The article discusses the features of modeling the category of time in oral narratives with reliability. The most essential property of the time of such narratives is the orientation to the actual moment of speech: the narrative about the events of the past is built taking into account the time plan of the situation of the conversation. This is reflected by means of different language levels – aspectual-temporal forms of verbs, features of the reference of actors, forms of direct and indirect speech, vocabulary with temporal semantics. Their analysis in the article is based on the material of autobiographical memorates. The reflection of three time points at once is considered: the moment of speech, the moment of the narrator’s first perception of the story from a participant in the events, and the moment of the events described in the text. A comparison of these features with the traditional narrative genres of folklore shows that the main difference in the organization of the temporal plan lies in the nature of the relationship between text time and the moment of speech. This is due to the different position of the speaker in relation to the chronotope of the text. Thus, the time plan of oral narration is a projection of the narrating subject.

Nenets nyukubts songs can be referred to the genres of maternal folklore, – they are performed for children, starting from the very young age. The specificity of the genre does not allow singing other kids’ nyukubts to a child – it is necessary to create a song specially for a particular child. This responsibility usually falls on one of the child’s closest relatives: mother, father, brother or sister, grandmother or grandfather.

In terms of structure, nyukubts songs repeat the “parental” genre of individual songs – in nyukubts, as in adult individual songs, one can distinguish elements indicating the “master”, “owner” of the song and elements describing this child, his life and his accomplishments. The motifs characteristic of nyukubts songs form a number of “clusters”: description of the child’s present features and actions, appeals to external forces for help, praising of the child, affirmation of sleep, description of the circumstances of birth, and affirmation of the child’s future features and occupations. The expressions of these motifs vary from song to song and it is almost impossible to find repetitions, which may be due to the importance of individualism in general for the genre of individual songs. Nevertheless, it is possible to trace quite clearly the division of songs according to the gender of their addressee: semantically nyukubts for boys and for girls will differ.

At the beginning of the 20^th century in the Russian Empire, the romance “Fragrant clusters of white acacia...” (“Beloi akatsii grozd’ya dushistye”) was popular. It was repeatedly printed in musical editions, released on records, performed by popular artists. During the Civil War, a new text was written to the music of the romance – “Boldly we will go into battle...” (“Smelo my v boi poidem…”). This rebel song was sung in its own way by various opposing forces, and with the establishment of Soviet power it got into the songbooks of the Red Army and into films about the Civil war. In 1976, the poet M. Matusovsky and composer V. Basner remade the “White Acacia” for the film “Days of the Turbins” (directed by V. Basov). The theme “how naive we were”, introduced by the author of this version, became the key material for subsequent alterations.

Over its more than a century-old history, these songs have been sung by Russians, Gypsies, Ukrainians, and Finns. The text is still performed from stage, used for comic alterations, the song serves as a means of self-identification, undergoes genre metamorphoses, being actualized as parodies, overtexts, parodies, is used in films, undergoes a new interpretation, accumulates both verbal and non-textual components. Studying the history of the song “White Acacia” will allow you to see how, by whom and under what circumstances the song is performed and how it participates in the broadcast of official and private ideology.

The article deals with the research of the Bylinas about Stavr Godinovich: a brief review is devoted to the works of the representatives of the theory of borrowings (V.V. Stasov, G.N. Potanin, A.N. Veselovsky, I.P. Sazonovich), more detailed - to the works of the representatives of the historical direction in epic studies. In particular, the methods and hypotheses of V.F. Miller, B.A. Rybakov, V.L. Yanin and M.N. Kozlov. The researchers correlated characters from written sources with the epic hero: the centurion Stavr from the annals of 1118, Vladimir Monomakh’s voivode named Stavko Gordyatich and the son of the Novgorod rebel Gyurata Rogovich. The biography of the “historical” Stavko and together with him the epic hero with each research and introduction of new sources (birch bark letters, graffiti inscriptions in the building of the Sofia Cathedral in Kiev) grew with facts and details. Researchers reconstructed practically all periods of life of “historical” Stavr: his young years, family ties, relations with representatives of power, life-changing events, etc. Thus, alternative realities were created for Stavr Godinovich, in which not only he, but also other epic characters (Vasilisa Mikulichna), events and details became “historical”.

This article is devoted to the question of place which harmful magical practices occupy in the everyday life of modern Armenia, in particular, in the modern Armenian family. The main source of the research is field work, which was carried out in 2019 in Armenia (Yerevan, Gyumri). Interviews were conducted with informants who had encountered harmful magic or who themselves turned to sorcerers and fortune-tellers. Magical practices common in modern Armenia include fortune telling, healing, and harmful practices. The latter are often a tool for a solution to family conflicts; in interviews about witchcraft, women accused other women – their relatives – of wanting to harm their family. This may be due to the structure of the Armenian family, which remains extended and in which women become competitors with each other, vying for power in the family.

The article focuses on the malicious functions of male and female witches in the North German legends of the 19^th century. The research is based on the “Die Volkssagen von Pommern und Rügen” compiled by J.D.H. Temme (1840), the first volume of the “Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg” by K. Bartsch (1879), “Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg, Pommern, der Mark, Sachsen, Thüringen, Braunschweig” by A. Kuhn and W. Schwartz (1848) and some other folklore collections.

The author highlights possible perceived motivations, i.e. reasons for the aggression of male and female witches towards other people. It is noticed that some functions and motivations that are frequently attributed to the female witches – for example, bewitching a cow in the first case, the desire to enrich themselves and the desire for revenge in the second case – can be attributed to the male characters. Nevertheless, the behavior of female characters can often be described as less demonstrative than the behavior of male characters. It can be assumed, that this state of affairs is related to women’s desire to protect their reputation as good members of society.

This paper attempts to describe the main semiotic ideologies (interpretation systems) of the Tarot card reading, to identify what determines the choice of an interpretation system by a practioner. Based on the results of semi-structured interviews and participant observation, the author was able to distinguish two modes of the Tarot card reading: divination based on meanings and divination in the state of Flow. The Tarot card reading in the state of the Flow involves the synthesis of intuition and meanings based on intuition, building a narrative and immersion in a trance state. On the basis of ethnographic material, three main semiotic ideologies of the Tarot card reading were also identified and described: occult (spiritual), esoteric, and psychotherapeutic. They differ on the basis of two criteria: reflection on the nature of the practice (the definition of the Tarot card reading as a magical, religious or psychotherapeutic practice) and reflection on transcendental sources of information (what is perceived as a source of information in the process of divination: deities/spirits, the unconscious, Tarot egregor, information field). The initial hypothesis that the difference between the semiotic ideologies of the Tarot card reading lies in the different level of agency attributed by tarot readers to themselves has not been confirmed. An analysis of the interviews and the results of the experiment showed that most practioners attribute to themselves a high level of agency, that is, they perceive themselves as responsible for the results of their predictions. The choice of a semiotic ideology may depend on the situation of divination: when divining oneself, one is most often guided by psychotherapeutic semiotic ideology, while divining by others – spiritual or esoteric.