Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.17234/SEC.31.1
Making Gifts to Water in a Ritual-Mythological Interpretation: An Example of Croatian-Slovenian Professional Cooperation (Summary)
Jelka Vince Pallua
; Institut društvenih znanosti Ivo Pilar
Abstract
The first part of the article focuses on the collaboration on the topic of symbolism of and the words for daffodils between the Croatian scholar Dr Jelka Radauš Ribarić and her Slovenian colleague and friend Dr Milko Matičetov. Based on their correspondence from 1977, the paper examines their generationally conditioned, similar ethnological reflections. In the main body of the paper, titled “The new interpretation”, the author develops a new ritual-mythological interpretation of customary spring-time practices involving daffodils, a water spring and a lime tree in the village of Vodice in northern Istria, Croatia. The former St. George’s day’s procession, preserved there in the form of children’s folklore by the presentation of daffodils to the spring and to a bogič/god on the lime tree is interpreted as a reflection or a relic of a (proto)Slavic, pre-Christian rite. The names for daffodils – jurjevke and Marijine palčke/Maričice – are explained within the same interpretative context.
Keywords
ritual-mythological interpretation; Proto-Slavic mythology; lime tree; Christianization; St. George’s day; Jarylo; St. George; Mara; making gifts to water; water spring; daffodils; Istria; Vodice; Slovenian-Croatian professional cooperation
Hrčak ID:
230980
URI
Publication date:
23.12.2019.
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