Birds of a Feather

Question: Do you have any information on the role of owls in Slavic folklore and myth? The only thing that I know is that the body of the Sirin is supposed to be that of an owl. While we’re on the subject, do you know anything about the Sirin and the Alkonost? The information that I have been able to dig up has been scarce.

Slavic party around here lately! Man, you'd think we had an interest or something.

Owls are not major players for most of Slavic myth, but they are present, and they're usually symbolic of the otherworldly and superhuman, often in a frightening capacity - pretty standard across non-Greek Europe, where owls usually have scary connotations thanks to their status as creatures of the night. Baba Yaga often appears with an owl roosting on her house, or owls living in the forest around the place, illustrating the imminent danger and her connection to the magical otherworld. The sirin is indeed often referred to as having the body of an owl, though sometimes the bird is unidentified; and though she's not specifically an owl, per se, the Simargl has dominion over all birdkind to a certain extent, so she could certainly have owls around if she wanted to. Polish folklore also features a nastily unsettling creature called the strzyga, a shape-changing owl-creature with vampiric tendencies, most likely borrowed from the Roman idea of the strix (witch) and transformed with typical Slavic aplomb.

The Sirin, a woman-headed singing bird monster, is one of those creatures borrowed from elsewhere to become part of the Slavic mythological landscape; as is probably pretty obvious, it's a direct import of the Greek siren, probably through Croatia and Macedonia and then on up into the more northerly Slavic lands. It shares its mythic space with the Alkonost (also a Greek import, this time from the story of Alcyone, turned into a bird for her hubris), often referred to as its "sister", and the two of them tend to appear as either a unit or as opposing but linked forces. As with many Slavic creatures, their connotations change over time and with your location; the Alkonost is usually the more dour of the two figures, singing sorrowful or dolefully prophetic songs and tormenting the souls doomed to Nav with her ear-piercing wails, while the Sirin is most often associated with joy, hope and just rewards (to the point that some medieval art in the Russian Orthodox Church actually features the Sirin as a symbol of God's divine will, or sets it as a creature of the Garden of Eden, now forbidden to mankind but occasionally venturing forth to bless saints and the deserving with its song).

But these roles actually reverse occasionally - in the more southern Slavic lands, the Sirin is more often the dangerously connoted creature (not surprising, as it's closer to the birthplace of the myth of the decidedly dangerous sirens) and is said to be a harbinger of death, while the Alkonost's song does not only torment souls in Nav but also brings joy and serenity to those blessed souls in Raj, where it lives. Occasionally one or the other of them is said to live on the Isle of Buyan instead of in the Underworld. Sometimes it's the Alkonost who brings joyous tidings and comfort to wanderers; sometimes the Alkonost is associated with the day and the Sirin with the night, or sometimes the association is reversed. The Alkonost's song, specifically, is also sometimes said to calm waters, probably another memory of the Greek Alcyone, whose father Aeolus calmed the weather to allow her to nest every year.

They're a lovely pair of ladies, and definitely perfect for appearances in Scion, whether as antagonists, helpers or characters in their own right. Exactly how much they're really related to the Greek siren and Alcyone is up to an individual Storyteller's discretion, but I like to think they're probably separate creatures, perhaps with good relations with their Greek cousins but so thoroughly Slavic that they can't just be mashed together and called the same, just as the Simargl and Simurgh aren't the same. (Or perhaps it's one and the other - maybe the Slavic Alkonost and Greek Siren hang out together, or vice versa!) The Bogovi supplement on our site presents only the Alkonost, and sets her as a composite creature, beautiful and benevolent to the deserving and terrifying and tormenting to the unworthy; really, all we're doing there is combining the two birds in one in order to let the siren remain a Greek creature, but Scion is more than able to accommodate all of them if you want it to.

For a gorgeous depiction of the two birds in action, check out Viktor Vasnetsov's Sirin and Alkonost - Birds of Joy and Sorrow:

Of course, which is which? Vasnetsov doesn't say. You'll have to draw your own conclusions. (And look up more of his work, if you liked what you saw - he's one of the best artists around for Slavic mythology.)

By the way, if you're a fan of Slavic bird-creatures, you might want to give the Gamayun, the third of the Slavic bird trio, a try as well. She, too, is a "sister" to the Alkonost and Sirin, though folklorists are not really sure where she came from since she doesn't seem to share their Greek origin and appears later in the body of Slavic folklore than they do. She is renowned for speaking prophecies and is also said to dwell on Buyan, where even the gods tend to leave her alone lest they hear something they didn't want to know.