White Woman

WHITE (WOMAN, GIRL, FEMALE)

The White (Woman, Girl, Female) is the appearance of death in the form of a woman or girl; a deceased woman; a harbinger of misfortune; a water spirit; a vision or ghost threatening human life.

"A white woman in a white shroud appears to whoever in the family will soon die" (Voronezh region).

"After the bath, I felt deluded — a tall, white figure appeared. I recited a resurrection prayer, and everything disappeared" (Murmansk region).

"A white person stands there — a sheet draped like this" (Novgorod region).

The "Harbinger in White" (in white clothes, a white robe, most often very tall) is one of the most popular characters in beliefs of the 19th and 20th centuries. In a narrative from the early 20th century in Arkhangelsk Governorate, the appearance of a woman in white in the hayloft precedes the demise of a young woman. In a contemporary narrative, a woman dressed in white comes out onto the road and foretells the future: "Someone started a rumor… Supposedly, a driver was going along, when suddenly his car stopped abruptly, and he saw a woman walking. Dressed all in white. She approached and asked him to buy half a meter of white material."

"And when you buy it, come back here. We'll settle up then."

He drove off and bought it. And as he passed that spot again, the car stopped. She asked him:

"Did you buy it?" He handed over the material. "Now ask for whatever you want, and I will fulfill everything."

He was terrified, not knowing what to ask. Then he said the first thing that came to mind:

"Will there be a war?"

She replied:

"There will be no war" (Western Siberia).

A tall figure, "covered entirely in white," appears to a father and daughter on their way to the market: "A woman stands there… and recites something aloud. So-o-o tall — so-o-o tall was this woman! She was also crying aloud like that. And then two years later, his father's time came. My mother always said that Death had come for him" (Novgorod region).

The image of a tall white woman apparently combines the personifications of death and fate in the form of a white, wavering figure, similar to a deceased person in burial clothes. According to beliefs, the deceased can come for the living and "take them away," cause their death — carrying death with them, embodying it.

White, in one of its primary meanings, is the color of death, of non-existence; it characterizes the inhabitants of the otherworld. The personification of "death-fate" in the form of a woman is also traditional: she bestows life and can take it away (a similar meaning is sometimes acquired by the image of a woman in black or red attire).

In 19th–20th century beliefs, the figure in white is referred to both vaguely ("white," "tall") and directly as death, and, for example, in contemporary narratives from the Novgorod region, it is interpreted as "a deceased person wrapped in a sheet."

The image of the white woman also implies several other interpretations. In the beliefs of several Russian governorates, it is associated with the element of water. The White Woman (Belaya baba) in the stories of Vologda peasants resembles a water nymph: "In rocky rivers, she sometimes comes out of the water, sits on a stone, and combs her hair." A woman in white appears at an ice-hole: "…We had just approached — there was a woman standing there! All in white, like a Snow Maiden. Everything around her head glowed like that. She stood by this horse's ice-hole and wagged her finger: 'Do you know that you can't go to the ice-hole at twelve o'clock? Even if you have to ask a neighbor for a scoop of water, do not go there'" (Western Siberia).

In a narrative from Kostroma Governorate, the white woman is a deceased sorcerer, the "river companion" of a half-crazed girl: "…we had already gone to bed, I heard someone knocking at the window, I got up, looked, and just about died of fright: Aksinya stood at the window, completely wet, and what a lot she had in her skirt: crayfish, and frogs, and some kind of water grass… I gently woke up my man, told him what was going on — he took a stick, and I — a small icon, a parental blessing, and we went out of the house with him to see what would happen. As soon as we approached the corner, the woman, all in white, darted towards us, but, surely, my blessing prevented it — she turned back and disappeared around the corner. No sooner had that one disappeared, than Aksinya emerged from nowhere, clattering her big teeth, looked at us and said: 'Grafenyushka, let me stay the night, I'm very cold.' And I said: 'Why would you come to me? Your house is right there, next door.' And she burst out laughing, and then started running down, towards the river, and lamenting: 'Marya! Marya!' — She was calling that one, her companion… that river one… well, that was him, disguised as the white woman, waiting for her around the corner…"

A white girl can also appear in the forest, driving away peasants who have come to strip bast: "I said, Lavrush, let's strip this bast! He moved a bit away from me, cut down a birch, was stripping bark for himself, and so was I. Suddenly he screamed at the top of his lungs! He barely came to his senses and said: 'A girl came to me, he says, tall, white, with her hair unbound, and she grabbed me by the scarf and tore the scarf off.' I looked, and he had a huge crimson spot on his neck… 'Well,' I said, 'Lavrush, let's run home quickly, the forest spirit is playing tricks on us, so he doesn't do anything bad, it's clear that this birch grove belongs to him'" (Vologda region).

In the vicinity of Semipalatinsk, it was told that in one of the burial mounds near the Irtysh River, according to legend, a treasure is hidden: "Sometimes at night, a white woman on a white horse appears above this mound. No one has ever claimed the treasure."

Diseases were often envisioned as women in white: "There are people who claim to have seen a woman in white clothing enter a house at midnight and, after walking through the house, disappear to an unknown place; or she would stop in front of someone in the family and gaze at him intently and for a long time. The next day, that person would fall ill" (Voronezh region).

It is evident that the polysemantic image of the white woman (like the entire range of characters who appear deceptively and simultaneously assume a female form) is nevertheless most consistently associated with omens of fate – misfortune, illness, death.

A harbinger of misfortune in the beliefs of Russian peasants can also be a man in white. On the Tersky Coast of the White Sea, a story was recorded about the appearance in the forest of a tall man in white, with a ribbon across his shoulder. He predicts imminent war and death to the peasant he meets in the forest.

In peasant tales from the late 20th century, the white woman more often does not pursue a person and does not even engage in conversation, but cries or laments, or simply stands motionless, like a manifest sign of impending misfortune. (Sometimes the appearance of the Mother of God is described similarly, also foretelling calamities and changes.)

Marina Vlasova