The Poludnica

They also fear and worship a midday spirit. For at the harvest (s)he walks the countryside dressed as a mourning widow, and, unless they fall prone on the earth as soon as they see the spectre, breaks the arms and legs of the workmen, one or many...
- Paul Oderborn, 1581

Poludnica, Siberian, a ghost, whith which people frighten children that they would not damage orchards, which happens during the general midday rest of the grownups; she is a deshevelled old woman with a cane.
- Vladmir Dal - 1865

In Russia, weak and sketchy memories of poludnicas have been preserved. In southern Siberia, under this name is known a mythical old woman, with thick, dishevelled hair, and clad in rags; she lives in a bath-house or nettle bushes and guards the kitchen gardens from mischievous children. In Arxangelsk province, poludnica is the protector of rye fields...The parents scare the children by saying, "Don't go to the rye, poludnica will burn you!" or: "Poludnica will eat you up!"
- A Afanas'ev 1896

In Posexon'e, Jaroslav, people know a special spirit 'poludnica'; a beautiful, tall girl, clad entirely in white. In the summer, during harvest time, she walks in patches of rye, and she takes by their head those who work at the very noon and begins to twist it, until she has worked it to a burning pain. She lures small children into rye and makes them roam there for a lon time. Here obviously the popular belief has been mixed with the naive village morality, invented for scaring children.
- S.V.Maksimov, 1903

Poludnica is a beautiful, tall girl, clad in white. In the summer during harvest time she walks in patches of rye and those who work at the very noon, she takes by the head, she begins to twist it and twists until the neck breaks. It is for this reason that people must not work at noon...By the way, people...relegate these stories to old woman's tales.
- A.V. Balov (written before the revolution)

(Pomeranceva adds:)In villages of northern provinces children were scared by the poludnica or the rye spirit (rzanica) - a female figure, which catches children, bakes them and eats them.

The middle of the day ranks in popular superstition as the most congenial time for demons. In point of fact, imagination has fabricated a special figure to represent midday - the white-robed 'noon-wife', who walks abroad among the cornfields, usually during the midday interval in which the people snatch a little repose...The 'noon-wife' keeps watch over the fields, protects the crops, especially the flax, against thieves, and threatens with her sickle children who pull up the corn...The Russians likewise have a Poludnitsa or Zitna matka, the protectress of the cornfields who, expecially in the season when the corn begins to shoot, perambulates the balks. She also molests children whom she finds idly strolling among the fields, and in Northern Russia parents warn their children against going amongst the rye lest the Poludnitsa burn them.
- V.J. Mansikka 1912

Collected by
Oinas, Felix J. Essays on Russian Folklore and Mythology. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica 1984

Illustration by Nadezhda Atipova from
Grushko, Elena & Medvedev, Iurii. Slovar' Slavianskoi Mifologii. Nizhnii Novgorod: Russkii Kusnets and Brat'ia Slaviane. 1996

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