Свети Георги в бългаpcкия и в полcкия фолклор
Saint George in Bulgarian and Polish Folklore

Summary/Abstract: The article notes the pagan origin of the cult of St. George reflected both in sacred buildings in his honour, in icon and other kinds of painting, in sculpture, in medieval literature and in spring rites, in a number of legends and tales of the Slav peoples. The article lists the oldest collections of legends from the Middle Ages which influenced the emergence of the folklore variants of the legend about the Saint among the Southern Slavs (the collection of priest Dragol in a Serbian edition from the 13th century) and among the Western Slavs (The Golden Legend by Jacob de Voragine of 1270). The view is put forward that the prototype of the legendary hero was St. George from Kapadokia who secretly adopted Christianity and was beheaded on April 23, 303 A.D. which date become a church feast. The article also points out the ancient origin of the motif of the killing of a chthonic monster, typical of demiurge gods like Mardouc, Apollo and of epic heroes like Gilgamesh, Jazon, Perseus, and others. The author has pointed out some differences in the folklore treatment of the Bulgarian and the Polish legends about St. George and the lamia: the Bulgarian versions exist mainly in poetic form while the Polish ones, in prose; in the Bulgarian legends the action is set on the Earth and is localized near water (lake, sea, spring), near a town or other inhabited place while in Polish the action setting is unspecified – in a house, in the sky or on the Moon; in Bulgarian legends St. George has no attributes of a knight, unlike the hero in Polish variants, the Bulgarian variants lack the characteristically Polish episode of sending St. George to the Moon as punishment for his cowardice; Bulgarian legends lack Christian elements, unlike the explicit dependence of the action on God’s help in Polish variants, etc.

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