"Грамада" — развитие на една обичайноправна наказателна норма
„The cairn" — development of a customary judicial and punitive norm

Summary/Abstract: An attempt is made in this article to discover the essence of a concrete customary judicial punitive norm, its relationship with codified law and the transformations it underwent in the course of its development. As a folk punishment the cairn passed through two phases of development. Initially the death penalty by stoning, which can be considered as a branch of banishment from the community, changed at a given stage of development of state power and written law into a symbolical death penalty. The punishment is transferred from the earthly world to the world beyond, it already has a moral and ethical sense, the magical sense takes second place. Although banishment and cursing as punishments are divided from one another, a number of events in common exist among them, proving the link and origin of the symbolical slaying as differing from banishment. To prove this link, the basic structures of the ritual of the cairn are studied — when, where and how the folk punishment was inflicted. The article attempts to elucidate the relationship between the cairn as a customary punitive norm and codified law — acceptance of the customary norm by official law and its transition at a given stage to customary law again. The examples given in the article show that a widespread punitive norm is in question here, that is why the Bulgarian ethnic specifics is sought for.

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