E-mail: irli-lusya@mail.ru
Tel.: +7 (812) 328-19-01
4, emb. Makarova, Saint Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation
Senior researcher, department of Russian Folklore, Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House),
Russian Academy of Sciences
An episode with “tury” the aurochs as a common beginning is connected, above all, with “bylina” epic songs about Vassiliy Ignat’yevich which weren’t recorded at western territories of the White Sea coast, so-called Western Pomor’e, i. e. Pomerania. Western Pomeranian texts about “Tury” the aurochs were traditionally interpreted in scholarly researches as a segregated introduction to the “bylina” named “Vasiliy Ignat’evich and Batyga”. The present paper deals with “Tury” versions, recorded at Western Pomerania during the 19th century by A. D. Grigor’ev, A. V. Markov and B. A. Bogoslovskiy, and in the end of the 20th century — by researchers of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. A comparison of these records with epic texts about Vasiliy Ignat’evich, popular in the Russian North, allows the author to affirm, that only in Western Pomerania the “Tury” didn’t appear as an introduction to another “bylina” specimen, but were performed as an independent plot. An episode with aurochs serves as just an introduction to the main action, that takes place after it, in the entire context of the “bylina” songs about Vasiliy Ignat’evcih. On the contrary, the Western Pomeranian “Tury” the song seems to be complete from the point of view of plot and composition. The version, that was recorded almost 100 years after A. D. Grigor’ev’s famous record, testifies to an extraordinary stability of the plot. In the present article there are also revealed some important differences between introduction of the “bylina” specimens and “Tury” versions from Western Pomerania. Special attention is paid to peculiarities of motives and images which align these texts together with spiritual verses of oral and written origin. Topic about “Tury”— the aurochs which was common in Western Pomerania is considered by the author as an inter-genre form reflecting correlation between “bylina” epics and spiritual verses. In distinction to some researches’ opinion the author believes that this plot, in its manifestation from the 19th century, couldn’t be formed earlier than in the 17th century, i. e. the Schism era.
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