Bestiary · Slavic · God of fate
Usud
In a Serbian tale, the power that fixes each newborn's lot, rich and merry one day and poor the next, as its own fortune turns.
In the Serbian tale Usud ("fate") decrees each person's destiny at birth. Fate lives in a great palace, rich and merry on one day and poorer and sadder on the next, and every night gives the babies born that day the very lot it has itself enjoyed. A luckless man who seeks Fate out learns that he was "born on an orphan's night". Afanasyev compares him with the German Saelde and the wheel of fortune.