Traditional beliefs held by the Ukrainians who lived in the Carpathians concerning the link between livestock and characters of "lower" mythology

Given the fact that domestic animals were not only beasts of burden and the basic source of food, but also played a decisive role in numerous family rituals and calendar cycle rites, the analysis of Ukrainian beliefs about livestock should be a priority in ethnological science. Different aspects of this problem have been covered by the researchers in the fields of ethnology, archaeology, linguistics and folk studies - they devoted a sufficient number of books, essays and articles to the problem in question. However, mythological aspect that constitutes the main problem of the given article remains underexplored. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyze the beliefs of Ukrainian people who lived in the Carpathians concerning the direct link between livestock and main characters of "lower" mythology. In order to achieve the goals, the author sets the task to explore the peculiarities of the way the Ukrainians who lived in the Carpathians applied traditional magical methods to protect livestock, including preventative measures; to focus on the demonological views of Ukrainian mountaineers, who clearly associated livestock with domestic spirits - namely, weasel, home snake and spirit of enrichment; to analyze the main methods of protecting livestock from harmful influence of witches, "unclean" dead, and other characters of traditional Ukrainian demonology. Resources. Although some materials for writing the article were collected using ethnological literature on the given subject, as well as ethnographic information recorded by the ethnographers in the 19th - early 20th century, the research is mainly based on the ethnographic materials collected by the author herself during her field trips to the Ukrainian Carpathians, namely Boykivshchyna region, which she undertook between 2003 and 2008. At present, these materials are stored in the archive of Lviv National Ivan Franko University. Conclusion. The indigenous population of the Ukrainian Carpathians believed that for successful animal breeding, health and well-being of the livestock it was necessary to gain goodwill and guardianship of their deceased ancestors, whose souls were embodied in the images of the domestic spirits of different kinds, e.g. home snake, adder, weasel and spirit of enrichment. Assistance in running the household successfully depended on people conforming to the requirements and rules, set by domestic spirits, concerning keeping livestock and selecting their coat colour, as well as on ritual "feeding" of the spirits in question. In addition to the rational methods, the Ukrainians who lived in the Carpathians used to apply a variety of magical methods to protect domestic animals from harmful influence of the witch, "unclean" dead or the intruder.

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