Zmey Gorynych

Zmey Gorynych is the many-headed, fire-breathing dragon of Russian epic songs and fairy tales, best known for kidnapping a princess of Kyiv and being defeated by the hero Dobrynya Nikitich.

The Story

Zmey Gorynych is Russia's most famous dragon. Its best-known adventure comes from the byliny, the old heroic songs about the knights (bogatyri) of Prince Vladimir of Kyiv. The versions differ in many details, but a typical telling of "Dobrynya and the Dragon" runs like this.

Dobrynya Nikitich's mother warns him never to bathe in the Puchai River. He goes anyway, strips off his armor, and swims. The dragon swoops down on him, breathing fire and sparks. Unarmed, Dobrynya grabs his "Greek hat," fills it with sand, and knocks the dragon to the ground. The dragon begs for mercy and swears never again to raid Russian lands or carry off Russian people, and Dobrynya lets it go.

The dragon breaks its word at once. Flying over Kyiv, it snatches Zabava Putyatichna, Prince Vladimir's niece, and carries her to its lair in the mountains. Vladimir orders Dobrynya to rescue her. After a long battle, Dobrynya kills the dragon, frees Zabava and the many other captives held in its caves, and brings them home. In several versions the fight lasts three days, and the dragon's blood floods the ground until the hero commands the earth to swallow it.

Appearance and Powers

The epic songs describe a flying, fire-breathing serpent-dragon. Some versions give it twelve "trunks" (khoboty), which are usually understood as heads. In many byliny the dragon is female, Zmeya Gorynishna. In Russian fairy tales, dragons called zmei or "Gorynych" often have three, six, nine, or twelve heads, and the hero must cut off each one. Because the number varies so much, there is no single correct head count, but the three-headed form has become the standard image in modern art and film.

The name Gorynych looks like a Russian patronymic. It is usually connected with gora, "mountain," since the dragon lives in the mountains, though some scholars link it to goret', "to burn." The word zmey itself comes from an old Slavic word for snake.

Origins and Sources

The byliny were sung for centuries before anyone wrote them down. A few were copied in the 18th century: the Kirsha Danilov collection includes a song in which Dobrynya kills the flying, fire-breathing "Zmey Gorynchishche" and finds gold, silver, and his captive aunt in its caves. Most known texts were recorded by folklorists in the 19th and early 20th centuries, many from singers in the Lake Onega region of northern Russia. Fairy tales with dragons were gathered in the same period, most famously by Alexander Afanasyev in his Russian Folk Tales (1855–1863). Scholars have compared Dobrynya's fight to the battles of storm gods against serpents in other Indo-European myths, and to Christian dragon-slayer legends such as Saint George, but its exact origins are uncertain.

Legacy

Zmey Gorynych is a favorite villain of Russian children's books, cartoons, and films, from Aleksandr Ptushko's fantasy film Ilya Muromets (1956) to the animated Dobrynya Nikitich and Zmey Gorynych (2006). Modern versions sometimes make him comic or even friendly, which is a recent twist. For other Slavic dragons, see Dragons Across Cultures and Dragon Species.

Related

• Tugarin Zmeyevich: Tugarin Zmeyevich is a monstrous dragon-man of Russian epic songs, a gluttonous, boastful invader who flies on wings until the hero Alyosha Popovich brings him down by praying for rain to soak them.
• Zmaj: The zmaj is the dragon of South Slavic folklore, a fiery, winged, often protective being that guards fields from hail-bringing demons, takes human lovers, and fathers heroes such as Zmaj Ognjeni Vuk.
• Wawel Dragon: The Wawel Dragon (Smok Wawelski) is the legendary dragon of Kraków's Wawel Hill, killed, in the best-known version, when it ate a carcass stuffed with burning sulfur and drank from the Vistula River until it burst.
• Zmeu: The zmeu is a giant, dragon-like ogre of Romanian fairy tales, a humanlike being of enormous strength who can fly and shapeshift, kidnaps princesses such as Ileana Cosânzeana, and is defeated by the hero Făt-Frumos.
• Dragon of Silene: The Dragon of Silene is the lake-dwelling, plague-breathing dragon killed by Saint George in medieval legend after he rescued a princess offered to it, the best-known version appearing in the Golden Legend around 1260.
• Dragon Species
• Dragons Across Cultures
• Saint George and the Dragon

Sources and Further Reading

• James Bailey and Tatyana Ivanova, trans., An Anthology of Russian Folk Epics (M. E. Sharpe, 1998)
• Drevnie rossiiskie stikhotvoreniia, sobrannye Kirsheiu Danilovym, ed. A. P. Evgen'eva and B. N. Putilov (Nauka, 1977)
• Linda J. Ivanits, Russian Folk Belief (M. E. Sharpe, 1989)
• Aleksandr Afanas'ev, Russian Fairy Tales, trans. Norbert Guterman (Pantheon Books, 1945)

Cite this entry: “Zmey Gorynych,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/zmey-gorynych.