Читать книгу Abkhazia in legends - Lina Belyarova - Страница 9

In the mythology of many cultures of the world, the spindle is an attribute of the Great mother who spins the thread of fate inside the Stone mountain or at the foot of the World tree. The spindle and all actions connected with spinning and sewing are symbols of life and continuity of time. On the other hand, the whirling spindle can be identified with the axis of the universe. The spindle acts also as a handicraft attribute of Satanay Gwasha, the mother of the Abkhazian Nart epic family consisting of 99 sons and one daughter who lived in the Caucasus Mountains. One of the Nart legends tells of Satanay-Gwasha who after awaking up early one morning, decided to spin yarn from the wool of six thousand sheep, and from that yarn she was going to weave cloth and tailor warm clothes for her ninety nine sons and one daughter. Before being engaged in handiwork, Satanay went to the wood and chose among the trees a straight one without boughs. She uprooted the tree and turned it into a spindle shaft. Then she chose a big rock and turned that rock into a whorl. Satanay attached the whorl to the thin end of the spindle for stability and the spindle started rotating in her hands. Holding the distaff in her left hand and the spindle from the huge tree attached with the stone whorl in her right hand, Satanay spun the wool of six thousand sheep on the first day. On the second day, she weaved the cloth from the yarn that she had spun from the wool of six thousand sheep. On the third day, she tailored clothes for her hundred children from the cloth that she had weaved from the yarn that she had spun from the wool of six thousand sheep. Thus Satanay Guasha, a caring mother and a craftswoman, was working at spinning, weaving, tailoring within three days and nights. Her work at spinning and weaving caused mighty rumble in the mountain gorges and shuddering of her huge house built of stone.