Su Anasy

Su Anasy, the 'water mother', is the female genius of rivers, lakes and ponds in Tatar folk belief, one of the water-people who inhabit the world beneath the surface. She is seen at dusk sitting on a bathing-stage or a stone in midstream, combing her unbound hair with a golden comb, and it is dangerous to disturb her or to swim at the hours that belong to her. In the celebrated poem of Ğabdulla Tuqay a boy steals her golden comb while she bathes; that night a dripping figure knocks at the family's door demanding its return, and peace comes only when the mother throws the comb back into the water. Ethnographers group her with the su iyäse, the master of the water, as the paired female and male powers of a single spirit-household of the deep.

Domains

• water

Powers

• combs her hair with a golden comb
• drags the careless underwater

Epithets

• алтын тараклы — the golden-combedĞabdulla Tuqay, Су анасы, 1908. (primary)

Relations

• companion: Su IyäseBoth belong to the family of water-spirits; ethnographers record the water mother and the water master as the female and male powers of one household of the deep.F. I. Urmanche, Татар мифологиясе, s.v. Су иясе, Су анасы. (secondary)

Sources

• Su Anasy, the 'water mother', is a female water-spirit of Tatar belief who appears with long flowing hair and a golden comb at the water's edge and may drown those who transgress against the water.: K. Nasyri, Поверья и обряды казанских татар, Kazan, 1880. (primary); F. I. Urmanche, Татар мифологиясе, Kazan, 2008–2011, s.v. Су анасы. (secondary)
• The best-known narrative is Tuqay's poem of the stolen golden comb, in which the drowned-world spirit pursues a boy into the human village to recover it.: Ğabdulla Tuqay, Су анасы (Su Anasy), 1908. (primary)