Prose folklore of the Vakh Khanty (to the interpretation of contemporary records)

Abstract

The article is devoted to interpreting audio recordings of prosaic folklore made during the expedition to the Khanty of the Vakh river, the group of Eastern Khanty. Twenty-four texts recorded in the Vakh dialect of the Khanty language were translated into Russian by the informants themselves. Russian-language texts are used for genre-plot characterization of samples, and sound recordings are analyzed to reveal the intonation specifics. Several publications of Vakh Khanty oral folklore samples collected during the century were considered, the largest being the collections published in Russian by N. V. Lukina and in Khanty by N. I. Tereshkin and L. E. Kunina. The author summarizes the information on genres and their folk names and briefly describes the plots and characters of folklore prose. Many plots common among the Vakh Khanty are known to the neighboring peoples: Selkups and Kets. Folk tales and non-fairytale prose have been found to be the main types of the Vakh Khanty prose. Non-fairytale prose texts are easily identified by the genre marker, the initial word formulas. All narrations have been found to be intoned in the usual speech manner: melodious performance is not typical for Vakh folktales and non-fairytale prose. No musical episodes sung or performed on musical instruments were found. To some extent, the “musicalization” of folktales and non-fairytale prose is due to the various onomatopoeia. The melodious performance has been found only in the cumulative folktale “Pyut’kyali” (“The Birdie”), with the main intonation of the Khanty telling preserved even in the sounding of the Russian translation.