The Mistress of the Copper Mountain
[3] In folklore or legend, she is depicted as an extremely beautiful green-eyed young woman in a malachite gown[2] or as a lizard.
[4] She has been viewed as the patroness[b] of miners,[5]: 247 the protector and owner of hidden underground riches, the one who can either permit or prevent the mining of stones and metals in certain places.
Some of her more distinctive features include dark braided hair, ribbons from thin tinkling copper, and a gown that is made from malachite.
[8][18] She is said to be always surrounded by her servants,[19] small lizards, which can be green, of various hues of blue, golden-speckled, glittering like mica, or patterned.
[2][23] She could permit or prevent mining in certain places, give or take wealth, and sometimes employs lizards under her control as her minions to conduct her work.
In the Urals it was assumed she only favored those people who were good, honest, and hard-working,[9] or workers who are brave and freedom-loving, tending to be hostile to the aristocracy.
[24] Children were taught not to shout and quarrel next to the stones, and to keep quiet in the mines, because, according to popular belief, the Maid disliked loud noises.
[34][35] The Mistress of the Copper Mountain appears in the third Pavel Bazhov's skaz from The Malachite Box, "The Mistress of the Copper Mountain", first published in the 11th issue of Krasnaya Nov in 1936;[36] and then in many other tales: "The Malachite Casket", "The Stone Flower", "The Manager's Boot-Soles", "Sochen and His Stones", "The Master Craftsman", "The Two Lizards", "A Fragile Twig", "The Grass Hideaway", and "Tayutka's Mirror".
[41] This tale concludes by stating: "It's a chancy thing to meet her, it brings woe for a bad man, and for a good one there's little joy".
[56] But he still resolved to mistreat his workers, and received warnings by a woman's voice that if he persisted, his boot-soles will be the only remains left to be given to his family.
[...] The bailiff saw a maid of amazing beauty standing before him, and here brows were drawn together in a line and her eyes blazed like burning coals.
[60] Valentin Blazhes stated that in the Malachite Box she is a classical ambivalent character, because she combines good and evil, life and death, beauty and ugliness.
[62] Pavel Bazhov had heard the tales about her at the Polevskoy Copper Smelting Plant from the miners' storyteller Vasily Alexeyevich Khmelinin (Russian: Василий Алексиевич Хмелинин), nicknamed "Grandpa Slyshko/Slishko" (дедушки Слышко) by children.
[64] Valerii Nikitich Demin [ru] commented that the Mistress is a universal mytheme, while the Copper mountain is the specific location: the Gumyoshevsky mine and Mount Azov.
[66] Bazhov believed that the most ancient creature of the Ural mythology was in fact Azovka, the Great Serpent [ru] appeared next, and the last one was the Mistress of the Copper Mountain.
[67] Mark Lipovetsky commented her black hair colour hints at her non-Slavic parentage, possibly from the "Old People", like Azovka.
[72] In one of the stories, she is displeased her malachite is used for pillars in a Christian church, and causes the yield of riches of the "Gumeshky" mine to wane significantly.
[74] Maya Nikulina [ru] points at her relation to the realm of the dead, as she does not ear or drink, does not leave any traces, her clothing is made of stone and so on, and the Mountain connects her to the world of the living.
Their folklore featured the underground riches, moral and spiritual powers, personified in Chthonic deities, mining and metallurgic techniques unknown to Russians.
Nataliya Shvabauer, noting that in her namesake tale she appeared lizard-bodied but still with a maiden's head,[30] characterized this hybrid form as "filth",[h] something by definition both supernatural (unchristian) and "foul[i].
[23] During Soviet times critics commonly described this character as the protector of the working class from the oppressors, from the standpoint of proletarian literature.
[78] Lipovetsky commented that she is the most terrifying characters of the collection, a beautiful girl and a dangerous demonic creature at the same time,[4] exhibiting both features of sexuality[79] and death:[80] thus she represents the struggle and unity between Eros and Thanatos,[81] characterized by three major Freudian motives—the sexual drive, the death drive (her realm is the realm of the dead) and the castration anxiety (loss of power).
[4] The latter is shown when she persistently and spitefully provokes the local administration, forcing the protagonists ("The Mistress of the Copper Mountain", "The Two Lizards") to relay offensive messages.
[82] Zherdev pointed out that the Mistress's female domain is the world of chaos, destruction or spontaneous uncontrolled acts of creation.
[83] Natalia V. Budur [ru]'s entry in The Fairy Tale Encyclopedia (in Russian) suggests that the Mistress represents conflict between human kind and nature.
She compares the character with Mephistopheles, because a human needs to wager his soul with her in order to get the ultimate knowledge, however, the Mistress does not force anyone to abandon their moral values, and therefore "is not painted in dark colours".
[87] Shimun Vrochek authored a story called The Master of the Copper Mountain (Russian: Хозяин Медной горы, romanized: Hozjain Mednoj gory), in which he mentioned the character.
