TRAVELLING HEROINE AND HER SIBLINGS: AN UNNOTICED SIBERIAN TALE

Berezkin Yuri Evgenievich

DOI: 10.23951/2307-6119-2018-3-67-75

Information About Author:

Berezkin Yu. E., Doct. hist. sc. Museum of Anthropology & Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Science. Kazanskaya str., 23, Apt. 29, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 190000. E-mail: berezkin1@gmail.com

After analyzing S. Thompson’s views on the study of folklore (Siberian and Central Asian data and historical problematic ignored) and presenting results of statistical processing of data on distribution of folklore motifs in Eurasia, the author describes a previously unnoticed tale widespread across Siberia from Lower Amur to Western Siberia with weak parallels among European Finno-Ugric peoples. The protagonist is a travelling girl who competes successfully with her rival, often a frog-woman. In the beginning the heroine parts with her brother(s) or sister who later appear again to help her. This motif is absent in the New World and could spread across Siberia only in the Holocene. Most of the other motifs found in correspondent tales have extensive parallels in North and some of them even in South America. Many of such episodes are absent, however, across the Northeastern Asia and Northwestern North America and had to be brought to the New World at a rather early stage of its peopling. This set of motifs is absent among the Turkic and Mongolian people.

Keywords: Siberian folklore, Finno-Ugric folklore, big data on folklore, Stith Thompson’s views on folklore, peopling of America

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Issue: 3, 2018

Series of issue: Issue 3

Rubric: ANTHROPOLOGY

Pages: 67 — 75

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