25a, Povarskaya str., Moscow, 121069, Russian Federation
PhD (Philology), leading researcher, Folklore department, Institute of World Literature named after
A.M. Cor’kiy, Russian Academy of Sciences
This paper deals with the analysis of the text of an oral narrative (belief-legend) about mythological female character “Baba Roga” the Horny Granny, which has been recorded in 1950 by an amateur recorder named Zvonko Lovrenchih from the territory of Croatian Belo- gorye and published in 1969–70. According to the author, folklore tradition of Belogorye, which development has started in the end of the 17th century, is intermixed and secondary as regards the original ones. The Horny Granny could not be invented in Belogorye, because narratives about similar enigmatic characters have been performed at the most different localities of the Slavic world. In this paper Croatian mythic narrative about her is compared to East-Slavic fairy tales about Yaga the Granny, Russian “Bylina” epics about Dobrynya the hero, items of Serbian and Bulgarian oral belief-legends. Typological similarity and genetic unity is revealed for female characters, that were able to change skin and to bewitch her antagonist into ungulates (an auroch or a deer).
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