Buyan

A child has cut her hand on a scythe, and the old woman holding the wrist does not reach for a bandage first. She bends close and begins to mutter, fast and low, and the words do not start in the hut at all. They start a very long way off. “In the sea, in the ocean, on the island, on Buyan, lies the white burning stone Alatyr.”

A great many Russian charms open on that line or something close to it. The collector Leonid Maikov printed about four hundred spells in 1869, and Buyan turns up in them again and again as the address every spell is sent to. The island is where the work gets done. On the stone sits a fair maiden, a masterful sewer. She holds a steel needle threaded with silk of a reddish yellow, and she sews bloody wounds shut. The healer in the hut only describes her. The stitching happens on Buyan, and the cut at home is expected to close with it.

The island itself is drawn in a few hard strokes. It stands in the ocean-sea, which is no sea on a map. There is the stone, white and burning, and from under it run rivers of healing. There is an oak, and the oak drips. Under the oak lies a snake named Garafena. In some charms the maiden on the island is called Zarya, the Dawn. Other charms fill the place with elders: the snake older than all snakes, a prophetic raven, the mother of bees who is the eldest of bees, and a bird that is the largest and oldest of all birds, with an iron beak and copper claws. One charm in Maikov’s book puts a cathedral there instead, ringed with an iron fence, roofed in copper from the earth up to the sky, its gates shut with thirty locks.

That last detail shows the way the island was used. A charm against thieves or the evil eye sends the danger to Buyan and locks it in. A charm against snakebite goes over the head of the local adder and addresses the oldest snake of all, on the grounds that the eldest can call the others off. Each charm follows the same reasoning. Whatever is first and oldest of its kind lives on the island, so that is where to take a complaint.

Nobody says how Buyan came to be. No tale gives it a maker or a first day. It is simply there before the charm begins, and the people who spoke the charms seem not to have asked.

Alexander Afanasyev asked. In 1851 he published an essay called “Pagan Traditions of the Island of Buyan” and argued that the island was never an island. He read it as the spring sky: the snake was lightning, the great bird was the storm, the bees were thunder bees bringing the honey of rain, and the whole place was one of the shapes of rai, the Slavic paradise where the sun lives. The English folklorist William Ralston carried that reading to British readers in 1872. It is a product of its century, when a great many things were found to be the sun, and later scholars have been cooler about it. The charms themselves make no such claim. They speak of an island.

The name is its own small quarrel. Most dictionaries tie it to buinyi, a Russian word for something wild and boisterous, which suits a rock in open water. An older sense of buyan was an open raised place such as a market square or a landing stage. A more adventurous school points to the Baltic island of Rügen, once called Ruyan and once the seat of a famous Slavic temple, and another to Berezan in the Black Sea. Neither has been proved.

Outside the charms, Buyan belongs to the storytellers. In some tellings of the tale of Koschei the Deathless, the oak on Buyan is where the sorcerer hid his death: under the tree a chest, in the chest a hare, in the hare a duck, in the duck an egg, in the egg a needle. The prince who finds the island digs up the chest, loses the hare, loses the duck, and at last stands with the egg cold in his hand while Koschei, far away, starts to sicken. Then he snaps the needle.

Alexander Pushkin gave the island its widest fame in 1831. In The Tale of Tsar Saltan the merchants sail “past the island of Buyan, to the realm of glorious Saltan”, and the line comes round like a refrain every time they put to sea. They never land. Buyan stays off the rail, a landmark on the way to somewhere else. Ivan Bilibin’s illustrations for the poem fixed its look for later generations.

What the island can do follows from what is on it. It heals, because the stone and the seamstress are there. It holds, because what is locked behind thirty locks at the centre of the world does not get out. It commands, because the eldest of every dangerous creature can be found there and spoken to.

Its limits are just as plain. The island does nothing unasked. It has to be named, aloud, in the right order, and many charms end by locking their own words with a key thrown into the sea so that no one can undo them. Once the church came to the villages the stone itself began to move. In the Christian versions it lies by the River Jordan, and on it stands a golden church, or a throne where the Lord or the Mother of God sits. The seamstress lost her seat. The island, in those versions, is not there at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Buyan in Russian folklore?

Buyan is a mythical island set in the ocean-sea in Russian folk charms and folktales. Charms name it as the place where the white burning stone Alatyr lies and where healing is carried out. It also appears in the tale of Koschei the Deathless and in Pushkin’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan.

What is on the island of Buyan?

The charms place the Alatyr stone on Buyan, with rivers of healing running from under it, and a dripping oak with the snake Garafena beneath it. A maiden sits there and sews wounds shut, and in some charms she is called Zarya, the Dawn. Other charms add the oldest snake, a prophetic raven, the mother of bees and a great bird with an iron beak and copper claws.

Why do Russian charms begin with the island of Buyan?

Russian charms open on Buyan because the island is treated as the place where the spell is actually performed. The healer describes an act on the island, such as a maiden sewing a wound, and the same result is expected in the patient. The first and oldest of every creature lives there, so a charm can appeal to it directly.

Is Buyan a real place?

No real island has been shown to be Buyan. Some writers have linked it to the Baltic island of Rügen, once called Ruyan, or to Berezan in the Black Sea, but neither idea has been proved. Alexander Afanasyev argued in 1851 that Buyan was a picture of the spring sky and of paradise.

Is Koschei’s death hidden on Buyan?

In some tellings of the Koschei tale, yes. His death is a needle inside an egg, inside a duck, inside a hare, inside a chest buried under the oak on Buyan. When the hero reaches the island and breaks the needle, Koschei dies.

Related Entries

Alatyr Stone (Alatyr), Gagana, Koschei, Zorya, Vyrai, Living Water and Dead Water, Nav, Sirin, Alkonost, Gamayun, Avalon, Penglai, Elysium