Bajun
The cat Bajun ("Кот Баюн", Kot Bajun ) is a figure from the Russian folk tale who lives on a tall tree on the Siberian fictional island of Kidan. According to AN Tolstoy , the cat Bajun lives on the also fictional island of Bujan in the ocean.
Tolstoy calls the tree on which the tomcat lives "gold top".
Its strength and size are enormous; with its claws it can destroy iron armor, with the help of a magical song, to euthanize people approaching it, and then possibly kill them.
Surname
The name of the cat Bajun is derived from the Russian баюкать, which translates as "singing to sleep". In this respect, the name of the cat is one of the so-called descriptive names that allow conclusions to be drawn about a main characteristic of the wearer. It is a method used by the cat Bajun to sing his opponent to sleep before attacking him.
The cat Bajun in the Russian fairy tale
The best-known fairy tale about the cat Bajun is that of " Gevatter Naum ", in which the shooter Andrei is commissioned by the Tsar, who wants to get rid of the shooter, to bring the cat Bajun to the court of the tsars. With the help of his wife's counter-spell, the rifleman succeeds in kidnapping the sacred animal of the Siberyaks to Moscow.
Mythological background
The cat Bajun is probably the godfather of a nature deity who is most likely to be attributed to the daughter of the Turkish god of heaven Tengir . This human and lion-headed female figure is associated by some authors with the ancient Egyptian goddess Sekhmet because of her name, her shape and her character traits . The ancient Egyptian sachmet is the predominantly angry aspect of the benevolent cat goddess Bastet from Bubastis .
Other aspects
The cat Bajun appears in many forms in Russian folk tales. Sometimes he appears as with magical powers afflicted companion of the Russian National witch Baba Yaga on, then as a simple hangover Kotofeij (or Kotofeij Ivanovich or Kotofei Kotofejewitsch) who flees from a farm to develop in many variations to the Lord of the forest.
A fundamentally bad trait is rarely ascribed to the hangover. Mostly he is attested to have a superior mind, which justifies his rule even over bear and wolf (cf. Russian кот учёный , kot uchony , "the learned cat"). The stories about the Russian fairytale tomcat are characterized by respect for him.
Web links
swell
- Kurt Ranke: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales: Concise dictionary for historical and comparative narrative research . In: Kurt Ranke (ed.): Encyclopedia of fairy tales . tape 9 . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-11-015453-6 , p. 166 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- Russian folk tales, arr. v. TO Tolstoy, SWA-Verlag Berlin 1949, p. 231 ff.