SLFK 211, Tuesday, September 17, 2002
Last lecture
A little bit about the relationship of tales across national boundaries and the Indo-European language family
The Aarne-Thompson Tale Type Index that allows us to deal with all of these tales and their relationships
Then on to Haney &endash; he wants you to take tales seriously and to get rid of old stereotypes that these are something told only by illiterate grannies to little children
Probably tries too hard
Perhaps it is because he has no field experience
Even Lesia and I are amazed at the extent to which tales survive
The situation in Lytviaky
Oral lore is supposed to die when electronic media like TV come in
Not so in Lytviaky
Folk DO NOT believe tales to be true; they tell you they don't by using the various removal formulas that = not here and not now
Example: 3X9 kingdoms away
But tales are certainly meaningful &endash; and to adults as well as kids
They are not a male genre
As meaningful to women as to men, to girls as to boys
And told by women as often as men
Rest of Haney is very good
Maybe he HAS TO try this hard to convince people to take folklore seriously
I certainly take it very seriously indeed
It is also equally true that I have run into lots of people who dismiss folklore
Everything else in Haney very good
He does a very good job of describing ritual, esp. for a description so succinct
He is also right about the mythic background of tales
We do not tell myths much these days, esp. perhaps in the religious context
And, if you take myth in its original meaning of great and serious, but beyond human, truth, myth fits religion just fine
Which is exactly Haney's ditheism point, that there are great and serious elements in tales. They may not be quite Christian elements, but great and serious nonetheless
Where myth is told, it is often told in the context of ritual
A ritual act is performed and a narrative of great import, explaining how things came to be as they are now, is told along with the ritual, or as part of the ritual
So Haney links tales to myth and to ritual
Thus what I told them about human sacrifice and remnants of same
In legends and in tales
There is also the idea of birth and rebirth connected to the stove
The stove is part of the house
Never exists separately, though we reconstructed it because it is so important
In the sense that it never exists separately, it is again womb-like
It takes up an enormous part of the house
The stove is associated with birth and, at least in Ukraine, women give birth near the stove
Looking through the window next to the stove to foretell the future of the child
When a child is ill, attempt to REBIRTH by putting in the stove
Perhaps what I told them about lullabies that sing the death of a child indicate an attempt to REBIRTH a sick infant
Association of bread with all ritual = all points of transition from one state to the next
The baby &endash; wiping the body with a crust of bread
Weddings &endash; welcoming the couple with bread
The wedding bread or korovai
Funerals &endash; bread on coffin
Kolivo or kanun
Bread given to the person who reads the Psalter over the deceased
As bread marks transitions, so attempting to "bake" a baby is an attempt to reform and make good and whole
Section on initiations, male and female
Female subsumed in wedding and male told in tales
Well, not quite
Tales do have both male and female initiation rite remnants
Old courtship practices &endash; the house at the edge of the village
Rented for vecherinki, vechornytsi, dosvitky
Reflected in the story of the Vampire
Tell at this point since I have kept leaving it out
Tell both halves and note the flower/girl in the second half
Link to the rushnyky assignment
I will tell a very long and full version of a tale that is probably a FEMALE initiation
The Doll
Mother dies and leaves ring to husband: marry her whom this ring fits
Leaves doll to daughter: feed doll and she will do what you want/need
Girl grows up and father decides to marry her (ring fits)
She escapes with the help of her doll
Underground passage to the realm of Baba Iaga
Iaga is huge &endash; fills up whole house
Baba Iaga has her keep house and set three tasks
Plow the field and raise a crop in one day
Harvest and make bread
Weave and embroider a towel in one day
Doll does all of the tasks
Sometimes the tasks really do take as long as the tasks normally would; just seems like one day &endash; so she is basically with Baba Iaga one year (the growing season or spring and summer, the harvest season or fall, and the season of quiet when women are supposed to work on cloth items)
Sometimes the Iaga commands the horsemen of morning, noon, and night
The girl is allowed to ask various questions which give her the types of knowledge she will need as an adult in that society, but when she asks about the horsemen, she is told that she is asking too much and had better leave
She either gets a magic loom from Baba Iaga or all she has is the knowledge that she gained from living there
She finds shelter in the home of an old woman
Makes beautiful cloth item and tells old woman to sell it
It is so fine that it is bought by the king/prince
Who wants to know where the old woman got it
Meets girl and falls in love; wants to marry
She says she has to see father first
Goes to location of old home &endash; it is now a desolate area
Realizes how much time has really passed, also that she is now rid of the threat of dad
Marries and lives happily ever after
Incestual marriage &endash; either remnant of deflowering of bride by older male
Own father or father of groom
Or starosta, as on my tapes
Or special marriage reserved for isolated members of the group which will be ritual marriage, for crop fertility and the like, rather than for children
Possible remnants of it in stories like the one I just told
And in songs about brother/sister marriage
Separated at birth
Do not realize they are brother and sister when they marry
Figure out only later
Doll &endash; talisman
Widely used, esp. faceless doll
Nesting dolls and fertility
Old votive objects in icon corner
Barbie parallels
Spitting and the unclean force
Magic circle
Subterranean journey
Either this or journey to a forest
Modeled on red death
Land of the dead &endash; perhaps the one old person who continues to live becomes the one who initiates young people
Perhaps just the death and rebirth motif common to all life cycle rites of passage
Perhaps experience of the land of the dead to make someone mature
The house of Baba Iaga and red death
Nature of tests/tasks of Baba Iaga
Importance of crops as well as knowledge that a young Russian or Ukrainian adult needs
Importance of cloth
Time portrayed as old woman in Russian material; is often old man in the west
Baba Iaga flies on mortar and pestle &endash; herbal knowledge, used to cure
Girl uses all of this knowledge and experience to set up a good and proper life
Horse and bird
Means of getting to the other world, esp. for a man
Note that he has to feed the bird off of his own body
Conflated in material culture
Shamanic horse of extra legs
The hut in the forest and the witch
She is not really a witch &endash; totally different word for witch in Russian
And she MAY have been an elder with the ritual function of initiating the young
Some of the imagery associated with her is the imagery of death and of the ritual sacrifice of elders for the sake of crops
Initiation is often seen as a rebirth which requires "dying" to one's previous state to be "reborn" in the new state
Initiations in other cultures &endash; like walkabout
Fraternity and sorority initiations
Other initiation indicators &endash; that the girl stays with the old woman for a year
That she learns all the skills that a woman needs in traditional, agrarian Russian culture
That she marries at the end
Parallels in contemporary (or roughly contemporary &endash; ended 30 or 40 years ago)
The groups of young men and women
They use a house at the edge of the village
Usually owed by an old woman who needs the money, a widow
Girls do work that parallels the tests in the story I told &endash; certainly cloth work
They also cook for the young men
They will pay for "renting" the building by doing things like tending the old woman's crops the following year
Some exaggeration and embellishment and you get the story I told???
This may be going too far, but …
There is a theory that ALL folktales, not just Russian, more factual than we assume
Things like conflict with stepmothers
Many women DO die in childbirth; man will then remarry
Stepparents, even in the animal kingdom, DO have a tendency to get rid of stepchildren
If there is a situation of limited food, as there was in central Russia and in Europe, the tendency WOULD be to send the stepchildren into the forest
Idea of royalty &endash; marrying a prince
Couple is often metaphorically treated as royalty
Idea is that as royalty are taboo, so may the couple be taboo onto all except each other
In Russian and Ukrainian weddings, they actually use crowns to symbolize this
So, if the wedding ceremony itself is associated with royalty and the goal of being a proper adult in society is to be a married adult
Then, finding the proper mate is like finding one's prince or princess
Marrying animals, like the bear
These are seen as totemic animals, as human ancestors, and perhaps young women were once left out in the forest as "brides" for the bear
Daughter and Stepdaughter story
Lets take an initiation tale yet again
Remember I said vampire is both a legend and a tale
When it describes a fairly realistic courtship scene (except that it does have an unquiet dead man) and ends with the death of the girl (warning &endash; watch out for tall, dark , handsome strangers) then it is a legend
When it adds the part about the blossom growing out of the grave of the girl
The girl coming out of the blossom and marrying a prince, then it is a tale
Though blossoms very much related to girls
It is what they embroider on the ritual towels that they need for the wedding during their courtship parties
2nd half of story is SETTING RIGHT the courtship that went wrong in the first half
Right kind of courtship, to a prince (or someone who can wear the crown at a wedding) as opposed to a stranger
Folktales have positive endings and set things right
Might be used for psychological healing
As with the snake husband tale
Will come up in Bettelheim
In short Vampire could be a legend, a tale about something "real"
Turned into some thing good
Similarly, you could have had something real, or believed to be real at one point, like the ritual sacrifice of a girl to a bear and now you have various stories about girl in the forest either marrying a bear and having a fantastic baby (relic of the Bear's Son Myth)
Or escaping from the bear, etc.