Setu lüroeepiliste regilaulude eepilisest kihist
The Epic Layer of Lyroepic Setu Runo Songs

Summary/Abstract: According to the literal scientific definition, lyroepics is a compound type where lyrics and epics blend with lyricism appearing first of all in lyric swerves from the epical topic. The aim of the current paper is to have a closer look at some aspects of the epic half of Setu lyroepic runo songs. In runo songs, the youngest epic layer is made up of ballad and the ballad hero - phenomena disrupting the epic time and space and trying to adapt the old formulas with present time. Thus we could depict the changing of the runo song's plot on the following general developmental scheme: myth --> heroic epics --> ballad Setu lyroepics is characterised by minimal concentration on the conflict and especially the weakness of the hero's conception, having given no ground for the myth to develop into narrative(s) of more or less linear plot. The main character of the lyroepic runo song does not remind of the syncretic hero of many natons' older epics. For some reason (thanks to the domination of female singers, historical and social peculiarities (see Annist 1969: 41 ff)), heroic peotry did not appear in neither Setu nor Estonian runo songs (unlike for exmaple in Karelian epics). Because of this, the material has followed (a lack of) principles unknown to us before the appearance of the new (ballad-like) aesthetics and thinking formulas. Pieces of old myths and combinations of them have been as if tried to "update" but this has not resulted a in new quality. Looking at the developmental schema (myth --> heroic epics --> ballad), Setu (and Estonian) lyroepic runo songs have more connections with first of all the mythical and ballad-like what are also their main epic layers. On the one hand, the obscurity and variety of the hero and plot - as story dominants - are a sign of the longevity of runo song traditions, but on the other hand testify the waning of epic pretension in them by the end of the previous century.

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