Article

Name: In the Footsteps of one Chuvash Text: From the Irkutsk Region to the Danube

Authors: Ekaterina I. Ismagilova, Natalya V. Leonova; Elena V. Fedotova

Abstract:

In 2023, in the Ziminsky district of the Irkutsk region, a story was recorded from the descendants of Chuvash settlers about a girl who left with a soldier who had invited her to marry with all her goods (dowry) and was abandoned by him on the bank of the river. Not wanting to return home in shame, the girl drowns herself. On the mother territory of the tradition – in the Volga region – four variants of this text were dis-covered. They are quite close to the Siberian version; they are distinguished by indi-vidual details and different lengths of text. In two versions, a different ending appears, perhaps formed in a later period – the girl does not drown herself, but returns home. More distant versions of this text were found in Belarusian, Ukrainian, Polish, and some Russian collections. This ballad plot was especially popular in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries. The examples of variable formulas given in the article clearly illustrate the variety of embodiments of the plot in detail while maintaining its main motives. The song text in question was presumably associated with the male performing tradition and existed primarily in a military environment. The Chuvash could get acquainted with this plot in the ancestral territories of its existence during their military service during the First World War. In the Chuvash versions of the ballad text, as a result of a different localization of the action, the emergence of stable formulas from ritual folklore, and the addition of details important for the Chuvash traditional culture, the folk worldview of the bearers of the tradition was manifested.

Keywords: song folklore of the Chuvash people of Siberia, Chuvash bait, ballad about a girl who left with a soldier, plot of a folklore work, folklore variants

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