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

Folklore 56 

 

       

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The Dog, The Horse and The Creation of Man 

Byelorussians. A man was harrowing, the devil sat on his harrow and it 

could not be moved from the place. God transformed the devil into the horse 

and since then horses exist (Grynblat & Gurski 1983: 53).

Ukrainians. The horse is a transformed devil. Devil could take any form but 

God performed magic and the devil remained in the guise of a horse (Chubinski 

1872: 49). The horse is an unclean animal. People put sanctified objects under 

the new cattle-shed to drive away witches. However, they do not put anything 

sacred in the stable because the devil lives there (Shevchenko 1936: 92).

Tajik. If a man sees a horse in his dream, he falls ill. In Samarkand people 

do not permit children to approach horses because the horse itself is a dev, i.e. 

an evil spirit, an ogre (Sukhareva 1975: 39–40).

There  are  no  parallels  for  the  19th  century  “horse  as  a  devil”  theme  in 

“Edda” but a well-known episode according to which Loki turned into a mare, 

copulated with a horse of a giant and gave birth to the eight-legged Sleipnir 

can be interpreted as an evidence in favor of the negative associations with the 

horse in the early Scandinavian tradition. To which extent the Eddic mythology 

reflects the set of stories known to the Germanic people in the pre-Christian 

times is of course impossible to say.

THE NORTHERN TRADITION

The Northern tradition is widespread across Eastern Europe and Siberia besides 

Taimyr and the Northeast (Figure 1). It looks like an upside-down version of 

the Southern tradition.

The well-known variant is as follows. The creator makes bodies of people, 

puts the dog to guard them and goes away for a while. The antagonist bribes 

the guard with a warm fur-coat, gets to the bodies and spits on them, making 

people subject to diseases and death. Coming back, the creator turns the bodies 

inside out so that the dirt would be concealed from the sight and punishes the 

dog who since then is a servant of the man and eats garbage. 

The Estonian versions are marginal to the tradition in question and do not 

mention a dog or any other guide of the human figure. The Setu preserved the 

motif of the devil (vanapagan) who spat on the figure when the creator put it 

to dry and went away and in another variant the devil simply poked the figure 

(with his finger) making human body sensible to the pain (Masing 1998: 64).

The story about the creation of the man and the punishment of the dog has 

been recorded in its typical form in Kazakhstan though it has been recorded in 

such a form among the Russians of the central and northern parts of European 

Russia, the Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Komi, Udmurt, Mari, Mordvinians, 

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Yuri Berezkin

Chuvash, Mansi, Khanty, Nenets, western Evenki, different groups of the Ya-

kuts, the Russian-speaking half-breeds of Russkoye Ust’e (Lower Indigirka), 

Kumandins, Tubalar, Khakas, Tofa, Buryats (Aktsorin 1991: 38; anonymous 

1858: 210; Azbelev & Mescherski 1986: 214; Belova 2004: 226–227; Devyatkina 

1998: 169, 297–298; 2004: 121; Dobrovol’ski 1891: 230–231; Golovnev 1995: 

399–400; 2004: 100; Gomboev 1890: 67–69; Grynblat & Gurski 1983: 46–47; 

Gurvich 1977: 195–196; Katanov 1963: 155–156; Konakov et al. 2004: 44, 271–

272; Kuznetsova 1998: 99, 101, 160; Lukina 1990: 300; Middendorff 1989: 20; 

Morokhov 1998: 427; Perevozchikova 1988: 39; P.I[vanov] 1892: 89–90; Potanin 

1883: 220–223; Radlov 1907: 523–524; 1989: 221; Rassadin 1996: 16; Rochev 

1984: 114; Sedova 1982: 13–15; Vasiliev 1907: 50–51; Vereschagin 1996: 134; 

Vladykin 1994: 321–322; Yegorov 1995: 117–118). The same tale was probably 

known to the Lithuanians, though the corresponding publication has but a short 

retelling (Kerbelyte 2001: 76). Some variants preserve the core of the story but 

add different details. In particular, the motif of turning the human body inside 

out can be used only in those variants according to which the creator himself 

makes the human figures alive. If the figures are made alive not by the creator 

but by his adversary, or if the problem was to make people strong and durable 

and not only to make them alive, the motif of turning the bodies inside out 

is unfit for the plot. It is absent among the Khanty, most of the groups of the 

Nenets and Evenki, the Mongols, Altai, Shor, Negidal, and Lamut (Anokhin 

1924: 18; Chadaeva 1990: 124; Ivanovski 1891: 251; Khasanova & Pevnov 2003: 

51–53; Khlopina 1978: 71–72; Labanauskas 1995: 13–15; Lar 2001: 188–205; 

Lehtisalo 1998: 9–10; Mazin 1984: 22; Neniang 1997: 21–23; Nikiforov 1915: 

241; Potanin 1883: 218–220; Romanova & Myreeva 1971: 25–326; Shtygashev 

1894: 7–8; Vasilevich 1959: 175–179; Verbitski 1893: 92–93). Among the west-

ern Evenki several different versions are recorded besides the standard one 

(Vasilevich  1959:  175,  178).  According  to  one  of  them,  certain  “workers”  of 

Khargi (the creator) let Kheveki (the antagonist) approach the human figures. 

In another version, the “assistant” of Kheveki is the raven who was punished 

by the creator the same way as the dog in more typical variants, i.e. since then 

it has been feeding on garbage.

This story has not been reported from Kazakhstan though it was recorded 

among the “Siberian Kirghiz”. The devil made the weather terribly cold, the dog 

had to hide itself and the devil spat on the man. Coming back, the creator did 

not punish the guard but recognized that the dog couldn’t have done anything 

having no fur-coat, so the creator himself and not the antagonist gave to the 

dog its fur (Ivanovski 1891: 250). “The acquittal” of the dog puts this version 

apart from the usual Siberian cases.

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