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Eastern and Western Christianity: continuity, changes and interactions; in the framework of the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore, Constantin Brailoiu’s project Contemporary religiosity in Romania; and in the context of a collaboration with Mioritics
The expression xuuč yaria can be translated as ‘story’ or ‘gossip’, and indeed, they are short stories about interesting, extraordinary or sometimes fearful events heard or seen by the storyteller. As far as their content is concerned, the stories are colourful and ramifying, and it is beyond doubt that the xuuč yaria has some connections with domogs, tales and even heroic epics. Unfortunately, research into this field has begun relatively recently, so these connections are far from being clear. Moreover, the xuuč yaria stories are interesting not only from the point of view of folklore, but they also shed light on the history of ideas, since the first ones were collected in the 1950s, and thus some of them reflect the political atmosphere of the socialist era. In this article an attempt is made to give the broader outlines of the xuuč yaria as a genre of Mongolian folklore, and establish a typology in the hope that it will be helpful for further research.
New Invented Apocriphes and the Folklore. The Roast Cock Crows . “It happened on the day of the Holy Supper, that Lord Christ was served a roast cock, and when Judas left to sell the Lord, he ordered the cock to rise and follow Judas, and the cock did accordingly, then reported to Lord Christ how Judas betrayed him, and because of this it is said to be allowed to follow him to Paradise.”A miracle-story of apocryphal origin (supposedly Act of Peter ), transformed into a subject with a typical paradoxical element, became popular in the oriental Christianity and in medieval Europe: this is how it got into the apocryphal New Testament narratives; among others into the newly discovered Ethiopian Book of the Cock , some early Coptic fragments and the medieval manuscripts of the Gospel of Nicodemus as well. The purpose of the present study is to document this unusual process (a story from an apocryphal source is transformed during traditional transmission, and finds its way into some versions of other apocryphal texts). The data attesting to the presence of the characteristic motif in orality are especially valuable. Conscious fieldwork and records from the 19 th and 20 th centuries reveal the oral variations, which take the form of an origin legend, aiming at an explanation of the world.
A dolgozat válogatás a középkori Magyarország kályhacsempéi közül: a népi stílus korai jelentkezését vizsgálja. Ennek jellemzője a sajátos, nem naturális felfogás a korszak vagy korábbi idők motívumkincséről. Olyan ritkább csempéket is tárgyalunk, amelyek tárgyköre a mesevilág népszerű hagyományából eredt.
The young Gogol published a study on the teaching of geography for children in 1831. At the same time, he was writing the collection of short stories, Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka (1831–1832). We can observe interesting connections between his texts – prose fictions and pedagogical writing – of this period: motives belonging to geography, history and folklore make a specifically large context. The author’s interest in geology, as he writes, in the „underground geography” (“подземная география”) – the earth’s crust, rocks, strata – corresponds with the “underground mythology and folklore” in the Dikanka stories, with the demonic figures ( колдун, ведьма, черт ), places ( abyss, ravine, depths of the earth, swamp, churchyard ) and time ( night ). In this study, on the basis of the Gogol’s long-time unedited manuscripts ( Неизданный Гоголь , ed. by I. A. Vinogradov, Moscow, 2001) we investigate the common roots of the seemingly heterogeneous motives to discover the hidden strata and meanings of his early works.
Predominantly, this study examines two issues. First, why in a very short span of time the real historical person of Jánošík turned into a folklore and literary character and what kind of interaction can be revealed between these two fields. Second, why compared to the whole of the Slovakian folklore the Jánošík tradition is so scarce in Slovakian communities of Hungary. The author also attempts to answer to the question how the Jánošík legends attested in these communities appeared among the Slovakians who settled down in Hungary in the late 17th and early 18th century.
This article analyses the image of Hungarians in Lithuanian customs of masking and oral folklore. The views of Lithuanians about this nation will be examined as they are reflected in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century in Lithuanian folklore.
King Matthias Corvinus' is a beloved figure in the folklore of the Slav nations of the historic Hungarian kingdom. This folklore divides into two groups: in the South Slavs' folklore the genre of historical epos prevails, while in the Slovak, Rusyn and Hungarian folklore King Matthias appears first of all as a protector of the common people against their masters' self-will, as a fair and wise king. In the Rusyn folklore King Matthias and his military leader Pál Kinizsi are being nationalised. They appear as Rusyns; the tales of King Matthias teem with local toponyms and often reflect real historic events and facts. In this way people unintentionally show King Matthias' great services at the legislative definition of the Rusyns' privilegies and rights, which exerted influence upon the shaping of their national identity. The theme of King Matthias' love-affairs, known in the Slovak folklore, does not exist in the Rusyn tradition. Thus, in particular the Rusyns' folklore stands closest to that of Hungarians. In comparison with the Hungarian folklore one can point to its greater severity and elements of sorcery and superstitions, typical in general of the world view of the Rusyn common people.
Summary Initially, the paper “Ethnic Stereotypes in the Macedonian Folklore and their Reflection in the Macedonian Contemporary Literature' is focusing on the ethnic stereotypes in folklore, knowing that it often reflects the historical reality in a fuller, more penetrating way than the other sources. In the Macedonian folklore, the positive image and the epic glorification of the Macedonian heroes are opposed to the manifested negative judgments about Others (mostly Turks and Arabs), often based upon ethnic stereotypes. The treatment of the motifs and the characters in them are quite typicalized and even overproportioned by frequent usage of hyperbolas and contrasts. The paper presents Bolen Dojcin and Marko Krale as typical heroes whose images succumb to stereotyping and the Crna Arapina as the perfect depiction of their enemy. These folklore images and stereotypes have significant implications and reflections in the Macedonian contemporary literature, especially in the poetry, so in the major part of the paper it deals mostly with these expressions. One of the main reasons for the usage of these “old-fashioned' stereotypes is to provoke familiar images in the people's minds (both good and evil), and to use this touch of the tradition as a base for the new ideas and poetry innovations. This paper pursues their transformations in the contemporary poetry of a few Macedonian authors, such as Blaze Koneski, Vlada Urosevic, Radovan Pavlovski and others. We read their poetry as intertext, namely as restoration and resemantisation of the traditional oral poetry, and we follow up the modifications done in their composition, versification and basic poetry idea. Apart from the poetry, these images and stereotypes taken from the Macedonian folklore can be noted in the other genres of the Macedonian contemporary literature, who enclose rereading of the ethnic stereotypes, upgrading of mythical fables, unconventional, unconditional and often very complexed usage of the folklore elements, symbols, myths or motifs. The paper leads to the conclusion that Macedonian folklore accumulates knowledge and image of the Other, but at the same time abounds with ethnical stereotypes. In the text, they were viewed through their manifestations and their alterations mainly in contemporary Macedonian poetry, through a number of paradigms and poetic concepts, highlighting their ability to make use of the spirit of the tradition as fundamentals for the fresh ideas and expressive innovations.
The authors of the thematic block are all researchers of the Institute of Ethnology at the Research Centre for the Humanities. The institute is a Centre of Excellence of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The institution's Folklore
