"Adzio". Przyjaciel kompozytorów, niestrudzony inspirator

Author(s): Ryszard Gabrys / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 3/2015

The text is a very personal reflection on the person of the great scientist, prof. Adolf Dygacz. The author presents a vivid reminiscence from the perspective of their long-term artistic and professional collaboration, and friendly relations with the Professor. The numerous examples of their joined artistic activities demonstrated in the text point out to a very close relationship and cordiality, and the author’s great respect for the talent of prof. Dygacz. A philosophical reflection on the fact of passing permeates the text.

"Ambroosius on ladna mees..." Ühest jõuluteemalisest külalaulust

Author(s): Anu Vissel / Language(s): Estonian / Issue: 12/1999

For the Estonians the word «Christmas carol» denotes an authorial song, primarily a children's song or a hymn. Christmas songs are extremely rare among the old alliterative songs (runosongs). It seems to be typical to the old pre-Christian winter equinoctial customs that they are not very closely associated with calendrical songs. Several Christmas songs might be found among the more recent rhymed folk songs, which describe some local Christmas party or some other events during the Christmas period. Usually, they are long cheerful narratives which mention nothing of the holiday's Christian origin. One of such songs is «Ambroosiuse laul» (The Song of Ambrose) from the vicinity of Torma. The song was created during the 1860s in Torma, Tartumaa region, and has gone through several stages: first a village song, then a popular song, and for the longest period a student song. The author of the song ingeniously hit the nail on the head using a family name that coincides with a name of the Italian bishop and saint, so, the song is about a generous and altruistic innkeeper called Ambrose. The song was inspired by an event that took place imminently before the Christmas. A tired soldier in rugs, who had just been released from a 25-year military service in the Tsarist Russia, had arrived at the stage of Torma. The innkeeper had given him shelter, food and clothes until the soldier went to search for his sister. The old soldier expressed his gratitude by washing all the inn floors on the morning of Christmas eve, and even brought a fine Christmas tree from the forest. In the evening, a party was held at the inn, where a local singer, violin player and comic Kristjan Kivi sang a song about it. The song describes the Christmas party as seen by the poor old soldier, who could take part of the party among the local crème thanks to the kindness of innkeeper. The song began to circulate in Estonia from the Christmas of the 1860s on. Soon the song was spread through oral renditions and songbooks all over Estonia (see map 1).The song retained its original melody only in its place of «birth» (note samples 1 and 2, audio sample 1), in further distribution it has been sung to various tunes and with different refrains from its original area (samples 4 and 5) and from other regions of Estonia (sample 7, audio sample 3), but is best known with the tune of a well-known German student song Krambambuli (Krambambuli, das ist der Titel...) (note samples 3 and 6. audio sample 2). Refrains were added to the song mostly in oral performing, while the printed versions, like the first text of the song published in 1878, were mostly without refrains (Table 1).

"Barbora umarła…", czyli o zabytkach folkloru hutniczego w archiwaliach Adolfa Dygacza

Author(s): Adam Okun / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 3/2015

The author presents the research of Professor Adolf Dygacz into the musical culture of glassworks workers. It primarily consists of the songs of foundry workers, their musical and content analysis, customs and vocabulary. The text comprises the description of glass musical instruments considered as a collection of glassworks products, and the examples of musical note manuscripts of Dygacz. The author denotes that up to now the foundry folklore has not lived to see its own popularization and scientific monographic study. The sources of the rich collections of the songs and customs of glassworks, numerous materials from field studies are still kept in the home archives of the Professor.

"Kõik saab alguse tekstis!" Kas pöörduda tagasi klassikalise kaanoni juurde?

Author(s): Rainer Wehse / Language(s): Estonian / Issue: 33/2006

I will discuss the situation of narrative and folk narrative research in the context of Germany and German-speaking cultural space against the background of the entire field of folkloristic until the paradigmatic change in the 1970s. I will analyse the gnoseological discourse accompanying folklore research. By focusing on the text and contextual analysis I will propose seven criteria that enable to interpret the two tendencies in contemporary folk narrative research. On the one hand I do support the need to look at contemporary narrative genres, whereas on the other hand there is certainly a danger of the traditional canon of narrative research being abandoned. Translated from the original article "The text is the thing!" Zurück zum Kanon? Which was published in German in Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde vol. 97 (2001), pp. 5-11.

"Kolm korda meie isa enne lugeda, siis..." Meieisapalve kasutamine loitsuna eesti rahvausundis

Author(s): Carolina Pihelgas / Language(s): Estonian / Issue: 01/2013

In Estonian vernacular religion the Lord’s Prayer has several divergent functions. The first historical records of using the Lord’s Prayer as a charm can be found in 17th-century witchcraft reports. According to M. J. Eisen’s folklore collection it is a universal charm that can be used in protective magic, healing procedures, erotic seduction and divination, and occasionally also for harming other people. The Lord’s Prayer may be repeated several times (usually thrice) and the order of the words or letters might be reversed to achieve a stronger effect on the supernatural. The Lord’s Prayer can be read as a separate text, but often it is intertextually combined with other charms. The process of incantation is usually accompanied by different ritual acts that might be homological (e.g. making a sign of the cross) or heterological (reading the spell over a liquid or food etc). Sometimes the time and place of incantation is also specified, and the mode of enunciation is precisely determined (reading in a low voice, without breath-taking etc). However, it is quite significant that the Lord’s Prayer does not hold a hegemonic position in the magical repertoire and it does not exclude non-Christian practices that were usually condemned by the church. As a charm, it supports and confirms other charms and ritual acts, amplifying their effect and serving as an additional guarantee of their expected success.

"Kui pidu korraldatakse, on järelikult seda kellelgi vaja." Vene vastlapühade tähistamisest Tallinnas

Author(s): Elo-Hanna Seljamaa / Language(s): Estonian / Issue: 08-09/2010

This article explores Russian Shrovetide or maslenitsa celebrations in contemporary Tallinn as means of giving Russian national culture in Estonia a tangible form and claiming, strengthening as well as representing a distinctively Russian ethnocultural identity. The article thus treats calendar customs as bodily techniques of incorporation that play a crucial role in creating and reproducing ethnic collectivity as a bodily community as well as an entity that can be put on display and remembered. Furthermore, maslenitsa celebrations in Estonia are discussed in the broader context of state integration policies, which aim at strengthening a homogeneous state identity in the public sphere, while fostering, at the same time, ethnocultural diversity in the private sphere. The analysis builds on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Tallinn, focusing on two empirical cases: maslenitsa festivities in a school that uses Russian as the language of instruction and a commercial maslenitsa party held on Tallinn Song Festival Grounds, the capital’s major festival venue.

"Kým nevesta povedala áno..." - Výstava o svadbách v minulosti

Author(s): Kornélia Jakubíková / Language(s): Slovak / Issue: 4/2005

"Naine libahundiks" (AT 409) eesti jutupärimuses

Author(s): Merili Metsvahi / Language(s): Estonian / Issue: 08-09/2010

The article discusses the folk tale type „The Girl in the Form of a Wolf”, which is popular in Estonian tradition, occurring both as a legend and a fairy tale. The plot is known in Estonian, Livonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Karelian, Russian, Byelorussian and Ukrainian tradition, but the number of variants written down in Estonia surpasses several times the number of variants recorded from elsewhere. The first recordings of the story are really early, in our context, as two different variants date back to the first quarter of the 19th century. The article describes the folk tale as told in Estonia and in some other countries, pointing out the religious elements detected in the text, questioning the folkloristic approach that contrasts two folklore genres, the fairy tale and the legend, and criticizing Hans-Jörg Uther for his undue reference, in his catalogue of international folktales, to certain variants as belonging to type 409 („The Girl in the Form of a Wolf”).

"Ne olvass, csak kenjed!"

Ráolvasások: Gyűjtemény a történeti forrásokból (1488–1850), B kötet Közreadja és a bevezető tanulmányokat írta Ilyefalvi Emese

Author(s): G. Péter Tóth / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3-4/2015

Ilyefalvi Emese: Ráolvasások. Gyűjtemény a történeti forrásokból (1488–1850) B kötet. Közreadja és a bevezető tanulmányokat írta Ilyefalvi Emese (A magyar folklór szövegvilága 2/B kötet) Balassi Kiadó, Budapest, 2014.344 oldal + 29 oldal színes melléklet Az A–B kötet együttes ára 8400 F

"Nem lehet elmondani, mennyi szép színű virág van, egyik szebb a másiknál". Sajátosságok a gyimesi népi növény- és növényzetismeretben

Author(s): Zsolt Molnár,Dániel Babai / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 01/2010

The study deals with one of the most important aspects of the reltionship between man and nature, i.e. (popular) botanical knowledge. Scientific concerns have mainly focused on the medicinal uses of plants, largely neglecting the peculiarities of popular knowledge about botanical species and traditional ecological worldviews. The authors conduct their research in these new directions, analyzing the popular botanical knowledge shared by the inhabitants of Hidegségpataka (Romanian: Valea Rece), a small villaga from the Gyimes (Ghimeş) mountains.

"Our Beer is Better Than Theirs": Sub-cultural Comics as a Joking Relationship with Identity

Author(s): Aimar Ventsel / Language(s): English / Issue: 46/2010

Many music-related subcultures have their own printed media known as fanzines. These journals often include comics, drawn by amateur artists who belong to the same subculture. In my article I will focus on the comics in German reggae and punk fanzines. I am going to demonstrate that besides entertainment and fun, these comics also entail a wide range of political, social and cultural messages as well as attempts to define the subculture’s identity. Punk/ skinhead-comics often discuss political issues, criticize certain features of punk culture (like local patriotism), but also raise issues such as commercialization. Reggae-fanzines focus very often on stressing certain cultural traits like the use of colloquial language, behaviour patterns and dress code which are considered essential to being part of that subculture. Considering the joking, the paper reveals that similarly to South African tribes, the humour of punk and reggae fanzines hides very serious social, political and cultural issues.

"Vanasõna ei ole varnast võtta"?

Author(s): Risto Järv / Language(s): Estonian / Issue: 10/1999

The article focuses on the use of proverbs in modern Estonian newspaper texts. The 231 proverbs found in the two largest Estonian newspapers indicate that most proverbs were used in the Politics, Reader's Letters and Culture columns of the newspapers. The term 'proverb' might be applied to familiar quotations, modern sayings as well as borrowed sayings. Proverbs are still used for justifying the user's attitude, sometimes also for jocular reasons. Although several proverbs found in the newspaper texts were 'searched' for a specific purpose, the majority of the proverbs appear to be found by "traditional» ways, i.e. spontaneously. The English version of the article is available in the electronic journal Folklore no. 10 / 1999; URL: http://haldjas.folklore.ee/folklore/vol10/toughjob.htm

"Võõras" usk ja verepatt

Author(s): Aleksandr Pantshenko / Language(s): Estonian / Issue: 26/2004

These notes are based on my studies of the folklore, rituals and ideology of two popular Russian religious movements in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: Khristovschina (`the Faith of Christ', also known as the Khlysty sect) and Scopchestvo (`the Castrates'). In 1733-1739 and 1745-1756, two commissions were convened in Moscow. Their task was to investigate the Quaker Heresy - this was the name given by the authorities to Khristovschina, which had spread widely in the Moscow and Middle Volga regions. While the first commission had limited itself mainly to flogging during interrogations and confrontations, the majority of confessions recorded by the second commission were obtained through dyba or `fire-burning'. Materials from this trial provide the first record of the motifs that came to be associated with the followers of Khristovschina for the next 150 years, namely, accusations of group sexual intercourse (svalnyi grekh) and the ritual sacrifice of infants. An analysis of these confessions provides evidence to suggest that the following legendary motifs of ritual murder were actually applied to Russian mystical sects: 1) while rejecting marriage, sect leaders encourage free sexual interrelations called `love' which take place after sect gatherings; 2) infants conceived as a result of `love' are intended for ritual sacrifice; 3) those infants intended for sacrifice are baptised according to special rites; 4) the baptised infant is slaughtered, its heart is cut out, and its blood collected; 5) the heart, dried and ground, is mixed with meal and baked as bread; the blood is mixed with water or kvass; and 6) this bread and water is then distributed during the gatherings as communion.

"Пея и ми гърлото дрънка": орнаментални явления във фолклорното пеене на Средна Западна България

Author(s): Lozanka Pejcheva / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 4/2007

This text focuses on some ornamental figures, characteristic mainly about the dialectic many-voiced folklore singing and the songs from Central Western Bulgaria. The specific ornamental phenomena, which appeal- in traditional many-voiced singing from the discussed region may be empirically perceived by hearing, but they may be also understood by established linguistic terms, concepts, phrases. The work presents the most widely used categories, which comprise the ornamental style, typical for the many-voiced singing from Central-Western Bulgaria. The Shopp musical ornamental style (Shopp - a peasant from Sofia Distiict - note by the translator) is indicated with words, which are used both in the circles of researchers and the carriers of the musical folkloric song tradition. Though they describe similar musical phenomena, the scientists and the singers express in different ways, but the ones do not exclude the others, they mutually determine each other, give proof and add to each other. The ways in which the bearers of the musical folkloristic tradition (the village women singers) and its researchers (the ethnomusicologists) discuss the ornamental phenomena, are summed up around several general moments, which structure the current knowledge about ornamental specifics in the singing practice in Central Western Bulgaria.

#Протестът: антологизиране, брандиране и институционализиране на протеста

Author(s): Milena Katsarska / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2016

The text suggests an analysis of the “culture of protest“ within the time frame of the “protest year of 2013“ in the cultural and social context of Bulgaria. The basis of the study – inscription (“thick description“) and specification (“diagnosis“) in the sense of Clifford Geerz (1971) – is a “microscopic“ social fact, namely the book Smilov, Daniel and Lea Vaysova (eds.). #Theprotest: Analyses and Positions in the Bulgarian press, the Summer of 2013. Sofia, “Iztok-Zapad“, 2013 (Смилов, Даниел и Леа Вайсова (съст.). #Протестът: анализи и позиции в българската преса, лято 2013, София, „Изток-Запад“, 2013). The publication which collects and (re)frames selected media stream within particular period of time, i.e. the book as an abstract collection of words/images (text) existing in a material form, is here understood as a social fact in the sense of Emile Durkheim. The adoption of such approach allows the comment to acquire specific outlines – the study of this „text-as-a-book“ neither brings to the fore the abstract dimensions (the text) of the book, which is usually the field of the literary critique and the text hermeneutics, nor focalizes exclusively the material dimensions, which is reserved for the history of the book and the analytical bibliography. The aim here is to describe and understand society and the social by examining and tracing the connections which exert an influence and exist between the simultaneous engagement of the abstract and the material side of this book as a social fact, as well as the social activities within it.

(E)migrating Legends and Sea Change

Author(s): John Shaw / Language(s): English / Issue: 37/2007

In northwestern Europe, the migration of legends has been a growingarea of study, exploring their history, development, and geographical/cultural distribution. The past two centuries have been a time of large-scale voluntary or forced migrations that have provided new opportunities for investigating how folklore, including legends, has survived and changed during mass population movements. Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, is foremost among the Scottish Gaelic diaspora communities, established in North America during the Highland Clearances, where oral storytelling traditions have been extensively recorded, and provides a unique opportunity for ethnologists to study survival and adaptation of various folklore genres through comparisons with those surviving in the Scottish Highlands from the early 19th century. This article will examine the kinds of legends that have travelled over the Atlantic; how they have adapted; legends that have sprung up in the new environment; and what distinctive new developments have appeared in post-migration tradition.

(KUMUK DESTANLARININ TEMELİNDE) TÜRK DESTANLARININ GELENEĞİ

Author(s): Tomay Ramazan Hasanoglu / Language(s): English / Issue: 29/2016

Kumuk epics has a rich base not only from the side of quantity, but also quality. Works on Kumuk epic creativity is distinguished by possibility of a wide range of clarification of functional character, typological character, and as a whole specificity of epics. Formulas, epic schemes, development of its tendency of the structure of epics are of crucial importance in order to follow development of Turkish epic creativity. Therefore, research on Turkish epic creativity in different ways seems as one of the significant problems of folk of Turkish people.

(Re)definisanje tradicije na primeru world music fenomena

Author(s): Marija Ajduk (dev. Ristivojevic) / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 1/2014

The paper problematizes the understanding of the concept of tradition in the context of the world music phenomenon. Marketed as a hybrid music genre, from the perspective of anthropological theory, the world music genre is a complex cultural phenomenon, the result of mixing global and local influences which are reflected not only in the creation of a specific sound, but through different perceptions of music itself (the audience, musicians, producers, creators of cultural policies etc.) By analyzing the Serbian world music scene as exemplified by the work of the World Music association of Serbia, as well as the Serbia World Music Festival in Takovo, I will attempt to determine the way in which the concept of world music is perceived in local narratives, whether it is experienced as a form of musical tradition and if so, what is signified and represented as tradition in this context.

(Български народни умотворения) Български песни: Гьергьев ден. Отъ С. Ж. Д-въ

Author(s): No Author Specified / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 23-24/1888

(Български народни умотворения) Прикаски, песни и баяния

Author(s): No Author Specified / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 25-26/1888