Pavel Bazhov had heard the tales about her at the Polevskoy Copper Smelting Plant from the miners' storyteller Vasily Hmelinin (Russian: ), nicknamed Grandpa Slyshko by children. The Copper Mountain is believed to be the Gumyoshevsky mine, the oldest mine of the Ural Mountains. It was sometimes called The Copper Mountain or simply The Mountain by the populace. Valery Dyomin commented that the Mistress is a universal mytheme, while the Copper mountain is the specific location: the Gumyoshevsky mine and Mount Azov.