Polevik can be kind

In Slavic beliefs, Polevik is a hostile creature but sometimes he helps humans. Novgorod people believed that Polevik could warn field workers about danger – for example, drive them out of the field before an approaching thunderstorm.
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That is why people always tried to please Polevik. In Novgorod, when pasturing cows in the meadowland, people bowed to Polevik and said: “Field father, field mother with little children, take my cattle, give it water and feed it”. And when cattle got lost, people would take bread and three coins, stand on the road and say: “Master of the field, I will give you bread and a gold treasure, and you bring my hog home.”
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In the Oryol region of Russia, on certain holidays at night, a couple of eggs and an old rooster stolen from neighbors were sacrificed to Polevik in the field. It was believed that, without a sacrifice, Polevik would get angry and destroy all the bread in the field. And in the Yaroslavl region, at the end of the harvest people left several uncut bread spikes as an offering to Polevik.
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Why do you think they sacrificed not their own, but the neighbor’s rooster? 😉
Artist: https://www.deviantart.com/natale777
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More interesting facts can be found in: “Slavic Antiquities” – encyclopedic dictionary in 5 volumes by Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
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