Tradition: Slovenian Mythology
Alternative names: Svetna Krava, World-Supporting Bull
Category: Cow
The Myth
In Slovenian folk tradition, there is a saying that the world stands upon a bull. The belief was recorded in the nineteenth century by Davorin Trstenjak and published in Slovenski Glasnik in 1860. The tradition was presented as a surviving fragment of an older Slavic cosmogony.
According to the belief, the entire world rests upon the bull. Whenever the bull twitches its ear, the whole world shakes.
A closely related version was recorded among the Serbs by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić in his Serbian Dictionary of 1852. In this version, some people said that the world stood upon water, while others jokingly said that the world stood upon the bull, and that when the bull moved its ear, the world shook.
The tradition therefore places the bull in a cosmic role as the foundation supporting the entire world. The source also connects this conception with broader Indo-European traditions in which animals such as bulls, horses, cows, fish, snakes, whales, and turtles function as beings supporting or participating in the creation or structure of the cosmos.
The bull’s importance is particularly significant in the discussion of Slavic tradition because cattle were economically important to many Slavic peoples. The source also notes another South Slavic motif in which supernatural opponents transform into a black bull and a red bull, representing opposing forces such as good and evil or rival communities.
The exact ancient Slavic cosmology behind the belief is uncertain, but the Slovenian and Serbian records provide evidence that the image of a bull supporting the world survived in South Slavic folk tradition.
Sources
Kropej, Monika. Supernatural Beings from Slovenian Myth and Folktales. Ljubljana: Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2012.