Светци-змееборци в българския фолклор
Saints–Dragon Fighters in the Bulgarian Folklore

Summary/Abstract: In popular culture, pagan and Christian notions and beliefs form a syncretic complex, which finds expression in oral works of people’s creative work. Very often in the Christmas songs we meet images of Christian saints which contain many archaic layers. The author examines the images of St. George, St. Elijah and St. Peter, which are close to each other in their functional and semantic characteristics. One of the themes that unite them is that of the dragon fight. The analysis shows that the saint’s image – a horseman and a dragon fighter – is not simply a folklore representation of the Christian literary and iconographic types, but is a result of the development of the tradition, whose roots are planted deep in the pre-Christian antiquity.

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