The rusalka is a female spirit of Slavic folklore, closely tied to water. Her name comes from Rusalia, an old name for Pentecost and the days around it. The folklorist Vladimir Propp argued that the earliest rusalki were kindly spirits who came out of the water in spring to bring moisture to the fields.
By the 19th century most tales described a restless, dangerous ghost: a young woman who had died before marriage, often by drowning, and returned to haunt the river or lake. She has pale skin and long, loose hair, often greenish, and she lures young men into the water, wraps them in her hair or tickles them to death. In Belarus rusalki were linked with forests and fields as much as water, and in Poland and the Czech lands the water rusalki were young and fair-haired.
They were thought most dangerous during 'Rusalka week' in early June, when they left the water to swing on birch and willow branches at night and swimming was forbidden. Antonín Dvořák's opera Rusalka, first staged in Prague in 1901, made the name known around the world.
What the stories say
- Laughter or singing by a river on early-summer nights
- Pale girls with long loose hair in the birch trees
- Circle dances in a moonlit field
- A pull toward the water while swimming
Famous cases
- 1901Dvořák's opera Rusalka premieres
Prague, Czech RepublicAntonín Dvořák's opera Rusalka, about a water nymph who falls in love with a human prince, premiered in Prague on March 31, 1901. Jaroslav Kvapil's libretto drew on Czech fairy tales. It became Dvořák's most successful opera and is still widely performed.
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