„În săbii să ne tăiem ori în luptă să ne luptăm?” Despre o misterioasă formulă itinerantă
Shall We Fight with Swords or Shall We Wrestle? On a Mysterious Itinerant Formula

Summary/Abstract: The article approaches a median formula well-known in folk-tales, in which the hero is asked, by his adversary, about how he prefers to fight him: in a wrestling match or in a sword-fight. The most interesting aspect of this problem is that the formula, which occurs in heroic folktales, appears to be known only in Irish, Romanian, Hungarian, Eastern-Slavic, Caucasian and Central Asiatic folktales. The article analyses possible ways of the dissemination of the formula and its relation to heroic folktales. It also approaches the Irish variants, which are extremely interesting because of the distance that separates Ireland from the other areas, in which the formula occurs.

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