Lilla Daam. Kogukonna usundiline muistend kui homogeenne tervik

Abstract

The article focuses on one particular ghost legend and its relations with the audience within a group of colleagues. Based on interviews, archival texts and the theoretical background of the contemporary legend research, the article points out the probable genesis of the narrative, the role of the narrative event and the narrator in the development of the legend, the hidden aspects of belief and experience, their mediation to the group and function in the cultural context of the era. The collective religious legend is in fact a homogeneous whole, which has been gradually complemented through the elaboration, joining motifs or details, conditioned by the mythologisation of reality. Personal supernatural experience, related to the core of the legend, strengthen belief and constantly renovate the repute of the story. The legend affects the collective behaviour (the collective routine) of the whole group, based on the common awareness of the legend. This is manifested in all sorts of games, jokes, language usage, conversation topics, which emerge in the everyday life of community and make up a part of the group identity.