Russian Folklore Ch. 1a-l

Emergence

Beings slowly come to earth and become more human the closer they got

Virgin Mary

Birth and death celebrated in later summer, early Fall

Y-DNA

DNA passed on only from father to son

Pisanki

East Slavic Easter eggs

Stribog

East Slavic god of wind and also musical instruments

Groundhog Day

German, midpoint between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox

Epiphany

Jan. 6, day ended the winter holidays that began with Christmas

Navi Day

March, veneration of the dead

Ivan Kupala Day

Midsummer festival; when the fern was thought to bloom; round dances around bonfires; gather wild herbs; collect morning dew

St. Basil's Day

New Year's Eve

Tengri

Powerful male sky god usually worshipped by Turks and Mongols

Father Frost

Russian Santa Claus; Morozko

Mokosh

Russian deity equivalent to Greek Gaea; associated with Friday

Rusalka

Russian female water spirit; associated with drowned girls or unbaptized children; tickled and drowned men to death; symbolizes spring water

Yuri Berezkin

Russian scholar studies the historical origins of folk motifs across the world; made the world database of folk motifs; came up with the 'tripartition' theory of Indo-European culture

Leshy

Russian spirit compared to the West European poltergeist; forest spirit; caused travelers in the woods to lose their way

Perun

Slavic god of thunder and lightning; patron god of warriors

Sacred Myth

actively believed by a community

Kozuli

animal cookies baked as a fertility symbol

Moveable Feast

any holiday timed to Easter, which moved around from year to year

Claude Levy-Strauss

argued that myth and folklore stemmed from basic features of the human psyche

Chernobog

associated with evil, darkness and the underworld; possible nickname of Volos

Golubinaya Book

authentic Medieval text with information about Slavic paganism

Cultural Literacy

basic shared knowledge about the culture of a society

Rusalka Week

bathing outdoors was banned

Dead Water

binds wounds on a dead person

Raven

brings dead and living water

Living Water

brings dead back to life

Earth Diver

brought mud from the primordial ocean to create the world

Greeting of Spring

celebrated mainly by kids

Dough Lark Birds

ceremonial food made in March to usher in the fertility of spring

Charles Perrault

collected French fairy tales

Alexander Afanasyev

collected Russian fairy tales

Fall

connected most closely to the Virgin Mary (Mother Moist Earth)

Cosmic Egg

contains chaos and is hatched/divided into opposites

Ante Aarne and Stith Thompson

created the first comprehensive folktale index

Ex Nihilo

creation from nothing by God

Bear

cute and clumsy but also strong and brave; might be connected with ancient hunter-gatherer totemistic beliefs

Summer Solstice

day of the year that has the greatest amount of sunlit hours in the Northern Hemisphere

Lelya and Polel

deities of marital happiness

Rod and Rozhanitsy

deities some ancestor cults associated with

Chort

devil; puny and easily deceived

Kutya

dish of whole grain and nuts only served during the Winter holidays

Dismemberment

dismembering of primal being

Svarog

distant male sky god; patron of blacksmiths

Bliny (Pancakes)

eaten during Maslenitsa; symbolizes the sun

Yarilo

embodiment of spring sun and its effigy

Russian Maslenitsa

equivalent to Mardi Gras; sleigh riding; fist fights; snow forts

Kikimora

evil female spirit sometimes envisioned as the domovoi's wife

Saints Life Stories

folktales anonymously made up by Russian peasants

Tricksters

found in many cultures around the world e.g. tiger

Volos

god of medicine; associated with underwater and underground; patron god of merchants and tradesmen; bears

Dazhbog

god of wealth (and possibly also rain that brings bountiful crops)

Klad

guarded buried treasure

Poland

has the most similar folklore to the Russians

Cosmogonic

having to do with the creation of the world

Fabulate

hearsay but without an identified source person

~10,000 Years

how far back language relatedness can be traced in time

Slavic Myths

influenced folktales and epics

Mt-DNA

inherited by sons and daughters

Autosomal

kind of DNA that mixes together between father and mother and is not passed on directly from only one parent

Green Holidays

late spring fertility rites

Shamanism

long ago disappeared in Europe - even before the Slavs came into existence

Russia had more centralized belief system

major difference between American and Russian folklore

Domovoi

may be associated with Russian ancestor cults

Alkonost

mythical Russian bird that brought confusion and forgetfulness

Sirin

mythical Russian bird that brought good luck

Gamayun

mythical Russian bird with a beautiful voice and brought good news

Three

number of major folkloric and belief system phases

Dividing Primal Unity

of Earth and sky

Goddess Hypothesis

one thing that Lithuanian scholar Marija Gimbutas is known for

Etiological

origin of things in the real world e.g. Persephone and Hades

Folklore

people-knowledge

Millers

profession often distrusted by Russian peasants as likely being in league with unclean forces

Lado and Lada

protected love and marriage

Carl Jung

psychologist that developed the ideas that later formed the bases of the Myers-Briggs personality test; famous for describing the universal structure of the fairy tale

Exogamy

rule that requires marrying outside your group

Russian Bath Houses

scene of important rituals, inhabited by its own spirit

Birch Twigs and Pussy Willow

special significance as fertility symbols for the Russian peasant

Ritual

specific action or set of actions that affirms belief; came before myths

Memorate

supposedly happened to an eye witness

Kolovrat

swastika-like wheel of life; water and sun fertility symbol

Kolyada

symbolized winter or the old year that was passing away

Tall Tales

tale among European settlers common in the American West

North and Inner Asia

the main ancestral parent of Slavic and other Indo-European folklores

Swedish Vikings

thought to have founded the first unified East Slavic state (Rus)

Ovinnik

threshing barn was scene of pagan rituals

Reincarnation

trait of Hindu culture cited as a rare survival into modern times of a key feature of ancient Indo-European culture

Powerful Male Sky God

trait shared by most North Asian and Indo-European folklores

Eve's

transitions opened the door to the 'other world'

Equinox

two days a year when there is exactly the same number of hours of daylight and darkness

Myths

unknown author; explains origins; may or may not reflect events known to be historically true; involves deities or supernatural

Semik

unmarried girls meet for a fertility ceremony (usually in the woods)

Trinity

unmarried sex

Upyr

vampire; south slavic

Radunitsa

veneration of the dead

Volkolak

werewolf

Simargl

winged messenger god who traveled between heaven and earth; seems clearly borrowed or at least influenced by steppe Iranian (Scythian) culture

Polytheism

worship of many gods

James Frazer

wrote "The Golden Bough"; identified two types of magic