CODES OF SLAV CULTURES
journal of slavic folkloristics and ethno-lingvistics

No. 1

PLANTS 

Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian ritual and lyric folk poems with the tree as a world axis and a tree of life are analyzed (Shapkarev, Stoin, Iliev, Marinov, Ikonomov, Miladinovci, Yastrebov, Karadzhich, Simonovich, Bovan, Nushich, Hrvatske narodne pjesme, Lahner, Zhganec, Shtrekelj, poems from different reviews). It is pointed at oppositions of symbolic traces of a tree: evergreen : deciduous, fruitful : fruitless, spindle-shaped : with branches, male : female. Cypress and fir in poems represent spindle, evergreen trees, often with birds on the top (falcon, nightingale, bird) and snake or dragon on the bottom. Three part vertical structure of animal disposition is not present in Balkan Slavs' poems. The apple as a branch fruitful tree often has wedding and fertility symbolism. The oleaster, a sort of a willow, branch fruitless tree, gets some features of a fruitful tree. It is pointed at the examples of replacing some sorts of trees. The second part of the article deals with christianized versions with stressed alegorisation of tree parts. The branch tree is often presented with golden branches, silver leaves and miraculous fruits. Christian apocryphal elements of the Dream of the mother of God and elements of old Slavonic mythology overlap in the poems containing the motif of a dream about the tree growing from the heart or the dream about spilt wine. The fir as a spindle tree appears in Easter poems from the Kosovo region.

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