Slavic folklore introduces us to amazing characters who are strikingly different from the heroes of European legends. Glorious heroes, amazing evil spirits and the most unusual animals - all of them are presented as living and interesting, real personalities. It seems to me that Kot-Bayun deserves special attention, appearing both in myths and fairy tales of various Slavic peoples.
He was presented in different ways. Some consider Bayun a dangerous creature, others immediately recall the words of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin about the “scientist cat.” What was Kot-Bayun like for our ancestors? What do the legends say about him? And why is the fluffy purr named Bayun?
Cat-Bayun - a mysterious character in Russian fairy tales
Character history
Russian folklore is full of descriptions of fantastic creatures, the prototypes of which are familiar animals. Slavic mythology gave the authors of epics and fairy tales material for their works, and curious narratives attract the interest of modern children, despite the age of the works. Cat Bayun is a little-known character, as he rarely appears in literature. This image previously appeared in many fairy tales, but today it has been unfairly forgotten. However, the characterization of this hero of Russian narratives is extremely unusual.
Insomnia: how it was banished and what it looked like
Sometimes our ancestors thought of insomnia as a bat.
Another character, as well as the human condition, is insomnia. If someone could not sleep for a long time, they said that this was the work of evil spirits. They had different names - criks, night owl, night owl, crybaby. To get rid of these unpleasant creatures, one had to read conspiracies that called on the Crix-Varaxes to go away, beyond the distant mountains. If a child could not sleep, it was believed that spirits were pinching him. In some provinces they were represented in the form of worms, bats, ominous birds or flying lights, and sometimes it was a woman in a black scarf. Time passed, and kriksas became an old name for frequently crying children.
Insomnia was a popular topic for poetry. Fyodor Tyutchev, Alexander Pushkin, Innokenty Annensky, Valery Bryusov, Anna Akhmatova wrote about her. The people perceived everything much more simply. Spirits were described, which were called kriks-varaxes, and who behaved very impudently. For example, in the fairy tale by Alexei Remizov, based on Russian folklore, these unpleasant creatures crawled into the garden, tore off the dog’s tail, and then set it on fire.
History of creation
Cat Bayun is a fairy-tale character, a cannibal cat whose size is difficult to imagine. He has a magical voice that lulls travelers he meets to sleep. The cat kills his rivals and does not disdain easy victims who are unable to fight his charms. At the same time, the hero who is able to defeat the cat can receive salvation from any ailments, because the four-legged fairy tales are healing.
cat Baiyun
Bayun means “storyteller, talker.” The verb “bayat” is interpreted as “to talk” or “to lull.” The animal sits on a tall iron pillar in the middle of a dead forest that stretches far away, in the thirtieth kingdom. There are no living creatures in the area.
In the fairy tale telling about Vasilisa the Beautiful, it is mentioned that the cat Bayun is a resident of a hut on chicken legs, the owner of which was Baba Yaga.
A hut on chicken legs
Descriptions of this fairy-tale hero are rarely found in epics and folklore. Modern sources of archaic tales and epics are collections of folk tales compiled by Afanasyev and the works of Tolstoy. Writers, without downplaying the importance of the character, talked about him on the pages of their works, proving that the image of the hero contains the wisdom of centuries.
Works in which the creature appears
“Go there - I don’t know where, bring that - I don’t know what.”
"Matyusha Ash"
“The Feather of Finist Yasna Falcon”
"Baba Yaga and the cat Bayun"
"Ivan the Fool and Baba Yaga"
“In the distant kingdom, in the thirtieth state” Fairy tales / Retelling by A. I. Lyubarskaya; Rice. B. Vlasov and T. Shishmareva; Designed L. Yatsenko.-2nd ed. - L.: Det., lit., 1991-336 p. ill.
“Vasilisa the Beautiful”, “Seeds of Good: Russian Folk Tales and Proverbs” / Comp., author, foreword. and note L. P. Shuvalova; Hood. A. Sorokin. — M.: Det. lit., 1988. - 175 pp.: ill.
“Vasilisa the Beautiful”, “Russian children's fairy tales collected by A. N. Afanasyev”, M., Detgiz, 1961 (AF. D.)
Image and character
Fairy tales give an accurate description of a fantastic animal. A cat sitting on a pole has remarkable strength. For example, it easily breaks a metal cap. You can pick it up using steel pliers. The beast has high intelligence and is capable of constructing long dialogues. At the same time, its dimensions are described in a specific way. The breed of the animal remains unknown, but the authors note that the cat is huge, comparing it to a horse. In addition, the animal is a cannibal.
Ivan Tsarevich
It is easy to assume that the storytellers compared the cat Bayun with a tiger or a lion. Predators are large in size and easily deal with a person, attacking from cover, clinging to the body of the victim with their claws and teeth. Bayun's opponents in fairy tales are Ivan the Tsarevich or Andrei the Shooter. The legends about these men mention that they carried the animal in a cage, which means that its dimensions were seriously exaggerated.
Despite the described bloodthirstiness of the beast, he is wise, decent and reasonable. The image of a cat, often used in folklore of different countries, is symbolic. This animal has never submitted to man. Brave warriors who are able to pacify a mysterious creature are an allusion to the desire of people to tame an independent beast and force it to carry out someone else's will.
Description of the drug
You can find on the Internet a photo of the drug Kot Bayun for cats. Outwardly, it does not stand out in any way from a bunch of other drugs - most often it is white packaging with green accents.
But don’t judge this medicine by its cover, because the main thing lies inside. If you believe customer reviews, of which there are quite a few on the Internet, you can see that this drug is not based on hormones, and therefore the sedative effect itself is quite limited, not as strong as that of its hormonal competitors. But there is no need to rush to classify this as a shortcoming.
Research and the opinion of veterinarians suggests that Kot Bayun drops for cats will therefore not have as many different contraindications as hormonal-based analogues.
Therefore, this drug can be used during simple diseases, without harming the animal. But everything is not limited to drops, because, if you wish, you can buy the same drug, but in the form of tablets, if you want to add it to dry food.
If we talk about effectiveness, then tablets in this regard look more preferable, because each of them contains more active herbs.
In Slavic mythology
The legends of Russian folklore are deep and multifaceted. Based on their interpretation, the cat Bayun is a kind of conductor between the world of the living and the world of the dead.
Cat Bayun in Pushkin's fairy tale
The pillar on which the animal sits is replaced in Pushkin's fairy tale by an oak tree tied with a gold chain. The cat walks along the chain and tells stories. The tree he chose is associated with the World Tree growing at the North Pole, in Hyperborea. Bayun's voice is loud and melodic, so the soporific stories can be heard clearly and at a great distance.
It would be logical to assume that the hero is a forest dweller. Then he is the ancestor of famous predators: the lynx or the Siberian wild cat. Zoological sources confirm that such animals were not uncommon in the Urals or Siberia at the time when these lands were inhabited by our ancestors, the Aryans. We are talking about the time 5-7 thousand years before the appearance of the Russians. The history of the mythical character is surprisingly long, no worse than the popular legends of Egyptian mythology.
The cat Bayun lives in the forest
The cat is capable of peaceful interactions with people because in some fairy tales he is invited to lull small children to sleep. A resident of the other world responds to the call, speaking and putting to sleep. If the storyteller sees a victim in his interlocutor, he charms her with his voice and eats her. The cannibal sorcerer is able to magically heal his opponent if he resists the spells. Some fairy tales describe how the cat Bayun, conquered by brave warriors, remains in the service of the king.
The word "bayun", in addition to its direct decoding, is regarded as a reference to Bayan, a Russian storyteller, whose fame is comparable to that of the great writer Homer. The storyteller told about legends of the past that were little known to the world. The mention of this man connects modern civilization and the disappeared civilization of Hyperborea.
The cat Bayun sits on a pole
At the end of this period, the cat Bayun moved to the dead forest and settled on the border of two worlds: the afterlife and the real, sitting on an iron pole. What is interesting in this case is the mention of the metal from which the warrior’s protective caps and the animal’s claws are made. After all, the legends date back to a time when such material was not known to the world.
The name Bayun is also consonant with the name Gamayun. Gamayun is the name of the things of a bird that knows about the past.
Gamayun
The original Russian image of a cat has been cherished by history for 17 thousand years. The familiar image of an animal that plays the role of a home talisman in everyday life and a warm friend that brightens up loneliness is older than the mythological characters of Ancient Egypt and Greece. Some parents even today sing a lullaby about a cat who is invited into the house for a pie or a glass of milk so that he can lull the baby who does not want to sleep.
Similar creatures in the myths of other peoples, fairy tales, and fantastic works
The cat Bayun is not just a character in Russian folk tales, he is the cat of the god Veles himself, the patron saint of cattle breeding, agriculture, and wealth, whom he faithfully serves. Or maybe it’s Veles himself, turning into a cat when he has to hide from the formidable Perun? The cat Bayun sits on a high iron pole, he can see seven miles away, his magical voice can be heard seven miles away. With his purring, the cat Bayun lets sleep, indistinguishable from death. This is what later fairy tales say: “...go to the distant kingdom behind the Cat-Bayun. You won’t reach three miles before a strong sleep begins to overwhelm you - Kot-Bayun will let you in. Look, don’t sleep, throw your hand behind your hand, drag your foot after your foot, and roll wherever you want; and if you fall asleep, Kot-Bayun will kill you!” God Veles is not only the god of cattle, but also the god of the underworld (the kingdom of death), and the patron god of singers and poets. No wonder they said about the cat Bayun: “Dead sleep overcomes everyone who hears it.” Is it not from the Golden, Silver and Copper Kingdom of Veles that instructions in fairy tales are given on how to defeat the cat Bayun? The singing of the cat Bayun is deadly, and his tales are healing, but getting a cat is difficult. And in fairy tales the hero is instructed to follow the cat with three iron caps, keep iron pliers and three rods ready: one iron, another copper, the third tin. If a cat breaks two caps, but cannot overcome the third one, grab him with pincers and beat him with rods. You will break two rods before defeating Bayun. If the cat tells tales at this time, don’t listen, but on the third tin rod the cat will pray and serve you faithfully.
