Once Indrik the Beast, the son of Dy and the Mother of the Damp Earth, walked through the mountains and down. And Indrik met his mother in the mountains. Turning into a Serpent, he rushed at his mother.
From their connection, the Fiery Volkh Serpent was born - a great warrior who decided to repay Indrik for dishonoring his mother. He told her this:
Oh, you goy, Mother of Cheese Earth! Do not swaddle me with your shroud, without tying me with a golden belt - swaddle me in strong armor, put a golden mantle on my head! “The Book of Kolyada”, III d
He went to Inderia and defeated Indrik the Beast in a fair fight. And then he took for himself his kingdom and Indrik’s wife, the snake Peraskea.
Peraskea and other snakes of Inderia began to persuade Volkh Zmeevia to also capture the Irian Garden and thus become the Lord of the World.
Volkh turned into Finist the Falcon, flew to Iriy and sat on a branch of an apple tree with golden apples. If he had pecked the golden apple, he would have become the Lord of the Universe, but then he heard the song of Lelya, the goddess of love, daughter of Lada. Volkh fell in love with Lelya and forgot about everything in the world. He began secretly courting Lelya and visiting her.
Lelin’s sisters, Zhiva and Marena, found out about this. And they told Svarog that a guest was visiting Lelya at night. Svarog came and looked - no one was there. Meanwhile, Volkh turned into a feather. Lelya took the feather into the wide yard and released it.
The young woman came out through the new gate, through the new, maple, lattice gate... she released the Falcon from her right sleeve - you fly - ka Finist Falcon high and far. “The Book of Kolyada”, III d
And then Lelya’s sisters poked needles on the window. The Falcon returned and tried to get through to Lele, but he couldn’t, he only tore his wings. And flew back to the Dark Kingdom. And finally he shouted to Lele:
- If you want to find me, then look in the thirtieth kingdom, in the Dark Kingdom near the Caucasian Mountains!
So Zhiva and Marena, which means Summer and Winter (time itself), separated the lovers. And then Lelya got ready for the road and went to look for Finist Falcon. On the way, she trampled three pairs of iron shoes, broke off three cast-iron staffs and gnawed away three stone loaves.
She trampled her little feet into blood. Where droplets of blood fell, scarlet roses grew.
And so she came to the Dark Kingdom. And she found Finist there, bewitched by the Snake Peraskea. Love helped Lela remove Peraskea's spell from Finist, and then they returned to Iriy. But God Veles did not release Peraskei from the Dark Kingdom.
And soon a wedding took place in Iria. Love transformed the god of war, he began to serve the Almighty and guard the path to the Irian Garden.
This legend is reconstructed from Russian folk tales about Finist the Bright Falcon, epics about Volga, South Slavic songs about the Fiery Snake Vuk and other related ones. Compare, for example, the above text from the epic about Volga (included in the “Book of Kolyada”) and the lines from Malechkov’s South Slavic song to his mother (text and translation given):
And egdi my dear Maiko! Wear me a kumani shroud, Ta sitegni me a new one. Oh, you, my dear mother! Swaddle me in silk shrouds, Yes, tighten a silver midwife for me... *From the East Slavic Vedic texts, when recreating the songs of the ball of Indrik from the “Starry Book of Kolyada”, various expositions of epics about Duke Stepanovich were also used, Churila Plenkovich, Bermyata and Katerina. Moreover, the name of Indrika was always returned to Duke, the king of Inderia, to Plenka - to Patera Dyya, to Bermyata - to the name of Barma, to Katerina - to the name of Tarusa (the truth of such restorations of names is verified by the similarity of the plots of Russian epics with the Indian Puranic stories about Indra, Dyaus, Brahmanaspati and Tara). You should refer to the classic collections of epics by Kirsha Danilov, A.D. Grigorieva, A.F. Hilferdinga, N.N. Rybnikov and other collectors (see the list of references in the book “Russian Vedas” of 1992, also “Explanatory Paley of 1477” (Syn. sp. 210, l. 556)).
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru