The character of the bear in Russian folk tales. Images of a wolf, fox and bear in Russian folk tales as a manifestation of genetic memory

VL / Articles / Interesting

23-01-2016, 14:41

The bear is an amazing animal. Special for us Russians - and since time immemorial. Now there are about 200,000 bears in the world, of which 120,000 are in Russia. The bear in Rus' is something like the king of animals, like the lion in Africa or the tiger in India, he is the master of the Russian forest.

The awareness of the kinship between man and the bear dates back to ancient times. Myths, fairy tales, rituals, beliefs - many of them have survived to this day. The bear is very similar to a person. He has human feet and fingers, he washes himself, loves his children, rejoices and grieves like a man, understands human speech and sometimes speaks himself, and also fasts throughout the Nativity Fast, i.e. sucks paw. Like people, he is partial to honey and vodka. He is a “thinker” and endowed with reason, but, as they say, “there is a lot of thought in a bear, but it doesn’t go away.” Hunters see proof of the human origin of the bear in the fact that a dog barks at a bear and at a person in the same way, not like at other animals. If you skin a bear, she looks like a woman. And according to many beliefs, hunters found a woman in a sundress under a bear skin.

Some hunting rituals can still be found today, especially among the indigenous peoples of Siberia. It is believed that you can only shoot a bear after it has seen you. In order for the soul to come out of a killed bear, you need to open its mouth. Skinning a bear is also a ritual, similar to removing a fur coat and unbuttoning the buttons.

Bears are perhaps the only animals that our ancestors buried (though only their heads and paws), so that the bear’s remains would not go to other animals and birds. And the cult of severed paws has been known to us since Neolithic times until the 19th century. Remember the fairy tale “Little Foot Bear”? By the way, a very scary tale about how a dead bear came to the hunter for his skin and a severed leg.

Ethnographers have studied the ritual killing of a bear, which is called relative, father, grandfather (sometimes father's father), and at the moment of killing the animal they try to appease it: “Don't be angry, grandfather! Let's come and visit us.” Representatives of the peoples of Siberia, when killing a bear, bury it and try to convince it: “It was not I who killed you, I am only burying you.”

The bear attacks women not to eat them, but to take them away and cohabit with them. They believe that from such cohabitation people are born with heroic strength. Remember the fairy tale “Ivashka the Bear’s Ear”? (or the cartoon “Masha and the Bear” J). And if, when meeting a bear, a man should pretend to be dead, then a woman, according to legend, should show him her breasts.

While studying cases of bear attacks on humans, I noticed how few of the victims of bears were women. I won’t undertake to talk about statistics, but at first glance this belief makes some sense.

In the fairy tale about the bear's son, he has "bear skin, a human face" or "a man from the waist down, but a bear from the waist down." Sometimes he only has a bear ear. The hero grows by leaps and bounds and, while still a child, upends oak trees, breaks out logs in a hut, etc. It is important to note that the fabulous half-bear, half-man escapes from the den, goes to people and in most cases kills his bear parent . Among the exploits of the adult hero Bear's Ear, catching a bear, riding a bear, or intimidating a butt with a bear is almost always mentioned.

Among the Slavs, the name of this animal still remains in an ancient taboo, allegorical form: “honey-witch” - “knowing honey”, and the original forbidden form was obviously close to the North Indo-European, since the winter home of the bear is called “ber” everywhere in Russia -logoy", i.e. "ber's lair".

The bear has a Russian character. He is strong, fierce, scary, but not so brave - in any case, here he is inferior to the wolf. There is also a saying: “God did not give the bear the courage of a wolf, but the wolf the strength of a bear!” And he is lazy (“The bear is strong, but he lies in the swamp”), and he is a thief... In folklore, and even in jokes, the bear does not look the best. Strong, but straightforward, dull... The fairytale bear is easy to fool. In a word, kind, strong, narrow-minded, clumsy. A disservice is what Toptygin can do to those he favors. And whoever doesn’t - he’ll tear you up, bite you, break you...

Contact with a huge scary bear, defeating and subjugating it awakened self-respect in a person and stimulated, by the way, the dashing, careless Russian spiritual generosity: a tame bear became a partner, and sometimes even a friend. The tame bear was taken around, he was taught various things, he was shown, he danced, somersaulted, he personally collected money for the performance in his hat; he danced, he portrayed a young lady getting ready for a date, and a drunk, and a crooked ancient old woman; the bear smoked, strummed the balalaika, maybe didn’t sing... True, the bear is forced to be a friend and a farcical entertainer: “The bear doesn’t want to dance, but they play with his lip.” Or: “The bear is not tied and does not dance.” But such is the bearish fate...

Since ancient times, bear fights have been popular in Rus', that is, a fight between a bear and a person (similar to Spanish bullfighting). A brave fighter with a spear went against the bear and killed it alone. I had a chance to read the memoirs of an experienced bear hunter of the 19th century, who went after a bear with a spear alone. He said that he would never dare to do something like this again in his life - this is pure madness. And there are still more than enough dreamers to go up against a bear with a spear - the bear’s strength haunts Russian men, they want to fight the beast in single combat. But who will win this single combat?

Rohatina, contrary to popular belief, is not a slingshot at all, but a spear with a crosshair. Unlike a combat spear, the crosshair does not allow you to pierce a bear carcass - the hunter not only wounds the bear, but also keeps it at a distance from himself (if he can, of course). With the advent of firearms, the spear is used to hold the animal until it is shot: one hunter holds the bear on the spear, while the other shoots. Until now, an unrifled double-barreled shotgun is considered more reliable in bear hunting; it is trouble-free. And the failure of a weapon in such a situation means the death of the hunter.

However, the bear is a non-aggressive animal if left undisturbed, and cases of bear attacks on humans are very rare. As a rule, a bear has good reasons for an attack: a mother bear protects her cubs, a person behaves defiantly, and a connecting rod bear can kill a person from winter hunger. However, it is very easy to accustom a bear to both human food and the taste of human meat: both are like drugs for the animal; they are light and tasty food. Where tourists have taught bears to beg, they can easily take a person’s supplies by force. And, of course, everyone knows how easy it is to get an animal addicted to alcohol.

When meeting in the forest, a bear usually behaves phlegmatically, or, frightened, runs away on its own. However, one should not think that this animal is completely harmless and good-natured. With a blow of his paw, a seasoned male is capable of breaking the back of a bull, let alone a man... A bear should be respected, not feared. And behave with him in accordance with his strength.

It is impossible to escape from a bear: for all its apparent clumsiness, it reaches speeds of up to 55-70 km/h. Bears run beautifully, easily and silently, while they are similar to cats - grace, elegance, perfection of movements. A bear walks through the forest silently, like any predator. The bear also swims excellently - just like a human, including in small strides. And he climbs trees, but only when he’s young—old bears don’t like that.

By winter, the bear gains subcutaneous fat (up to 180 kg) and lies in its den in the fall. During the wintering period, the bear loses up to 80 kg of fat. Contrary to popular belief, the brown bear's winter sleep is shallow; his body temperature during sleep fluctuates between 29 and 34 degrees. In case of danger, he wakes up and leaves the den, going in search of a new one. Sometimes a bear does not have time to fatten up properly during the fall, so in the middle of winter it wakes up and begins to wander in search of food; such bears are called connecting rods.

The largest brown bears live in Kamchatka and Alaska. Males weigh 400-500 kg or more; there were giants weighing 600-800 kg. The largest bear caught on Kodiak Island weighed 1,134 kg. Some males, standing on their hind legs, reach a height of 2.8-3 m.

In our forests, bears are noticeably smaller, weighing about 200-300 kg. Their height at the withers is about a meter. Males are one and a half times larger than females. Bears have five-fingered (human) paws and huge claws - up to 12 cm.

Bears are not friends with each other, they are loners. Only during the mating season does a bear get along with a she-bear; sometimes they spend a “honeymoon” together (and are very affectionate with each other). But after that they separate and try not to meet. An adult male can easily attack a bear cub, so the female bear avoids meeting males.

The cubs are born in February, in a den, and weigh only 300-600 grams, and emerge from the den already weighing 25 kilograms. They sometimes spend up to four years with their mother, and the bear feeds them with milk from one and a half to three years. Often, last year's bear cubs, the so-called pestuns, stay together with the young-of-the-year cubs (lonchaks). But when the time comes, the mother cruelly expels the cubs. The brothers can stay together for some time, but then they separate and do not remember their relationship.

You can talk endlessly about bears. Paradoxically, the more a person moves away from the bear, the more he idealizes its image: the anthropomorphic image of the bear, the idea of ​​a shaggy brown predator as always tame, big, good-natured, strong and fair, is irrevocably established in the mass consciousness.

But, no matter what, the image of a bear for Russian people has always been and will remain one of the most powerful archetypes. Maybe this is the secret of my “Berendey”?

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Short fairy tale Who's in charge in the forest for children to read at night

There lived a family of hares in the same forest. So, somehow, they gave birth to bunnies. They were small and fluffy, like balls. Mommy hare and daddy hare couldn’t stop looking at their babies. They invited guests to the viewing. The animals who lived in the neighborhood came with gifts and congratulated the happy parents. The bear brought a barrel of honey, the squirrel brought a whole basket of nuts, the hedgehog brought the ripest apples. Everyone wanted to please with their gift. But suddenly, a couple appeared that no one was expecting. It was a wolf and a fox. Nobody liked them and everyone tried to avoid them on the tenth road, because they were hooligans, littered in the forest, and offended little ones. The wolf and the fox came empty-handed and approached the bunnies.

“What wonderful kids,” said the fox.
“Let them grow faster and fatter,” added the wolf.
“Go away,” answered the hare, “I didn’t call you.”
- You don’t need to call us. We come wherever we want and whenever we want. Ha-ha-ha,” they laughed and, waving their tails, walked away.
“We need to do something with them,” the hare complained to the neighboring animals, “this couple is dangerous for my children.”
“Let’s drive them out of the forest,” suggested the hedgehog.
“Yes,” the bear supported, “we will collect signatures from all residents, and they will have to leave.”
And so they did. The squirrel galloped around the inhabitants of the forest and collected signatures to evict the wolf and fox from the forest. Then she brought this list to the hare, and he bravely went to the hooligans. But the closer he came, the more scared he was. Father hare saw a fox and a wolf in a clearing. They played cards on a tree stump.
“Here,” said the bunny and held out a document in his trembling paw, “get out of our forest!”
The wolf and fox came closer, read the paper, and then laughed loudly.
“You think we were scared,” the wolf laughed, then he grabbed the piece of paper from the hare’s paws and ate it, “there was a document, and there is no document.” The commander has been found here!

Bunny could hardly hold back his tears, but he couldn’t cry, because he was the father of the family. It was necessary to act. He came home, packed his things, said goodbye to the hare and went to the lion for help. The lion was supposed to help drive the insolent people out of the peaceful forest. After all, the lion is the king of animals, everyone obeys him. The bunny walked for a long time and finally came. The lion was lying in the sun, resting, and his cubs were climbing on him, playing.
“Good afternoon,” said daddy hare, “I came to you from afar for help, because you are also a father and should understand me.”
The hare told the lion about his misfortune.
“But I won’t be able to drive them away all the time.” “When I go home, they will return,” said the lion.
The bunny became sad. But the lion calmed him down.
“I think I know what needs to be done,” and the lion whispered his plan into the hare’s ear.
They returned to the hare's native forest and went to look for the wolf and the fox. They were just throwing cones into the jay's nest. The lion hid behind the bushes, and the hare came forward.
“Stop it immediately,” shouted the hare, “I order you!”
-Who are you to tell us?
- Now I am the leader in this forest. I visited the king of beasts - the lion, and he appointed me in charge here.
- Well, yes, that’s what we believed. How can you prove it?
The hare took a deep breath, and at that time, behind him, in the bushes, the lion roared with all his royal strength. The trees shook from such a roar. The hare closed his mouth.
“Well, do you believe it now?” asked the bunny. The wolf and the fox tucked their tails and ears.
- Y-y-yes. They believed it.
“So,” the hare commanded, “so that your spirit is not in this forest, and don’t even think about offending the animals, otherwise you will have to deal with me!”
The hooligans turned around and ran away, only their tails flashing between the trees. The bunny thanked the lion, said goodbye to him and went to his home. There he was met by a hare and kids.
“Now I’m calm for you,” said the father hare and stroked the children on their fluffy heads.
Since then, no one has been mischievous in the forest, and there is no trace of the wolf and the fox.

Today I heard a fairy tale about a bear, and I decided to retell it to you. I liked the bear from this fairy tale - he turned out to be grateful. Being able to be grateful if someone helped you is a good thing...

"Like a bear got lost in the forest"
Author of the tale: Iris Review

It must happen that the bear Misha got lost in the forest! The clubfoot couldn't find his den. It looks like that stump, and the old tree is bent like a wheel, but there is no den.

Misha got upset, sat down on a tree stump, and sniffled dissatisfied. An ant crawled towards the bear.

-What are you grieving about, clubfoot? - asked the ant.

“I can’t find my den,” answered the bear.

“Have you forgotten that in a dense raspberry forest you made yourself a new, spacious den, and covered the old one with earth?” - reminded the ant.

- I’m so forgetful! - The clubfoot was upset.

The bear decided to thank the ant for the hint. He picked a burdock leaf, rolled it up into a little bag, and put a few fresh raspberries in it.

“Let the ant eat it himself and treat his friends,” Misha decided.

Questions for the fairy tale “How a bear got lost in the forest”

What did the bear lose in the forest?

Why was the bear upset?

Who helped the bear find his den?

How did the bear thank the ant?

Do you often forget your things?

In Russian fairy tales about animals, a bear often encounters a person: “The Bear is a Lime Leg”, “The Man and the Bear”, “Masha and the Bear”. The fairy tale “The Bear is a Lime Leg” is the oldest of Russian fairy tales about a bear. It tells how a man, in a fight with the “owner,” cuts off a bear’s paw and for this the animal takes revenge on him: it finds him and eats him. Here the Bear appears to be a terrible, cruel, vengeful beast who never forgives an insult: he takes revenge according to the rules of the tribal law: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The old man and the old woman are going to eat his meat, and he eats them, although among the Slavs the bear itself does not attack a person, and it poses a danger only when the person himself disturbs him: he pursues, injures, threatens his family. The bear in this fairy tale appears as a prophetic creature. The fairy tale teaches us to honor the beast.

In fairy tales about forest inhabitants, the bear is represented as a “forest commander”, “master of the forest”. He has strength, power, but at the same time we see his frivolity, simplicity, limited horizons, and anger. All animals fear him, but most often he is deceived by them. We can see the gullibility of the bear in the fairy tale “Beasts in the Pit”, the bear believed the fox that she was slowly eating her entrails, ripping open her stomach, then he ripped open his stomach and died. But this might not have happened if he knew that he should not eat himself. The fairy tale “The Fox Midwife” shows the stupidity and gullibility of the bear. The resourceful fox deceived the bear: she ate the entire supply of honey, and even forced the owner himself to admit to something that he did not do.

They love him, respect him, fear him, they make up fairy tales, songs, and legends about him. In fairy tales, the bear is usually kind and flexible, but if you believe ancient legends, he is not such a simpleton.

Today, questions about bears are relevant for schoolchildren; information about bears is increasingly used in various quizzes and exams. By the way, you can take the OGE in Biology 2017 online tests now, which will significantly increase not only your chances of passing the exams, but also broaden your horizons.

Different peoples treat the bear differently, but they all treat it with great respect.

The Indians have a legend about the love of a bear and the first man on Earth. The descendants of this union settled throughout the world.

The Slavs believed that the god Veles took the form of this beast, and the den of the owner of the forest led to the underworld. The Greeks worshiped the goddess of the hunt, Artemis, and in her honor the priestesses danced in bear skins.

In Austria, scientists found a large stone box with a bear skull on the lid, crossed front paws underneath, and the box itself was filled to the top with bear skulls.

There are also quite a lot of bear burials in Russia, especially in the Yaroslavl region. People lived there who worshiped the cult of the bear and made bloody sacrifices to it.

Yaroslav the Wise hacked to death the leader of the bears with an axe. In honor of this victory, Yaroslav erected a city there, which was later named Yaroslavl. The coat of arms of this city features a bear with an axe.


Christians often called him “brother of the devil.” Potapych maintained order in the forest, because evil spirits were afraid of him.

Russian peasants made various amulets from bear heads, paws, and claws and hung them in barns to protect livestock.

In villages they often talked about bears stealing Russian beauties. Sometimes the children of the bear and the man returned to the people. So, from Russian fairy tales we learn about the hero Ivan the Bear's Ear.

The forest owner and the man are very similar to each other. Hunters claim that the bear's carcass surprisingly resembles a human body.

Despite the fact that people have endowed bears with supernatural qualities, this is, first of all, a huge supply of meat. Siberians call the forest giant by affectionate names: grandfather, owner, Mikhail Potapych, Toptygin. They are trying to appease Father Bear.

The northern peoples always tried to deceive, confuse, and shift the blame onto the Russians, so that the forest owner would not bring down his anger on their heads. It was believed that when cutting a carcass, a man from another tribe must be present. While the spirit of the bear was looking for its killer, the hunters were cutting up the carcass.


Russian hero hunters went out to hunt bears with one spear. Such brave men were honored and lavish celebrations were held.

In Rus', bear amulets were often made. With such amulets they protected themselves from the evil eye, damage, and all evil spirits.

People used a bear claw as a talisman. A person who wore such a talisman on his chest was considered invulnerable. It was believed that a bear tooth protects a child from all sorts of troubles and illnesses.

The Slavs thought that if you eat the heart of a bear, then a person may not be afraid of diseases. The forehead of an elderly man was smeared with lard, so his memory was restored.

Nowadays, people support weakened animals, especially babies, those who themselves ask for help from humans. We can also see bears in the circus, in the zoo. By the way, bears are easy to train.


But always, at all times, this beautiful, powerful beast will cause us delight and admiration.