Mapowanie motywów mitologicznych. Zmora jako istota szkodząca ludziom i zwierzętom gospodarskim
Mapping mythological motives. Zmora as a creature harmful to people and farm animals

Summary/Abstract: The article is aimed at showing, in the broadest possible temporal and spatial aspect, cultural diversification in the ways of harming people and/or animals by a mythological creature, which in Poland is most often called zmora. What will be useful for this purpose are ethnographic materials from the second half of the 19th and the first three decades of the 20th century (basic journals and books). For comparison, they will be juxtaposed with the unpublished results of the studies on folk demonology, including the discussed mythological creature which harms people and/or animals, conducted for the Polish Ethnographic Atlas (PEA). The demonologi- cal beliefs which are in our research focus and which are drawn from the vast material of the PEA will be presented in such a form for the first time. Mapping the old ethnographic materi- als along with the later atlas data makes it possible not only to indicate the range in which the belief that a zmora torments people rather than domestic animals occurred in Poland, but also to show the transformations of its borders in time and space. Mapping also makes it possible to compare modern and ancient areas of mythological motives.

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