The Earliest Prominent Women’s Contribution to Ethnography: Sofiya Cherniavska

Author

IVANNIKOVA LIUDMYLA

a Ph.D. in Philology, a senior research fellow at Ukrainian and Foreign Folklore Studies Department of the NASU M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology

The Earliest Prominent Women’s Contribution to Ethnography: Sofiya Cherniavska

Abstract

This is the first paper in modern historiography dealt with the scientific heritage of Sofiya Cherniavska, a little-known collector of folklore from Khersonshchyna. Her personality remains to be unknown, as there is no biographical information available. The authoress surmises that she hailed from the village of Bilozerka, where she collected material for her collection. The collection of folklore from the Bilozerka village was highly appreciated by her contemporaries. Mykola Sumtsov has put her name next to the most prominent names of folklore collectors. Lately, Cherniavska’s folkloric heritage was highly appraised by Stepan Myshanych, who called it a singing monograph of a village.

The paper’s authoress reviews the scientific achievements of S. Cherniavska from modern science’s point of view. She primarily gives an assessment to scantily investigated phenomena of traditional culture, recorded by the collector and being at the time virtually disappearing. According to a programme, to which the collector stuck, all the materials were divided into two groups: ceremonies; and beliefs and song. Among the described rites, the following ones are of an interest: Kolodiy, Perepolovennia, 1st of May, dedication holiday, mowing celebration, harvest holiday, and send-off to army. There are original samples of maiden divinations. While considering send-off of a recruiter in more details, the paper’s authoress proves that it belongs to the rites of passage, related to New Year and funeral ceremonies. A particular attention is drawn to the beliefs on the transformation of water into wine during Christmastide: from Christmas through New Year to the Epiphany. They were already disappearing in the late XIXth century, though being popular all over Ukraine back in the XVIIth century. Records of legends made in Kyiv in the 1620s to 1640s evidence this conclusion. The authoress traces the transformation of these beliefs. Among songs, the ritual, Cossack-historical songs have remained the most poetic and conservative in terms of textual study. The authoress parallels records of S. Chernaavska with records of D. Yavornytskyi made at the same time and in the same village, as well as focuses on variants, contaminated texts, and novelties.

Keywords

Folklore of Southern Ukraine, song novelties, history of folklore studies.

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