Русский календарно-обрядовый фольклор Сибири и Дальнего Востока: Песни. Заговоры. - 1997. (Т. 13).

only a curse and prophecy but also a protection. Ancient people believed tha t a song could hsve an influence on the nature phenomena and help grow crop, get healthy cattle offsprings and also influence fam ily and community prosperity and wealth. A song was thought no t on ly to make the agricultural labour easier but also to influence its results. W ith the help o f glorifying the nature masters in the ritual songs and wishing them pros­ perity, wealth and welfare people had been expecting the same for them ­ selves. Thus, according to the magic law, the expected things would be achieved w ith th e help o f indicating them in some way. The similar magic techniques are even more characteristic o f charms and spells that are pre­ sented in the second part o f th is volume. The ritual folk lore is such a genre in wh ich the aesthetic function is secondary and a practical fun ction (ritual and magic) is dominant. Each genre o f the ritual folklore begins w ith an introductory article. The fir st one is represented by the philological article "The Calendar and Ritual Poetry o f Siberia and the Far East". Considered in them are the history o f collecting and studying calendar songs, its existing peculiarities: artistic and local, their significance in everyday life and culture o f the Russian population in Siberia and the Far East. One can trace a general cultural and historic regularity for Siberia and the Far East. The fact that people from the European Russia started settling down in the huge Siberian region in d ifferen t times and from d ifferen t places influenced not only the formation o f the Russian population but also its culture. That is especially vivid in the way o f preserving the agricultural and magic rituals, beliefs and connected w ith them all the d ifferen t forms o f folklore. By the end o f the XVIIIth century a majority o f the population o f Siberia had already been formed ou t o f the Russian peasant crop-growers who preserved more stable ethn ic features. That is the reason why the presented folk lore is mostly the peasant one. The urban population o f Siberia at the end o f the XlXth century had been less than 10 %. The whole block o f the calendar songs, charms and spells o f people o f Siberia and the Far East had been formed on the general Russian cultural and domestic basis. At the same time the specific features o f the Russians’ settling in the regions o f Siberia and the Far East and peculiarities o f their everyday life, occupations, social and professional cond itions contributed to th e development o f the local traditions. At the first stages o f colonisation one could notice the priority o f the Northern Russian traditions. Newsettlers from the Southern and Central Russia brought w ith them the ritual traditions d ifferen t from th e old residents’ ones and thus there had been constant changes in them. During the last four decades there had been registered only isolated cases o f the greatly transformed songs o f the Northern Russian origin.