“Vyatskie - rebyata khvatskie... (The brave young men of Vyatka region)” (Irtysh Land folklore texts about the “Vyatskie”)

In the “patchwork” resettlement space of Siberia, including the Omsk Irtysh Land, a group of immigrants from Vyatka province and their descendants is especially distinguished among the Russians. “The Vyatskie” settled in separate communities, mainly in the northern regions of the Omsk region. In the second half of the 20th century, in Siberian conditions, the Vyatskie mostly lost the peculiarities of their dialect and way of life. This paper considers one “peculiarity” of their folklore heritage. These are sayings, anecdotes, and household tales about the extreme foolishness of the Vyatskie. The texts under study were conditionally divided into 4 groups: sayings expressed in one word or phrase that reflect the specific features of life and speech of the Vyatskie; sayings close in the genre to proverbs and adages; sayings retelling some plotless anecdotal situation; anecdotes and household tales. Each text is compared with the data of the ethnographic and historical-cultural essay of D. K. Zelenin, “Folk Sayings and Anecdotes about Russian People of the Vyatka Region.” The analysis led to the conclusion that the folklore texts about the foolishness of the Vyatskie were brought to Siberia by immigrants from Vyatka province. A comparative analysis allowed compiling an index of anecdotal stories about the Vyatskie, with a color designation showing the plots found by the author only in the article referred to or only in the materials of the Omsk archives and indicating the common plots. Not only does the index reveal the pattern of existence of the aforementioned folklore texts of Irtysh Land but is expected to become a kind of “questionnaire” for further fieldwork aimed at studying the folklore heritage of this group of Siberian immigrants.

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