The Black Gentleman: Manifestations of the Devil in Estonian Folk Religion by Ülo s> Valk (review)

Abstract

I20 SEER, 8i, I, 2003 are given about the dedicatee; recordings are indicated by the names of the singers in them; and, finally, the singers in recordings of other composers' settingsmay alsobe given. Clearly, Richard Sylvester has a good understanding of the problems of settingwordsto music and a greataffectionfor these songs,which rangefrom the unknownto theverypopular.His shortintroductoryessayson each setting often highlight the difficultieswhich Chaikovskiimight have encountered, as well as questions of the songs'performance.They offersome untechnical but thoughtful analysisof the musical form and procedures of the song, drawing particularattentionto changes made to the textsby the composerandpossible reasons for them. Also raised are questions relating to the plain translations, for instance, the awkwardlybisexual word drug(in the transliterationhere, druk). There are many recordings of Chaikovskii'sromances on the market,but the twenty-two represented on the disc which accompanies this book have clearly been selected with care, mainly from outstanding recordings of the 1940S and I950S, including such gems as Leonid Sobinov's 'Sred'shumnogo bala', Nadezhda Obukhova's 'Ni slova, o drug moi' and best of all, Sergei Lemeshev's 'Korol'ki'. Many of these fascinating recordings are simply unavailable on commercial compact disc and represent collector's items in other formats. Their inclusion makes a very welcome bonus and reflectsthe care and finejudgment found in the book itself. ProfessorSylvesterhopes that his user-friendlycompanion 'will provide a basisfor furtherstudyof [Chaikovskii's]songs as musicalcompositions'.In its coverage of many lesswell known songs, aswell as favourites,it shouldindeed offer a valuable source for musically minded Slavists and, particularly, perhaps,forsingerswithoutRussianwho wishto explorewith expertguidance a central part of the rich Russian vocal repertoire. This splendid crossdisciplinarypublicationdeservesto be purchasednot only by singers,scholars and university libraries, but also by all but the most unenterprisingpublic libraries. A companion volume devoted to the songs of Rakhmaninov is, apparently,in preparation.It will be eagerlyawaited. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies ARNOLD MCMILLIN University College London Valk,Ulo. 7The BlackGentleman. Manifestations oftheDevilinEstonian FolkReligion. Folklore Fellows Communications, 276. Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, Helsinki, 2001. X+ 2I7 pp. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography.Priceunknown. THEmajorityof studieson the devil have been writtenalmostexclusivelyfrom a mono-disciplinaryperspective, which has resulted in a disparatecollection of monographs by historians, anthropologists, theologians, sociologists, and ethnologists, who have placed the figure of the devil within their own particularcontexts and chronologies. In TheBlackGentleman: Manifestations of theDevil in EstonianFolkReligion,Ulo Valk controversially weaves together descriptions of the devil from Estonian nineteenth- and twentieth-century REVIEWS 12 I folklore,earlymodern demonography, and confessionsfound in seventeenthcenturytrialsforwitchcraftto presentan interdisciplinarycomparativestudy. The Estonian material is contrasted with similar Lithuanian, Russian, and Finnish sources, whilst Stith Thompson's Motif-Indexof Folk Literature. A Classification of Narrative Elementsin Folktales, Ballads,Myths,Fables,Medieval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux,_est-Books andLocal Legends (vols I-6, Copenhagen, I955-58) providesthe backgroundthroughwhich to introduce a wider range of European and American material. This book is a 'slightlyrevisedversion' (p. ix) of Valk'sdoctoraldissertation and was published in Estonian in I998. He argues effectively for locating Estonia's tradition of the devil within the West European context of demonology and folklore,proving that it is genetically part of the European Christian tradition. 'Since the devil essentially belongs to Christianity, the Finno-Ugric backgroundand parallelswith kindredpeoples are of secondary or even tertiary importance', asserts Valk (p. I8), by-passing an argument which would have benefited more from a better exegesis of this theory than from comparisons with Indian and twentieth-century American examples. However, thisreflectsValk'sexpertisein folklore,literature,Indology, and the Estonian witchcraftpersecution, which has proved to be both a strengthand a weakness. Opinions differas to the wisdom of basing comparisonson such an interdisciplinary and broad chronological basis. The result is a widerangingsurveythat findsthe readerswiftlymoving between the earlymodern period, and the nineteenth or twentieth centuries, which can be rather disconcerting.The benefit of this type of approachis that the book appealsto a muchwideraudience, andlinguists,historians,anthropologists,ethnologists, and folkloristswill allfindsomething of interest. Statisticaltables based on I723 texts detail how the devil was reported to have manifestedhimselfas a man, a noble lady, a clergyman,an elk, a pike, a hayrick, or even a needle without an eye, according to legend, memories, confessions in witchcraft trials, and various belief systems. This empirical approach allows...