Field Worker

The spirit-owner of the field in the mythology of the Eastern Slavs was called a Field Man or Field (Belor. palyavik, Ukrainian polovik).

It is described mainly as a humanoid creature with individual animal, plant and demonic features, which is sometimes accompanied by a strong wind and sparks or lights. Usually this is a tall, long-legged man, overgrown with fiery-colored hair, with bulging eyes, horns, a long tail with a tassel at the end, a beard of ears.

Ukrainians also believed that he had ears like a calf, claws, large teeth and wings.

In the Novgorod province, they thought that Polevoy was dressed all in white, that he was gray-haired, and also in Ukraine they imagined that he was all white as snow, or that he was an old man with a white beard.

In Belarus, the field worker was depicted in long clothes, in bast shoes and with a cane in his hands.

In the Orel province, on the contrary, he was described as a naked, earth-black man with grass-like hair and multicolored eyes (the personification of the field).

In bylichki and byvalschiny, the field can take the form of both a young "hefty fellow" and a small ugly old man, can pretend to be an acquaintance or an animal (for example, a bull or a goat), can change its height depending on the surrounding vegetation.

It was generally believed that each field should have one and only fieldworm living in various terrain irregularities. The time of his activity is more often at noon or a sultry day. He protects the field, affects its fertility and the well-being of the cattle grazing on it.

The field is mostly hostile to a person: it can scare, knock off the road and even kill, as well as harm cattle and crops.

The images of the rarely mentioned lugovik, the land surveyor and his wife, the field hostess, are adjacent to the image of the field worker. The fieldworm has a lot in common with the noonday, the goblin and some other mythological characters.