The Songs about «a Clever Wife» from the Winter Calendar-Ritual Cycle of Bуelorussian Settlers

The paper deals with a group of songs about «a clever wife» from the winter calendar-ritual cycle of Byelorussian settlers. The songs were written down in Siberia and in the Far East; most of them had not been published yet. They are compared in a number of parameters to the examples of mother country’s tradition recorded in Byelarus. Use is also made of the rhythmic typology of the Byelorussian calendar-ritual songs by Z. Ya. Mozheyko. On the ground of the results of the analysis it is possible to affirm that although the songs about «a clever wife» appeared in Siberia and existed in isolation from the mother country’s tradition they possess all the typical characteristics of the Byelorussian carols. They retain their inherent function in the ritual and their typical plot as well as the main parameters of the organization of verbal and musical text such as the lexical and phonetic system, the form of the song verses and the structure of the line of a poem, mode, intonation, and textural features. For the purpose of introducing this group of songs for scientific use their full texts are presented in the Appendix to the paper.

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