Poznańskie Studia Slawistyczne, 2012, nr 3
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Item Magiczne funkcje słowa w przekazach ustnych z Lubelszczyzny – aspekt pozytywny(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Wójtowicz, MagdalenaThe aim of this article is to give an anthropological description of verbal magic. The magical utterances are present in the following areas of traditional culture: folk medicine, family and annual rituals. They focus on a formula which, in the opinion of people expressing them, have some magical powers which cause positive effects in the real world. The empirical material, which constitutes the basis for the description, derives from the questionnaire interviews with inhabitants of the rural communities of Lublin voivodeship. The author focuses on the elements that must be satisfied that the words gained causative power. These elements are situational context (which includes time and place of activity, sender, recipient, symbolic attributes), repeating, fidelity playback, optional confidentiality.Item Pasičnićki zamovlannja u svitohladnij tradyciji ukrajinciv: mahična vlada slova(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Movna, UljanaThe article is exposing some results of the study in bee-keepers’ spell as a featuring trait of Ukrainians’ world-view practice; the present research is the first work of such a kind in the home ethnology. The spell belongs to that sort of ritual text that might be characterized by a vivid and most active speech with its fully evident magical strength. Spell as a genre of folklore refers to peculiar items owing to its archaic nature as well as to utilitarian functionalism, especially verbal destination, unity of sacral and profane articulation. The world-view ground of spell has been always heterogeneous as that originated and developed through the ages with fixing so prime of human world-consciousness as historically later (Christian) epistemological and axiological picture of the reality. In the paper the bee-keepers’ spell has been considered because of its religious and magical contents that has quite significant spread so in everyday bee-keeping practice (occasional aspect), as in the contents of yearly religious festivals (the calendar one). The aim of bee-keepers’ spell has been getting a concrete practical result, i.e. successful functioning of apiary.Item Kletvata vo makedonskata tradicionalna kultura(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Petreska, VesnaCurses are spoken formulas that express a desire to happen something bad in the future to someone or something, with the assurance that it will capture. This conviction or belief is based on faith in the magical power of the word. In the folk life curses are being made when the most important values in the community are injured. Therefore, curses are discussed in relation to the values that are maintained in a given community, and their violation determines sin, and depending on the committed sin and weights required curses or punishments. Looking from this social perspective, they represent a measure of values in the society that occurres as an indication of distortion of values, whether those who suggest deteriorated values occupy a high or low social status in the community or family. The curse is correcting the distortion, i.e. some satisfying justice, out exclusively on force majeure, and indefinitely. In this regard it emphasizes that the most important values in traditional Macedonian culture were life itself, created progeny, and their family, property and honor. Most evidence of the belief in the power of the curse by folk stories is the event of an accident either cursed person or his family. Therefore, curses also point another very important value, which is highly appreciated – the natural course of human life, birth-marriage-death, that value in ritual practices tend to emphasize or re-establish if it is disturbed, and curses she tries to unravel.Item O ličnim imenima mitoloških bića u nekim slovenskim kletvama i frazeologiji(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Radenković, LjubinkoThe topic of the paper is the interpretation of the motivation for the personal names of certain mythological beings in curses and phrases of Slavic peoples. Curses, as well as certain phraseologisms, can preserve the names long-forgotten in the mythical and religious systems. However, due to their lapidarity and lack of ritual context, these names create the opportunity for different interpretations. The paper analyzes the meanings of names, with a mythological connotation: Maren, Ivan/Jovan, Andjelija, Jana/Janja, and Vid/Vidok.Item Czary nad kołyską. Magia słowa w kołysance ludowej i lirycznym wierszu kołysankowym(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Stefaniak-Maślanka, BeataThe article focuses on some examples of magic in traditional folk lullabies and lyrical lullabies for children. The aforementioned types of genre should invoke child’s sleep by using special words or melody. On the other hand, traditional lullabies were used to protect children or bring them health and happiness. To accomplish this, the singer often called some „higher being” for help. In the article that kind of speech acts are considered as magical behavior. The second part of the text discusses use of language, character of content and some special procedures in lyrical lullabies, that can be called „magical”. This kind of magic is, however, created by lullaby authors, who practice it as an intentional method to „do things with words”.Item Magična moć opscenih reči u ženskoj reveni(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Stevanović, LadaThe theme of this paper is the magic power of the obscene words and jokes in traditional Serbian culture, on the example of women’s only festival revena in Banat. This ritual represents one day holiday that was celebrated in the beginning of spring, before the Eastern Fast. During revena women gathered for a celebration during which their behavior was completely different than usual, transgressing all the strict norms that prevailed in everyday reality of patriarchal society. Except for the excessive drinking and eating, women expressed their sexuality freely and they spoke about it in the most obscene way. Apart from the verbal part, the ritual of revena had also its performative side. Thus women were proving their female sex by raising the skirt (in the Kumane village), and this act functioned as some kind of pass to enter the revena. During the holiday, some women were dressed up as men in order to fulfill the necessary male roles for the sexual games, because no man (except for the musician) was allowed to be present on this holiday. The analysis in this paper, devoted above all to the magic power of the obscene language in the traditional culture, is inscribed into the Bakhtin’s theory of carnival. It is applied here not only to the carnivalesque behavior, but also to the concrete verbal obscene content. These obscenities are inseparable from laughter, so the magic power of laughter (as defined by Veselin Čajkanović) is also analyzed in this paper, and, apart from appearing in revena, it represented important part of the funeral ritual.Item Маgijata na slovoto i mylčanieto v obreda – formuli i funkcii(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Kolarska, IrinaBeliefs and perceptions of word are based on existing mythological layer of culture that has specific mechanisms and functions. This mythological context of word determines its acceptance as a magical tool that has a certain force of impact. The power of speech is invisible, but exactly by the word, the individual and the community identify themselves and provide a link between past, present and future. One of the most significant events of word (or speech) is connected with its use in ritual. The reason of this is that the importance is attached to the ritual and to the consequences of its performing. Ritual word has an impact on society, and nature and the individual by verbal formulas that contribute to its realization. Depending on the ritual, word can both perform different functions and act as a specific magical tool.Item Edin star bylgarski obred i magičeskata sila na dumite(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Kitanova, MarijaThe ritual „Gramada” is a typical tradition of the Bulgarian ethnic territories that appeared between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. It represents a symbolic way of „escorting” (a sort of symbolic funeral) of a dead man, who committed an act unacceptable for the community, upon the world of the dead. The „Gramada” ceremony is observed as piling up some stones on a sacral place so they can form (create) a barrier between the sinner and the righteous. During the ritual, symbolic words and acts are performed as a verbal and nonverbal act of magic. It reveals the belief of the traditional Bulgarian people in the magical power of words.Item „Instruments of the Old Faith”: Magical Words in Three Medieval South Slavic Healing Rites for Snakebite(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Kier, Andrew JamesThe line between Orthodox Christianity and pagan/folk customs and beliefs in the fifteenth century Slavia Orthodoxa was not precisely drawn. The population called upon spiritual forces of all kinds, to heal illnesses and injuries. Though the official position of the Orthodox Christian Church was to condemn and suppress these pre-Christian beliefs, certain elements such as magical words were included in Church-sanctioned texts. The fifteenth-century South Slavic trebnik (Hilandar HM.SMS.378) is one example of such a text. In addition to its canonical material, it contains a healing rite for a snakebite, which blends Orthodox Christian elements and pre-Christian ones, utilizing magical words. In this article, I examine Hilandar HM.SMS.378 – the magical words, the symbolism, and the cultural background – and compare it with two similar rites from a medieval South Slavic lječebnik (‘book of healing’) transcribed by V. Jagić in 1878. I also discuss the possibility that the three rites share a common origin.Item Wokół pierwszej polskiej systematyki zamówień. O zapomnianej propozycji Józefa Obrębskiego(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Engelking, AnnaThe author discusses the first Polish systematics of magic spells against illness, which was proposed by Józef Obrębski in a brochure Index for „Treating the Polish people” by Henryk Biegeleisen in 1931. Obrębski introduced a division of spells into 9 groups, separated on the basis of their content, form and function. It was not an autonomous development. It have been created for the needs of someone else’s work and on the margin of a broader classification of material in the field of folk medicine as a whole. However, the proposal of Obrębski can be regarded as a serious outline covering all material concerning the systematics of spells against illness. In the following parts of the article the author sets the discussed work in a due context, locating it in the history of Polish research on the genre of spells. She recalls the first nineteenth-century works and analyses a possible impact of the Obrębski’s systematics on the subsequent approaches to the subject.Item Vuk u folkloru Hrvata(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Dragić, MarkoThe paper focuses on the significant role of wolf in the Croatian folklore that has been confirmed by a series of analyses over the thirty contemporary original field records. The socalled wolf processions were still performed in many places of the country just before the Homeland War in 1991. Often described in a word vukavarski, the processions were always initiated by an act of killing the wolf since the animal was traditionally assumed as a symbol of evil and subsequently as a cause of severe damage. In order to celebrate such an act, the wolf killer, accompanied by a small group of hunters, had to march through the village. The group was obliged to sing or recite spells, derived from an apotropaic rite, in front of the country houses. As for the hosts, they were satisfied to receive the procession (such a satisfaction was usually expressed by different rewards) since all the neighbourhood had got rid off another dangerous animal.Item Svadbeni kod u basmama(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Vukmanović, AnaIncantations use the wedding code in order to fulfill the magical function which faces a cure or a protection, demanded by certain people. Thus the wedding code applied to the incantation turns out to be different from the wedding song itself. The phenomena of anti-speach (insults directed to the bride or to the wedding guests) and of inverse reality of the sacred moment in the incantations become the powerful means against diseases and evil spirits. While modulating the wedding ritual objects (wedding shirt, wreath, veil, flag), or ritual actions (giving gifts, repulsing the wedding guests, taking the bride away from her parents’ house), these objects and acts gain a secondary, magical function that makes diseases and evil spirits drive away. The wedding songs and the incantations share the same model of space in which forest and water introduce themselves as the strong boundaries between two worlds: of the living and of the dead. While in the first case the boundaries are porous, allowing an interpenetration of both the worlds, in the second one they remain closed off. The above mentioned genres also share some motifs – of a fast growing girl, hospitality (as well as of an uninvited guest) and magical counting. Furthermore, the article proves that various functions determine essentially different meanings of motifs, ritual actions and eventually characters which appear in these folklore genres.Item Magia słowa i magia milczenia w polskiej bajce ludowej(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Wróblewska, ViolettaThe article’s main subject refers to some magical aspects of the literary communication which might be observed in the selected examples of Polish fairy tale, composed in the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth one. The crucial issue of the article concerns a certain relationship between the magic words’ and the silence’s forms and the folk world outlook which reveals itself as a realm, constituted on a structure of opposition. Moreover, in the paper one may also encounter with a characteristics of the functions of spells, whispers and scenes of silence that appear in the folk tales.Item Modelativni potencijal kletve u usmenoj epici(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2013-02-25) Detelić, Mirjana; Delić, LidijaThis paper offers an analysis of (prevalently feminine) curses which come to being within the text of the epic songs. This specific form of cursing is particularly pointed in the curses by mother’s milk. Both in tradition and in the epics, these curses are equal to taboo, which means that nobody dares disobey them: such is the deep belief in their efficiency. Because there is no discrimination in the epics about who can or cannot make a curse (everybody can: narrator/singer, protagonists, antagonists, heroes and their foes, messengers, mothers, wives, godmothers, sisters, brothers, fairies, forests, etc.), focusing on the parental and lovers’ curse is necessary for the sake of congruence. This will help in spotting the interactive patterns in the structure of epic songs more accurately. The analysis is done on the corpus of approximately 1500 epic songs described at the end of this paper.Item Priče iz folklorne tradicije poluotoka Pelješca(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Tomelić Ćurlin, Marijana; Ćurković, DijanaThe paper presents a research of Croatian folklore tradition of the central part of the Pelješac peninsula included various aspects of traditional culture: from legends, beliefs and customs to poems, stories, adverbs, etc. A special regard was given to the beliefs in the supernatural forces. The main purpose of the paper is to show that folklore tradition is not a relic of the past, but rather a natural part of life in this community.Item Katehorija nyžčoj mifolohiji v systemi svitohladnyx ujavleń karpatśkix ukrajinciv(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Naugolnyk, Danuta‘Lesser mythology’ played an important role in the worldview notions of the Carpathian Ukrainians (Hutsuls, Boykos and Lemkos) during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It combines notions about various demonic figures, which may be divided into three types: figures of unearthly origin; transformed human souls; people in possession of secret knowledge and supernatural qualities. The terms used to define the representatives of lesser mythology varied from region to region. A range of euphemisms was also used. The coexistence between the living and the undead gave rise to many taboos relating to magic.Item Mifologičeskije personaži kulturnogo prostranstva v severnorusskom i norvežskom folklore (tipologičeskije aspekty)(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Drannikova, NataliaMythological characters of the cultural space in the folklore of the Russian North and Norway (typological aspects) is a comparative analysis of spirits of house that exist in the cultures of both countries. For comparison, we examined different names, habitat, status and functions of spirits at home. For the first time in the scientific revolution a lot of original folk material is introduced.Item Nad „Peklom med vodami” do „Mohokosa”, „Železne gore” i „Per(n)jaka”(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Bajuk, LidijaI conducted my own ethnographic field research in 1998, 2004 and 2007. Further field research, from 2010 to 2012, under the title ‘Folk Piety and the Transmission of Ethnoheritage in Upper Meñimurje’, was part of Tomo Vinšćak’s academic project Sacral Interpretation of Landscape, organized by the Matapur Association and the Ethnological and Anthropological Department of the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. The analysis and comparison of the collected materials has contributed to research into the fascinating and still vibrant – though under-researched – survival strategies of pre-Christian and Christian worldviews in the western and north-western parts of the northernmost districts of Croatia.