Old Slavic beliefs seem to attest some awareness of an ambivalent nature of the Earth: it was considered men's cradle and nurturer during one's lifetime, and, when the time of death came, it would open up to receive their bones, as if it were a "return to the womb". The imagery of the "moist earth" also appears in funeral lamentations either as a geographical feature (as in Lithuanian and Ukrainian lamentations) or invoked as "Mother Moist Earth". The Slavic epic
bogatyr Mikula Selyaninovich, or Mikula the Villager, has his power from Mat Zemlya. == See also ==