collected and translated by Elena Boudovskaya
These four short Rusyn folk narratives were collected and translated
by the Slavist Elena Boudovskaya and posted to the Carpatho-Rusyn
Knowledge Base in 1996. Told in the plain, telegraphic style of oral
narration -- clipped sentences, present-tense asides, mid-sentence
shifts in perspective -- they preserve village beliefs about devils,
the restless dead, and shapeshifting that circulated among Carpatho-Rusyn
storytellers.
Devils
Two sons... and the younger one married. The younger used to beat his wife very hard. The elder one married after the younger one. The mother
told him [the younger brother]: "why do you beat her? You married her according to your own wish, don't beat her".
And he said "I didn't know [her] then".
Well. He beat her on Saturday. And they had to go to church on Sunday, it was Easter. The elder brother came and they were walking to church for Easter, and one devil, the younger brother's devil, told the other...People say that on one's left side there is a devil, on one's right side there is an angel.
One devil told the other "you don't know how to rule your people. Put some garbage into his food, he [the elder brother] will throw the food away and will beat his wife".
The other replied "I tried it, but he only embraced and kissed his wife", meaning the elder brother.
And while walking to church he [the elder brother] heard everything the devils were saying to each other.
"Do you want to see" [the devil said], "how my man, [the man] whom I rule, how I'll make him kill his wife today", meaning the younger brother.
"How can you do that?"
"Like this: she will go to the basement to bring some wine, and I shall [make her fall?] and he will kill her".
Great God, and the brother was listening to it. He said "brother, I'll give you an ox, a cow, but whatever your wife does, don't do anything, just kiss her. Don't beat her but kiss her".
"How can I kiss her if she does something wrong?"
"I'll tell you everything later".
And on Easter when he came home he said "go to the basement to bring some wine", the younger brother sent his wife. When she went to fetch wine he [the elder brother] said "brother, don't beat her, I'll explain you later but now I am not
going to tell you [why]".
She began to cry. A ten-liter bottle fell and broke. But he embraced his wife and kissed her. When they looked at the oven [they saw that] from the place where the devil had been only grease began to flow.
"Who spilled the grease on the oven?"
"Well, brother, see how the devil burst and melted because [you] didn't do as he had ordered. Because God gave me such hearing that I heard it and now didn't let you do it. And I want you to know that the devil instigated you all the time to beat your wife."
From that time on he never beat [his wife].
..........Anna I.Pyrynec, born 1921, Novoselycja, Mizhirja raion, Zakarpats'ka oblast',
recorded in winter 1987
A Husband Visiting From the Dead
(A man) died... and was buried... and the wife goes to sleep and he comes to her every night and he makes love to her as a living man. She is afraid and she doesn't know what to do. She goes to a priest and the priest prays... and she cannot help herself.
There were such wise people long ago, women or old women. They advise her: *"You know, (such a wise woman) says, take a trough for kneading bread and",*she says, *"buy yourself a brand new candle, and light it and put it on the table and cover it with this trough, so that it cannot be seen, and dress yourself as beautifully as... when a bride is going to church, long ago she used to put on a white dress and girth herself with a red "piwka". And you should sit at the table and wait for him.*She did so.
"And when", she says, "he comes, you should lift at once this trough, and you'll sit so well dressed and he will ask you: "Where are you going?"
- "I am going for a wedding. "*
"Where is this wedding?"
"There and there", she says, "a brother is marrying his sister, so there will be a wedding."
"Oh", he says, "who has ever heard about a brother marrying his sister?"
" Well, (she says), who has ever heard about a dead man coming to his wife?"
And then she blew down the candle and (went) forever... he didn't come to her any more.
.......... Anastasyja Zavadiak, born 1905(?), Novoselycja, Mizhirja raion, Zakarpats'ka oblast',
recorded in winter 1987
Wind Woman
"Pov'itr/ul'a" (wind woman) changed a baby like that: a woman had... they got married and lived for a year, and she had a baby within this year.
And the baby was three months old and she didn't have anybody in the house to watch the baby. She thinks:
[if] I leave [the baby] in the house and go to milk the cow I'll not hear the baby cry,
but, she thinks,
I'll put the baby in front of the barn (because there were the house and the barn under one roof), and she put the baby there on a bench. And she was milking the cow and once she heard the baby cry, and she heard [that] it was her baby crying, but when it began crying the second time, it was another voice.
When she came [to the baby], it was not her baby.
She went to [witch-doctors?] everywhere but nobody could help her.
They told her: you could have helped at that time, if you hadn't taken the baby but had fetched dog-rose twigs and had beaten this baby with them [na v'idl'/ik - counting beats?], and the "pov'itrul'a" would have brought your baby and she would have taken hers because she would have pitied her baby being beaten. And this baby, they said, didn't you see that it was no good.
It [the baby] lived seven years and when it saw something made of iron it [would cry:] a-a-a, asking for that, and they gave it iron objects, and it ate them as... as you eat cooked dough pieces, so it ate iron. Yes. And it is not a lie, it was precisely so.
..........Anna I.Pyrynec, born 1921, Novoselycja, Mizhirja raion, Zakarpats'ka oblast',
recorded in winter 1987
A Husband Turning Into a Wolf
There was a man and his wife, and somehow this man used to turn into a wolf. Well, she didn't know where her husband went, sometimes he was gone and then he was back again.
Once she went to a meadow to rake up hay and a wolf went running to her, and she tried to protect herself with the rake, but the wolf caught her dress and was pulling it and tore it, and she was beating it with the rake and chased the wolf away, and away it went.
Later (her husband) came, he had already turned into a man. He came and they sat down to have their lunch. She was looking at him (and saw that) he had a small piece of her dress hanging from between his teeth. How is it (possible)? When she told him about it, he went away and never returned, he turned into a wolf forever.
.......... Anastasyja Zavadiak, born 1905(?), Novoselycja, Mizhirja raion, Zakarpats'ka oblast',
recorded in winter 1987
Colophon
Four Rusyn folk narratives collected and translated by Elena Boudovskaya,
copyright 1996 Elena Boudovskaya, hosted at carpatho-rusyn.org
(Carpatho-Rusyn Knowledge Base). Captured 2026-08-05 from
http://www.carpatho-rusyn.org/boudevil.htm, bougho.htm, bouwind.htm,
and bouwolf.htm. Published here under permission held by the New Tianmu
Anglican Church for this material, recorded 2026-08-05; all rights remain
with the original translator, Elena Boudovskaya. The source village/region
of each tale and the storyteller are not further identified on the
captured pages beyond what appears in the text itself.
🌲