Article

Name: A large spiritual verse about Yegory the Brave in Russian Siberian text

Authors: Vera S. Kuznetsova

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Study of folklore

Abstract:

The paper presents a new archival text of a spiritual verse about Yegory the Brave. It was recorded by F. K. Zobnin on June 9, 1896 in the Tobolsk province, 17 miles from the city of Semipalatinsk on the Holy Spring (the place of worship of the icon of the Mother of God of the Sign or Abalak) from the Siberian peasant-stihar Maxim Ivanovich Mordvin. The record under consideration is a detailed and comprehensive rendition of an extensive verse concerning Yegory the Brave, exhibiting characteristics of a heroic epic and possessing a length comparable to medium-length bylinas. Most of the known texts of the verse have been calculated by B. M. Sokolov to be between 130 and 180 verse-lines. However, the variant recorded by Zobnin contains 232 verses and it is the first Siberian fixation of the verse about Yegory the Brave. Additionally, this record allows clarifying the geography of the existence of the verse about Yegory the Brave and the repertoire of Russian spiritual verses in Siberia. At the same time, the text under analysis supplements the general corpus of the known records of the large verse about Yegory the Brave with a new, complete version. Thus, it expands the source base of the forms of existence of spiritual verse as a manifestation of the mechanisms of adaptation of Christian plots in the system of folk representations.

Keywords: Russian folklore, spiritual verses, Yegory the Brave, St. George, Russian Siberian texts

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