AI narrative interpretation of The Devouring Sister of Schiefner’s Avar Tale in Schiefner’s Awarische Texte (1873).
AI interpretation of the coal-black cloudlike appearance in Schiefner’s Avar tale IX. Contour, scale, texture and quiet victim-free moment are invented; the image does not identify a weather deity or supply human anatomy.
Overview
An elderly wealthy couple with seven sons asks God for a daughter to perform work in the house. Their daughter grows at an extraordinary rate: after a day she appears a month older, and after a month a year older. The narrator describes her becoming a powerful being, without supplying a stable height, face or costume.
The brothers take turns guarding their mares. At midday a coal-black thing seizes a mare and vanishes. When the youngest brother takes his turn, he sees a coal-black, cloudlike being rise into the air with a mare in its mouth. His arrow causes the mare to fall. At home he finds the family tending an arrow wound in his sister’s palm and identifies her as the thief. The family rejects his warning, and he leaves.
He is welcomed as a son by a childless elderly couple in another kingdom. After living there, he keeps two exceptional dogs, Schnellfuss and Scharfohr. When he decides to visit his former home, he tells his foster parents to release the dogs immediately if they begin straining and whining at their chains.
His village is in ruins. The sister greets him affectionately in the remaining inhabited house, but repeatedly goes outside and consumes his horse. He escapes to the roof by asking her to prepare food. A mouse tells him that she has consumed their parents, brothers and the other living creatures nearby. The mouse advises him to leave his boots hanging through the roof opening and answers the sister in his place while he flees.
Discovering the deception, she pursues him. His prayers place an unbridged river and a pathless rock between them, but she crosses them in a step and a leap. A further prayer places him in the top of a tree reaching the clouds. She extracts a molar, takes a hair from her head as its handle and uses this improvised axe against the tree. The two dogs arrive when he calls and kill her.
The ending does not make her harmless. A drop of her blood on a leaf calls him brother and asks not to be abandoned. He carries the leaf against his breast; on reaching home he dies, and the blood drop is found to have penetrated his chest and heart. This profile concerns the unnamed sister in this particular Avar tale. Kart is the printed German label; no general Nart-hero anatomy, modern national ownership or exact collection village is inferred.
Origins & earliest records
Tale IX, Bruder und Schwester, in Schiefner’s Awarische Texte (1873), printed pp.77–82; German narrative beneath the Avar text. The retained framing does not identify an individual teller or precise collection locality for this tale.
Records & interpretation
The complete German tale is legible on native PDF127–132, with the final sentence on printed p.82. Köhler’s complete IX note on printed XVIII compares Hahn’s Strigla story; that comparison is separate from the Avar narrative.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Awarische Texte
St Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, Mémoires, seventh series, XIX, no.6. The retained scan lacks the opening prefatory page; selected German narratives and their complete comparative notes were read against original pages. The Avar text is retained but not independently translated.
Family & connections
A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Historical Avar texts with German renderings and editorial comparative notesAnton Schiefner, Awarische Texte (1873), original bilingual editionResearch access: 2026-10-21
Image credits
AI-generatedAI narrative interpretation of The Devouring Sister of Schiefner’s Avar Tale in Schiefner’s Awarische Texte (1873).
AI interpretation of the coal-black cloudlike appearance in Schiefner’s Avar tale IX. Contour, scale, texture and quiet victim-free moment are invented; the image does not identify a weather deity or supply human anatomy.
