УЯВЛЕННЯ ПРО ДОЛЮ В ТРАДИЦІЙНІЙ КУЛЬТУРІ УКРАЇНЦІВ

Abstract

Understanding the concept of «fate» for representatives of traditional Ukrainian society had several options. For the average person, this word can mean the course of events, coincidences, the direction of life, which are completely independent of the desires and will of a man. The article considers aspects of the semantic meaning of the concept of destiny for Ukrainians in the linguistic and mythological aspect. This topic cannot be considered fully disclosed in the scientific literature. Studies on this phenomenon are often descriptive works, containing accumulations of rich folklore material, mainly in the form of fairy tales and songs. Theoretical elaboration of folklore materials, which creates a full picture of a variety of meanings, that give them a phenomenon, we can meet quite rarely. The article is based on the analysis of folklore material in the form of fairy tales, lyrics and paremias, collected in different times: from the end of the XIX century up to the beginning of the XXI century, and, as well, at the works of individual ethnographers, where fate is described as a strong part of a construct of mythological beliefs. In the course of the research, the authors find out that the idea of destiny has various factors of formation. Perceptions of destiny as a structural part of the traditional worldview are binary in nature, expressed in a clear distinction between «good» and «bad» in this area, but the word itself does not have a clear negative or positive meaning. Meanings often depend on circumstances and epithets, provided in a given situation. The ideas about the peculiarities of the formation of human destiny and the factors that were perceived as able to influence it are considered. The ambivalent attitude of the people to the immutability of human destiny is traced. In folklore we can find many examples of how fate can be changed. Researchers have paid special attention to the characteristics of destiny as a character that brings it closer and combines it, in a sense, with other mythological creatures, such as Friday, ancestral spirits, house spirit «domovyk» and relative to it «hodovanets». In conclusion, the authors made an attempt to systematize the available data and to create a definition of the concept of «fate», which would reflect a generalized version of the ideas that existed in Ukrainian society. There are two definitions, according to such aspects as mythological meaning and everyday language use.