IVANNIKOVA LIUDMYLA 2025 №4

IVANNIKOVA LIUDMYLA

а Ph.D. in Philology, an associate professor, a senior research fellow at Ukrainian and Foreign Folkloristics Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine).

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0617-5082

The subject of the scientific research of the article is non-fairytale folklore prose, associated with the narrative tradition of modern Ukrainian funerals, namely demonological legend, true story, folklore novel. The object includes zoomorphic and anthropomorphic personifications of death, preserved in the prose folklore of the Podillia-Volhynia border region, the problem of creation and transmission of folklore texts within the family as the smallest folklore center.  The authoress’s own records and observations made in the late 20th – early 20th centuries have become the source base. The purpose of the research is to trace the principles of folklore creation, translation and transmission of prose narratives within a small folklore center, to reveal the archaic and symbolism of zoomorphic and anthropomorphic images of death, to clarify their common Slavic roots. The focus of attention precisely on the material that existed in a very narrow environment – within one family, on its translation and transmission determines the scientific novelty of the work. The following research methods are used in the article: the method of included observation, self-recording, interviewing, descriptive-analytical, comparative-historical and comparative-typological methods.

The family is the smallest folklore center where the process of creation, translation and transmission of prose texts takes place. From there folklore text transmits to other, larger centers, such as a street, village (city), region. The emergence of new variants is caused by the process of folklorization of individual texts. Different plot variants are generated by the distance in time between the event and the story about it. The peculiarities of the new variant are influenced by the long time distance between the active existence of the narrative and its recollection, a long storage of the text in the passive memory of the narrator, the secondary origin of the text, that is, the number of implicit narrators, the temporal and ideological separation of the narrator from the narrative tradition of the center. But with all this, the plot remains recognizable due to the preservation of its main elements. The variants and different-time records from a certain person or several people enable the detection of the individual characteristics of each performer.

The themes of the created legends may be closely related to the life of this small community, but during a story creation each narrator uses motifs, images, plot schemes, and formulas that he draws from the oral tradition not only of his narrow community, but also of a much wider region. The more archaic the image and its function are, the greater is its presence in various folklore genres, worldviews, beliefs and rituals. That is why the legends about death as a zoomorphic and anthropomorphic creature recorded by me in local folklore centers (family, street), represent not only individual carriers of folklore, but the entire archaic layer of Ukrainian folklore. The archaic nature of these plots is evidenced by the presence of a number of borderline loci around which the stories are constructed. These are house’s porch, a window, a door, a roof, a barn, a stable, a stall, a gate, a road, a street, crossroads, a mountain, a cemetery, a garden, a pond. These are spatial and temporal boundaries through which an exit to the other world is opened. Therefore, a person should not cross them. Just those characters of legends who have dared to violate these boundaries, managed to see personified zoomorphic and anthropomorphic images of death in the form of a gray / white horse, a goat, a bride with her bridesmaids. There isn’t a clear differentiation between death, illness and evil spirits in the legends I have recorded. A horse, a goat in the local tradition of this center can personify various demonic creatures. Nevertheless, white color, muteness, the ringing of bells and the appearance at border loci, which has become the cause of people’s death, are considered as the main signs of death in the studied texts.

The recorded texts and their concentration in the oral tradition of the folklore center of the village, the family, indicate that the Podillia-Volhynia border region could be one of the main areas of the emergence and existence of prose narratives where the personified image of death appears. They reflect archaic worldviews and beliefs inherent not only to Slavic, but also to other European peoples.

Keywords: non-fairytale prose, folk demonology, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic personifications of death, folklore of the Podillia-Volhynia borderlands, creation and transmission of folklore texts.

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