The “Cairé” and “The Ghost of Komat” Textual Landscapes and Cultural Heritage in Argentinean and Slovenian Folktales

The present article proposes a comparative approach to Argentinean and Slovenian tales that share thematic features with ATU 326 (“The youth who wanted to learn what fear is”) from the standpoint of the fictional construction of verbal landscapes. The comparison is oriented to identifying similar narrative patterns dealing not only with thematic tale types but also with structural and stylistic features, along with changing details. The thematic, structural, and stylistic features common to different versions conform to a narrative matrix, which acts as a pretext to be recreated in diverse narrative contexts. The changing details give new meanings to universal pattern connected with the cultural heritage of different local contexts, such as the Argentinean and the Slovenian ones.

Haya Bar-Itzhak

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Народная демонология Полесья в контексте восточнославянских традиционных верований

This article studies folk demonological beliefs that are widespread on the territory of Polesye, located on the border of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The traditional culture of this region is of great interest for ethnologists of the broadest profile, since it preserves many archaic elements of all-Slavic significance. In the first part of the study, two blocks of the regional mythological system were considered: spirits of domestic and natural loci, and a group of characters originated from the souls of deceased. The second part of the work considers two groups of mythological characters: spirits not assigned to a specific locus (the devil, spirits of diseases, personification of death, characters for intimidation of children) and different categories of living people endowed with supernatural knowledge (witches, sorcerers, healers, werewolves). The study is based on data from the East-Slavic demonology.

Večjezične kratke folklorne oblike: primeri iz Goriških brd

The article focuses on short folklore forms recorded in the Gorica Hills (slv. Goriška brda) in the 20th and early 21st centuries, which can be considered as non-linguistic or non-ethnically bound folklore features. The language of these folklore forms is a mixture of the dialectal forms of the contact languages (Slovene, Italian, partly Friulian). Using the examples of the collected material, we analyse in which genres of the short folklore forms multilingualism appears, what function it has and how the characteristics of the territory are reflected in them. We compare sources or parallels in published Slovenian and Italian material, and analyse the material in the context of research on literary children’s folklore in Slovenia. The study of bilingual and multilingual folklore forms from Goriška brda focuses on the question of whether and why multilingualism is best preserved in short folklore forms and especially in children’s folklore.

What is It Like To Be a Bat in the Time of Covid-19, or How Many Pandemics Could We Have?

In these paired years (2020–2021), the whole world has been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has resulted in the emergence of different presumptions, alternative facts, and fake news. Among those, the most dominant news was about bats as the culprits of expansion of the virus and, indirectly, the Chinese diet as the root cause. However, there is no proof that the links in the triangle of bat-virus-human are valid; and the source of infection has not been identified. In addition to bats, these viruses can be found in other animals, such as camels, pangolins, and humans. Therefore, individual scientists are reversing the situation by presenting the possibility of transmitting the virus from humans to animals. Nevertheless, it has become ultimately ‘acceptable’ to demonise the bat. In this respect, various authors remind us of certain historical contexts of notions and perceptions of the bats, as well as the similarities and differences of those perceptions during the pandemic, referring to it mainly in the context of Croatia and the world. In the end, the article’s conclusion is that the story about the bats is, actually, a great indicator of the representations of Otherness and the strengthening of a binary and hierarchical division of ‘us’ and ‘them’.

Plants, Women, Magic. Contemporary Polish (Kuyavian) Folklore Based on Herbal Medicine

Nowadays, interest in phytotherapy and ethnobotanics has increased. This phenomenon was the reason for the cultural project “Ethnopantry of Dobrzyń Land”. During the event, the participants explored the knowledge of herbal medicine and ethnography, including superstitions, beliefs, and the role of plants in folklore texts, while simultaneously providing information about stories, practices, and methods of using herbs in their place of residence, among the older generation or relying on their own experiences. The transfer of knowledge between the instructors and participants resulted in a large amount of folklore material. The article is an attempt to summarise the collected data and to analyse them from an anthropological perspective.

Tudi stari Slovani so poznali gnomone

The belief that only written records of ancient Greek science are relevant to our knowledge of past science and that there is nothing outside of that knowledge that is not contained in written sources is misleading. The ancient Slavs were able to develop their knowledge of mathematics and astronomy independently of ancient Greek science. Neglecting the knowledge of the ancient Slavs in comparing it with that of the ancient Greeks is misguided and cannot lead to useful findings.

Dazhbog: The Ancient Slavic Pagan Deity of the Shining Sky

The paper is concerned with a detailed consideration of one of the most well-known and frequently mentioned Slavic pagan deities: Dazhbog (or Daž(d)bog). Historiographic stereotypes full of contradictions and problems have been fixed in research concerned with the deity, for example, defining Dazhbog as the deity of the sun; its proximity to another solar deity (Chors) and vagueness, why are there two solar deities; Dazhbog’s relation to the deity Svarog/Svarozhich; Dazhbog’s belonging only to the East Slavic area; the etymology of his name as a “giving deity”. An alternative view on Dazhbog (overlooked rather than new) that can solve these problems is given in this paper.

Этиологические заметки: «История об Иване»

This article represents research on an obscene Ukrainian folklore text published by Fedor. Vovk. Its possible relation to the verse fairy tale, “Nikita the Tzar, and his Forty Daughters”, by Aleksandr S. Pushkin is considered. The elements of the text are given Slavic folklore parallels, which enables making a conclusion about the clearly folk origin of the creative product. The following question is raised: can the text under research possibly be a distant reverberation of the Slavic etiological myth about how women acquired genitals? While such myths might have pagan roots, a suggestion is made that pagan gods were the prototypes of the main characters in the Ukrainian text. Thus, the text, recorded as an obscene joke, can supplement the collection of aetiological myths and legends about how the original people acquired genitals.

Rus, Russia, and Ukraine in Alternative Slavic Fantasy by English-Language Writers

Alternative Slavic fantasy is defined here as fantastika (speculative fiction) created by English-language writers on the basis of real or assumed Slavic folklore, separate from Slavic fantasy per se. The focus of the current paper is the logic of interaction between Slavic folk plots and characters with Russian and Ukrainian history. The first part addresses Medieval Rus in Peter Morwood’s and Katherine Arden’s trilogies. The second part, which addresses Russia and Ukraine in the 19th-20th centuries will be published in the next issue of the journal.