Гарванът и враната в представите на българи и румънци
The Raven and the Crow in the Conceptions of Bulgarians and Romanians

Summary/Abstract: The article dwells on the Bulgarians' and Romanians' conceptions of the raven and the crow. Linguistic data, folklore, beliefs associated with various prophesies, and a great number of the ritual practices come to show that the two birds are rarely differentiated, regardless of the fact that even in their outer appearance (size, colour of feathers, beaks, legs) the raven and the crow differ. Their common features - the black colour and the unpleasant crowing - seem to have been invari¬ably provoking negative emotions and have thereby lastingly impressed the human imagination. That is why, while setting them apart from the rest of the birds, it has assigned them the role of macabre harbingers, related to death and misfortune. Their common avian semantics of inhabitants of the skies, of creators of the uni¬verse and of cultural heroes has by and large waned today. The only trait by which the raven and the crow are definitely told apart is their nutrirional regimen. It associates each one of these birds individually with different human activities, and this makes them favourite characters in various folklore genres, or involves them in specific ritual actions. The relationship of the crow with farming determines its major place in the labour rites and rituals, while the raven's preying makes it a favourite character in epic poetry describing battles, blood and death. These nuances in the images of the macabre black birds most often require their precise identification. The examples, quoted in this text, make possible precisely such a differentiation of the raven and the crow as two different characters in the conceptions of the people.

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