The Mistress of the Copper Mountain (;), also known as The Malachite Maid (), is a legendary being of the Ural miners, said to be the Mistress of the Ural Mountains of Russia. A character of Slavic mythology and Russian fairy tales.
In folklore or legend, she is depicted as an extremely beautiful green-eyed young woman in a malachite gown or as a lizard. She has been viewed as the patroness of miners, 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.
"The Copper Mountain" is the Gumyoshevsky mine, the oldest mine of the Ural Mountains, which was called "The Copper Mountain" or simply "The Mountain" by the populace. It is now located in the town of Polevskoy, Sverdlovsk Oblast. In some regions of the Ural Mountains, the image of the Mistress is connected (or equated) with another female creature from the local folktales, the Azov Girl (), the enchanted girl or princess who lives inside Mount Azov.
The Mistress of the Copper Mountain became a well known character from her appearance in Pavel Bazhov's collection of Ural Mountains folktales (also known as skaz) under the title The Malachite Box. The Mistress appears in the third skaz, "The Mistress of the Copper Mountain", and in 9 other stories from the collection, including "The Stone Flower", "The Manager's Boot-Soles", and "Sochen and His Stones".
Characteristics The Mistress of the Copper Mountain has the appearance of an extremely beautiful young woman with green eyes (or sometimes a mature woman, though unmarried, as indicated by her unscarved hair). Some of her more distinctive features include dark braided hair, ribbons from thin tinkling copper, and a gown that is made from malachite. She wears a diadem decorated with malachite and precious stones. The mistress can appear as a lizard herself,; sometimes wearing a crown, and has the mountain lizards under her command. She may also assume the form of a snake, though the giant snake master is also familiarly embodied by (cf. the tale "The Great Snake"). Part IV.
As a mountain spirit, she is the protector and owner of hidden underground riches. She is said to be always surrounded by her servants, small lizards, which can be green, of various hues of blue, golden-speckled, glittering like mica, or patterned. According to legend, a person who sees the Mistress comes under her spell. She shows kindness to good people and skilled craftsmen, helping them to find jewels and gold, but if her conditions aren't met, the person loses all his luck and skill, and can even die. 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. Thus miners for malachite considered their finds to be owing to her blessing, and if they suffered a streak over time not finding any, they suspected they have incurred their wrath. In the Urals it was assumed she only favored those people who were good, honest, and hard-working, or workers who are brave and freedom-loving, tending to be hostile to the aristocracy.
The sacral being, the Mistress was surrounded by rituals and taboos, e.g. women did not come down in the mine, because it was the Mistress's domain, and young men seeking her patronage did not marry. The violation of the taboos was supposed to bring a harsh punishment. 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. Her distinguishing attributes were lizards, copper and malachite.
Other names The Mistress of the Copper Mountain may be called just "The Mistress of the Mountain", and also has many other names, such as The Mountain Mother (, ), The Golden Woman (, ), The Stone Maiden (, ),, or The Stone Girl The Malachite Girl, The Malachite Maid or The Malachite Lady (, ), The Serpent Mistress, The Lizard Queen, etc. It has been claimed that because the Mistress is so powerful and dreadful, she has not been named directly by the miners, who say "it was she herself" ().
The Azov Girl In many national folktales, the Mistress and Azovka (lit. "the Azov Girl") are identical with each other, and the same stories are told about each of them. The Azov Girl may also be a sort of underling of the Mistress of the Mountain (rather akin to the army of lizards under the Mistress's command). However, the Azov Girl seems to have an independent identity unconnected to the Mistress of the Mountain, this despite the fact that Azov Girl is certainly the guardian of minable treasure (gold, etc.), and not of weapons or other goods.
The tales about Azovka are very different from one another, although they share some common characteristics. Firstly, that there's a cave with hidden treasures inside Mount Azov. Secondly, few people found the cave, and no one could get the treasures. The treasures belong to the Tatars, the Bashkirs, or "the Old People". According to popular belief, Azovka lives/is held captive inside the cave (or the mountain), and she guards the treasures. In most tales, she is the enchanted girl, possibly stolen by the Tatars, the cursed Tatar princess, the Old People's queen or their elder's daughter.
Appearances in works
In The Malachite Box 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; 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". Bazhov confirmed that he based the character on local legends. He said: "Yes, I believe that the series of tales connected with the Gumyoshevsky mine is closer to folklore. In my opinion, they represent the attempt to reconstruct the folklore of this mine". When asked whether the character from his writing differs from its folklore interpretation, Bazhov replied: "I don't believe there is a difference. If there is, it is bad [news]".Mironov, A. "Obraz Hozjajki Mednoj gory v skazah P. P. Bazhova Образ Хозяйки Медной горы в сказах П. П. Бажова [The character of the Mistress of the Copper Mountain in P. P. Bazhov's tales]" in: P. P. Bazhov i socialisticheskij realizm.
In "The Mistress of the Copper Mountain" she is described as follows: You could see from her plait she was a maid. It was a sort of deep black, that plait of hers, and didn't dangle as our maids' do, but lay close and straight down her back. And the ribbons at the end weren't quite red and weren't quite green, they'd something of both. You could see the light shining through them and they seemed to click a little, like thin leaves of copper. [...] She was not very tall, with a pretty figure, and she was a real fidget - couldn't sit still a minute. [...] Her robe, now, it was something you'd never see anywhere else. It was all made of silk malachite, that's a kind you get sometimes. It's stone but it looks like silk, you want to take and stroke it.
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".
In "The Malachite Casket" story, which constitutes a direct sequel of the "Mistress" tale above (as the exploits of Stepan passes on to his daughter Tanyushka)., the heroine Tanyushka is also black-haired and green-eyed, and eventually called a double of the Mistress. M. A. Batin surmised she must have been the daughter born between the Mistress and Stepan.
In "The Malachite Box" collection in general, the Mistress serves as a "magic helper" to the characters, and in "The Malachite Casket" in particular, the beggar woman (or "sorceress") who comes visit to instruct Tanyushka is evidently the Mistress of the Copper Mountain in disguise. The glass button which this teacher gives Tanyushka is a magic tool to give her answers when she needs, and later when the decision is pressing for the family to sell the Malachite Box, the green-eyed woman peers back at Tanyushka and nods affirmingly. This woman in the button is in fact the mistress's double (), according to .
In "The Stone Flower" it is said that the Mistress has her own "mountain craftsmen": They're skilful craftsmen who live in the mountain, and no man ever sees them. Whatever the Mistress wants, they make it for her. I saw a bit of their work once. [...] Our serpents, no matter how good they are, they're but stone, but this was like as if it was living. A black line down the black, and eyes—ye'd think it was just going to up and sting ye. They can make anything!
In "The Manager's Boot-Soles", the cruel "manager" or of the mine was wary because the Mistress "didn't like it when folks [the miners] were treated ill underground". 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. Then finally, she herself appeared before the prikazchik (here translated "bailiff"): All of a sudden the bailiff saw a figure in front of him. It was moving lightly, waving a lamp. At the turn of the gallery [mine level] he saw it was a woman. [...] He started running after her, but his faithful men [henchmen] weren't in any great hurry to follow. They were all shaking. Because they saw this was bad — it was she herself. [...] 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.
She can be reached through the stone forest."Flower of Stone", ".."; : "trees.. made of stone. Some were marble, some were serpentine every kind. But they were living trees, .."", etc. She is cruel and just, she dislikes greedy people and is indifferent toward their suffering, but she shows her benevolent side to those with talent and selflessness. 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. Nataliya Shvabauer commented that her duality is represented in her every trait, from the appearance to her functions. Even her seemingly joking pranks trying to frighten people can be deadly, as in "Sochen and His Stones", where Sochen winds up dead.
Origin and development
Pavel Bazhov had heard the tales about her at the Polevskoy Copper Smelting Plant from the miners' storyteller Vasily Alexeyevich Khmelinin (), nicknamed "Grandpa Slyshko/Slishko" () by children. "The Copper Mountain" is believed to be the Gumyoshevsky mine, the oldest mine of the Ural Mountains. It was sometimes called "The Copper Mountain" or simply "The Mountain" by the populace. commented that the Mistress is a universal mytheme, while the Copper mountain is the specific location: the Gumyoshevsky mine and Mount Azov.