E-mail: uwwalo@mail.ru
Tel.: +7 (495) 939-14-39
Lomonosovsky av., 27–4, 119991, Moscow, Russian Federation
Researcher, department of ethnology, Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov
Euhemerism is a scholarly trend, that provides an interpretation of mythic or folklore characters as poetic reflections of great history persons or alien ethnic groups, sometimes previous indigenous population of a given territory. According to the euhemeristic Druid theory in Victorian folklore studies the Druids, Celtic augurs, which got famous since mentions by historians of ancient Rome, stood as a prototype of folklore fairies. It was the first known precedent of using euhemerism as a method to reveal the origins of the mythic (demonic) creatures of British folklore. This theory itself was adopted from the French translation of the Prose Edda by P. Mallet. P. Mallet suggested that mythological dwarfs could be associated with a Finno-Ugric Sami people, who had contacts with old Scandinavians since the Viking Era. Trying to make his theory sound more British antiquarians replaced dwarfs with fairies and the Sami ethnic group with the Druids. Despite its popularity in the early 19th century, the argumentation of the Druid theory turned more and more absurd, and by the 1830s it was replaced by the original Mallet euhemeristic Sami theory. But the Sami theory was fared from its arguments, so the Druid theory kept on existing. R. Southey extended the application of the Druid theory by using Devonshire sources on Pixies, the newly discovered British folklore creatures, and Scottish material about Picts and Pechs. J. F. Campbell added to the Druid theory examples from Scottish fairy tales and legends of Grugach, as did W. Sikes from Welsh legends. For the last time the theory was revoked by A. Lang, and its existence came to end simultaneously with it of the euhemeristic method itself.
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