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Dobrynya the Dragon-Slayer
Two historical Dobrynyas are united in the person
of this hero. The first, mentioned in the
Chronicles towards the end of the tenth century,
was uncle to Prince (Saint) Vladimir, and brother to
Malusha, the housekeeper (kliuchnitza) of the Princess
Olga, Vladimir's mother. In the bylinas he becomes
Vladimir's nephew and steward (kliuchnik).
The second, Dobrynya of Ryazan, surnamed
"Golden Belt," was a hero who perished in the battle
of Kalka in 1224.
Marina is to a certain degree an historical reminiscence
of the heretic, Polish wife of the False Dmitry,
Marina Mnishek. It is evident that her name must
have superseded the original one in the seventeenth
century. That name was in earlier times probably
"Marya the White Swan," as her character is identical
with those of the treacherous wives of Mikailo the
Rover, and Ivan Godinovich : in some versions of the
latter she is called Marya instead of Avdotya. Mora
or Morena, the goddess of serpents, death, sleep, and
cold, was no doubt the original heroine.
Marina Mnishek, like the Marina of the song, was
reputed a witch among the common people, and like
her the latter is sometimes designated as the "heretic."
This Slavic Circe typifies the dark and hurtful female
principle which is united to a bright and beneficent
male principle.
It often happens in mythology, that one deity is
divided into two or more distinct persons, in accordance
While Vladimir is the passive, inactive principle of the
Sun, and pursues his way tranquilly through the sky,
the active, warlike principle is embodied in Dobrynya.
Dobrynya wages incessant war with darkness, triumphing
over it every morning, and with winter, whose
fetters he strikes asunder every spring with the sword
of his rays. Like Krishna, Apollo, Hercules, Frey,
Siegfried, and Yegory the Brave, the St. George of the
religious ballads, he is a slayer of dragons; like Perseus
and Yegory, he rescues captive women.
He possesses traits in common with Ilya, also. For
the Sun-god and the Thunder-god are both descendants
of Svarog, the Heaven, the father of all gods. Hence
their brotherhood in arms was originally a mythical
bond. Dobrynya corresponds to Odin, Ilya to Thor,
in Northern mythology.
The marriage round the bush is undoubtedly the
ancient heathen rite against which early Russian
writers inveigh.
Dobrynya's long absence from Nastasya, the Russian
Penelope, has the same mythical signification as Mikailo
Rover's imprisonment in the stone, or Ilya's long confinement
to the oven—the night and winter repose
of the deities of light and warmth. Dobrynya's transformation
into an aurochs likewise represents the
obscuration of the beneficent summer deities in winter,
and his golden horns are an intimation of his bright
origin.
These Russian poems treating of the return of the
long-absent husband are more complete and perfect in
form, and, from an epic point of view, more original,
than either the oral traditions of Western Europe
which are chiefly in prose, or than the literary versions
which go back to the thirteenth century.
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