Talk:Rusalka

Rusalka Drawing

Can anyone provide a picture of the Bilibin artwork? I searched far and wide, and could not find any reference.

Same here. I doubt there even is a picture of a Rusalka by Bilibin. I'm going to look a bit further and delete the reference if I can't fin anything. 82.95.254.30 (talk) 20:06, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Nothing. I'm deleting that line, it's being repeated all over the internet without anybody providing a reference to this 'famous' image. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.95.254.30 (talk) 13:26, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I think I may know the Bilibin artwork in question: It's a depiction of a rusalka with the head and breasts of a woman but the lower body of a bird -- in other words, resembling the Greek harpies rather than a mermaid. Throbert McGee (talk) 10:40, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I removed the importance-sect flag from the games section as Games are a valid (modern) cultural medium. I also removed the spam flag as there was no sign of spam. Glover (talk) 04:01, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Image for link is wrong for Rusalka by Konstantin Vasiliev

Someone has posted a picture of a boat called 'Rusalka', and has somehow knocked the painting off wikimedia. I'm not sure what to do about this, as deleting the image may not be the right thing, although I'm not sure that WM needs an image of a pleasureboat, but it might be used an a 'pleasureboat' article somewhere?

Can someone more experienced do something about this? There are a number of articles, including the one about Konstantin Vasiliev, that now show this boat, not his painting?

Colum —Preceding unsigned comment added by Metacosm (talk • contribs) 17:15, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Rosalia?

Rusalka. - The word is derived through Greek ῥουσάλια from "rosalia". - На! This is nonsense! Max Vasmer & Fantasy!Blogbox (talk) 08:35, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Please, provide sources for your statement as many scholars have the opinion that rusalka comes from Rosalia.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nix1129 (talk • contribs) 14:35, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Occult nonsense. If there are some "similar words" in greek and slavic, it does not mean it derived everything from "greek". Besides old Slavs shared more Vedic influence and have had rich folklore and mythology(as still today still ignored). Rusalke were like "morning rosa"(dew). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.182.72.117 (talk) 11:21, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Popular culture section

I think the "in popular culture" section needs trimming. Mentioning various works that feature rusalki is reasonable, but the fact that "Call of Duty: Black Ops" features a Russian ship named the Rusalka is pretty irrelevant to rusalki in general. (If it needs to be mentioned anywhere, it should be the CoD article).

And if that fact that "rusalka" was used as the translation of "mermaid" in the Russian edition of The Little Mermaid needs to be prefaced with "It is perhaps of note that", then that probably means it's not worth noting. Wardog (talk) 10:54, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

"from East Slavic русалка (originally meaning "light-haired girl", русый [rusyy])"

In east slavic and old russian blond is "polov" not "rusyy". https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%86%D1%8B — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nix1129 (talk • contribs) 07:29, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. There has been quite a bit of unsourced content change which I've reverted. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:04, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Dubious about changing appearance

I've noticed that Stazek Lem has correctly placed a request for a citation for rusalkas 'sometimes' being able to change their appearance. I've read a lot of literature surrounding Slavic mythology, but have never encountered shape shifting associated with them. I think that at some point an editor has confused 'mavka' with 'rusalka'. By the same token, the death by drowning is associated with rusalkas (as is 'tickling to death'). The mavka article needs better sourcing than dictionaries, and should also be reigned in for overstepping into the territory of the other spirit. They're rarely interchangeable (and only by one account: here. One is a forest 'nymph'; the other a water 'nymph' who does not have shape changing abilities. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:48, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Article reads nothing like the sourced material

It seems very strange when an article seems so far removed from the source material, you wonder if someone copy and pasted something from some unrelated website and just added a few cites hoping no one bothered to read them. I read through a couple of the sourced material on this wiki and got a completely different understanding than what is presented on this wikipqage, which looks more like some dudes opinion that never read any of the sourced material at all and just decided to "wing it". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.117.93.248 (talk) 03:30, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Outside of a few exceptions, Wikipedia's coverage of Slavic folklore is terrible. This article likely needs a total rewrite. :bloodofox: (talk) 15:59, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

I think that, for starters, the 'in popular culture' section is largely detrimental and should be treated as WP:OSE. There's more WP:PROMO and unnecessary detail in it misleading for the reader. Compare Werewolf and Vampire (although the 'games' section in the latter article is superfluous WP:RECENTISM). On the whole, I agree that it needs a serious overhaul. To the best of my recollection, this article began life as a generic 'Slavic mythology' piece (wrong: it was folklore then, as it remains). A messy hodgepodge of WP:SYNTH does not make for an encyclopaedic article. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 20:37, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head there; agreed. :bloodofox: (talk) 20:43, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Also note that Slavic folklore currently redirects to Slavic paganism — ??? :bloodofox: (talk) 20:53, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, all sorts of strangeness. There's been all sorts of fiddling around over the years (predominantly good faith stuff), but it's led to articles full of twaddle: split off and turned into articles only addressing one folkloric entity, and other such issues. Baba Yaga and other folklore appears in Category:Russian mythology. I think there are other unnecessary overlaps between mythology and folklore in other Slavic mythology cats. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:36, 31 July 2018 (UTC)