For mortals, the birds were perilous. Those who heard their song would lose all sense of earthly ties, chasing after them to their doom. In desperate attempts to escape the Sirins' allure, people fired cannons, rang bells, and made other loud noises to scare them away. Over time, in the 17th and 18th centuries, their image shifted, and Sirins came to embody world harmony, dwelling near paradise.
It was believed that only the truly happy could hear a Sirin, while only a rare few could see one—she, as elusive as the fleeting nature of human joy. A symbol of eternal bliss, she represented heavenly happiness beyond reach.
The tale of Sirin may have found its way to Kievan Rus through Persian traders in the 8th and 9th centuries. In the cities of Chersonesos and Kiev, images of Sirins adorned pottery, golden pendants, and even the borders of Gospel books from the 10th to 12th centuries. The Pomors often depicted these mystical birds in the Book of Genesis, perched in the trees of paradise.
At times, Sirins are seen as symbols of God's word entering the soul. Other times, they embody the temptation of heretics preying on the weak. Occasionally, Sirins were likened to the Polish Wila. In Russian folklore, the Sirin was intertwined with the figure of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, a revered religious writer. For poets like Nikolay Klyuev, the Sirin became a symbol of the poet's voice itself.
