SLFK 211, Thursday, September 19, 2002
Last lecture mentioned about Haney and fieldwork
Should have told them that they too can do fieldwork
Alexis and Hsian-Ru
They went with the Minyonoks out of Moscow
Field expeditions out of St. Petersburg also possible
I told a story of female initiation which is the folktale usually called The Doll
A young girl comes of age
She gets the knowledge that she will need to functions as a woman
And she finds a husband and marries
The way she gets the necessary knowledge is through a subterranean journey
Bettelheim would argue that children want to stay at home but the family circumstances, namely the threat of incest, force her out.
Subterranean journey has the elements of death (internment in the ground) and
Rebirth (emerging from the realm of the Baba Iaga) that are typical of initiations
A great many folktales tell about some sort of journey into an "other" world, whether for a female or for a male
Perhaps at some point there was a practice of exposure of adolescents to prepare them for adulthood.
We don't know. We can only guess on the basis of tales and of practices in other cultures
We do have tales that reflect things that are done to adolescents quite closely, like The Vampire
If courtship practices that died out about 50 years ago can become the subject matter of a folktale, then more ancient practices could have become the subject matter of folktale a while back
Courtship practices, as in The Vampire, are still remember
Exposure of adolescents, as in folktales about Baba Iaga are not
But does not mean that they did not exist at some point
And that all we have left of them is an exaggerated version in tales
There is a theory propounded by Vladimir Propp that all magic tales have to do with initiation in some way
Animal tales are tales for small children
Magic tales are for adolescents
Everyday tales for adults
So supposition is that what were stories ABOUT initiation rites become tales as the rites are forgotten
Or stories told as part of initiation rites continue even as the rites themselves disappear
Theory that Baba Iaga is a remnant of an ancient religion when there were female goddesses rather than male gods
Remnants are the statues that are archeological and ancient relics
And things like the embroideries with female figurines
And the figures of Baba Iaga and the rusalka
Where the Baba is supposed to be the old and scary form of the goddess and the
Rusalka is supposed to be the young and attractive form
Please note that the Baba is not so bad after all
She may seem scary and repulsive
But she gives knowledge and not just in the story I told
Vasilisa and the magic items of the skulls that set things right in the daughter/step daughter relationship
She does seem to be god-like in that she fills the entire house, even though it may be a small house
She controls what seems to be the cycle of the sun, as in the horses of morning, noon and night
She seems to be a remnant of some sort of earth goddess
And even during the Soviet period, the LAND, the country, was represented by female figures &endash; the Batkivshchyna Maty and the figure in Volgograd
Maybe the rusalka is a figure based on a goddess of birth and death
And Baba Iaga is based on a goddess associated with the land and the soil
Who confers knowledge of the land and the soil onto young people at adolescence
So, you have an ancient belief system which is gone
But remnants in tales
And in embroideries, other objects
Many of these are for kids and this is not a surprise
Devaluation of a religious system once a new one comes in means that it SINKS from high culture to kid culture
As in the plague charm Ring Around the Rosie
Farmer in the Dell and Old MacDonald could be crop charms which are now children's songs/games
When a religion is devalued and supplanted by a new one, what was considered good does NOT become neutral; it becomes negative
So Baba Iaga is pictured as bad
And even the attractive rusalka is bad and destructive and kills people
As there was likely at some point a cult of goddesses and what we have left are the rusalka and the Baba Iaga
So horses were considered sacrificial animals who could connect our world with the world of the spirits
Horses are used to represent time in The Doll story
Magic horses appear in the Firebird
Horses appear in embroidery, where the 8-legged horse or the winged horse was the special horse who journeyed not just on this world, but could also go to the world of the spirits
In this role, horses blend with birds, esp. giant birds who can journey from one world to the next
You may not have horse sacrifices any more as a way to access the spirits and the other world, but you sure do have bird sacrifices
And you use birds exactly to open up the other world and to foretell the future
Haney mentions bears and horses and I will do bear in a minute
But note that where you don't have magic horses, you might well have a magic wolf, as in Firebird
And a wolf is a shamanic animal
As the eight-legged horse is an animal in shamanic belief that you could use to ride to the world of the spirits, so the wolf is what a person could turn into to journey to the world of the spirits on his or her own power
In Firebird, the wolf has special knowledge
And, as it turns out, is a transformed person
There are stories of wolves attacking wedding parties and of the couple being killed and the members of the party being transformed into wolves
There is a belief that the bear is a totemic animal, meaning an ancestor of human beings
And this is reflected in the fact that, in tales
Bears talk to people as equals
Bears try to marry young women, and sometimes succeed
This is animal husband par excellence
And yields bear's son &endash; an especially great hero
Some people want to use folktales to find out what Russian myths were
This is awfully hard and not too reliable
But you CAN look at tales to find out what matters at any given time
Spoons in Baba Yaga and the brave youth
Some of you already knew and that food and the mouth and things that go in the mouth, like spoons
Curses are cast through the mouth and through food
Make a stranger eat to make sure he or she is safe
Any crisis articulated as a food problem
Please note that in Russian material, when you have various champions who help the hero, like a man who can see especially far, a man who can hear esp. well, you often have a man who can eat to excess and this is a test of strength, in a way
Almost any story you take, important mythic elements
Ivan the Cow's Son
Three identical boys born to the queen, a maid and a cow as a result of eating a magic fish
Fish and weddings
Bride rubbed with a fish and the fish fed to the groom to make him love her
Bride deflowered with a fish ??? Supposedly to make her fertile
The pike as a special shamanic animal
Along with the wolf and the eagle
Women and cows &endash; the cow as a second mother
Elena's interviews
One basis for this is milk
Cow gives milk to the baby like the mother, after the mother stops to breastfeed
Whoever gives milk becomes a mother
The rules of the wet nurse (in Russian, milk mother) &endash; discuss why this practice would be wide-spread
She is considered a second mother and the child has obligations to her like to a mother; she is invited to the wedding when the child gets married
This affects the whole family &endash; the children of the 2 families become siblings and refer to each other as such
Incest taboos among adults
Sucking the teats of a witch in tales