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The conception has been adopted in scientific literature that traditional beliefs, as a part of the people's world view, belong to the past. This article aims to show that some of the traditional beliefs are alive, others are getting adapted to the new conditions, while still others are being created in our time, too. The socio-economic and spiritual crisis in the country-and its impact on the people's mental make-up provide a fertile soil for their updating today. The source of information used are the results of an enquiry, made by the author, along with materials from the mass media, providing information about the functioning of the beliefs in various circles and among different people in Bulgaria, in the Balkans and in the world.
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The specific subject of the article is to follow the evolution of the ideas about magic as an evil on the basis of the traditional law punishments of witches from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The question is raised about the mechanism, by which the popular punishment and the ideas of punishment of witches influence the individual and collective psyche, the overall life of society. The author comes to the conclusion that owing to the specific historical development of Bulgarian society, unlike the Western-European, the initiative for the punishment of witchcraft comes from the community and is executed without the direct interference of the state and the church. What is more, the trial and punishment of the witches does not aim to destroy tradition, but in reality reaffirms it.
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ETHNOGRAPHIC MATERIALS
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The study follows the folk beliefs and bans associated with bathing and house-cleaning widespread among the Bulgarians in the 19th and mid-20th century. They come to show that if for the man of today bathing has a hygienic purpose, for the traditional Bulgarian it was above all a ritual practice. By it he warded off evil forces and treated illnesses. And since, according to the folk conception, during treatment one is on the borderline between life and death, what is at hand is a system of bans on bathing and head washing in specific days of the week and periods of the annual calendar cycle, which are dangerous for man. Other factors also contribute to the absence of systematic habits. Among them were the overoccupation of the rural population; cohabitation of people from various generations in small houses; the absence of water and enough money; shyness of the nakedness of the human body, characteristic of the peoples of the Mediterranean region. The factors, contibuting to the change of attitudes regarding personal hygiene during the first half of the 20th century have also been outlined.
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The article makes an analysis of the customary regulative practice, followed during the early half of the 20th century in the central part of the Balkan Range. According to it, at the wedding a plot of land is given as a ransom ( kind of compensation), should the bride prove not to be a virgin. This plot of land is given by the bride's father to his son-in-law, not to drive away his daughter and to keep her in his home. An attempt has been made to position that "ransom" amidst the other forms of the traditional exchange of gifts at the wedding. It has been emphasised that the Dourkina niva is not part either of the gifts, which the bride traditionally brings into her new home at the wedding - the troussau, or of the dowry in terms of real estate, which appeared at the end of the 19th century under the influence of modern legislation, or the miraz - the share which the daughter inherits from her father. That plot of land belongs to her husband. The Dourkina niva, as a compensation for the missing virginity of the bride, has been considered to be a development of the traditional requirement for virginity at marriage among the Slav and Balkan peoples and the archaic ideas and beliefs associated with it. In the traditional marital exchange among the patrilinear families among the Bulgarians, the bride's family receives an incomplete compensation {urgaluk) from the family of the bridegroom, should the bride's body be impaired in some way (if she is lame, blind, if she is not a virgin). When the marital exhanges are among patrilinear families, the Dourkina niva is impossible as a compensation; according to traditional Bulgarian law, the woman does not possess any land and real estate. That is why in the article it has been indicated that the appearance of the Dourkina niva is a sign of change in the traditional social structure of the Bulgarian village. Giving land as a compensation in cases of the bride's lost virginity is possible in case the individual families dominate that social structure. It is only in such a social medium that the receiver of the ransom from the father of the bride is the bridegroom in personal. The practice analysed is a late development in Bulgarian culture (late 19th century) and is a sign of the transformation of the social relations in the Bulgarian village along the lines of modernisation.
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The article dwells on the traditional holidays and customs of the Bulgarian Muslims in a region, almost unknown to Bulgarian ethnology: Golo Burdo in Eastern Albania. In that part of the Balkan Peninsula, the Bulgarian ethnos appeared during the Early Middle Ages - late 7th and early 8th century. In the centres of population of Golo Burdo, lslamisation particularly intensified during the 1 8th century, and continued throughout the entire 19th century. At the end of the 20th century, Bulgarian Christians are living in just three villages. According to informal statistics of the 1990s, 17 400 Muslim Bulgarians live in Golo Burdo. Subject to investigation are the traditional holidays of Letnik, celebrated on March 14, the feast days of St George, of Jeremiah and the classical Muslim holidays - Ramazan- bairam and Kurban-bairam. The first three holidays belong to what has been referred to as the agrarian cycle, which is similar to the one of the surrounding Christian population. It is precisely herein that the pre-Islamic layer stands out in the culture of the Bulgarian Muslims from Golo Burdo, who fell under the influence of Islam comparatively late. The practice whereby the holidays of the agrarian cycle are celebrated according to the Julian Calendar has been preserved as it is characteristic also of the other communities of Bulgarian Muslims. The Letnik holiday has been studied in detail, for it stands out as a typical holiday of the beginning, associated with warming up and the start of farm work. The traditional holidays and customs of the Bulgarian Muslims from Golo Burdo come to show their belonging to the western part of the Bulgarian diaspora in the Balkans, despite the fact that similar elements can be traced in the customs of ethnographic groups from other Bulgarian regions, and particularly from the Rhodopes.
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BOOK REVIEWS AND COMMENTS
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The article presents some of the major works which have marked the evolution of the symbolic ethnology in France during the eighties and the beginning of the nineties. The author outlines the new approaches to the cult of saints, to "magic" and "sorcery", and to human body, as highly symptomatic of the new trends in French ethnology.
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