Leshy
The forest spirit of Russian and Slavic folklore, an old man of the woods who can grow as tall as the trees or as small as the grass, guards the forest and its animals, and leads travellers astray.
Meaning
The leshy (also lesovik, or Lyeshy in Ralston’s spelling) takes his name from the Russian word for forest, which Ralston writes lyes. The Czech scholar Jan Máchal described him in 1918 as an old man with long hair and beard, flashing green eyes and a body covered in thick hair, whose height matches the trees he lives in: “in the forests he may attain the size of high trees; in the fields he is no taller than grass”. Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Victorian translator W. R. S. Ralston agree on the marks that give him away: no eyebrows or eyelashes, and clothes worn without a belt. He is a figure of Slavic peasant folklore, a spirit of the forest rather than a god.
Origin and history
Ralston, writing in 1872, found the leshy feared and placated. In the Olonets region a herdsman was expected to give him a cow every summer or lose the whole herd, and in the Archangel region a herdsman who pleased him could count on him to watch the village cattle. Máchal records that a man taken ill in the forest would leave salted bread wrapped in linen in the woods as a present for him, and that hunters left him the first game they took.
His favourite animal was the bear. Ralston and Máchal both say the birds and beasts of the forest were under his protection, and that he whistled, laughed and shouted in the woods, misled people who had lost their way and drew children into the thickets.
A Slavonic satyr
Ralston called the leshy one of the “Slavonic Satyrs” and retold a tale from Afanasyev in which a hunter shoots a strange grey-haired peasant sitting on a log in the forest, follows him to a hut in a hill, and finds a priest’s daughter the leshy had carried off three years before. In his own shape, Ralston wrote, the leshy has horns, goat’s feet and shaggy hair, and looks like the medieval pictures of the devil.
Leshy, changeling and rusalka
Máchal writes that the leshy swaps his own offspring for human children, leaving changelings as the fairies do in Ireland, and the Rusalka haunts the same woods and waters.
Read next
- Next in Mythical creatures of Greece and EuropeRusalkaA water spirit of Slavic folklore, the soul of a drowned girl or an unbaptized child, who lives in lakes and rivers, sits in the trees at the start of summer, and lures people into the water.
- The same shape in Andean and Inca symbolsPachamamaPachamama is Mother Earth in the Andes, honoured by Quechua and Aymara people with offerings buried in the ground, above all in August, when, farmers say, the earth is hungry and thirsty.
See also
Minotaur, Centaur, Chimera, Hydra, Harpy, Siren.
Sources
- The Songs of the Russian People (W. R. S. Ralston, 1872), W. R. S. Ralston, The Songs of the Russian People, as Illustrative of Slavonic Mythology and Russian Social Life (London: Ellis and Green, 1872), Internet Archive, chapter II, The Lyeshy, pp. 153–156
- Russian Fairy Tales (W. R. S. Ralston, 1873), W. R. S. Ralston, Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore (London: Smith, Elder, 1873), Project Gutenberg, chapter V, The Leshy, and note 264
- Slavic Mythology (Jan Máchal, The Mythology of All Races, vol. 3, 1918), Jan Máchal, “Slavic Mythology”, in The Mythology of All Races, volume III: Celtic, Slavic (Boston: Marshall Jones, 1918), Internet Archive, Chapter VII, Silvan Spirits
- Leshy (Encyclopaedia Britannica), Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Leshy”, online edition (archived copy), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves or triangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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