The Myth of the Baranets in European Literature and Its Possible Origin in Cotton

From the Middle Ages onwards, European literature mentions a mythical plant-animal known as the Baranets, sometimes called the Boranets or Boramets. It is also known as the Tartar lamb or the Scythian lamb.

The first mentions of the Baranets appear in the notes of medieval travellers; in time the myth migrated into bestiaries and even into reference works on plants. According to the legend, the Baranets dwells on the Asian steppes. Accounts of the Tartar lamb appear again and again in the literature of the modern era as well.

Travellers who had visited Russia describe in vivid colours a lamb growing on a low stalk straight out of the ground. The lamb is the fruit of a peculiar plant, downy, like a real lamb; while it grows, it feeds on the grass around it, and when the grass runs out, it withers away along with its stalk and dies. True, the Europeans mostly refer to the colourful tales of local peasants, who compare it now to a melon, now to a sheep.

Some even claimed that the Baranets was the favourite food of wolves. But in time the chief distinction of the Baranets became its wool, which, it was said, was used for lining clothes because it was so fluffy and warm.

The Dutch traveller of the 17th century Jan Struys writes that in shape and appearance it closely resembles a sheep and has a head, legs and a tail. At about the same time Jacob Reutenfels, the author of a book on Muscovy, explains that the sheep-like plant Baranets dries up all the grass around it, for which reason some suppose that it possesses reason and feeds on grass.

The principal explanation of the origin of the tale of the Baranets rests on this description: until the 18th century Europe was unacquainted with a crop such as cotton, which is distinguished precisely by its high absorbing power and draws all the moisture out of the soil, so that the plants around it wither.