Domovoi (Damavik): The House Spirit in Belarusian Belief

The domovoi is the house spirit of Slavic belief: a little grey-bearded old man who lives by the stove and looks after the household. In Belarusian he is the damavik (дамавік), and he is also called the khatnik and the hospodar, the master. He dries the grain, tends the horses and cows, and wakes the family for work. Keep the peace at home and the farm thrives on his care. Start a quarrel, and he will lie on your chest at night.

Our account comes from Adam Bahdanovich's Remnants of the Ancient Worldview among Belarusians (1895), a record of Belarusian village belief now in English for the first time. Bahdanovich describes the house spirit alongside three other farmyard spirits: those of the drying barn, the bathhouse and the cattle shed. For the rest of the unseen crowd, from the leshy to the werewolf, see our field guide to Slavic folklore creatures.

What is a domovoi?

Bahdanovich calls the domovoi and his neighbours "homestead deities", because their power ends at the edge of the peasant's yard. Even that small world, he notes, is divided among them quite precisely. The house belongs to the domovoi.

The khatnik or dymovy is much like the Great Russian domovoi. In the Belarusian’s view he has all the qualities of a thrifty householder.

He is a spirit to be glad of. Bahdanovich is clear that every decent household ought to have one.

What is the house spirit called in Belarusian?

The house spirit has several names. Bahdanovich records the dymovy, from dym, "smoke", but says this name is little used in Belarus. Villagers more often called him the hospodar, the khatnik or the podpechnik, "the one under the stove", and sometimes the zapechnik.

Bahdanovich admits that dymovy may only be a local mispronunciation of the Russian word domovoi. Even so, he finds it telling:

it shows that the people connect the domovoi, the khatnik, directly with fire.

What does the domovoi look like?

Those to whom he has zdavausia, as Belarusians say (appeared, or shown himself), describe a little old man with a grey beard and long grey hair. He wears a nasou, a linen caftan, though some say a white shirt. He is belted with a diaha, a leather belt, or by other accounts with bast.

He sleeps on the stove or under it. That is where the name podpechnik comes from.

What does the house spirit do?

He keeps a farmer's hours. Before anyone else is awake he sees to it that the house gets up:

He gets up early and gives the rooster a push to startle it; the frightened rooster flaps its wings and crows, and so wakes the household for work.

Many stories have him getting the fire going and going into the storehouse or the sviren (granary). There he dries the grain, turning it over by the handful. He looks into the cattle shed, gives fodder to the horses and cows, strokes them and tends them.

His care does real good. When the domovoi turns the grain it "sporneet", grows more plentiful. His stroking makes the livestock lively and hardy. He also rocks screaming children to sleep and watches over them when they are left on their own.

He has moods. When all is going well and good things lie ahead, he plays pranks and dances on the lava (bench) in the house, the storehouse or the entryway. When misfortune is coming, he senses it and howls at night to warn the master.

Why does the domovoi lie on your chest?

Because someone started a quarrel. The house spirit is a keeper of family peace.

The hospodar loves a family that lives in harmony.

He cannot stand quarrelsome women. Whoever starts family quarrels may be severely punished: at night, while the culprit sleeps, the domovoi lies heavily on his chest and smothers him.

The household had to manage him with some care. Bahdanovich puts it plainly:

One must live at peace with the domovoi and know how to please him, and this takes some skill on the householder’s part.

Anger him, and he will not only stop "spriyat", favouring you. He may even do harm.

How do you please a house spirit?

Bahdanovich found two customs he read as old offerings to the domovoi. In Barysau and Lepel districts, when the foundations of a new house were laid, a rooster's head was cut off at one of the corners. It was buried there in the ground or placed under the cornerstone. The rooster itself was roasted for the meal served when any new building's foundations are laid. Sometimes the rite was performed when a stove was built.

The villagers no longer knew why. Asked about the stove, they told Bahdanovich it was done "so that the hens will multiply", since hens spent the winter in the space under the stove. He saw an older sacrifice behind it, and cites an Old Russian sermon against pagan survivals: “They slaughter chickens to them (the gods).”

The second custom was found all over Belarus. People stuffed combed-out or clipped human hair and nail parings into the corners and cracks of the house. Bahdanovich allows himself a dry joke:

Domovoi spirits are evidently less bloodthirsty nowadays if, instead of quivering flesh and warm blood, they are content with such indigestible fare as hair and nails.

Is the domovoi a spirit of fire?

Bahdanovich thought so, at least in part. He reads the domovoi as a personification of fire, of the domestic hearth. The name dymovy points that way, and so does the spirit's attachment to the stove.

The domovoi is also said to live in the storehouse, which might seem to break the pattern. But in Belarus, Bahdanovich explains, storehouses were mostly built warm, with stoves, so that young animals born in winter could be kept there. Such storehouses were called istopki or izdobki. There too the domovoi lives on or under the stove.

He also sees in the domovoi features of Chur, the deified ancestor of the kin, whose name survives in the charm “Chur miane!”, Chur protect me. Rocking the children and guarding them is the work of a kin deity. Bahdanovich adds a proverb that probably comes from this belief: “The devil rocks the rich man’s children.”

Is the house spirit good or evil?

Christian teaching counted every such spirit among the unholy. Villagers drew a finer line. Bahdanovich notes that even in his day Belarusians distinguished between domovois and the spirits of the elements on the one hand, and devils on the other.

The domovoi is, in his words, "always welcome". People were on friendly terms with him and tried to please him, and he helped the household prosper. The contrast is the khlevnik, the cattle-shed spirit, whom families drove out the moment they found him.

The domovoi also had kin. The spirits of the drying barn and the bathhouse, Bahdanovich writes, split off from him and look much like him. The money-bearing serpent that lives in the storehouse is, in his view, "a special kind of domovoi", a kletnik or storehouse spirit. Its strange birth from a rooster's egg is told in the dragon from a rooster's egg.