In the Investigative Case on the death of Tsarevich Dmitry in 1591, among the records of oral testimonies of eyewitnesses and participants of the Uglich drama (“interrogatory speeches”), there are accounts by Osip Volokhov’s mother Vasilisa. They record an episode of the crowd’s holkhanije (horkhanie) over her son’s corpse, the meaning of which remains unclear. The paper is dedicated to the analysis of the etymology and symbolism of this word, which designates a shout which either announced a successful hunt or was part of a traditional martial dance, lomanie (‘breaking’), which preceded a wall-to-wall fight. Exclamations and ‘choruses’ mentioned in written sources in relation to ‘breaking’ are analyzed, and a hypothesis is put forward regarding the archetypal connection between martial dancing and hunting in the ritual mockery of a corpse.

The article examines the attributes of Prince Andrey Yuryevich (Bogolyubskiy)’s social status as depicted in 12th-century chronicle accounts. These descriptions appear to have drawn from his own “prince chronicle” and separate novels that preserved oral testimonies from his inner circle. Chronicle narratives about Prince Andrey reflect the influence of the Old Rus epic style and language. In chronicle texts, the prince is endowed with a suite of tangible and intangible artifacts that underscore his exalted position in Old Rus society: his status as a Rurikid, a descendant of the renowned Vladimir Monomakh, and heir to his father, Yuriy Dolgorukiy. His principal attributes – a futuredefining name, warhorse, inherited sword, and high boots – not only signify his social role but also imbue their owner with heightened heroic qualities, forming an inseparable facet of his persona.

The earliest extant manuscript of a Rus chronicle, the Synodal MS. of The First Novgorodian Chronicle, has an extremely brief section for the 11th century. Those annals contain mostly excerpts from a Kievan chronicle, supplemented by several notes on Novgorodian events. The time of the composition of this brief section is a subject for discussion; the author has presented elsewhere an argument in support of the mid-1090s. If so, those annals most probably were composed at the beginning of the episcopate of Nikita, formerly a monk of the Kievan Cave Monastery. The Paterikon of the Cave Monastery reports Nikita’s gift of divination: he, for example, announced that Prince Gleb of Novgorod had been killed on a certain day, although the event took place more than one thousand kilometers away from Kiev. The author suggests, hypothetically, a connection between this episode and the presence of the precise date of Gleb’s death in the Synodal MS., as well as the fact that, according to the Synodal MS., Izyaslav Yaroslavich of Kiev was killed earlier than Gleb (in reality, Gleb was killed earlier, and Izyaslav benefited politically from his death). Those observations contribute to our understanding of the process of positioning brief notes on events within the chronological framework – a practice essential for the early stages of annalistic writing and a transitional phenomenon from oral memory to written record.

The article analyses the political and ideological context of the compilation of the first list of sarcophagi containing the remains of Byzantine emperors in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. Like all other central churches, the Church of the Holy Apostles was not simply a place of worship but also the venue for a wide range of “extra-liturgical” activities. It was a significant institutional setting not only for regular political and church rites but also for the most pressing spontaneous political actions. It served as a kind of special palace for the Basileuses of the Byzantine Empire who had passed away, and their remains became relics and often functioned as “participants” in political theatre. The presence or absence of a particular emperor in the Church of the Holy Apostles itself had significant political and ideological significance. The treatise De Cerimoniis of 963 was the first attempt to record the locations of which emperors were buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles. The author and compiler of the treatise, an anonymous “master of ceremonies” thus transformed the local knowledge of its clergy and officials responsible for conducting rites in this church into a written document that now had performative and ideological significance. This “master of ceremonies” was close to the imperial family, descendants of Basil I the Macedonian, who used the Holy Apostles as their family tomb, which was intended to emphasise the legitimacy and historical and teleological foundations of their power.

The tradition of local historiography in Iran existed both in the pre-Mongol period and in subsequent eras. The history of the Kerman region, in particular, demonstrates a clear continuity in the representation of the native land by authors from different periods, including Afzal al-Din Kermani, Nasir al-Din Munshi Kermani, and Muhammad ibn Ibrahim, all of whom devoted their works to describing historical events that took place in these territories. Among these historians, Nasir al-Din Munshi Kermani occupies a particularly important place. His work, Simt al-‘Ula li-l-Khadra al-‘Uliya, was compiled between 1318 and 1320. Apart from the detailed reconstruction of his biography and the analysis of his work undertaken by Abbas Eqbal, this historical source and the information it contains have received little dedicated scholarly attention in modern historiography. This article aims to examine the distinctive features of the text’s composition, the author’s narrative techniques – including his use of quotations from earlier historical works – as well as the proverbs and sayings employed to clarify the meaning and significance of particular historical events.

The article examines the transformation of the image of the sacred bird, the Phoenix, in the Old English poem of the same name, compared to its Latin source, ‘Carmen de ave phoenice’, attributed to the early Christian writer Lactantius. The Latin written tradition of depicting the image of the sacred bird undergoes significant changes in the Old English poem under the influence of the oral Germanic tradition through the introduction of formulaic diction and heroic-epic motifs. The use of oral poetic techniques supports a Christian interpretation of the Phoenix legend. The Anglo-Saxon poet excludes all details of the Latin narrative, rooted in ancient pagan mythology, but deepens the Christian symbolism of the poem by using Germanic epic terminology. Thus, the Phoenix’s longevity and immortality are revealed through the epic motifs of ‘old age’ and ‘youth’, characteristic of the Old English poem ‘Beowulf’. Following the Latin source, the poet presents the Phoenix as the companion of the sun, but uses military social terms that hint at spiritual warfare. The motif of exile, characteristic of ‘heroic elegies’, takes on a different meaning, transforming into a motif of ‘paradise regained’. Thus, the techniques of Germanic epic narrative not only facilitated the cultural adaptation of the ancient story but also enhanced its religious significance, enriching the dialogue of cultures within traditional poetic art.

The article presents the study of binary formulas in the Old English poem “Genesis” in relation to the question of their origins. Special attention is paid to the influence of the Latin text of Vulgate on the Old English formulaic system. Describing the use of binary expressions denoting man and woman (husband and wife, father and mother, son and daughter) in the poem, the article analyses instances of calque translations from Latin, as well as the variation and repetition of formulas. In rendering the Latin “masculum et feminam”, the author of the poem coins two formulas “wif and wæpned” and “fæder and moder”, that are mainly associated with one another in the subsequent part of the text. The use of these expressions is closely connected with the context of their first occurrence. Thus, they are reproduced in the passages describing Adam and Eve or in allusions to them. Coining three equivalents of Latin “filios et filias”, the author mainly reproduces the pair “suna and dohtra” (“sons and daughters”) and calques its syntactic position in the poem. The formulaic pairs of this thematic group are rarely found in other Old English poems due to their semantics or written source.

The main focus of the article is the study of the sound organisation of Old English alliterative verse. In nearly a third of the extant lines of Old English poetry, alliteration is enriched by additional sound devices, whose structure and function appear to be crucial for the development of Old English metre. The function of consonances and full rhymes is studied not only in the units of poetic speech, such as compound words, lexical repetitions, repetitions of genetically related words and rhymed formulas, but also in the metrical units of verse (long and short lines). The change in the distribution of different types of rhymes and consonances within halfand long lines is accounted for by the linguistic changes as well as by transformations taking place in alliterative verse. In typologically late written texts, where alliterative verse begins to metamorphose, internal rhymes are used comparatively rarely, but the repetition of sounds usually involves the fourth stressed syllable of the line, which was avoided by alliteration. In long lines, anaphoric and chiastic rhymes perform functions common to alliteration, culminating and connecting. Less frequent ring rhymes are endowed with an ambivalent function in verse: they emphasise the autonomy of the long line and contribute to the destruction of its accentual pattern. End rhyme, unmotivated by lexical repetitions but originally relying on rhythmic-syntactic parallelisms, reinforces the internal caesura and breaks the rhythmic pattern of the long line into independent segments. Typologically early Old English poems, derived from the oral tradition, are dominated by rhyme types that serve to strengthen alliterative verse (anaphoric and chiastic rhymes, rhyme in odd short lines). Among the various sound devices participating in the phonetic arrangement of verse in typologically late written poems, end rhymes, which destabilise the structure of alliterative verse, acquire special functional significance. The analysis of the sound organisation of alliterative verse appears to establish the most reliable criterion for tracing the evolution of Old English metre and can therefore be used to assess the reliability of other criteria for dating Old English poems such as changes in phonology (the appearance of epenthetic vowels, lengthening of vowels as a result of the loss of [h], shortenings due to the loss of intervocalic sounds, the syncope and apocope of unstressed vowels), hypermetric lines, placement of the caesura and alliterative canons.

In the Karelo-Finnish runes of the Kalevala circle, Väinämöinen embodies the functions of an archaic cultural hero-demiurge. The runes about the creation begin with a motif of the Saami who shoots arrows at the horseman Väinämöinen. The hero falls into the sea, where he has been swimming for many years. A bird lays eggs on his knee, they roll into the sea – the sky, earth, and stars appear from their fragments. The world is created spontaneously from the movement of the first creature who felt the heat from the eggs hatched on his knee. The hero arrives at an unknown shore and weeps. The hero plows the roots of a large oak with a bull Turs (that has a hundred horns and a thousand heads). Certain motifs and vocabulary of this rune suggest the influence of the Scandinavian epic. The parallels between Väinämöinen and the Scandinavian giant Ymir, from whose body the world was created, are most obvious: Meletinsky pointed out that in the runes iron, snakes, and stones turn out to be parts of the body of the runes singer; even Väinämöinen’s knee becomes earth, a green hummock upon which a bird builds a nest. Unmotivated in the rune is the mention of heat under his armpit: in Scandinavian cosmogony, the first human beings will be born from the armpits of the androgynous Ymir. A special linguistic analysis deserves the mention of the bull with a hundred horns, tursa (Tursahalla): cf. Sсand. þurs is a designation for giants, the offspring of Ymir.

The genealogies in “The Book of Settlements” (Landnámabók) do not represent complete genealogies of medieval Icelanders, but rather only those branches that were relevant to the compilers’ purposes. Moreover, the names of some original settlers may have been lost, while others (who did not actually exist) were retrospectively “reconstructed” from place names. In this regard, sections of the Landnámabók that mention three brothers are particularly noteworthy. At first glance, this could reflect the reality of large families in medieval Iceland. However, in cases involving three sons, they are not simply mentioned in genealogical lists but are introduced with the formulaic phrase þau áttu þrjá sonu (“they had three sons”), emphasising their renown and the large number of their descendants. While these accounts may contain echoes of historical events, they could also be a product of oral transmission, where formulaic phrases and triadic structures facilitated the preservation and transmission of narratives. The widespread folkloric motif of the “three brothers” could have influenced the nature of the information transmitted by the oral tradition, and the “extra” brothers could be forgotten, or a third brother could be added to an original pair.

The article analyses the Report of Miracles among the Eastern Tatars (Relatio de mirabilibus orientalium Tartarorum) by the Franciscan missionary Odoric of Pordenone, who travelled to India and China in the first third of the 14th century. His work centres on an account of the discovery and translation of the relics of Franciscan martyrs. Odoric provides a detailed and reverent account of their Christian deeds, martyrdom and posthumous miracles. The culmination of Odoric’s narrative is the translation of their relics, which is marked by a miracle (miraculum). Whereas the author served as a passive chronicler up to this point, he becomes an active participant in the events of this scene. We are dealing here with the missionary’s personal testimony. Another example of a religious miracle – the voyage through the valley of the dead – also requires the missionary to show his Christian steadfastness, yet this account takes the form of a folktale. Here the author’s text is based on myth as well as personal experience. Besides these central chapters, the religious stratum of the narrative is sparse. Odoric mainly describes the “terrestrial world”, which he depicts through extraordinary phenomena, exotic customs, and “wonders” (mirabilia), whose importance is already evident from the title of the book. He takes an interest in everything that differs from habitual notions, things, and phenomena or that evokes surprise: flora, fauna, local customs, the external appearance of natives, and economic life. Traditional eastern mirabilia, such as cynocephali and ogres, which were found both in the oral tradition and in written sources, are also present in Odoric’s Report, although “wonders” that are explainable predominate.

In medieval sources, the Swan Knight invariably appears as a character imbued with a sacred nature. The initial section of the “Swan Knight plot”, which developed in the French tradition, is dedicated to his miraculous birth. Presumably, the plot section about the Swan Knight’s birth originates from folklore stories about brothers transformed into birds and wondrous children. Its folkloric origins are indicated by fairy tale motifs and a structure characteristic of the classical fairy tale. The mention of magical objects (in particular, gold chains) is characteristic of both types of fairy tales, but they perform different functions: they serve as a means of transforming children into birds and as a marker of the miraculous nature of the characters. This article examines literary versions that have largely preserved archaic features: the Old French poem “Elioxe”, which has come down to us in 13th-century manuscripts and represents the typologically earliest source, and one of the tales from “Dolopathos”, first included by the creator of the Latin version, Johannes de Alta Silva. The transformation of folklore motifs is associated with a change in the roles of gold chains, as well as the emergence of new functions that form associative rather than semantic links.

The article focuses on the Roman de Brut by the Norman poet Wace, which is a poetic adaptation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Latin chronicle, Historia Regum Britanniae, into Old French. The study aims to examine the contexts in which Wace uses first-person narrative formulas. The purpose of the article is to define the functions of such formulas in the text and, through this, to identify the significance Wace attributes to his role as a historian and translator in contrast to his role as an author. The study consistently examines formulas featuring the author’s name and those including a first-person pronoun and/or verb that refer to a source, justify the exclusion of a fragment, clarify the etymology of toponyms, express authorial modesty, or serve as a literary device. The analysis leads to the conclusion that first-person formulas in the Roman de Brut are primarily used to construct Wace’s persona as a modest translator of a historical text, concerned with the accuracy of details and the reliability of the narrative. However, certain instances indicate the beginning of an emerging authorial self-awareness and a nascent transition from the chronicle to the romance.

The figure of Dietrich of Bern and his historical prototype, the Ostrogothic king of Italy Theodoric the Great, was often associated in the Middle Ages with the Wild Hunt, a cavalcade of the dead that emerged from Germanic folklore. One variation of the Wild Hunt motif is the pursuit of a woman – a sinner, a prostitute, or a wood-spirit and a fairy. Three poems from the extensive Dietrich of Bern cycle feature the motif of a woman being pursued by a monstrous giant or pagan, which at first glance seems clearly connected to the representation of Theodoric/Dietrich as the Wild Huntsman. However, closer analysis reveals that the oral tales of Theodoric, who, like a wild man, pursues nymphs through the Tyrolean forests, and the tales of his ride to hell on a black devil’s steed were distinct and unrelated in the epic tradition.

A report on the trip to the Faroe Isles by W.U. Hammershaimb was published in Copenhagen Antiquarisk Tidsskrift (issue for 1847–1848). It includes valuable information pertaining to Faroese ballads, as well as to the general theory of oral poetry. Although earlier collectors had documented Faroese folk poetry, Hammershaimb notes that some of his own recordings were longer than those of his predecessors. He also observed that the same ballads were performed differently from island to island. According to Hammershaimb, the ballad tradition was already in decline at the time of his visit. Besides, the same ballads were performed differently on different islands. According to Hammershaimb, the ballad tradition was in decline at the time. The report further includes a short poem that differs in genre from the ballad tradition and preserves several archaic forms. Hammershaimb’s Report on the Trip to the Faroe Islands in 1847–1848 is thus an important supplement to his more extensive and better-known publications.