Folk mythology in the region Pchinia in South Slavic context

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of folk mythology from the region of Pčinja, located on the Serbian-Macedonian border and preserving the archaic features in the local tradition at the turn of the 21th century, when we have an ethnolinguistic expedition in the village of Jablanica (1998). It is shown that the specificity of folk mythological representations is related to the location of the region at the intersection of the main traditions of the Eastern part of South Slavia. However, a number of recorded mythological names connect the region with the Central and Western parts of Southern Slavia. The features of the tradition that have parallels in Eastern, South-Eastern and Southern Serbia (including Serbian Kosovo villages), Macedonia and Western Bulgaria are analyzed in detail. The paper uses an ethnolinguistic research method aimed at studying language phenomena in close relationship with the extralinguistic context, which is especially important for the analysis of folk mythological representations, when the same demonological image may have different names, and vice versa, heterogeneous in genesis and functions mythological characters are designated by one common name for the demon. The study uses еtymological and dialect dictionaries, the ethnolinguistic Kosovo archive, as well as ethnographic works from different regions of South Slavia.