Umay Ene
Umay Ene (Iradi, "Mother Umay") is a folk name for the Virgin Mary (Maryam) in parts of rural Irad, where she has taken on the role of Umay, the old Turkic goddess of childbirth, infants and the hearth, who is named in the Orkhon inscriptions of the 8th century. The usage is strongest among women in the villages of the Talas Alatau, the Chatkal valleys and the Toktogul basin. Elsewhere in Irad, rural devotion gives the place of the Virgin in Western piety to Janyl, but Maryam keeps the cradle and the birth room.[1]
Women in labour call on Umay Ene, and a fire is kept burning in the house for forty days after a birth. The afterbirth is buried under the threshold with a prayer to Maryam, and the cradle (beshik) is hung with a small cross, an owl's feather and a white thread to keep away the albasty, the demon who attacks mothers and newborns. Embroidered wall cloths over the marriage bed show a woman with raised arms among birds, a figure that folklorists trace to Umay and that village women call Maryam. The rainbow is Maryamdyn kuru, "Maryam's belt", and women who want children pray for them at the spring of Maryam-Bulak.[1][2]
The Syro-Iradi Catholic Church tolerates the name Umay Ene as a pious title but discourages the customs around it. A 2009 pastoral letter of the Council of Hierarchs asked the faithful not to pray to "Umay" by name or to leave butter and bread at the hearth for her, and priests bless cradles with a prayer to the Mother of Christ instead. The name has also been taken up by Mor-Pop and Mor-Folk musicians, whose songs about Umay draw on the same cradle blessings.[2]
References
- ^ Central Asian Folklore Society (2021). Epic Cycles and Horseback Chants of the Northern Valleys. Talas State University Press, Talas, pp. 135–158.
- ^ Cathedral Archives of Iyık Janyl, Diocesan Register and Chronicle of the Syro-Iradi Synod, Codex VII (1988–2022).