Фольклор удэгейцев: Ниманку, тэлунгу, ехэ. - 1998. (Т. 18.)

2. The Russian records (directly from the narrator or with the help of an interpreter). This was the method of V.K. Arseniev. In the 50s it was also used by B. Mozhayev. 3. The texts rendered in the Udehe language. There are many of them in the story of the first Udehe author Jansi Kimonko "Where the Sukpai flows" written in the Udehe, but published only in Russian. 4. The recording of texts in the Udehe began in the 30s of the present century and was performed by Y.R. Schneider. In 1936 he prepared the first publication of the Udehe folklore, the texts and scientific translations. The volume included 21 texts — tales, stories, riddles, historical and ancestral legends — as well as research commentaries. Unfortunately, Y.R. Schneider was subjected to repressions and his book was not published. Of all that he had collected only two tales were published in the children’s book "Selemaga". In 1936 Udehe texts were recorded by Schneider’s post-graduate Y.N. Baskakova who was subjected to repressions as well and whose texts have not yet been published. Since the 60s the texts have been recorded (in the written form and on a tape-recorder) by an Udehe V.T. Kialundziuga. The texts of her archive seem to be the best as they had been recorded by a person of the native folklore media who understood the narrators perfectly well. In 1985 V.T. Kialundziuga helped the members of the Novosibirsk research folklore expedition to record some Udehe narrators on the modem compact-disks. Since the 50s the Udehe folklore has been collected by LI. Sem and in the 70s it was recorded by Y.I. Sheikin, a musicologist. Recently some works of the Udehe folklore have been recorded by А.КҺ . Girfanova and Y.V. Perekhvalskaya. The present volume is the first academic publication of the Udehe folklore. The compilers included into it the works of various folklore genres — tales, legends, songs and riddles — of the various territorial Udehe groups. The volume consists of two parts. The first and the larger part contains 78 works of folklore including Udehe tales and recitative monologues, the stories of ancient life and customs, some historical and fairy legends, riddles, taboos and simple songs. The second part of the volume includes Udehe myths, tales and legends recorded by V.K. Arseniev (about 50 works). The volume is supplied with a disc of the Udehe music and the notation. The folklore of the Udehe has been investigated rather poorly in comparison with that of the other Manchu-Tungusic groups. On the whole, the Udehe folklore seems to be on the same level as that of other peoples of the Siberian and American North. The characteristic features of this level are the vagueness of genre borders, the existence of both pre­ shaman and shaman mythology and the weakness of the epic tradition. The process of genre formation has not yet been completed which makes the classification of the Udehe folklore works very difficult. Of course, there are many works that can be definitely reffered to myths, tales or legends, but there are others involving mythological or shaman motifs (see N 13, 14, 18,