Bannik

Nobody put a bathhouse where the village could see it. It went at the back of the yard, down a gully or over the brow of a slope, a low box of logs blackened inside by its own smoke, with one small window and no chimney, standing well clear of everything worth keeping because sooner or later it would burn. From the outside the buildings looked abandoned even while in use, and nobody repaired them with any conviction. Those sooty walls still heard the first cry of nearly every child born to a Russian peasant family, and the first easy breath of a grown man at the end of a working day, laid out in the steam with his back unknotting.

The building had an owner, and it was not the family. He lived behind the kamenka, the heap of fire-heated stones that made the steam, or more often under the polok, the high shelf where people stretched out to be beaten with birch besoms. Russian villages called him the bannik, or the baennik, or simply the banny, the one of the bathhouse; Belarusians called him the laznik. He belonged to the same family of house spirits as the domovoi behind the stove, the dvorovoi in the yard and the ovinnik in the drying barn, and folklorists have long treated the stories about him as a harsher branch of the same tradition. Harsher is the word. The domovoi is a nuisance who likes you. Around Belozersk in old Novgorod country they said there was nothing more spiteful than a bannik and nothing kinder, and then went on scrupulously observing every rule that kept him sweet.

Mostly he was heard rather than seen: a knock behind the stones, a voice, something shifting under the shelf or in a heap of fresh unsteamed besoms. Women lying in after childbirth were held to be especially sensitive to those sounds, which is why one was never left in a bathhouse alone. When people did claim to have seen him he came out small and old, with a big head and a long matted beard, his whole body covered in leaves, sometimes carrying a worn besom or a tub. What witnesses remembered best were the hands, huge and shaggy, once described as covering the entire heap of stones at a stretch. He could also arrive as a cat, a dog, a hare, a frog, or as somebody’s neighbour. In one Siberian village a woman came in to light the stove and found a little man in white sitting on the shelf swinging his legs, in a small cap and white boots with red laces, and was so taken with him that she bought a rubber toy and left it there to keep him amused.

Where he came from is disagreed on. Dmitry Zelenin thought that in appearance and origin he recalled the domovoi, but that in him, as in the ovinnik, the traits of a fire spirit dominated. Tatyana Bernshtam argued that the descent was more tangled, with a water spirit, ancestral dead and fire spirits all folded in, since the bathhouse gave fire a ritual role. That reading suits the building. A banya is the one place on a farm where great heat and standing water are forced into the same small room, and it sits at the edge of the yard, on the border between the household and everything outside it, which is exactly the kind of ground that grows a spirit.

His claim on the place was scheduled. Bathing ran in three shifts, usually between about five and seven in the evening, and the fourth belonged to him. After the third turn the devils washed, and the leshie, and the ovinniki, and the banniki themselves, and a man who went in at that hour did not come out alive; the village would say afterwards that he had been overcome by fumes or had simply steamed himself to death. That belief in the fatal fourth steam turns up all across Russia and Belarus, and in Siberian villages it was the commonest bannik story of all. Clearing the fumes from the bathhouse was reckoned to be his job, and bringing them was reckoned to be his right.

So people paid him. On leaving they always left a little water in the tubs and a scrap of soap if they had not washed with lye, and the besoms stayed behind rather than going into the house. A piece of rye bread under a thick crust of coarse salt bought goodwill. When a bathhouse burned and a new one went up, the household strangled a black hen without cutting it, left the feathers on, and buried it under the threshold, timing the work for Maundy Thursday if they could, then backed out of the doorway bowing to the tenant they were about to live with.

Break the rules and he collected. Hurrying someone who was washing offended him. So did washing last and alone, or coming in at night, on a holiday, or during Yuletide, when the permitted hours had closed. He threw hot stones out of the kamenka, threw boiling water, held doors shut, dragged people onto the stove. The worst stories are consistent and very old, and they are about skin: a woman who came out of a bathhouse as a hide with the nails still on it, a man found on the shelf with his own skin stretched to dry over the hot stones. He kills people. That is not the whole of him, but it is most of what the stories record.

Once a year, though, he answered questions. At Yuletide a girl would open the bathhouse door a little way and put her bare back through it, and wait. A soft touch from a shaggy palm meant a good year and a good marriage. Claws meant the other thing. Near Kadnikov in Vologda province some girls went to listen at the bathhouse when the local boys had sulked and stayed away, and one dared another to put her hand in at the window, promising that the bannik would fit her fingers with gold rings. The voice that answered said, now I have got you. He set the rings on, and they were iron, and they welded her fingers into one lump she could not prise apart. She got the hand back out of the window and ran home crying with the pain, and told the others he was shaggy all over and his own hand was huge and shaggy too, and that she would not be going to listen at any more bathhouses.

The one thing he cannot do is follow you home. His power stops at his own building, so the recorded escape is to back out through the door rather than turn your back, and the recorded remedies come from the church he is barred from: a man in Penza province who went in after midnight pulled his cross off over his head with his shirt, climbed onto the shelf, and then found he could not get down again while the besoms flogged him unassisted. The door would not open. Neighbours took axes to it and struck nothing but sparks. It was a village wise woman who ended it, sprinkling the door with holy water and reading a prayer over it before it swung, and they carried him out senseless and rubbed him with snow. There is one more limit, and it has nothing to do with holy water. The old people say that a white bathhouse with a proper chimney has no room in it for a bannik, and as the black bathhouses have gone the stories have thinned out with them, until leaving the water in the tub became a thing done from habit by people who can no longer say why.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a bannik?

The bannik is the spirit that owns a Russian peasant bathhouse, living behind the stone stove or under the steaming shelf. He belongs to the same class of household spirits as the domovoi and the ovinnik, but he is far more dangerous than either. The name simply means the one of the bathhouse.

What does the bannik do to people?

He punishes anyone who breaks the rules of his building by throwing hot stones and boiling water, filling the room with fumes, holding the door shut, or strangling and suffocating them. The most extreme stories describe him flaying victims and stretching the skin over the hot stones. People who observed the customs were generally left alone.

Why should you not take the fourth steam in a Russian bathhouse?

Bathing ran in three shifts, and the fourth belonged to the bannik and his guests, including devils, forest spirits and barn spirits. Anyone who went in during that turn was believed not to come out alive, and the death would be explained afterwards as fumes or over-steaming. The belief is recorded across Russia and Belarus.

How did people keep the bannik happy?

They left a little water in the tubs, a scrap of soap and the birch besoms behind when they finished, and offered rye bread under a heavy crust of coarse salt. When a burned bathhouse was rebuilt, a black hen was strangled unplucked and buried under the new threshold, and the household backed out of the doorway bowing.

Could the bannik tell the future?

Yes. At Yuletide a girl would put her bare back through the half-open bathhouse door and wait for his touch: a stroke from a soft shaggy palm promised a good year, and a blow from a clawed one promised misfortune. Bathhouse divination about future husbands was one of the main reasons anyone willingly approached him.

Related Entries

Domovoi, Dvorovoi, Ovinnik, Polevik, Kikimora, Leshy, Vodyanoy, Rusalka, Bes, Baba Yaga, Likho, Tomte, Kobold, Brownie