Ritual lamentations on the folklore map of Russia. Book review: Yugay, E.F. (2019), “Petition to the other world: Vologda funeral lamentations in the 20th century”, Indrik, Moscow, Russia

The reviewed book considers the funeral lamentations as a form of communication with the other world. The author analyzes the context of ritual lamentations, the content and structure of ritual texts, formulas and the order of their combination in texts (semantics and syntagmatics), in the fourth chapter considering how lamentations work. The study is based on rich archival and field data that were collected in theVologdaregion from the beginning of the 20th century to 2018. Numerous stories from the expeditions demonstrate subtle author’s reflection on her field work. Texts of lamentations recorded in expeditions of different years are published in the Appendix to the book. Analyzing ritual texts, the author draws attention to the peculiarities of the language, to which elements and formulas were preserved longer than others. Elena Yugay considers ritual lamentations as a “residual phenomenon” in modern times. On the one hand, this approach impoverishes the view of current processes. But on the other hand, the author invites us to reflect on why funeral lamentations are gradually fading into the past and what comes in their place.