Zduhać
A role of zduhaći, according to folk tradition, was to lead storms and hail clouds away from their family estates, villages, or regions, to save their crops.
A man named Mato Glušac (1774–1870), from the village of Korita in Herzegovina, was reputed the supreme commander of the Herzegovinian and Montenegrin zduhaći;[14] he was also a famous seer.
[14] They used various weapons, such as spindles, beech buds, sharp splinters, leaves, stalks of straw, fluff, flakes, sand, long twigs, cornel stones, pine cones, eggshells, and other light objects.
The brother, of course, promised that, and the sick man continued: "You will have to go tonight to Mount So-and-so, at three to four hours' walking distance from here, most of the way lying through a dense forest.
The wisp will turn into an enormous storm cloud that will cover all the sky, and there will come a darkness such as you have never seen before; the wind will blow, whistle, roar, and shriek, as you have also never heard before; the hair will rise on your head so that it will lift your cap, and I fear that you may go mad from horror.
He passed through the dark forest; he came beneath the stair-like cliff; the moon and the stars were shining, so it was like a day; a silence all around him, pleasant; he sat down and lit his pipe.
He was going back home as if flying; when he arrived he found his brother sitting by the hearth, placing logs on the fire, healthy as if he had never been sick.An interpretation of the story about the Ceklin zduhać is given in an essay by literary theoretician Radoman Kordić.
[1][27] In the region of Užice, western Serbia, it was believed that storms and hail clouds were led by zduhaći who flew above them in the form of big birds.
[28] In some regions of southern Montenegro, such as the Bay of Kotor, Grbalj, and Zagarač, and in parts of Herzegovina, a man who acted as a zduhać was called a vjedogonja or jedogonja.
[31] A correspondence between the witches and the vjedogonje can be seen in a passage from The Mountain Wreath, a poetic drama by Petar II Petrović-Njegoš, the plot of which takes place in 18th-century Montenegro: Бог са нама и анђели божји!
A man named Vukota said these words to Bishop Danilo, one of the main characters of The Mountain Wreath, who previously uttered a piercing vision speaking as if he was alone.
[29] A 19th-century ethnographic account describes that "when a man regarded as a vjedogonja dies, they drive hawthorn spines under his nails, and cut the tendons beneath his knees with a knife whose sheath is black, so that he could not get out of his grave (like a vampire).
[37] In the region of Mount Zlatibor in western Serbia, the man who protected the fields of his village from bad weather was called a vetrovnjak; the name is derived from vetar "wind".
[38] In the region of Dragačevo, western Serbia, people told of the vilovit men, who would disappear at the sight of hail clouds, reappearing bloody and with torn clothes after the storm was over.
The name vila denotes Slavic nymphs or fairies, female anthropomorphic spirits of woods, mountains, clouds, and waters, who had magical powers.
[40] In 2004, ethnographers interviewed elderly people in a group of hamlets south-west of the town of Valjevo, who defined the vetrenjak as a man able to direct the movement of clouds.
[43] In the folklore of Serbs in the region of Syrmia, protection from hail was provided by the men called oblačars; the name is derived from oblak "cloud".
In this way, the oblačar fought against a gigantic serpentine demon called aždaja, which was thought to fly accompanied by its retinue in low dark clouds, spewing hail from its broad muzzle.
[51] His arch-enemy was a female demon named ala (plural: ale),[52] whose main activity was to lead storm and hail clouds over fields to destroy crops.
[46] As thought in the region of Leskovac, Serbia, such a boy would only then become able to defeat an ala, when three old women spun yarn, knitted a shirt, and dressed the child in it.
[60] It was recorded in the region of Niš that a winged dragon boy, in his fights with ale, "takes a plough beam and immediately stops the ala, and hail ceases.
[71] A legend in the region of Leskovac has it that fighting the ale was originated by Prophet Elijah, when he, accompanied by a dragon boy, killed twelve of these demons.
Russian epic hero Volkh Vseslavevich is described as a son of a dragon; in folk poems, he transforms into a falcon, aurochs, wolf, and some other animals.
He uses meteoric stones, lightning-swords, thunderbolts, piles of trees and rocks to defeat the kulshedra and to protect mankind from storms, fire, floods and other natural disasters caused by her destructive power.
The burkudzäutä, mounted on animals or household objects, flew on a night between Christmas and New Year to burku, the land of the dead described as a great meadow.
[92] In the eastern Baltic region of Livonia, people designated as werewolves went underground in the shape of dogs to fight against sorcerers who stole the shoots of the grain.
[91] In West Europe, medieval sources describe women who fell into trance on certain nights, abandoning their bodies in the form of an invisible spirit or animal.
The divinity, semi-bestial or attended by animals, was known by various regional names, such as Holda, Perchta, Madonna Oriente, Richella, Bensozia, Dame Habonde, and Fairy Queen (in Scotland).
[86] Ginzburg argues, adopting a diffusionist approach, that the shamanistic elements of the European folkloric figures have their original source in the shamanism of Siberian nomads, and their diffusion was possibly mediated by the Scythians.
[106] In the novel Lelejska gora by Mihailo Lalić, set in Montenegro during the Second World War, there is a negative character, Kosto, nicknamed Zduvač (a local variant of zduhać.)
