Ovinnik

The drying barns stand off at the back of the village, away from the houses, because everyone knows what they do. They are squat log boxes, smoke-blackened to the colour of charcoal, and at ground level each has a pit dug beneath the drying floor with an opening like an open mouth. A riddle current among Russian peasants called the ovin a fierce wolf with its flank torn out, a thing that does not breathe but blazes. At dusk, and worse at that thin grey hour before sunrise, the row of them squatting behind the cottages was enough to put a chill on anyone crossing the yard.

The ovin existed because northern grain does not dry itself. Sheaves came in damp from the field and had to be racked over a fire until they were brittle enough to thresh, and a barn full of dry sheaves above an open flame is a bomb with a slow fuse. Barns burned every autumn, everywhere, often taking the whole threshing floor with them, the old grain and the new harvest in one night. A loss like that has to belong to someone. It was given to a spirit, and to a particularly nasty one.

He sits in the pit under the drying racks, in the corner, day and night, which is why he is so often called the podovinnik, the one under the barn. By day the village boys use that same warm hollow to bake potatoes in the ashes, squatting a few feet from him and seeing nothing. He is only visible once a year, during the bright matins of Easter morning, and what shows then is a black cat the size of a yard dog, shaggy, with coal-red eyes. He barks like a dog. When he has managed to do some real damage to the men, he claps his hands and laughs, and the laugh is the leshy’s laugh coming out of a barn.

His work is supervision. He watches how the sheaves are stacked and he keeps the calendar. Barns are not to be fired on the great feasts, above all on the Exaltation of the Cross and on Pokrov, when every ovin in the district is held to be keeping its own name day and is owed a rest; from the first Spas in August they are prepared for the season, and on the day of Agafon the Threshing-Floor Man, the twenty-second of August, a man guarding his grain wore his sheepskin turned inside out and kept a poker in his hands. Drying during a high wind is also forbidden. Break the rules on a good day and he shoves you in the ribs beside the fire hard enough that you cannot get your breath back. Break them on a bad one and he flicks a coal in among the drying rafters and lets the whole building go.

A man near Yukhnov in Smolensk province decided to dry his barn on St Michael’s day. The gumennik carried him bodily out of the pit, laid a burning brand under each of the four corners while the man watched, and frightened him so thoroughly that he went white as a gull inside the year.

Worse things are told. In the forest country around Bryansk a woman went into the barn on Clean Monday to beat flax for spinning. She had barely got inside when something groaned like a horse and then laughed, and the hair stood up on her head. Her companion ran. She stayed and worked on, so long that the household went looking for her, and found nothing. She had gone like a stone into water. When the time came to break the hemp the whole family came in and saw something hanging on the hackle-comb, and looked closer, and it was her skin, entire, with the face still legible on it and the marks of the fingers of her hands and feet. That is the story as it was collected, and it is not softened anywhere in the telling.

In the Meshchovsk district of Kaluga they remembered a strongman named Valuy who fired his barn on the wrong day and sat by the pit himself. The invisible watchman came at him in the shape of a man and began stuffing him into the barn oven. He could not roast him. He only crushed and bent him, and Valuy went bent double for the rest of his life, but Valuy got both arms round the ovinnik and threw him into the fire. It cost him. The thing waited and took its revenge on his son, another big lad, who also lit the barn before a great feast; the gumennik fired the building and burned him in it, and they found the boy jammed against the wall with his hands all grazed, still swinging.

The spirits fight each other on the same terms. A traveller in the Belozersk district was turned away from a crowded cottage and sent to sleep in the bathhouse, and came back in the morning with a story. Something like the podovinnik had come in and complained that the master had invited him for the evening and then put a lodger in his way, and said he would throttle the man. A floorboard lifted and the bannik came up out of it and said the guest was his and was not to be touched. They wrestled for a long time without either one winning, until the bannik shouted at the traveller to take off his cross and lay into them both. He did, and they vanished.

Honour is what the thing actually wants. Careful men never lit the fire without first asking the master of the house for leave. In the Kadnikov district of Vologda a man who had thrown down his last sheaf would turn to face the barn before going home, take off his cap and bow low: thank you, little father ovinnik, you have served faithfully and truly this autumn. In the same country nobody would heat or clean a barn alone, always two or three together. In Kostroma province they claimed he could be squared on his name day with pies and a rooster, the bird’s head struck off on the threshold and the blood sprinkled into all the corners, the pie left down in the pit, though the men who knew most about him treated that as a pretty story and put no faith in it.

He does one thing for people willingly. Girls bold enough to walk past the bathhouses out to the threshing floor could have their futures told. It was done on Vasily’s evening, New Year’s Eve, at midnight, between the second and the third cockcrow, which is his hour and the best hour for spells. The first to take her turn pulled her dress up over her head and backed against the window of the drying loft, and asked the ovinnik, little dear, whether she was to be married this year. A stroke from a bare hand meant a poor marriage. A stroke from a shaggy one meant a rich one. Some pushed a hand into the racks instead and read the answer the same way. If nothing touched her at all, she would not be married.

What he can do follows entirely from where he lives: he commands fire inside his own building, he is strong enough to lift and fold a man who lifts sacks for a living, he can take a human shape when he wants one, and he sees far enough ahead to answer a question about next year. What he cannot do is leave. His authority stops at the threshold, which is why the bannik beat him on the bathhouse floor and why the whole apparatus of the fight took place on someone else’s boards. Against a settled grudge the ordinary defences are worthless. Crosses in every corner will not help, nor prayers, nor even the icon of the Unburnt Bush, which is the one an Orthodox household hangs precisely against fire. Once he has decided, the advice given was to give up on the barn. The only reliable protection was never to give offence in the first place: ask before lighting, keep the feast days, do not dry in a wind, and take your cap off at the end of the harvest and say so out loud.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Ovinnik?

The Ovinnik is a Slavic farmstead spirit who lives in the ovin, the barn where sheaves of grain are dried over a fire before threshing. He is one of the household and yard spirits alongside the domovoi, the dvorovoi and the bannik, and he is consistently described as the most dangerous of them. His name comes directly from the Russian word ovin, meaning drying barn.

What does the Ovinnik look like?

The Ovinnik appears as a huge black cat, shaggy all over and the size of a yard dog, with eyes that burn like live coals. He barks like a dog and laughs like a forest spirit when he has done someone harm. He is said to be visible only once a year, during the bright matins of Easter morning, and he can also take a human form.

Why is the Ovinnik so feared?

Because he burns barns down, sometimes with people inside them. Drying grain over an open fire caused frequent, ruinous autumn fires, and Russian peasants attributed these to the Ovinnik punishing anyone who fired the barn on a forbidden feast day, dried grain in a high wind, or stacked the sheaves badly. Once he is genuinely angered, crosses, prayers and even the icon of the Unburnt Bush were held to be useless.

How did people appease the Ovinnik?

They asked his permission before lighting the drying fire, refused to work in the barn alone, and bowed bareheaded to the building at the end of the harvest to thank him aloud. In Kostroma province a rooster was beheaded on the barn threshold on his name day, its blood sprinkled into the corners and a pie left in the pit beneath the drying floor, though experienced villagers regarded that particular remedy as unreliable.

What is the Ovinnik’s role in New Year divination?

Unmarried girls went out to the threshing barn at midnight on New Year’s Eve, between the second and third cockcrow, to ask the Ovinnik whether they would marry that year. The girl backed up to the window of the drying loft with her dress raised and waited to be touched. A bare hand meant a poor marriage, a shaggy hand meant a wealthy one, and no touch at all meant she would stay unmarried.

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Domovoi, Bannik, Dvorovoi, Kikimora, Polevik, Leshy, Vodyanoy, Rusalka, Likho, Baba Yaga, Vila