Samodiva

Also Known As: Bulgarian самодива, plural самодиви samodivi; also самовила samovila and вила vila, names the sources use almost interchangeably
Region/Culture: Central and Eastern Europe
Mythos: Bulgarian Mythology, Slavic Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: She flies, she dances, she owns the wild water and the healing herbs, and she can lock a district’s springs or cure a wounded man depending on how the meeting goes.
Role in Mythos: She is the resident power of the Bulgarian uplands and waters, the being a shepherd, a hunter or an epic hero runs into at the edge of settled ground.
Relation to Humans: Village belief held that she causes humans almost nothing but harm, striking down those who trespass on her meadows and her pools. The same tradition has her healing wounded heroes, teaching herb lore and, once a year, dewing the fields so the grain will set.

The water is loud at that hour and nobody in the village is awake to hear it. Down below the houses, at a river bend or a mill pool or the stone fountain where the women queue in daylight, women who are not women are washing their shirts. Bulgarian collectors of folk belief called that hour potayna doba, the secret depth of the night, and it belonged to the samodivi. When the washing was finished they went up to the meadow and danced, and the shepherd who came over the rise at the wrong moment did not go home the same man.

Nobody has ever managed to sort out their names. Samodiva, samovila, vila and rusalka run together across the Bulgarian lands like water finding one channel. Dimitar Marinov, gathering village belief in the decades either side of 1900, tried to hold them apart by address: the samovili on the high bare uplands beside untouched mountain lakes, in the shade of slender firs, and the samodivi down in the low country, in the rivers and the deep pools, by the bridges and the wells, in the gorges and the caves. Mihail Arnaudov refused the split outright. Petar Dinekov said plainly that the names are constantly mixed and denote the same beings, and that the etymology is unclear, probably Indo-European, however easily the words fall into a tidy Slavic reading. Taken as Slavic, samodiva comes out as something close to the self-wild one, which is at least honest about her conduct.

Marinov’s informants were exact about the clothes in a way they were not exact about anything else. A white shirt, very thin, thin as a shadow, the body showing through it. A belt called a zunitsa, coloured like the rainbow except that the green band runs wider than the others and hits the eye first. Hair fair and light and long enough that it streams far out behind her in the air whether she walks or flies. On her head a wreath of the flower that carries her name, and the wreath is the working part of the costume: with it she bewitches the young men. Under her arms, folded out of sight, a pair of light wings. What they produce is not a beating of pinions but a soft continuous movement of air, and the wind she travels on has its own name, polibnik.

For distance she rides. Her mount is a grey stag, and the village accounts are insistent that these are stags of a different kind altogether, winged, that fly. The ground where the samodivi raced them was called the virolishte and the ground where they danced their horo was the horolishte, and both words settled onto real meadows, which is how a stretch of ordinary grass acquires a reputation and keeps it for centuries. In autumn they went away to a village called Zmeykovo. No one could say where Zmeykovo was or how to reach it. In spring they came back.

Krali Marko found out what one of them could do to a landscape. Three days and three nights he had ridden the green forest after a grey stag, and there was no water anywhere, not a drop to cool a hero’s throat, and he cursed the forest and wished fire on it and frost on it in spring. Gyurgya the samovila stopped him. The forest was not at fault. Vida the samovila had locked twelve springs inside a dead tree that stood dry to the top and green at the crown, and Marko rode until he found it and broke it apart with his mace, piece after piece, until the twelve locks gave and the water ran. Vida heard it run. She caught a grey stag, bridled it with two live snakes and made a whip of a third, and came down on him to take his eyes out with her hands. He offered her money for the water. She was not interested in money.

Set against that is everything else on record. Arnaudov’s summary keeps contradicting itself because the material does: charming maidens who can also be evil spirits, who threaten girls and lads with sickness and then heal wounded heroes, who do kindnesses and cause suffering. Dinekov called them symbols of life-giving water and virgin nature, of beauty, love, freedom and the joy of being alive, and then noted that they destroy shepherds. The herbs belong to them. Arnaudov traced the plant called rosen and the word rusalka back through the Roman Rosalia and forward into the Bulgarian magic worked around Enyovden at midsummer, when the herbs are at their strongest and the beings who own them are nearest. In Marinov’s account the rusalki come from the edge of the world once a year in spring, dew fertility onto the flowering fields so the grain will set, and leave again, and whether the harvest is heavy or thin rests with them.

Three hundred of them once gathered to dance on a level upland and discovered they had no piper. Word had reached them of a kaval player as far off as Bitola, so they sent Gyurgya, the quickest, and she fluttered twice and on the third beat flew. She found Dimo at his supper. She struck him on the back of the head and his teeth came out, struck him again and his eyes leapt from their sockets, and carried him up to the mountain. Then the old samovila made the offer: play, and if you outplay us, Gyurgya is yours. He played three days and three nights and he outplayed them. He took her home, and then he stopped up the chimney hole and the smoke vents and kept her three years, and she bore him a son. At the christening she asked him to open the vents, since she would hardly run off now that she had the boy. He opened them. Twice she fluttered, the third time she flew, and she left the child behind and went back where she had come from.

Her powers are all of a piece with that. She flies, she outlasts anything human at singing and dancing, she casts arrows, she carries sickness in one hand and the cure in the other, she knows every plant on the mountain and what it does, and she can shut water inside a tree and hold a whole district to ransom with it. Her limits are of a piece too, and they are mostly about enclosure. A closed vent will hold her; so, in the versions where a man steals the garment she bathes in, will a white shirt locked in a chest. She can be beaten at her own art by someone good enough. She can be killed, and Marko killed Vida, and cut her into pieces, and rode on. But nothing holds her long, because there is nothing in her that wants to stay. The folk songs put it without embellishment: a samodiva makes no home, and raises no children for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a samodiva?

A samodiva is a female nature spirit of Bulgarian and wider South Slavic folklore, tied to mountains, forests, meadows and above all water. She is described as a beautiful fair-haired woman in a thin white shirt with light wings under her arms, and she is treated in village belief as a real and dangerous presence rather than a story.

What is the difference between a samodiva, a samovila and a vila?

In practice there is none that the sources agree on. The folklorist Dimitar Marinov tried to separate them by habitat, putting the samovili on high mountain meadows and lakes and the samodivi in the lowland rivers, pools and caves, but Mihail Arnaudov rejected the division and Petar Dinekov concluded that the names are constantly mixed and refer to the same beings.

Are samodivi good or evil?

Both, and the tradition never resolves it. Marinov recorded that samodivi cause humans almost nothing but harm, while the same body of belief has them healing wounded heroes, teaching herbal medicine and bringing fertility to the fields in spring.

How can a samodiva be captured?

Only by enclosure, and only for a while. In one Bulgarian song a musician wins a samovila in a playing contest, takes her home and keeps her three years by blocking the chimney hole and the smoke vents; in the related stolen-garment songs a man takes the shirt she has left on the bank while bathing. In both cases she recovers her freedom the moment the barrier is lifted, and leaves.

What animals are associated with samodivi?

Winged grey stags, which they ride, and snakes, which they use as tack. In the song of Krali Marko and Vida Samovila she bridles her stag with two live snakes and makes a whip of a third.