A Cross-Dressing Bogatyr: the Russian Bylina of Mikhaylo Potyk, Where He Disguises Himself as a Woman

In Russian byliny — traditional heroic epic songs — there is a rare plot about the warrior-hero Mikhaylo Potyk, who disguises himself as a woman twice. Why does he do it, and how does this motif work inside the epic world? In this text, we’ll briefly go over the bylina’s storyline, but we’ll look closely at the two episodes where cross-dressing is used twice: first to defeat enemies, and then to save the bogatyr’s life.

Who is Mikhaylo Potyk?

Mikhaylo Potyk is a young Russian bogatyr — a legendary warrior-hero. In the byliny he is described as handsome, strong, and brave, with yellow-blond curls. He fights evil beings — serpents and monsters — that embody the forces of darkness.

Potyk is portrayed as an ally of Prince Vladimir (a major figure of the Kyiv court in epic tradition) and as a contemporary of other famous bogatyrs — Ilya Muromets and Dobrynya Nikitich. Interestingly, in this bylina Ilya is called old, Dobrynya is called young, and Potyk is spoken of affectionately — “dear one”, “sweetheart”.

The hero’s name is probably connected to the word pot’ka, which in older Russian meant “bird”. That link ties Potyk to ancient Slavic reverence for birds, which were often imagined as messengers between different worlds.

The bylina about Mikhaylo Potyk was widespread on the northern and eastern shores of Lake Onega. On the Pudoga River it was recorded from seven different storytellers. These versions have a complex structure and preserve the plot’s details unusually well.

The Potyk story is one of the most layered and intricate in the Russian epic tradition. At its centre is an ancient myth about a human marrying a being from another world. Potyk’s beloved, Marya the White Swan (Mar’ya Lebed’ Belaya), combines features of both a bird and a serpent.

A retelling of the bylina with a female disguise

One day Prince Vladimir held a feast. He summoned three bogatyrs and gave each of them a task. He told Ilya Muromets to ride to the Sorochinsky Mountains and defeat the enemies there. He ordered Dobrynya Nikitich to cross the Blue Sea and bring new lands into Rus’. And he assigned Mikhaylo Potyk to collect tribute from Tsar Likhodey of Podolia.

Mikhaylo set out on his journey. Out in the open steppe he pitched a white tent with a golden top. The daughter of Tsar Likhodey, Marya Podolenka, noticed the tent and came to the bogatyr at night. Potyk’s horse spoke with a human voice and woke its master. He saw the girl and fell in love with her. Marya asked him to take her to Kyiv, have her baptised, and marry her. Mikhaylo agreed. In Kyiv the girl was baptised and given a new name — Nastasya the White Swan.

After the wedding, the spouses swore an oath: if one of them died, the other must lie with them in the same coffin.

Time passed. The prince held another feast. The bogatyrs boasted of their feats. Mikhaylo told everyone how he had collected tribute from Tsar Likhodey and married his daughter. Prince Vladimir praised him and gave him a new assignment — to collect tribute from Tsar Nalyot, who lived beyond the Blue Sea.

Potyk rode there. But as soon as he arrived at the tsar’s palace, a dove flew into the hall and brought news: Nastasya had died. Mikhaylo immediately rode home. He saw that his wife really was dead and ordered an oak coffin made for two. Remembering the oath, he lay down beside Nastasya’s body.

For three months Mikhaylo lay underground in the coffin next to his dead wife. One day a snake crept in, meaning to drink Nastasya’s blood. Potyk grabbed the snake with tongs and forced it to bring living water — a magical water that can bring the dead back to life. As a pledge he took the snake’s young one and killed it. Terrified, the snake brought the water. Then Mikhaylo revived the little snake first, and after that revived his wife.

They got out of the coffin. But soon word of the miracle — and of Nastasya’s beauty — spread across the whole land. Forty tsars and kings wanted to marry her. They sent envoys to Kyiv and demanded that Prince Vladimir hand Nastasya over to them, or else they would destroy the city.

The prince began begging Mikhaylo to give in, to save Rus’, but the bogatyr refused — and put on women’s clothes:

“And he dressed himself in women’s clothes,

Laid chainmail armour on his good horse,

The sword-kladenets (a legendary magic sword) and his sharp sabre,

And went out toward the Sorochinsky Mountains:

He left his horse under an oak,

And took a strong bow with him.

And he came to the green meadows,

To those grasses, soft as silk.”

— The bylina of Mikhaylo Potyk

So the bogatyr disguised himself as a woman and went straight into the enemy camp. There he proposed a test: he shot an arrow somewhere and promised to marry whoever found it. While the kings (tsars) rushed off to look for the arrow, Mikhaylo quickly grabbed their weapons and cut down all his enemies.

But good fortune turned into misfortune again. While Potyk was fighting, a certain Tsar Vakhramey abducted his wife, Nastasya, and carried her off to the land of Volyn. The bogatyr raced after them, but Nastasya — who now loved Vakhramey — deceived her husband. She gave him a special “forgetting” wine. After drinking it, he fell into a deep sleep and turned to stone.

Three years passed. Ilya Muromets and Dobrynya Nikitich decided to look for their missing comrade. On the road they met an old man. He showed them where the enchanted stone lay. The bogatyrs tried to move it, but couldn’t. Then the old man lifted the stone himself, and Mikhaylo came back to life. After that, the old man vanished. The heroes understood that it had been Saint Nicholas, who had come to help Potyk.

When he came to, Mikhaylo learned that Nastasya was living with Vakhramey. He set out for Volyn again. But this time too his wife deceived him. She gave him the “forgetting” wine again, and then ordered her men to nail her husband to the wall with iron spikes.

Vakhramey’s daughter, Marya, took pity on Mikhaylo. She treated his wounds and helped him escape. To get out of the city, the bogatyr disguised himself as a woman once more:

“They took a horse from the deep cellar,

They took fine armour from the palace,

Dear one Mikhaylo Potyk, Ivan’s son,

Dressed himself in women’s clothes,

Laid the armour on his good horse,

Took the good horse by the reins,

And led it out beyond the city wall.

Outside the wall he changed — and buckled on his mail.”

— The bylina of Mikhaylo Potyk

Mikhaylo took up his weapons, marched on Vakhramey’s city, and captured it. In battle he killed the tsar, and he executed Nastasya — tying her to seven horses and tearing her apart. After that Mikhaylo married Marya Vakhrameyevna and became the new tsar of that land.

Mikhaylo Potyk, 1902. A postcard published by the “Community of St. Eugenia”

What the bylina means

In the first case, the hero’s cross-dressing doesn’t look entirely justified. In the second episode everything is clear — he uses a disguise to slip in unnoticed — but in the first, there doesn’t seem to be any real need. The hero is strong enough to defeat his enemies by relying on sheer bogatyr power. The disguise may have helped him reach his goal a bit faster or avoid an unnecessary fight, but if you think about it, for a hero who can handle opponents head-on, this device feels oddly hard to explain.

Now, about the plot as a whole. In old Russian byliny you can often see traces of very ancient ideas. Scholars read them as echoes of pre-Christian ritual culture — for example, burial rites, or the old motif of “winning a bride” from the otherworld.

The figure of Marya the White Swan is especially striking. She combines features of a bird and a serpent. That makes her resemble the snake-legged goddesses known from Iranian and Scythian–Sarmatian myth. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote about such goddesses. He reports that the Scythians traced their ancestry to a son of Heracles and a serpent-goddess who lured the hero into a cave.

In the Russian bylina, the plot is similar: Marya herself pursues marriage with Potyk and calls him to lie with her in the earth. When the hero descends into the grave, it is not death but a trial. He takes food and weapons with him, because he knows danger awaits. Potyk defeats the serpent, revives Marya, and returns.

Folklorists argue that this act reflects a struggle between an older “matriarchal” order and a newer masculine, heroic principle. Potyk is read as a figure for the Slavic people, emerging from the influence of nomadic Scythian–Sarmatian traditions and forming their own culture. In this reading, the bylina becomes a story about an ancient dispute between two models of family and society. The union of Potyk and Marya is a collision between the Slavic world and the steppe world. The hero’s victory shows a new human type being born — a warrior and protector, not a captive of magical forces.

Potyk is a double-edged hero. In the first part he is clever and decisive. He ignores the advice of Prince Vladimir and the Kyivan bogatyrs, because he trusts his own knowledge. He goes down into the grave to his dead wife, anticipating a meeting with the serpent, and he knows how to obtain “living water” — the magic life-giving water of Slavic folklore — in order to resurrect Marya. In the second part everything changes. Potyk loses caution, becomes trusting, and falls into traps. Only other characters manage to save him.

The scholar Boris Putilov explained this through the contrast between the hero’s “foresight and blindness”. This kind of opposition is common in the Russian epic tradition. The contradictions may also have appeared because the bylina took shape gradually. Its separate parts seem to have existed for a long time as independent songs — one about the underground realm, another about the hero’s return.

From the standpoint of the axiological approach in folkloristics (that is, an approach focused on values), this bylina tells how passion blinds the hero and leads him to wrongdoing. Then comes punishment and, finally, repentance. In this, scholars see Mikhaylo Potyk’s path of spiritual purification.

Many researchers have pointed out the fairy-tale character of the Potyk byliny. They note that it has many similarities with folktales from almost all European countries. Overall, the content of the Potyk cycle is closer to Western European tale traditions than to Asian ones. At the same time, it also contains some intriguing parallels with individual episodes from the Mongolian epic poem about Geser Khan.

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References and Sources

• Миронов А. С. Аксиологический анализ былин о Дунае и Потыке. Проблемы исторической поэтики, 2020. [Mironov A. S. – Axiological Analysis of Bylinas about Dunay and Potyk]
• Свод русского фольклора. Былины. Т. 17: Былины Пудоги. 2014. [Collective authorship – Corpus of Russian Folklore. Bylinas. Vol. 17: Bylinas of Pudoga]

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