Volume 46, Issue 3-4

Slavic traditional oral literature contains many myths which describe the creation of the world in terms quite different from those of the Biblical account. These myths often involve a conflict or rivalry between God and the devil. The devil (or sometimes a bird) dives to the bottom of a primeval ocean to retrieve earth. This Earth Diver myth (Mot. A 812) has been recorded in Siberia, South and Southeast Asia, and in North America. In Eastern Europe, it appears in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, and Bulgaria. Some scholars have searched for the origin of this myth in ancient Iran, others in Siberia. It appears to have reached the Slavs from Finno-Ugric peoples. Besides the form of a prose myth, a small number of Christmas carols have been recorded in Galicia (Western Ukraine) which present doves or other birds as diver-creators. The Slavic prose myths and the Galician carols raise many interesting questions about the development and diffusion of oral literature, and its interaction with written traditions.