Legend of the Sagalakov shamans



Once upon a time, a powerful shaman bought for his sons a young girl from a Khakas family. He was so struck by her beauty that he allowed her to choose whom of his three sons she would marry.

However, in actual fact, she had no choice. Under Khakas traditions, if the eldest brother is not married, younger ones have no right to marry. Although the girl liked the youngest brother the most, she had to choose the eldest. Before the wedding, several times she tried to run away from the shaman's family but she was always found and brought back.

One day, when she was already eight months pregnant, she was no longer watched so closely and she escaped, running deep into the taiga. She ate berries and mushrooms and kept walking, in search of people, until she gave birth not far from a village.

Exhausted, she wrapped the baby up and looked around: There were only uniform pines and cedars everywhere, until suddenly she spotted a red rowan tree. She put her baby boy under the tree and walked to the poorest-looking yurt on the outskirts of the village in the hope of getting help there.

There was an elderly couple living in that yurt. While the old woman looked after the young one, the old man went to fetch the baby. He spotted the rowan tree among the firs and then saw an eagle, its beak covered in blood, sitting on a cedar opposite the rowan.

The old man thought that the eagle must have killed the baby, however, when he approached the rowan tree he saw that the baby was alive and well but there were bodies of killed predators scattered around him. None of them had managed to approach the baby because he was being guarded by the eagle.

That was the baby who grew up to become a great shaman, the first in the Sagalakov line. He began healing people at the age of just nine.

