Мотив оборотничества в русских свадебных приговорах
Shapeshifting Motifs in Russian Wedding Incantations

Summary/Abstract: This work is devoted to the analysis of Russian wedding incantations that contain shapeshifting motifs. They are a part of the dialogues pronounced by the representatives of the groom’s family (best man, the groom’s godfather, etc.) and the bride’s family (brother, father of the bride, a special “elder,” etc.) near the closed doors of the bride’s house. The shapeshifting motifs in wedding incantations is related to wedding lamentations and fairy tales in its verbal manifestation and style. The incantation texts are characterized by an independent voluntary transformation of the bride and the groom; the bride always goes through a transformation; the groom remains in a human image or transforms after her in order to get the bride. The bride transforms into different representatives of ornitho-, zoo- and ichthyofauna. The image of a white swan, registered in the Kizhi, Pudozhskay and Mezen’ traditions, is the most frequent. The second frequent are the images of a pike, noted in the late records of the 1970s from Arkhangelsk province (Leshukonsky and Mezensky area), and the image of a fox. The transformation of the bride into a ring is another feature of the shapeshifting motifs, which aligns wedding incantations and fairy tales even more. The groom’s actions in the shapeshifting motif differ in the degree of his efforts — whether the groom procures the bride himself or engages helpers to whom he is connected by familiarity, by kinship (best man, other participants of the wedding procession) or by a chance meeting, which took place during the search for the bride (a miraculous helper). The using of miraculous means, magic objects or the assistance of a magic helper are rarely present in incantation recordings; these images are mostly a sign of individual style and skill of particular performers, and the texts that contain them are typically recorded in isolated cases.

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