ФОЛЬКЛОР І ЗВИЧАЄВЕ ПРАВО: ПРАВОВІ СМИСЛИ В УКРАЇНСЬКИХ НАРОДНИХ ТРАДИЦІЯХ

Abstract

Folklore is a key source for understanding the fundamentals of legal relations in the traditional Ukrainian society. The proposed article focuses on customary law as an archaic form of legal relations that developed as a creative product with characteristic features of a folklore text, namely variability, anonymity, syncretism, where ritual becomes a tool for manifesting and implementing the custom, making it public. In this context, folk poetic creativity emerges as the oldest source of the Ukrainian legal culture. The research highlights that folklore texts contain significant elements that help reveal the characteristic features of traditional legal systems, including labor relations, rituals, social contracts, and sales agreements. A philological approach to deciphering legal relics, based on the analysis of folk tales, songs, proverbs, sayings, and rituals, is a novel direction in folklore and humanities research in general. Through this approach, the article reveals the diversity of cultural traditions that served as a legal basis in the Ukrainian society and shows how customs regulated labor and social relations. The study offers a new perspective on the importance of folk poetic texts as a source of legal culture demonstrating how they reflect and shape societal norms, reinforcing them with collective rituals and ceremonies. This approach helps uncover hidden meanings and legal principles that define traditional life, making them accessible to the modern reader. The study draws attention to the underexplored ways of understanding the specificity of the unique Ukrainian legal culture through the decoding of the legal semantics in oral texts and ritual actors’ regular practices. The proposed ideas are based on the experience of studying the history of the Ukrainian customary law by scholars from the University of Saint Volodymyr and the author’s interpretation of folklore as a semiosphere of traditional meanings, where legal senses are significant, and their variable, as well as public expression through ritual texts has sanctioning power and is part of collective communication.