Forgotten evil spirits: cat-bayun. Cat Baiyun. Slavic mythology Cat bayun interesting facts

A huge man-eating cat with a magical voice. He speaks and lulls the approached travelers with his tales and those of them who do not have enough strength to resist his magic and who have not prepared for a fight with him, the sorcerer cat mercilessly kills. But the one who can get a cat will find salvation from all diseases and ailments - Bayun's tales are healing. The word itself bayun means "talker, storyteller, eloquent", from the verb play- “tell, speak” (cf. also verbs cradle, lull in the meaning of "to lull"). Fairy tales say that Bayun sits on a high, usually iron pole. The cat lives far away in the distant kingdom or in a lifeless dead forest, where there are neither birds nor animals. In one of the tales about Vasilisa the Beautiful, Cat Bayun lived with Baba Yaga.

There are a large number of fairy tales where the main character is given the task of catching a cat; as a rule, such tasks were given with the aim of ruining a good fellow. Meeting with this fabulous monster threatens with inevitable death. To capture the magic cat, Ivan Tsarevich puts on an iron cap and iron gloves. Having requisitioned and caught the animal, Ivan Tsarevich delivers it to the palace to his father. There, the defeated cat begins to serve the king - to tell fairy tales and heal the king with lulling words.

... Andrey the shooter came to the thirtieth kingdom. For three miles, sleep began to overcome him. Andrei puts three iron caps on his head, throws his hand over his hand, drags his foot by foot - he walks, and where he rolls like a skating rink. Somehow he survived his drowsiness and found himself at a high pillar.

Cat Bayun saw Andrey, grunted, purred and jumped from the pole on his head - he broke one cap and the other, he took up the third. Then Andrei the shooter grabbed the cat with tongs, dragged him to the ground and let's stroke him with rods. First, it was cut with an iron rod; he broke the iron one, began to treat it with copper - and this one broke it and began to beat with tin.

The tin rod bends, does not break, wraps around the ridge. Andrey beats, and the cat Bayun began to tell fairy tales: about priests, about clerks, about priest's daughters. Andrei does not listen to him, you know he is courting him with a rod. The cat became unbearable, he saw that it was impossible to speak, and he begged: - Leave me, good man! Whatever you need, I'll do it for you. - Will you come with me? - Wherever you want to go. Andrei went back and took the cat with him.

- “Go there - I don’t know where, bring it - I don’t know what”, Russian fairy tale

No matter how you look at Russia, - at random from time immemorial, In the fields instead of rye - quinoa and loach, On the icons - a ghoul, and with a club - the law, On an iron pole - Bayun the cat.

Sergey Yesenin

Notes

Links

• "Cat Bayun", sculpture in Zyuratkul National Park, Russia

Literature

• “In a Far Far Away Kingdom, in a Far Far Away State” Tales / Retelling by A.I. Lyubarskaya; Rice. B. Vlasov and T. Shishmareva; Designed by L.Yatsenko.-2nd ed.-L.: Det., lit., 1991-336s. ill.
• “Vasilisa the Beautiful”, “Seeds of Goodness: Russian Folk Tales and Proverbs” / Comp., author of the preface. and note. L.P. Shuvalov; Art.A.Sorokin.-M.: Det.lit., 1988.-175p.: Ill.
• “Vasilisa the Beautiful”, “Russian Children's Tales Collected by A.N. Afanasyev”, M., Detgiz, 1961 (AF.D.)
• Vasilisa the Beautiful, Russian Folk Tales, Moscow, Goslitizdat, 1957, vols. 1-3

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See what "Cat Bayun" is in other dictionaries:

Cat Baiyun- Bayun Kot Bayun is a character of Russian fairy tales. In the image of the cat Bayun, the features of a cat and a siren are combined. Cat Bayun is a cannibal monster with a magical voice; he lulls with his fairy tales and songs travelers who accidentally met him and ... ... Wikipedia

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Books

• Cat Baiyun , . Cat Bayun is a character in Russian fairy tales with a magical voice. He speaks and lulls approached travelers with his tales. This collection includes some of the most popular…

The cat is clearly a forest dweller. This indicates that the source of the image is a forest cat, it may be a Siberian wild cat or a lynx. Most likely, the place of origin of the image is the Urals and Siberia, when the ancestors of the Russians, the Aryans, lived there. It was 5-7 thousand years ago. Consequently, the history of the cat in Russian mythology is at least 5 thousand years old, which is older than the ancient Egyptian culture. So to say that a cat comes from ancient Egypt is to ignore Russian history. In it, the image of a cat (not a cat) is much older.

The cat is called to cradle children. This means that he does not live with people (he must be called!), He is a wild forest dweller, moreover, a dweller of the other world. Or rather the frontier world. From here in the distant kingdom, from here at Baba Yaga, from here in the dead forest, which has always been the border between the kingdom of the living and the kingdom of the dead.

The cat speaks, lulls, hypnotizes - Bayun from the word "bayat" - to tell. So Bayun is a storyteller. The one who falls asleep, he kills and eats. But Cat Bayun is not just a sorcerer and cannibal. The one who resists his charms, he heals from all diseases. He is both a killer and a healer. It all depends on the person with what he came to the cat. The cat is a great healer. Getting a cat is a great feat. In various fairy tales, it is performed by Ivan Tsarevich or Andrei the shooter. To do this, he puts on several iron caps, which the cat breaks with his iron claws, one after another, but finally, exhausted, allows himself to be captured. And after that he serves the Grand Duke, healing with his accordion - tales.

Bayan (the great legendary storyteller, Russian Homer) and Bayun are one and the same word. The cat is a storyteller, he talks about the affairs of the distant past, but not just the past, but about the history of the ancestors, which no living person knows about. This is an intermediary between the civilization that has disappeared, and the current civilization of people - Russians, between Hyperborea and Russia.

The size of the Bayun Cat is much larger than the size of an ordinary domestic cat. It is rather the size of a Siberian forest cat or an Amur forest cat (body length 75-90 cm, tail - 35-37 cm), or even an Amur tiger (perhaps this is the idea of ​​a tricolor cat - yellow-black-white - as a Real, bringing good luck ) - the habitat of these wild cats in ancient times could extend much north of the current borders.

Pushkin's Cat Bayun walks on the oak "right-to-left", but this is a distortion of Russian mythology, in which the Cat walks up and down. Goes up - tells a fairy tale, legend, goes down - sings a song. The tree on which Cat Bayun walks is the same World Tree that grows on Mount Meru at the North Pole, in the country of Hyperborea. In other myths, Cat Bayun does not walk on any tree, but sits on a high iron pillar (perhaps an idea of ​​the planetary axis of rotation of the Earth). It was in those days when the Lomonosov Ridge had not yet gone under water, and Mount Meru towered above the ocean.

After the death of Hyperborea, Kot Bayun moves to the dead forest (or the forest of the dead), to the border between Yavu and Navu, where he again sits on a high iron pole.

And why so much iron in ancient Russian mythology? Baba Yaga flies on an iron mortar, Cat Bayun sits on an iron pole in the middle of a forest on the border of the world of the living and the world of the dead. And the claws of Kota Bayun are iron. Iron is always an accurate and unambiguous indication of a mechanism, tool, machine. Where could the idea of ​​iron, aircraft and iron machines come from among our distant ancestors, who, according to official history, lived almost in the Stone Age?

On the other hand, Kot Bayun = Gamayun, or Gam Bayun (gam - hymn, legend, bayun - storyteller) is a prophetic bird. But prophesying not because it predicts the future, but because it knows the past. Such a deep and ancient past, which is unknown to any of the people and is not described in any annals. This is the history of the ancestral home of Russians or Aryans - Hyperborea.

So the cat in Russian mythology is not at all borrowed, but rather one of the oldest in world civilization, more ancient than the image of a cat in ancient Egyptian mythology.

Cat Bayun is a native Russian character, coming from the ancestral home of Russia - ancient Hyperborea, the keeper of its secrets and its history. And given that Hyperborea died about 17 thousand years ago, then how old is Cat Bayun?

The pharaohs of Egypt, the ancient Jews, the Sumerians, not to mention the Romans and Greeks and the whole hastily put together European civilization are unreasonable babies compared to the cat Bayun, whom every Russian mother easily invites to lull the baby "for a glass of wine and the end of the pie."

By the way, it was for cake and wine that a cat was invited to cradle children in ancient Russia. It was only later that a glass of wine was replaced by a “glass of milk”, as the original image of Bayun was forgotten and approached a domestic cat. And before they paid with wine, as with a person.

Come, cat, spend the night,
Come rock baby
I'm the one, cat, I'll cry:
I'll give you food for a week,
I'll give you a glass of wine
And the end of the pie.

And here's another weird one:

A gray cat will come
The son will grab the barrel
And drag you into the woods
Let it bury in the sand
Under the willow bush.

Wow, huh? And everything is so affectionate, gentle, cradling. Why is death so attractive in ancient Russian mythology? Interesting question, but another story...

Newly baptized O. I. "Cat Bayun"

The fairy tale seems to describe all the main details of this character: he sits on a pole, is able to break an iron cap, otherwise you can’t take him with tongs (also iron), and, most importantly, he reasonable, at least at the level of Asimov's robots, otherwise it would be impossible to conduct a constructive dialogue with him.

Tikhonov Igor Vsevolodovich "Cat-Bayun"

Stop. We forgot one more thing - dimensions Cat. From some point on, it was generally accepted that Kot-Bayun was not only a cannibal, but also of enormous size, probably the size of a horse.

Um. Cat... Cannibal... Huge size... What kind of animal is this?!
Yes, you know what: a tiger, a lion, other large cat predators. All felines, from small to large, both domestic and wild, are similar: they are all predators, attacking their prey from an ambush, getting it not only with their teeth, but also with their claws...

Bayun cat looks like Jack Nicholson

Let's get back to size. Is Kot Bayun huge? Older drawings - K. Kuznetsov - for example - do not give us the opportunity to judge this, but newer drawings - O.I. Novokreshenykh or I.V. Tikhonov - they believe that yes, it is huge.

Chizhikov, who illustrated Uspensky's fairy tale story "Down the Magic River", simply portrayed Bayun as a huge black cat (and really, it’s not a white Persian or a black and white Siamese, after all?), more than just a horse, but also a horse with a rider .

Viktor Chizhikov. Illustration for E. Uspensky's book "Down the magic river."

In a word, Kot-Bayun is not "just" an "elephant-sized" domestic cat, not just a super-large and magical black panther or a melanistic tiger. But it's not that simple.

In the above tale, for example, Bayun's size is not mentioned, but the fact that he jumped on the head of the main character still indicates that he is smaller than a tiger, and even a leopard, a cougar and a lynx.

Viktor Chizhikov. Illustration for E. Uspensky's book "Down the magic river."

A large relative of the domestic cat, having attacked its victim from the back (a lynx on a hare, a tiger on a deer, a lion on a zebra), knocks it to the ground without any problems. The fact that Cat-Bayun did not do this in the battle with his adversary (Andrey, Fedot, Ivan) suggests that he is still small in size, say, no larger than a domestic cat, since the main character (say, Andrei the shooter ) was able to bring him home in a cage. (That's right, because a cat on a leash is nonsense and a mortal insult to an animal, moreover.)

In doing so, however, he has sufficient strength to break two iron caps, as well as steel-iron claws, with which he wanted to gut the king when they were introduced to each other.
Yes, but with all this, he also possessed not only reason and speech, but also reason, decency, or something: Andrei the shooter ordered him to calm down and not touch the king, the Cat did not touch the king.
Kot-Bayun is a cat in a square, and Andrey's victory over him is people's dreams of a final victory over cats - a cat that retains its innate cat qualities and listens to a person like a dog. (Don't wait!)

Cat-Bayun, no matter how you twist it, no matter how you twist it, he is a cannibal. (Like any other big wild cat, no matter if it's fabulous or real.)
And so we're back to the original question. Why is Kot Bayun not so popular? E. Prokofieva, who wrote a guide about evil spirits, was able to mention him in only two instances: in Pushkin's "Ruslan and Lyudmila" and Uspensky's "Down the Magic River".

As for Pushkin's "Scientist's Cat", he is not very similar to Bayun: he does not destroy people, he does not send sleep, although, like Bayun, he tells fairy tales and also sings songs. But unlike Bayun - "I was sitting under him, and the scientist cat told me his tales. I remember one: this tale, now I will tell the world ..." I.e. this cat not only did not touch Pushkin, but also told him his fairy tales without such arguments as those rods with which Andrei was courting Bayun.

Cat Bayun in Slavic mythology is a guide cat .. According to legend, Bayun the cat sits on an iron pole near a golden mill far away. This pillar (for Pushkin it is a century-old mighty oak) is border axis between the world of the living and the world of the dead.
Going down, the cat sings, rising - tells fairy tales. The bayun has such a strong and loud voice that it can be heard very far away.

And now consider the miracle cat with contemporary points of view. More precisely, his voice.

The voice is essentially sound. Sound, like color, has a spectrum of different frequencies. And we hear only a small part of them. There are such concepts as ultrasound and infrasound. They are beyond the perception of the human ear, but some animals hear it. This is where we will dig...

Maybe some people know such a thing as "the voice of the sea." It is this phenomenon that explains the sudden disappearance or death of ship crews. The voice of the sea is destructive for a person, like the songs of Bayun. The death of animals in anomalous zones called "devil's meadows" is explained in the same way.

The fact is that some frequencies can have a harmful effect not on the hearing organs, but on the whole organism as a whole. The worst thing is that a person does not hear these frequencies and cannot move away from the source at a safe distance in time. First, the head hurts, then the state of health worsens, the person loses consciousness ... and then death occurs ... But animals can hear at these frequencies, and disappear from the dangerous place. Everything converges!

And from a fantastic point of view, the image of the Cat - Bayun can even be considered as ancient - a weapon of mass destruction using sound waves!

And yet Bayun was forgotten. Why? Too unsteady image he left in fairy tales; in Pushkin it is only in the prologue, and Ouspensky is now also forgotten, and cannot "help" Bayun.
It's a pity!
In the books of the genre of Slavic fantasy, he would take not the last place, no worse than some Serpent Gorynych ... But apparently - not fate.

But domestic cats thrive to this day, and it does not interfere with being kind to them - what if they tell their offense to such Bayun? It will be bad then! Incl. Treat them like human beings and you will be rewarded a hundredfold.
End

Near Lukomorye there is a green oak. There is a golden chain on the oak. And day and night the scientist cat keeps walking around the chain.

This poem by A.S. Pushkin is familiar from childhood to every inhabitant of our country, but who is this mysterious cat scientist who goes to the right, the song turns to the left, tells a fairy tale? Alexander Sergeevich borrowed the image of this learned cat from Russian fairy tales where there was a similar character Cat Bayun. It is about him that we will talk about today. This character in fairy tales is mostly mentioned in passing and is, so to speak, on the sidelines. And of course, for a long time, his image was not only distorted, but acquired many new features and now it is not possible to find the true appearance. But let's see what we have on this incredible character.

Probably it's worth starting with the attitude of people towards cats in general. After all, a cat is a beloved animal! Many signs and proverbs are associated with it: For example: “There is no hut without a cat”, “A beast for a mouse and a cat!”

But if a cat curls up in a ball in the cold, sleeps soundly with its belly up - to the warmth, scrapes the wall with its paws - to the wind, washes - to the arrival of guests, licks its tail - to the rain, stretches for a person - it promises a new thing.

The cat of all peoples was the companion of sorcerers. Popular superstition ascribes to her eyes that see in the dark an extraordinary power drawn from the mysterious world. A three-haired cat, according to our plowmen, brings happiness to the house where it lives; a seven-haired cat is an even more sure guarantee of family well-being. And here is the version of the origin of cats on earth: Veles, the patron saint of animals, once wandered the earth and stopped in the evening at a haystack to spend the night. He had bread in his knapsack, and at night the little mice ate the whole bread. Veles got angry, threw his mitten at the mouse - and the mitten turned into a cat. Since then, the feline race began.

And now let's move on to our scientist cat Bayun, this character has a magical voice and huge size. He sits on a pillar and speaks to the travelers who approached him with fairy tales and songs, his voice can be heard from seven miles away. As it purrs, it lets on anyone it wants, an enchanted dream. Dream visions are no different from ordinary experiences, and everything happens as if in real life. They say that when a traveler falls asleep, a cat eats him without remorse. So it turns out that Bayun is a huge cannibal cat, ruthless and merciless. But he also has another side, I don’t know if someone is able to agree with him, but yes, to subdue him. And then, in the master's hands, the tales of the cat Bayun acquire healing properties.

Video version of the article:

But here's what's interesting with the size of Bayun, everything is not as clear as it should be, judging by the drawings that depict Bayun. Indeed, on older ones it is quite difficult to judge its size, but in modern ones it is already depicted as a huge and vicious cat.

And here is an excerpt from the Russian fairy tale “Go there I don’t know where”, which may give us a clue:

.. Andrey the shooter came to the thirtieth kingdom. For three miles, sleep began to overcome him. Andrei puts three iron caps on his head, throws his hand over his hand, drags his foot by foot - he walks, and where he rolls like a skating rink. Somehow he survived his drowsiness and found himself at a high pillar.

Cat Bayun saw Andrey, grunted, purred and jumped from the pole on his head - he broke one cap and the other, he took up the third. Then Andrei the shooter grabbed the cat with tongs, dragged him to the ground and let's stroke him with rods. First, it was cut with an iron rod; he broke the iron one, began to treat it with copper - and this one broke it and began to beat with tin.

The tin rod bends, does not break, wraps around the ridge. Andrei beats, and Bayun the cat began to tell stories. Andrei does not listen to him, you know he is courting him with a rod. The cat became unbearable, he sees that it is impossible to speak, and he prayed:

- Leave me, good man! Whatever you need, I'll do it for you.

- Will you come with me?

- Wherever you want to go.

Andrei went back and took the cat with him.

It seems that this tale does not say about the size of the cat, but the fact that he jumped on the head of the hero clearly indicates that he is still small in size. But on the other hand, he broke two iron caps with his steel claws, which speaks of his great strength.

The word bayun means “talker, narrator, rhetoric”, from the verb bayat - “to tell, speak.” Fairy tales say that Bayun sits on a high, usually iron pole. The cat lives far away in the distant kingdom or in a lifeless dead forest, where there are neither birds nor animals. In one of the tales about Vasilisa the Beautiful, the cat Bayun lived with Baba Yaga. By the way, you can find the story about Baba Yaga and other characters of Slavic mythology in the playlist in the hints and at the link in the description. Also do not forget to support Slavic mythology in the channel group in contact. In the same place in the discussions, you can suggest a topic for new videos. In general, I advise you to subscribe to it.

There are a large number of fairy tales where the main character is given the task of catching a cat; as a rule, such tasks were given with the aim of ruining a good fellow. A meeting with this fabulous monster threatens with inevitable death.. Having requisitioned and caught the animal, Ivan Tsarevich delivers it to the palace to his father. There, the defeated cat begins to serve the king - to tell fairy tales and heal the king with lulling words.

But not in all fairy tales, the cat Bayun acts as an evil and creepy character, for example, a fairy tale from the book "Myths of the Russian People" authored by Georgy Naumenko:

It's getting dark. The street becomes dark and deserted. Cat Bayun is walking down the street. It has two knots on its tail. Two kittens are sitting on his back. He approaches the house, opens the window and gives the kitten. The girl saw, was delighted and said: - What a pretty, pretty kitten! I'll take it for myself! The girl took the kitten, went to bed. Bayun the cat is happy. He untied one knot, released sleep and slumber, and purrs: “Murr-murr-murr, sleep!” Murr-murr-murr, go to sleep! The sweet dream began to overcome the girl. Drama rolled over his eyes. And she sees that she is a squirrel with a golden nut, jumping from branch to branch. It seems that she is a fish - a silver back, swims in the sea-ocean and overtakes ships. She dreams that she is a lark, flies over the field, sings songs and gets the sun with her wings.Goes further Kot Bayun. Opens a window in another house. Gives a kitten. The boy saw it and said: “I don’t like kittens!” I will be glad to torment! Cat Bayun did not give him a kitten. The boy went to bed. Cat Bayun is dissatisfied, let sleep calm down, purrs: - Murr-murr, sleep! Murr-murr, sleep!

Sleep began to overcome the boy, Ugomon closed his eyes. The boy sees that he is a hare and the wolf is chasing him, is about to grab him with his teeth. The hare stumbled, rolled over his head, turned into a dove and flew into the sky. A kite saw a dove, chased after it, and wants to grab it with its claws. The dove dived into the water and turned into a crucian. And swam into the sea. A pike saw a crucian, opened its mouth, showed sharp teeth, and chased after it. I don’t want to accept death from a pike. He jumped ashore and hit the fisherman in a pot. The fisherman saw the fish, put the pot on the fire and said: “It will be a nice ear!” The boy became scared and terrified, and he shouted: “Save me! I was gone! And then I woke up, opened my eyes. Bayun the cat closed the window and went on.

Of course, this fairy tale is a modern interpretation of this character, but such an image also has a place to be.

And on this I think it’s worth finishing my story, if you have something to add to it, write comments