Humay

Bashkir · deity · Bashkir traditional religion; continuing · deity

Humay is the luminous bird-goddess of Bashkir myth, daughter of the celestial king Samrau by his wife the Sun. She appears as a swan or as a maiden crowned with radiance, and the winged tulpar Akbuzat is hers to bestow. In the epic she tests and then marries Ural, becoming the ancestral mother-figure of the heroic line. Her name and character descend from the wider Turkic-Iranian Huma bird of good fortune, whose passing shadow was said to make a commoner a king; among the Bashkirs she is remembered as protectress of birds, especially the swan, which tradition forbids to hunt.

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