The Rusalka and the Slavic water

The literal source of the word “vampire”, from 1720s official reports

A rusalka is not a mermaid, and the difference is the whole point. She is the restless soul of a young woman who died in or near water before her time, by drowning, by her own hand, or by somebody else's, and in some traditions of an unbaptised child. She belongs to the category of the unclean dead: people who did not get the years they were owed and are still owed them.

That is a story about drowning, and it is attached to specific water. Rivers, ponds, mill races, the deep place under the willows. Every community that lived beside water and lost people to it had somewhere the loss was concentrated.

The season matters. Rusalnaya week, in late May or early June around Pentecost, is when the rusalki are said to come out of the water into the fields and the birches and swing in the branches. During that week people did not swim, and the reason given was practical superstition: offend them and they send floods or sickness in the cattle. It is worth noticing that late spring is when rivers are high and cold and swimming actually is dangerous.

She also varies enormously by region, which is a sign of how old and how local the belief is. Around the Danube she is beautiful, dressed in mist and singing to draw men in. In the Russian north she is naked, unkempt, ugly and simply lying in wait.

Nineteenth-century writers and composers took the Danubian version and made her a tragic romantic figure, which is the one most people meet first.

The pin sits on the Danube in Serbia. If you are on any big Slavic river in early summer, the local version of this is worth asking about, and somebody will have one.