The Mistress of the Copper Mountain · The Woman in Malachite in the Mine

In the legends of the Ural miners there is a “Mistress of the Copper Mountain”: she wears a malachite dress that flows and shifts, she can move through the ore veins, and she decides who finds gemstones.

What she tests is a person’s character: the greedy walk into tunnels that do not exist and wander for days and nights; those who keep their word are sometimes led by her to a place full of gems, but are told they may take nothing away.

Before going down, miners used to leave their last piece of bread at the mouth of the shaft. Bazhov’s collection of tales wrote these stories down.

Folklore / The Urals · Russia / Time immemorial