The Sun Maiden and the Crescent Moon

***Fables and Folktales: The Sun Maiden and the Crescent Moon*** is the fourth video in the ‘’Fables and Folktales’’ series by Red. It recounts a tale from the Ket people of Siberia (in Russia) about how the love between a sun goddess and a mortal man, and how the crescent moon came to be.

## Summary

The video begins with Red light-heartedly recounting the similarities of North America and Russia, as both are massive lands that get freezing cold the further north you get and both have a history of European colonialism trying to depose the native peoples. Contuinuing with that, she speaks of James Riordan, an American who travelled and lived in Siberia (in Russia) for some months, writing down some of the legends of the indegenous people he met, worried that various cultures of Siberia were in danger of being lost due to assimilation.

One such tale is that of a young man and his sister who were orphaned from a young age. The brother, being the more adventurous of the two, would often go out in the woods while his sister stayed behind cooking. One day, the brother caught the attention of the Sun Maiden, who was feeling lonely. Losing no time, the Sun Maiden reached her sunbeam arms and took the brother up in heavens.
The brother stayed with the enthusiastic Sun Maiden for a week, before telling her he wanted to go home, and being uneasy about being kidnapped, but promising he would return. The Sun Maiden, worried that something bad might happen to him, gave him a whetstone and a comb, and a flying horse to escort him down.

The brother arrived back home to his sister, not knowing that in the meantime he was gone the witch Hossiadam had devoured his sister and assumed her form to trick him. The witch then cut a leg from the horse and began to cook it.
The brother, upon seeing the severed leg, realized the gravity of the situation and quickly fled, grabbing the leg and reattaching it to the horse while Hossiadam chased after him. The horse did not make it far before collapsing due to its leg; thereupon the brother continued on foot. But the witch quickly caught up with him, and he threw the whetstone at her, which immediately transformed into a big mountain blocking her way. She tore threw the mountain fast by gnawing the stone with her teeth, and kept chasing the brother. The brother then threw the comb at her, and it transformed into a dense forest. Again this failed to halt her for long.

The Sun Maiden, seeing what was happening below, reached her arms to grab her beloved at the same time Hossiadam finally caught him; in the ensuing fight, he was pulled in half. The Sun Maiden used her magic to revive her lover. But because the halve she got was the halve without a heart, he could not stay alive for long and would always die again and again. She tried to replace the missing heart with burning coal, but this only kept him for a week. Heartbroken, and unable to see the brother like this, she banished him to the opposite part of the sky, decreeing that they would see each other only on the longest day of the year (i.e. the Summer Solstice). Thus he became the crescent moon.

## Credits

In the credits Red sings and speculates that the story probably is about the brother becoming the moon in general, not just the crescent moon, and the life-death-rebirth cycle is the phases of the moon.

## Characters appearing

* The brother
* The sister
* Sun Maiden
* Hossiadam

## Links

* Watch *The Sun Maiden and the Crescent Moon* on youtube.