On one mythological motif among the Burgenland Croats in comparison with the neighboring traditions of the South and the West Slavs

Abstract

The article discusses the motif of baking bread by mythological characters of the “vila” (‘wood-nymph’) type (for themselves and/or for people living nearby), which is known to the Croats of Burgenland in Austria and Hungary, Croats on the Drava (Hungary), as well as in one form or another – to Slovenes and Czechs, there are also some Lusatian parallels. The paradigmatic alterations of the considered belief, noted during the field survey of villages or in previously published sources, are analyzed, reflected, as a rule, in mythological stories: from the viewpoint of the agent of action (“a wood-nymph”, “a wild woman”, and in case of loss of archaic meaning – “a women”, “Mother of God / St. Maria”), the recipient of the action (a person living nearby; a person who helped these mythical creatures; finally, the characters themselves, who presumably eat baked bread), the conditions of the action itself (selfless giving; a gift in exchange for help), an object of action (in particular, bread as a miraculous object that disappears under certain circumstances). In relation to the South Slavic folk ideas and the verbal clichés reflecting them, characterizing the red glow in the sky at sunset (allegedly coming from the furnaces of the wood-nymphs), the patterns of ethnolinguistic geography are traced, concerning the correlation on the map of a stable verbal expression and its mythological context (extralinguistic data). When comparing the material with Western Slavic beliefs reflected in mythological stories, the specific features of this belief, not known to the Southern Slavs, are noted: the disappearance of bread when a person violates the ban; collecting of neglected spikelets in the field by mythological characters, and some others.