Митология и символика на народните развлечения: люлките в традиционната култура на славяните
Mythology and Symbolism in Traditional Amusements. Swings in the Traditional Culture of the Slavs

Summary/Abstract: Judging by ethnografic descriptions, among the Slavs the swings had the significance of a ritualised way of spending the leisure time. They had been particularly popular in the Balkans: among Bulgarians, Macedonians and Serbs, as well as among the Eastern Slavs, but have been almost unknown to the Western Slavdom. On the basis of an ample comparative material, the generalisation can be made that swinging in swings as a definite ritualised action has a polyfunctional and poly¬semantic character. It has been interpreted in view of the opposition of dynamics and statics, common to traditional culture, which has been playacted in a great diversity of ways in the rituals of the springtime period. On the other hand, the instant of a kind of a passage can be stressed in the traditional interpretation of swinging: seated on a swing, a man is detached from the earth, in a way hanging in the air, taken out of the customary social "context". It is not accidental that same situation has been consistently ascribed to the mythological beings, as well. On a symbolic plane, swing¬ing creates the ideal medium for "isolation", where by the inner transformation of the personality is possible both socially (maturation, marriage), and biologically (good health, salvation from disease).

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