Фольклор долган. - 2000. (Т. 19.)

Nganasanian Man" demonstrating how sinful is to reanimate people. In fact in this work one can see a process of interrelation of two different ideas of the world o f the dead: the Turkic one — where there had been a prohibition to attend the world o f the dead and the Samoyedish — where it was possible for shamans to travel into the world of the dead. Of great interest are the myths about the existence on the Earth of huge hairy giants and people who have a single eye. These myths tell us that people with one eye live on sea islands and are peaceful, in contrast to them giants are not friendy to people prohibiting them to visit their land. A special group of myths are the works confirming shaman’s power. They were thought to have the ability to see and take over evil spirits, to possess different extraordinary capabilities, for example, to be able to take a shape of different creatures. Dolganian myths explained nature’s phenomena, regulated social life, declared the norms of law, right and behavour of a man. A comparative studies of the mythology of the Dolgans, Yakuts, Evenks and Nganasans demonstrate that there are direct coincidences among them. Thus, the materials o f the volume on the Dolganian mythology give evidence that in the formation o f the spiritual culture of the Dolgans were used works of the peoples out of whom a new ethnic group appeared, and also the works of the neighbouring peoples. A volume’s sector devoted to songs consists of 16 original samples of the Dolganian songs. Six of them have been written down by A.A.Popov, five of them in the 1930s were included into the first collection of the Dolganian folklore. Their translation had been done by E.M.Tager — an aid of A.A.Popov, who did her best to preserve an artistic peculiarity of the original text and to create a literary variant of songs easy for perception. In the present volume given are the texts by A.A.Popov in the Dolganian language and new checked translations o f them done by P.E.Yefremov and edited by N.A.Alekseev, the latter being also a co-editor of this volume. They are both responsible for the translation and edition of 10 original songs, not published before from the personal archives of G.G.Alekseeva. She collected more than 200 Dolganian songs during the expeditions to Taimyr in the 1987—1990s. The songs of the Dolgans are original and expressive. One can feel in them a soul of the Dolgans. Charms and beauty of the poetic images, their originality are founded on the full merging of the Dolgans with the surrounding world of Nature and reflect the life conditions o f the people who are mainly hunters and deerbreeders. As far as genre specifications of the Dolganian songs are concerned, they are songs-improvisations of a very personal, confessional character. From the point o f view o f their content, they are often responses of some events or reflections of momentary mood of a performer. Lyrical songs tell us about the feelings of lovers and have distinctive marks of the people’s ethics and rites. Contemporary songs are eclectic, interconnected in them are figurativeness and descriptiveness.