Mäetagused (Jan 2007)
Vana traditsioon, noored esitajad
Abstract
In my article, I shall deal with the Khanty narratives and song texts published in two volumes (the first and the third) of Ostjakologische Arbeiten. There are also 516 riddles published in the third volume but these will not be covered in the current paper. The 106 longer texts represent 9 different Khanty dialects, 68 of them are narratives, and in general outline their origins are the following: 49 texts were received from Kirill Maremianin, 18 texts from Prokop Pyrysev, 6 texts from P. Chamzarov, 5 texts from A. Olgina, 3 texts from Dimitri Tebitev, and 3 texts from G. Artanzeev. 20 texts were collected from different persons by Steinitz during his expedition in 1935, and one song text originates in Leningrad in 1963. Of the texts, 29 were written down personally by the informants and controlled or corrected by W. Steinitz, all other texts were put down by Steinitz. One story and 18 songs performed by Maremianin were recorded on phonograph records in 1936. Most of the texts have a remarkable mythological background. I personally find it interesting that 85 texts were collected from the students of the University of Northern Peoples in Leningrad. In Estonia, we are accustomed to elderly people being the main informants of folklorists or linguists. In 1936, the oldest student of Steinitz - Dimitri Tebitev - was about 30, Kirill Maremianin was 29, and Prokop Pyrysev only 18 years old. Nevertheless, some of them seemed to know a very specific song and story repertoire. How good experts of folklore and mythology were these young men? What is the position of their stories and songs on the folkloric landscape of Ob-Ugrians? I will try to seek answers to these two questions. It follows from the bear feast song texts that the festival house is situated to the north of the abode of the World Surveyor Man, but to the south of the Kazym River mistress. If we happen to deal here with the repertoire of a specific bear feast, it must have taken place somewhere between the settlement of Belogorie and the estuary of Kazym. If we have a look at the map published in the second volume, we will find that Lokhtotgurt, the native village of the singer, is situated precisely in that region. Stereotypical parallel groups of verses are a common feature of Ob-Ugric folk songs. Often the same formulae are also present in stories. I may confirm that several stereotype formulae in the songs published by Steinitz may be found also in Mansi songs. To sum up, I would like to draw attention to the fact that while the texts of calling songs largely coincide, the descriptions of the abodes of deities are always different. All the calling songs are accurately oriented in relation to the performer’s native village - deities residing in the north come from the north, those residing in the south come from there. The deities display characteristic ways of moving about. There is yet another good example of how good experts of tradition the student informants of Steinitz were - the song Lenin created by D. Tebitev in 1937. As we can see, Lenin is characterized as a supernatural being summoned to a bear feast. The verses with the sharp ear of the alert long-tailed duck, with the sharp ear of the alert fox used in the song are also typical of heroic songs. Of course, there are some innovations in the figurative style of the song, but from our perspective it looks like a quite traditional spirit’s or hero’s song. Even the purpose of the protagonist is similar - to safeguard the Khanty people against misery. Of the narratives, 21 texts are stories about everyday life told by K. Maremianin and P. Chamzarov. Most of the texts, although classified by Steinitz as fairy tales (Märchen), are mythological stories. To the ending of a text called “The semper-stone” Steinitz himself added the following comment: “In this and the following two paragraphs the main heroes of the fairy tale - the son, his mother and his older brother - transform into spirits, establishing themselves in their holy places. This is the usual conclusion of the hero fairy tales (or stories) and hero songs, which are actually reports about the life of the ritually admired progenitor or other spirit.” (Steinitz 1976: 245). It may be confirmed that K. Maremianin, P. Pyrysev, and the other young informants of W. Steinitz were good experts indeed in their homeland’s folklore. Without the collection of Khanty texts published by Steinitz in the two volumes of Ostjakologische Arbeiten, there would have been a remarkable gap in the studies of Ob-Ugrian folklore and mythology.
