E-mail: goldenberg48@mail.ru Tel.: +7 (8442) 60-28-24
27, Lenin av., Volgograd, 400066, Russian Federation
Doctor of Philology, Professor, the Department of Literature and Teaching Methods, Volgograd State Social-Pedagogical University
This article analyzes the transformation of the plot about the death of the hero of the historical song “Shchelkan Dudentevich” into a modern toponymic legend about the river Shchelkan which exists in the Volgograd region. We may consider this a process of secondary folklorization, reflecting the influence of book knowledge on the creation of a new folklore story about the inglorious death of the Golden Horde’s Baskak Shchelkan in the river. The story of his murder by Tver citizens in 1327, reflected in an early version of the song, is first found in ancient Russian chronicles, and from there made its way into historical works and school and university textbooks. In modern folklore, it is radically transformed within the generic field of a toponymic legend. Book knowledge creates a semantic halo around the historical name, which stimulates the emergence of new plots connecting the mythology of the given landscape to significant events in national history.
The role of the Mongol-Tatar heritage in the hydronymy of the Volgograd region offers possible reasons for attaching the personality of a historical person to the mythology of the local landscape. The legend of his drowning has become the subject of popular anecdotes in which Shchelkan’s image is mythologized: he becomes the spirit of the river, its “master”. School teachers and local historians are the main sources and popularizers of these notions; most of the author’s informants point to them. Archaeological excavations of Golden Horde burials on the Shchelkan River might also have had an indirect impact. Despite all of the plot differences between the historical song and the toponymic legend about the death of Shchelkan, they have a common artistic property — an ironic tone in the depiction of his death. Thus even in the context of a new genre and plot, modern folklore remains true to tradition, preserving some of the artistic principles of depicting a historical character.
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