thick veins
Stand out on his entire body;
They throb and heave
With the blood running through them.
His temple is sunken,
His nerves carefully quiver
Under the golden skin.
His nose is straight,
And he has quite a temper.
As a rule, the Olonkho characters are all different. If the main hero is a good defender of the people, who saves everyone in times of trouble, then the representatives of the ‘Abaahy kin’ tribe (literally, the demon’s relatives) are represented as evil and ugly creatures; they are one-armed and one-legged Cyclops. They represent all possible kinds of sin and evil, such as wrath, cruelty, bestiality and impurity. The Abaahy (evil) characters attack people, rob and destroy their lands, and kidnap women. In Olonkho, kidnapping a woman is a symbol of all possible insults, offences and humiliation towards the people. Having said that, the Abaahy characters have some human features. Their interpersonal relations are built on the principles of the humans’ tribal interrelationships. Thus, Arsan Dolai has the features of the patriarchal race’s chief. During the course of some events the main characters hold conversations with such evil characters. The nature of these conversations is similar to the conversations of two rival tribes’ representatives. The main heroes make various bargains with the evil characters and Abaahy shaman girls: they make peace for a time, and swear an oath not to attack during the period of truce. Sometimes the main characters do not kill the Abaahy characters that they defeated, but let them go peacefully, with a promise that they will not attack people anymore, or they turn them into servants. In this sense, there are interesting marriage bargains between the defeated Aiyy heroes and the Abaahy shaman girls. The Abaahy shaman girls are very lustful and strive hard to get married to an Aiyy hero. In order to do so, they can easily betray their own brother, the main character’s bitter rival. Using their weakness, the defeated Aiyy hero gives the Abaahy shaman girl a false promise to marry her and strikes different bargains with her, aimed against her brother. The Abaahy shaman girl does not violate this treaty, but the Aiyy hero does. Sometimes the Aiyy heroes and the Abaahy become sworn brothers, but only temporarily, because in Olonkho it is considered impossible for the Aiyy and the Abaahy to be close friends and sworn brothers forever. All this shows that in Olonkho to some extent there are somewhat mythological and fantastic features of real ancient tribes’ representatives that the ancestors of the modern Yakut people fought with.
All the other Olonkho characters, parents and relatives, good and evil deities and spirits, shamans and shaman girls, messengers, slaves, ‘guards’ of different places and other supporting characters are grouped around the main good and Abaahy characters.
Among all these characters there is one significant character, a woman-heroine, who is the bride, the wife, the sister or the mother of the hero or other Aiyy heroes. The heroine is idealized as a woman of beauty and is kindness personified. She can be a mighty heroine herself, leading battles and defending herself and others. A mighty heroine can lead battles not only with the Abaahy mighty heroes, but also with the Aiyy main heroes and other mighty Aiyy warriors. She fights with the Abaahy characters for the same reasons as the mighty Olonkho hero, i.e. to defend the people (especially in those Olonkho fragments, where the main character is a woman).
Of course, mighty heroines fight with mighty heroes for other reasons. These reasons can vary. There are common cases of the hero and heroine’s ‘marriage fights’, which are a part of the ‘heroic matchmaking’, the hero’s marriage as a result of a mighty battle. The mighty heroine is not willing to get married to a weak hero, who is not capable of defending his family and his people at the right moment. For this reason, she, first of all, tests the hero in battle, tests his might and courage.
Welcome ritual for a Sakha bride and groom
However, the heroine most often tests the hero by treacherously making him face the Abaahy mighty heroes. While doing this, she not only tests the mighty hero, her fiancé, but also defeats the creature with her hands before the marriage, because in Olonkho it is impossible to live a happy life without defeating evil creatures. The hero in Olonkho gets weaker after marriage and is not capable of defending his family from Abaahy; in this case the son of the family, a hero of the second generation saves the family. There are cases when the hero for some reason does not wish to marry the heroine. In such cases this is followed by long battles between them. Again the woman purposely makes the hero fight with the mighty Abaahy, causing their defeat. In all such cases the heroine asks the mighty Abaahy character to ‘save’ her from the character pursuing her, by promising to marry him. The mighty Abaahy that believe her, battle the mighty hero and perish. There are cases when the Aiyy shaman girl entangles the hero by using magic and carries him with her. From time to time she throws the mighty hero to the Abaahy as ‘a special treat’ for them to eat. In such cases, the hero breaks the bonds, then battles and conquers the mighty Abaahy that tries to eat him. The themes of the hero’s and heroine’s battles can be quite different. In all cases there is a happy ending to the hero and heroine’s conflict: finally, they get married, produce children and live peacefully and happily ever after.
In general, the heroine’s character is more finely defined than the hero’s character. The hero is first of all a warrior. The woman is shown not only in battle, but also at home. In the household she is a good housemaid and mother. In battle she is as good as the mighty hero. Being the mighty Abaahy’s captive, she shows her mind’s special inventive power and heroism. On the contrary (and in accordance with the Olonkho tradition), before being captured, living in her household she is represented as a weak, helpless and soft woman. But when she is a captive, she becomes transformed. In order to save her child (most commonly the foetus of the baby, because the creature also captures a pregnant woman) and herself she becomes exceptionally inventive and uses clever methods to save her child (the one the creature wants to eat) and vindicates her honour, and then gives the hero clever advice to help him save her.
Such characteristics of woman became ingrained in traditional Olonkho and represent the idealization of a heroine – a cause of struggle and contention between Olonkho heroes. During the pre-revolutionary period [the author means The Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 in Russia], Yakut society was changing into a classist society where women were oppressed and had no rights (although the woman’s position in the family remained quite independent). In ancestral society faced with severe life conditions, the ancient cattle-breeding Yakuts had no notion of established religious views on a woman so within the family women generally held a considerable position of influence. They were required to do as much as men did. All of this complicated women’s characteristics and roles in Olonkho. While heroes of different Olonkho epics hardly differ from each other, the woman’s image is always personalized in some way. Such personalization is not fully representative since the Olonkho women differ not in individual characteristics, not in intelligence or mentality, but in the role they play: some women, for example, are just beauties, a hero’s aspiration, some of them show their mettle when captured, others are heroes, etc.
Several typical images function identically in all Olonkho epics and are represented almost equally, without any changes.
One such typical (and very important) image is of a blacksmith named Kytai Bakhsy the craftsman. This image is mythological and it is typical of such a symbolic craft. The blacksmith is one of the most powerful characters of Olonkho. He can smith not only weapons and armour for a hero (as well as for his enemy) but is also a hero himself. In D.M. Govorov’s Olonkho
