The hut on chicken legs belongs to the images of the Russian folktale which are best known and attract greatest attention, both among the scholars and the readers. However, this image still lacks an exhaustive conception that could help us to understand what its original significance was and in what way the latter was reflected in its distinctive qualities. The present study made it possible to deepen and clarify V.Ya. Propp's idea according to which the hut on chicken legs has been interpreted as a house for the initiation ceremony, and to establish the origin and meaning of this mytheme in connection with the mythopoetic ideas about the winter solstice that were common among the Slavs. Accordingly, various types of fairy-tale plots in which the hut on chicken legs is mentioned obtain an interpretation as representations of the myth of the descent of the solar God (hero) into the underworld through the input opening during the days of the winter and/or summer solstice, that is common to many peoples of the world, or of the ideas of the return of the dead from the other world during the holy holidays, that are known among the Slavs. Consequently, the connection of these plots with the initiation rite can only be secondary. The complexity of the image of the hut on chicken legs which contaminates two archetypal features (the ornithomorphic appearance and the ability to turn around) on the basis of the mentioned mythopoetic concept is noteworthy, while each of the mythemes related to it (Kuuirinta 'Crane palace' of A & zcaron;i Dah & amacr;ka in the Avesta; the rotating houses in Dolgan, Vedic, and Irish epics; J. Chaucer's literary interpretation) is based on one of them only.
The international oral narrative about a girl who seeks her brothers belongs to one of the most widespread tales in European and Middle Eastern folklore, indexed as ATU451 in The Types of International Folktales. These tales are well-known in European folklore and literature through the literary treatments by the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Andersen. In the worldwide folkloric versions, the motif of a sister who seeks her brothers coexists with the transformation of the main characters into animals. The paper concentrates on topics as follows: the relationship between siblings, animals, and music, and the search journey. The paper focuses on Georgian, Middle Eastern, North African and European folktales. Different ways of narration show how these folktales have formed their specific variety, which arose in adaptation to local circumstances. Keywords: Fairy Tale, Folklore, Singing Animals, Journey.
In Turkiye, the Yoruks, who have a nomadic lifestyle, migrate to a different region every season as part of their animal husbandry activities and bury their deceased relatives randomly anywhere during their migrations. This study focuses on the rare and interesting burial traditions of the Yoruks, as well as these cemeteries, which are called "blind". In the article, the locations of these cemeteries were determined by field research method, the oral culture of the local people concerning these cemeteries was recorded and examined in the light of the mortuary cult that the Turks brought from the pre-Islamic period. With this examination, it has been observed that the Turks believe that the souls of dead people do not disappear and that the soul's connection with this world is not interrupted, and that they created an ancestor cult around this belief.
Fairy tales, which are among the cultural treasures of societies, have continued their existence from the earliest ages of mankind until today and have addressed people of all ages. Each society has maintained its own trace in the fairy tales created with the awareness of social sensitivity. It has sensed its essence by adding something from itself and passed it on to the next generations. Thus, fairy tales have taken on a social characteristic based on the universal reality of humanity. This type of oral narrative, which blends reality and imagination, has opened the doors of each society's unique common value judgements, social and cultural messages. They tried to give these messages through the types representing the good in fairy tales. Through the types representing the bad, attention has been drawn to various events and situations that should not be and cannot be accepted. In this study, the concepts of type and character in oral and written literature genres were analysed. Especially in the fairy tale genre, how the type and character are named and according to what they are characterised as type or character are discussed.
We explore here the etymological origin, the diffusion on the linguistic territories of Romanian, and the semantic interrelations of three terms which, despite their relative confusion in everyday language and even in dictionaries, each illustrate a very different reality: descantec, farmec, vraja, with their correlative names designating the practitioners: descantatori, fermecatori, vrajitori. The first is part of a semantic binomial specific to the popular North- and South-Danubian Latin, created from canticum in the sense of magical incantation: *incanticum / *descanticum, opposite terms such as "black" magic / "white" magic. The other two, borrowed from Greek (phi alpha rho mu alpha kappa omicron nu) and Slavic (vraza, from wrozq, spell), have come to surpass, in North Danubian Romanian, the "offensive" term incantec, whereas they are unknown as such in South Danubian Romanian dialects: only the "defensive" term of the initial binomial, descantec, has remained commonly active among all Romanian-speaking communities. We also mention the solomonari (renowned in "meteorological" magic), a name proving a popular tradition enriched with bookish elements of parabiblical origin.
