Lada (mythology)

The deities owe their popularity to Polish priest Jan Długosz, who described Lada as a goddess and a god of war in his works and compared her to the Roman Mars, to Aleksandr Faminstyn, who recognized the name Lada in Russian songs as attributed to the goddess of marriage, and to scholar Boris Rybakov, who insisted on recognizing her historicity.

However, the vast majority of religious scholars and Slavists reject the historicity of these deities, believing that they owe their divine status to a misunderstanding of the song refrains by medieval scribes.

[1] The first source mentioning the theonym Lada is the Gniezno Sermons, which were written by Lucas of Wielki Koźmin around 1405-1412, without giving any description: One should pay attention to those who say ungodly things today in dances or elsewhere in performances, consider unclean things in their hearts, shout out and mention the names of idols, and consider whether conversion to God the Father is possible.

For it is forbidden to hear freely these holidays, which unfortunately celebrate according to what was left of the rites of the accursed pagans of our ancestors, unless for punishment, as once the shout of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah rose.

[7] Maciej Miechowita, who copied information from Długosz, did not agree with him, however, on the function of Lada and corrected Długosz' information, comparing her to the Greek Leda and recognising her as the mother of Lel and Polel: They worship Leda, the mother of Castor and Pollux, and twins born of a single egg, Castor and Pollux, which can be heard even today in the most ancient songs sung by Łada, Łada, Ileli and Leli Poleli with clapping and beating hands.

[8] She is also mentioned in the Powieść świętokrzyska: "there was a church of three idols, which were called Lada, Boda, Leli, to which the ordinary people went on the first of May to make prayers to them and to offer them.".

[10]Similar informations are found in the Kievan Synopsis of 1674 by Innocent Gizel, which mentions Lado as a deity of happynest, to whom offerings were made during wedding preparations.

The theonyms contained therein were then used and popularized by Jan Długosz in his Annals, where he did interpretatio romana and compared Lada to the Roman god of war Mars.

Although the Hustyn Chronicle contains original content, it is also a compilation of various earlier East Slavic as well as Polish sources.

[13] The value of the Chronicle was also recognized by the Russian musicologist and composer Aleksandr Faminstyn in his 1884 work Bozhestva drevnikh slavyan.

There he writes of a 17th century song from Croatia which notes "the holy god Lado" sung by girls dancing around a bonfire:

[22] This position was later upheld by linguists Gregor Kreka and Aleksander Brückner,[21] as well as Max Vasmer[20] and Oleg Trubachyov.

This view is shared by scholars who consider at least part of Długosz's mythological account to be valuable, such as Aleksander Gieysztor,[24] Andrzej Szyjewski,[d] or Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov.

In his work, Yazychestvo drevnikh slavyan (1981), he hypothesized an Indo-European origin for the goddess Lada and compared her to the Greek Leda and Demeter.

According to him, Lada and Lelya [ru] ruled over spring nature and agricultural work, fertility, love and marriage.

[27] The form Alado appearing in Postilla Husitae anonymi is probably the result of an attempt to adapt the word to Italian phonology.

He believed that *Lęda was supposed to be a pagan theonym that had been demonized, and he refers here to the Russian dialectical words ляд, lyad, and ляда, lyada meaning "unclean spirit, devil".

However, as Michał Łuczyński notes, the assumption that the ly notation corresponds to the vowel ⟨l⟩ justifies the reading of the Latin name as *Lada rather than *Lęda.

In addition, an analysis of Długosz's personal spelling features shows that the ly notation also served him for the consonant ⟨ł⟩, e.g: Lyassza Gora "Łysa Góra", or Lyeba "Łeba".

[37] However, according to him, an argument for the existence of the goddess could be the Bulgarian custom of laduvane, during which the second girl in the family who goes to fetch water is called "lada".

In Russian, the wedding is sometimes called rukobitije ("crossing of arms"), from which the clapping while singing the refrains of the lada during children's songs may derive.

She gives the example of a story about a Gypsy who forced a peasant to exchange horses by jokingly suggesting to the villager that they should go to an inn, shake hands, and shout liko.

[38] The lado refrain is also considered a ritual vocabulary by Lithuanian ethnologist Rimantas Balsys, who blames the misunderstanding in the Baltic context on the uncritical use of 16th century sources and the activity of the Romantics, who considered the ritual ledų dienos ("day of ice") as proof of the existence of the winter goddess Lada.