Фольклор долган. - 2000. (Т. 19.)

desirable guest in t h e houses of the Dolganian people who during long winter evenings or during a winter storm entertained tired hunters and deerbreeders with stories beyond everybody’s imagination. Included into the volume are 19 fairy tales: magic , everyday life and about animals. They are published in the Dolganian language for the first time. Isolated samples of them were included into the collections of fairy tales of the peoples of the North in the Russian language and published by different publishing firms, but the scientific significance of all of them was low as the fairy tales had undergone literary changes. An analysis of the Dolganian fairy tales demonstrates that the plots of many of them were taken from the folklore heritage of the peoples who had participated in the Dolganian ethnic formation. For example, a fairy tale "Fox - Vixen" is, in reality, a European fairy tale "Puss’n Boots". In the Dolganian variant a main hero is not a cat but a fox. It can be explained by a fact that a majority of the Dolgans do not know cats and a fox traditionally was considered to be an extremely cunning animal. Thus, a Dolganian storyteller did not follow automatically the text of a fairy tale but creatively changed it making it more clear for his own people. Many Dolganian fairy tales were taken from folklore heritage of the Yakut people. A fairy tale "Langkay — A Big Head" in many places coincides with a Yakut fairy tale " "Birds’ Meeting". A fairy tale "An old Woman Taal" was also widely spread among the Yakuts. And a fairy tale "A Happy Day, an Evil Day" is an original variant of fairy tales having the same plot existing among the Turkic speaking peoples. One of the variants of it, for example, is included into the volume "The Tuvinian Fairy Tales" of the present series. In some cases fairy tales were told in the verse forms or in the rhymed prose. The example of such work can be a fairy tale "Poor Peasant with Seven Sons". The most spread genres of the non-fairy tale prose of the Dolgans are myths and legends. There 17 of them in the volume. The Dolgans themselves did not make difference between them and used one term — "bylyrgy ostor" (meaning "an ancient legends"). It has been so because both myths and legends were considered to be true stories about real events. The main topic of the Dolganian myths is a meeting of a man with spirits living in the Upper world. According to the beliefs of the Dolgans young men from the Upper world could live with young girls from the Earth and marry them. There are myths telling that it is a sin to bother deities from the Upper world for trifle things, first o f all, the head of the good-willed deities of Yuryung Aiyy. It is colourfully described in the myth about the engagement to the daughter of Yuryung Aiyy, how proud had become one leader of the Norilsk Dolgan and decided to become a relative with an Upper deity himself. A shaman fulfilled his request but in the end everybody died — a leader and his guests. A special theme in the Dolganian mythology is a relation with the deceased people and their world. As an example of this can serve a myth "A Daughter of a