth of Christ 

and the travelling Christ who was in search of an animal to help him to cross a 

river. The bull tried to cover the baby Christ with a hay or straw while the horse 

pulled it off making him visible for potential persecutors. The horse refused to 

help Christ to cross a river while the bull helped him.

One of the Norwegian tales contains some of the motifs found in the South 

Asian and Caucasian myths described above. The devil decided to create a 

beast that would run across the whole earth and destroy human beings. He 

tried to make this monster alive by spitting on it but in vain. God made it 

alive, told it to become a horse and to serve the man. Horny swellings on the 

horse’ hooves are the trace of the Devil’s spit (Dähnhardt 1907: 342). In the 

19th century Scandinavia the negative associations of the horse were hardly 

strong. In most of the tales in which the opposition between the horse and the 

bull is mentioned the horse is bad and the bull is good but there are also texts 

according to which it was the bull who refused to help Virgin Mary while the 

horse helped her (Dähnhardt 1909: 94). However across most of Baltoscandia, 

Ukraine, Byelorussia, as well as Tajikistan we find direct claims that the horse 

was the only animal created by the devil or that it is the incarnation of the devil 

himself. Here are some eloquent examples.

Lithuanians. The horse originates from Velnias (the devil) and is eager to 

kill the man. Velnias rides a horse, can take the image of the horse, different 

objects in his possession turn into parts of the horse’s body: a gun into a leg, a 

gun’s strap into bowels, a tobacco box into a hoof, festive food into dung, etc. 

(V

ėlius 1981: 263–264).

---