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

19 etc.). With greater certainty we can refer to the tale genre N 2, 3 though there are among them some unusual for the European reader tales of animals, the masters of the taiga and the elements (N 1, 4). The problem of epic genres is especially complex. We cannot possibly speak of the Manchu-Tungusic epos as of a genre since this group of works has just begun to form and at present it is but a mixture of various genre traditions and motifs. Nevertheless, there are a number of epic features such as an unusual birth, the hero’s matchmaking, the father-in-law’s trial of a son-in-law, etc. It would probably be more proper to call these narrations heroic tales. One of the remarkable features of the Udehe folklore in any kind of tales is aetiological insets — why the Manchu deer’s rump is red (N 24), why the tomtit’s head is black (N 3), how the birds got such firm beaks and talons (N 3), why the hair’s ear-tips are black (N 35). The Udehe themselves divide all the narrative genres into two classes — nimanku and telungu. Nimanku includes the works different in their origin, function and artistic form, those of mythological, everyday, heroic and aetiological character. All the peoples of the Manchu-Tungusic group (except the Manchu) know the term nimanku (or nimnakan) and all of them divide their oral works into the two major classes. The word-root nima- (nimna-) means in the Manchu-Tungusic languages "to practise shamanism" and is connected with the most ancient ideas of a man about the magic of words. At present nimanku are taken by the folklore natives as the works of imagination and fancy, which distinguishes them from telungu narrating of the actions that supposedly took place in reality. Here are some subjects of the Udehe nimanku. 1. A large bird dropped its dung on a young girl (belie*) and the girl got pregnant. She left her parents, married a young man (yegdyga) and gave birth to a son. Once when the yegdyga went hunting there came seven wolves and devoured the child. The wife climbed up the shaman pole and asked a raven to tell her husband of the misfortune. The husband killed the wolves, put their carcasses into seven bark boxes and delivered them to the old woman — the Mother of the wolves who did not suspect these were her cubs and ate the meat. Only in the last box did she find the heads of her sons and full of grief turned into a wolf too (N 26, cf. N 105 (31) by Arseniev). 2. Once upon a time there lived a poor old man and a rich old man. The poor man lay down by an ice-hole and pretended to be dead. A hare found him and together with other hares brought the man home. There the old man and his wife killed all the hares and only one of them managed to run away. But the old woman touched his ears with an oven fork and they became black. The rich old man tried to repeat the trick, but he could not. In another case the poor old man prepared the glew and spread it over a tree. Many birds got stuck to the tree. The rich old man tried to do the same, but instead got stuck to the tree together with his whole family (N 35; a common Manchu- Tungusic subject). *For the terms belie and yegdyga see later.