Mermaid

The Book of Degrees of the Royal Genealogy, the first historic Russian book, has an entry about the legend of a daughter of the Kazan Khan, Mukhammad Amin, who foresaw the inevitable fall of the Kazan Khanate. The terrible premonition prompted Princess Gausharkad to commit suicide when the troops of Ivan the Terrible were storming Kazan. The girl did not want to be captured by the enemy and threw herself into the Kaban Lake, turning into Su Anasy - a mermaid.
The daughter of the Khan cursed the lake she died in: any invader, who came too close to Kaban or swam in the lake, would inevitably drown there. In doing so, Princess Gausharkad wanted to protect her homeland and the Tatar people from invaders.

According to multiple legends, Gausharkad did not just have strong instincts and a powerful women’s intuition, she was also a witch and was practicing black magic. That is why she turned into a mermaid after her death.  In Tatar mythology, mermaids were creatures who brought drought, disease and would also drown people.
The legend of the curse of the Kaban Lake is connected with another urban myth about treasures hidden at the bottom of the Lake. According to this legend, Queen Suyumbike ordered that her jewels be hidden there, relying on the protection and patronage of her late predecessor Gausharkad, who would not let anyone, except the Kazan Tatars, take the treasure chests away.

A mysterious and romantic image of the deceased Princess was reinterpreted by Tatar poet Gabdulla Tukai in the fairy tale titled “Su Anasy”.  It tells a story of a boy, who saw the mermaid on the shores of the Lake: "The witch was attempting to comb her gray entangled hair with a golden shining comb under the mirror of the lake.” The youngster steals the comb, and the evil mermaid comes to the village, demanding to get back what was taken from her; but she leaves promptly, when the mother of the boy throws the comb out on the street and tells her son off.
Tukai’s tale has long become a favorite fairy tale of Tatar and Russian children of Tatarstan. In 1997, the fountain monument named Su Anasy which depicts a fragile girl sitting on a rock and stretching her hands out to the sky with the golden comb placed beside her, was erected on Bauman Street in downtown Kazan.