Реликти от календарен мит в една жътварска песен
Remnants of a Calendar Myth in a Harvest Song

Summary/Abstract: This article studies the well-known Bulgarian folksong about the child left on the harvested field. On the basis of an analysis of the personages and their functions in the song the author of the study proves that some very old rituals intended to stimulate fertility are apparent in the invariant of the song. The main suggestions of the author's thesis are that the child is both a sacrifice to the gods of fertility and a personification of the dying and reviving god in the first and last sheaves. The animals, which appear as personages in the song symbolizing the three spheres of the universe, mark the process of sacrifice offering at the mythological field. The female-harvester in the archetype is a complex evolutionary image of the Great Mother-Goddess or of her priestess into a human being genetically and functionally linked with the zoomorphic spirits of nature. On the basis of these conclusions the author maintains that the harvest song in its most ancient version was part of a calendar-agrarian myth about the ritual sacrifice to the gods of fertility.

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