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FROM CALENDAR CEREMONIALISM OF THE VISHERA KOMI-ZYRIANS: DEMYAN BEDNY // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2019. Issue 2 (24). P. 169-178

A special place in the national calendar is occupied by church holidays, which were perceived as the landmark in the annual cycle. In this context, the calendar ritualism of the Komi-Zyrians basically repeats the Northern- Russian calendar tradition, and the specific elements of calendar representations are associated with the existence of local traditions. The Vishera Basin (right tributary of the Vychegda) was inhabited by the Komi population from the 16th century, with the history of the Vishera settlement ethnographers associate the beginning of the formation of the entire Uper-Vychegda group of Komi Zyrians. After the formation of the main settlements of the upper Vychegda, the Vishera local tradition developed in a certain isolation, which was also reflected in the specifics of the formation of calendar representations. This article is devoted to calendar ceremonialism of autumn day of Kuzma-Demyan and the occasional hrononim Demyan Bedny connected with this date. Based on own field researches and archival materials, the author reveals a number of the specific moments connected from the studied local tradition. Among them: adaptation to economic activity and the gender "redistribution" which assigned to this autumn date the status of a general female holiday with a feast – bratchina, symbolizing end of agricultural year; the ambivalent attitude towards autumn wealth projected on a regulation of the marriage relations; language attraction between homonyms vo "year" and vo "harvest", "kasyanovy year" and "demyanovy month", which put in the forefront the motives of "poverty and misfortune" corresponding to a hrononim Demyan Bedny. Thus, the name, which obviously accidentally got to a context of calendar representations Demyan Bedny was "predetermined" by a number of the motivations already characteristic of autumn day of Kuzma-Demyan. It allows us to say about existence in the system of tradition of the mechanisms of self-organization defining the general vector of the development from a set of untied and random factors.

Keywords: folklore, Komi-zyryane, Komi language, local tradition, folk terminology, chrononyms