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Bosniak women -the women thatgave birth todragons

One of the most mysterious Bosnian traditions is the oneabout the birth of snijet. Tabooed and of a holly status,this tradition existed in Bosnia for centuries, until todaywhere it only exists in stories and sayings of older women.Some of them claim that they themselves gave birth tosnijet or dragons.

The beginning of this tradition should be sought in theforefathers of the Bosnians, the ancient Illyrians who sawthe snake i.e. dragon as a central animal of their nationaland also religious cult. In favour of this the ethnologicalrecords can be found among the Bosnians living inMontenegro and Albanians on Kosovo and Albania, landsthat once made up the vast Illyrian empire. We also needto mention another tradition which is specificallyconnected to the Bosnian people and that is the one thatmentions snakes entering and living inside humans whohappened to fall asleep outside, in the field or under atree. This clearly points to the ancient belief that snakes ordragons are directly connected to people and that physicalpermeations and mergers are possible.

Mola hydatidosa or infanticide?

The legend about dragons and their descendants which iscalled among the Bosnian folk snijet are an inalienablepart of the fascinating world of mythology of this countrywhich sometimes seems so real and tangible as in thissense. A long time before the twentieth century, when theethnologists started gathering ethnological data aroundBosnia and Herzegovina, among the Bosnian folk onecould hear, through an oral tradition, a story that a womangave birth to a snijet, a mysterious creature which wasconsidered to be a baby dragon. Since the ethnologistsnever saw a birth of a snijet they concluded that this is aphenomenon which is called hydatidosa in medicine, adisease of the placenta where there are degenerative andproliferative process's in the placenta, specifically in thepart that stems from the fetus.

However the medical explanation doesn't mention the

possibility of mola hydatidosa and the child being borntogether or the possibility that the embryo develops into afetus inside the diseased placenta. The same way, whenwe look at the pictures of mola hydatidosa from alayman's perspective, we quickly ascertain that theappearance and description of that disease have nothing incommon with the claims made by the ethnologists duringtheir field work. The only similarities to the medical claimsare the accompanying symptoms of profuse bleeding afterbirth of the snijet, yet that phenomenon is common formost normal births, especially those in the past. Namely,up until the last few decades of the past century, mostchildbirths were done at home, individually or in thecompany of an experienced woman which is called amidwife, far from the hospital and the doctor.

In such completely unprofessional conditions the traditionabout the snijet was misused and women and girls used itto hide abortions or the birth of deformed, retarded orextramarital children which they would kills right afterbirth. Since the snijet has been tabooed from itsbeginnings each infanticide went unpunished. If someoneshowed some interest for the childbirth the midwife wouldclaim that "she had a snijet!" and that would stop anyfurther discussion.

But, such criminal behaviour and attitude recorded inisolated cases is not a justified reason to cease theinvestigation about the snijet. Especially since the authorof this text had the opportunity to meet an old lady whovividly described her experience of giving birth to a snijet,which leaves little room for doubt.

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God's punishment or blessing?

The ethnologists equated the word snijet to Ustilagomaydis, because of the appearance, white colour andshaped like a corn parasite. However, in some places thereis a different opinion based on the white colour of theplacenta which uncommonly resembles an egg shell. Thewomen usually described snijeti jaje i.e. carry down anegg. With this interpretation we are getting close to themythological theory of the birth of a dragon, for whichmany legends claim that he actually came from a largeegg.

There are a few versions of how a snijet is brought to thisworld. According to one of them if the woman hasintercourse during her menstrual cycle, and a child isconceived, God will punish her for that blasphemy and shewill give birth to a monstrous creation known as snijet. Inthe second version the woman is impregnated by adragon, when he sees her resting somewhere in the fieldafter work or when he visits her while she is sleeping. In afew ethnological publications we come across a fewcontradictions when it comes to the birth of snijet, namely,while some parts of BIH experience snijet as God'spunishment, others don't see anything bad in it and claimthat each Bosnian woman has given birth to snijet at leastonce in her life.

A woman can be pregnant with both a child and a snijet,which has catastrophic consequences for the fetus. Therewere cases that a woman gives birth to a child with a deadsnijet on its head, after which the child would also diesoon after. In the same way, if both are born alive, thefolk belief is, that the child will die when the snijet is killedor when it dies.

The dread that a woman will give birth to a snijetappeared if the birth process took longer than usual.According to folk belief, snijet is delivered much harderthan a normal child, the woman bleeds profusely andrecovers slowly. Influencing the woman's psychologicalstate depended on the climate, especially if she gave birthto a dead child. If the woman who gave birth to a snijetbelonged to the part of the country that thought it waspunishment from God, she would go into deep depressionand psychological crisis, spending most of her days in bed.However if her surrounding saw snijet as a good thing(sevap) then her recovery would be much faster and herpsychological state stable.

Snijet can be born along a child or by itself. If thathappens in most cases the baby would be born dead orwould die soon after birth. There were cases when thechild survived but that happened only if the snijet didn'tcome to life inside the woman's womb. When the snijet isalive inside the womb, it then attacks the child and eats it,that's why the child is born with a deformity or disease.Apparently, the snijet bites and eats the child's head, arm,leg or bites it on its back "and eats its entire lungs while itis still in the mother's womb".

According to the confessions of women that gave birth to asnijet or that witnessed such an event, the child leaves thewoman's body first followed by a snijet. Each woman, no

matter the geographical location inside Bosnia, describethe snijet identically: "Snijet resembles a mole, it's thesame colour and size, except it doesn't have any hair" or"Snijet mostly resembles a mole, it's black, has no hair onit, but everything else resembles a mole, the nose, bodyand legs". This description is also interesting: "it looks likea black piece of liver that has skin".

Escape from the mother

As mentioned earlier, snijet can be born by itself, or with achild, in a white placenta. If the pregnant woman is onlycarrying snijet in her womb, then her pregnancy doesn'tlast for nine months, but three to four. But, nevertheless,all through that short pregnancy she feels standardaccompanying symptoms which are similar during normalpregnancy.

In most cases snijet was born alive and as soon as it cameout of the woman, it showed strength and a developedinstinct for survival, because according to the testimony of

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numerous women, "the moment it comes out it runs awayfrom people, you can't catch it, it runs like a mouse andclimbs walls". If the pregnant woman would give birth byherself, without anyone's help, which was frequent in thepast, then the snijet escaped without much problems andlater it transformed into a dragon.

According to the statement of an old lady from Žepa, whogave birth to two snijet besides her eleven children, sevap(good thing) is when someone gives birth to a snijet "it'sas if the woman gave birth to two healthy children". Thesame lady said the following: "a woman who gives birth toa snijet three times, has all of her sins forgiven and afterdeath she will go straight to heaven, that proves how

happy God is when a snijet is born!"

Even though the birth of a snijet was tabooed for fear ofjudgement or ridicule of the environment, it was treatedwith respect, besides the fact it was killed, which can beseen in the fact that it was forbidden to throw a deadsnijet into the garbage can, one needed to bury it wrappedin a cloth together with the placenta, under a young treeor farmyard manure. Behind such a rule one can see thehuman fear of a dragon retaliation because of the death ofits cubs, therefore the wrapping inside a cloth and buryingneeded to hide such a deed.