Folk ideas about the diseases sent (based on the material of the Arkhangelsk dialects)

Kovrigina Elena Andreevna ORCID: 0000-0001-8161-3615 Junior Researcher, Department of Russian Language, Faculty of Philology, Lomonosov Moscow State University 119991, Russia, Moskva oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Leninskie Gory, 1-i korpus gumanitarnykh fakul'tetov (1-i GUM) el.kovrigina7@yandex.ru

In the linguistic picture of the world of dialect speakers, the disease is personified, like a living being that aggressively affects a person directly, without the intervention of a third person. However, according to popular beliefs, the appearance of the disease can also be an expression of the evil will of another person – a sorcerer. The belief in the possibility of sending a disease is a special cultural layer in the popular perception of the world.

The article examines the linguistic and cultural semantics of lessons, prizors and kilas – concepts that reflect popular ideas about the evil eye, that is, harmful magical effects on human health. The material is extracted from issues 1-21 of the Arkhangelsk Regional Dictionary (AOS) ^[1], the AOS file ^[4], including its computer version, as well as the author's own observations made in dialectological expeditions from 2013 to 2021. The examples use a simplified transcription adopted for AOS ^{[2, 3]}.

In popular culture, the state of illness is often represented as "the result of the action of demons of diseases, other evil spirits, witches, sorcerers, people with an evil eye" ^{[6, p. 225]}. The appearance of such ailments is primarily associated with a harmful magical effect on the human body. The range of words denoting ways to cause a person to have a painful condition is quite wide. According to popular beliefs, the negative impact could be carried out through the word: a reservation, a mischief, lessons, a look: the evil eye, a prisor or a touch: a prikos, a pritz. Any action aimed at "spoiling" a person is called spoiling.

1. Lessons and prizes

In the Dictionary of Russian Folk Dialects, the word lessons is fixed in the following meaning: ‘evil eye, harming someone with an evil look (evil eye)’ ^{[8, p. 330]}, the word prizor – ‘according to superstitious beliefs – the evil eye, harming someone with an evil eye (evil eye), a look that brings harm, misfortune (bad look)’ ^{[7, p. 228]}. There are reasons to assume that these definitions do not reveal the whole essence of these phenomena. This interpretation indicates only one of two possible ways to influence human health. Let's take a closer look at this issue.

Etymologically, the word lessons goes back to the verb *rekti – ‘to speak’, and the word prisor – to the verbs *zr?ti, *przr?ti – ‘to watch’ ^{[9, p. 168]}. Historically, these two types of influence on human health have been clearly differentiated by the way it is rendered: through a word (lessons) or through a look (prisor). In modern dialects, lessons and prisms have acquired a broader meaning. Lessons and prisms are called magical negative action with a word and a look. Probably, such a change in semantics is due to the fact that for speakers of the dialect, only the general situation of harmful influence on a person from the outside is relevant. In addition, the internal form of the analyzed words, indicating the method of this effect, is already forgotten. Currently, the words lessons and prizor are synonymous.

Here are some examples:

– impact in a word: The lessons are those I do not know, there is a lot to be done there; The lessons are just say and get sick; I was afraid of something, someone would say a word to me, and they would disgrace me; People make some reservations – they will.

– the impact of the look: Zglass is related to the lessons, they will say – it's overtime; The other will look yes, "Oh, how beautiful she is" or tse, that's what she is, and she will get sick. Prizor – well, it 's zglazyat; With the eye, they will say, she has made a mistake.

As mentioned above, in the folk language picture of the world, lessons and prisms are methods of malicious magical influence, as a result of which a person comes to a state of illness. Such a negative impact on human health can be both conscious and unconscious. To "endow" a person with lessons and prisms means to time out, to time out, to time out, to shame or disgrace him, that is, to "spoil, jinx" him. About a person who is in a painful state as a result of lessons and prisors, they will say that he is ugly, or that he has worked hard, put on his shoes, disgraced himself.

It is possible to harm not only a person with a glance, but also domestic cattle: Here, they are glaring at my cow like wild men, here they want to torture my cow; What does it mean to disgrace something? Maybe someone is famous, they will make a cow sick.

A person who "knows", i.e. has special witchcraft skills, can maliciously spoil someone. As a rule, evil people with evil eyes of black color have a "bad look": Just a knowledgeable person called who can time it; There are black people, evil, who have what kind of look. It seems to be black, as they looked, so they were worn out, black-eyed; Probably, she disgraced herself. Maybe she has a black voice.

In addition, it is possible to harm human health unconsciously, without desire. This can be done by people with special ugly eyes: Some eyes are still ugly. In the end, it happened by chance to say that, oh, what a sweetheart, – and fse, they frowned.

An unintentional reason for lessons in cattle can also be a feeling of envy towards the owner: The animal can get sick from lessons, yes people are envious of such, yes envy is something in a kiss.

Envious people who can jinx someone are called picky: Vasilisa - she is envious, not good, prisorciva. Vasyushka is envious, yehidna, will disgrace yesho; She is picky with us, Verka, before the illness, she will start vomiting.

The consequences of lessons and prizors are quite diverse. A sick person feels weak and dizzy. The painful condition may be accompanied by fever and fever. Due to the evil eye, the mucous membrane of the eyes may become inflamed in a person, there is damage to the skin. Pain in the neck, back and legs can also be the result of lessons and prisors:

When they get me, I'm lying, I'm lying, I can't stand it; The Prizor will take it, he's lying in bed, in drosh kidaet, he's shivering like that; He'll come – her eyes are red. I'm out of time. Well, some eye looked at her; her hands were covered with scabs on her elbows, whether anyone had been harnessed. Here it is from lessons, from lessons, as they have equipped it, so it will stand in the back; Her neck got sick with prisoru; Legs, yes, they say, with prisoru who happens.

Lessons and prisms can lead a person to death: Here are lessons like spoiling, even to death, you can die; And from a lesson a person can die: the temperature rises, and I was a freak (easily susceptible to the evil eye); They will be disgraced, and they can go to the grave.

An exhausted adult is in an indefinite, difficult-to-diagnose painful condition: You will be harnessed, you will lie down, and no one will recognize this pain.

Newborn unbaptized children, i.e. children "without an angel", are especially vulnerable to lessons and prizors. The reason for the baby's restless sleep, irrepressible crying, rejection of the breast is considered to be the evil eye: That's the trouble, how the roar, the noses of the biyo, the zarevlevatsa. Izurocitsia, the child is crying, not with a tit, not with a yevo (you will calm her down); She goes, hang up the zypka – she will be a disgrace, she will not sleep, she will roar.

An exhausted or neglected cow gets sick with an udder, and she stops giving milk: Here the cow milks well, a man goes and says: "What a big udder, how well it milks," and she gets sick, her udder will get sick. The cow is out of kilasi, there is no milk in the udder; Pull the tits-those. The udder hurts sometimes, whether with a prizor, prizoryat, maybe and veredyat.

In order to determine the cause of the malaise, it is necessary to perform the following action: Get the embers out of the blowout, throw them into the chyashka, and if the embers are filled, it means that the person is surochen.

Clothes turned inside out can protect you from lessons: your clothes are turned inside out, you have not been harnessed. To protect yourself from prisors, you need to hook a pin: You need to wear a pin, so that you are not disgraced, not stipulated. In addition, protective words can help to protect against the evil eye: Both a talisman on the hands and a talisman on the neck are the most dangerous places, so that no one has made a fool of them. According to popular beliefs, a newborn can not be shown to anyone, then no one will tame the child, not a disgrace: they knew a lot of lessons, they tamed people, so they don't show the child.

It is believed that if you take something in your mouth, then a person's ability to the evil eye disappears. Only if this condition is met, you can look at the baby: Take a straw in your teeth. Take it in the teeth, have a snack, so as not to disgrace. Look at you mosh (at the baby).

Only "knowledgeable" people can get rid of the lessons: This and the ranse are gone, this old lady lived in the house, she was also a shopgirl, she knew from lessons and from fright.

Most of the rituals aimed at getting rid of the evil eye and its consequences are associated with the ablution of a person who has been subjected to lessons and prisms. Water is an important element of many ritual actions related to the deliverance of a person from diseases. In popular culture, water is an attribute of purification and renewal. So, in order to get rid of lessons and prisms, it is necessary to water a sick person with water and read the plot:It will burst in your face, you will tremble from this, you will become lehche, this is from lessons. It is necessary to water, prizor when. King of the sea, King of the earth, King of the water, give me water from seven rivers, from 12 streams, wash off, rinse the servant of God. Amen. You can go anywhere. Spit three times into the ladle.

In conspiracies from lessons and prizors , they directly turn to water for help as a mythological creature: In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the Holy Spirit. Water-Water, the queen of the sea, walked-ran, soaped-rinsed penye-korenye, yellow sands, gray pebbles. Tagzhe wash away-spoloshchi with the servant of God's name fse lessons-prizory, paralysis and rodimtsy, and commotion.

The elimination of lessons and prisms can also be associated with the image of fire, which, according to popular beliefs, also has healing properties: As the smoke on the fire does not hold, so the lessons, the prizes do not hold on my head.

With a request for deliverance, they turn to Jesus Christ or the Most Holy Theotokos:I will be blessed, I will cross myself, from the hut by the doors, from the gates by the gates, and the field is clear. In an open field, Jesus Christ on a black horse poached silk spoilage, lessons, pinches, aches, a broom poached not on a faithful person. Be strong words, yomki, salaries and stone, sharp knife; Out of these two rivers comes the Mother of the Most Holy The Mother of God, who takes off – well, here's the baby that you're moesh. Fse lessons, fse prizory, fse lyutskiye stipulations and windy fractures.

Lessons and prizes are sent back to where they came from – to the forest, to the wind, to evil people: We pour the remaining water backhand through the vice through the left shoulder and say: where did the lessons come from, go there, from the forest to the forest, from evil people to evil people, amen, amen, amen;From where ozev and prizor came – go there: from wind to wind, from people to people – let him go where he wants.

You can get rid of the evil eye with the help of a decoction of medicinal prisor, natural herbs, from the tract: The tract is here – it is so from the weak. Yest grass urochnitsa. It blooms in spring, blue flowers; Here are the prisorny grasses. Boorotska grass, it is also like kuksinnaya (purple), only zhoska, it grows by the hands.

2. Kila

In the dialects of the Arkhangelsk region, kila is called various tumors that appear as a result of the evil eye or witchcraft damage:

1. Inguinal hernia: Keel, inguinal keel, yeyo speak; Inguinal hernia was called keel, keel;

2. umbilical hernia: The boy's kilka, the little navel. Doctors can't, but Grandma will bite;

3. any solid tumor: So she does not walk. She's got the keel. Well, the tumor is different; To whom and to whom they can impose buldyrs, they are so much; Including cancer: Esophageal cancer was recognized. The old women gave me herbs, kiln grass. Old women take off their kilas. Kily means tod je is the cancer.

4. Hemorrhoids: Went to the toilet - there are keels hanging. She did, so do it; Now they call her a gemora, and they called her a keel; They planted the keels, let the arrows fly;

5. fungus – In combination, a flowing kila: Anka syudy (on her head) was planted – it was called early - a flowing kila, she had a sore spot on her head, in the present, a fungus, and in the then – a flowing kila, also by grandmothers, and knead her hair on that have not grown;

6. Warts: The keels on the fingers are like warts. Sadyats on the fingers; Some kind of keels were hung. I had kilos hung on my fingers – so four healthy calluses;

7. Blisters: They could have planted watery pimples, and they could not be burned, except to go to another old lady; The fashion was early – the kilas were imposed on a person like water pimples, who kept their anger, so I would tie them to the kila;

8. any purulent abscesses (boil, boil, carbuncle): Kila is a boil with a fist planted, because you can't step, you can't do it; The kila will be cut, pus, they say, comes out; We had a kila at Volodya, like a ras on the waist. Kilyo is like a boil.

It is worth noting that the speakers of the dialect distinguish between an ordinary boil or abscess and one resulting from spoilage: The chiris from the heaviness sit down themselves, and people sit down on the keels. It can't be that the kils themselves have come, they are being imposed. 

Only a "knowledgeable" person with special secret knowledge, trained in household magic can send (plant) the disease. Such people are called noble, healers, hiccups, keelers, people who know both for the worse and for the good:

They were nobles, narot what he was, a noblewoman. The keels were planted. My mother-in-law's brother was a noble, he planted kilas. Kilas are early healers who had some words and imposed kilas on each other. We have some kind of keels here, they plant the keel. The kilts are knitting, people knew this early and on the thin and on the good. And the hiccups planted hiccups – like these words are thin, and now they are planting kilyo. They are called hiccups and keelers.

Such people plant a keel, sit down, push, thrust, impose, tie, roll in, attach, hang, let down the wind:

Here they will plant kilos, kilos. And the growth is some kind of mess they have there. We had a Parfait in the village, fse kily something sat down. Oh, defka, it's a kila, someone planted it on you. She gave her son Kil a very nice place. Muschina lived, the mock kill to impose, like a tumor. I brought a whale, a beetle man. Keels can stick to a person in the wind.

One of the main reasons why a sorcerer can plant a kila on another person is personal enmity, domestic disagreements, a desire to "punish" a neighbor for his refusal to fulfill even the smallest request:

She (the sorceress) is imposing a kil, she is imposing an inner kil, they will take out their anger like this. And yes, it was called kily, what kind of person does not please a person, so that's what he will do. I didn't give salt to one, he was sick, and my throat hurt, and he knits kilas.

After performing a number of actions, you can determine the person who sent the keel:

Pull a thread through this keel with a needle and throw it into the oven, and the one who imposed will come to visit. As the keel is pierced and the water is thrown into the oven, so whoever imposed, he will come running.

Kila can affect the internal organs of a person, the skin and the mucous membrane: 

She forced the kila on me, they say. Upstairs and inside. If to the throat, it can crush. They say a hernia rolled out, the film burst there, so an inguinal hernia, an umbilical one, comes out. They were talking earlier, they'd tie a kilo.Oh, defka, evo has a kil. Such a gnojev's lump is strong for so long. Kily is like a sore throat. The bubbles there will go on damp places, looking at how they will bind them, on slimy places. 

In the Pinezhsky district of the Arkhangelsk region, two types of keels are distinguished: nine and forty, depending on how many new boils will arise around one old one: 

Sorokovukha – kila, vokruk kila yesho forty naroset. Oh, how I have an abscess here, it's red, it's turned red, there will be an abscess on my neck. It was Anna who planted a kila for you, you will have nine, nine boils. 

In the popular understanding , the kila has a destructive effect on a person: tyche t, tears: The early kila was knitted. She happens to be a pain, she goes to pain, she's a kilo. Shto mug, shto kila – fse on the same rights, soulfully. The keels are poking, tearing up the fse. My mother's ear ached, there was no peace in any way. It's my keel that's tearing up like an ear. We went home, yay ush ek, mouth-from the outside, here it is, this, defka something.

Kila can drive a person to death: They somehow imposed kilts on the throat, on the arm. Someone needs to annoy a neighbor. He will be sick, sick. She said, if no one will take it off, then she will die. A person is dying from this kila. 

You can plant kilos not only on a person, but also on livestock: Someone forced a keel into the cow's mouth, shes a keel. The cow's keel is stuffed. Litka Sakina imposed on our calf a keel on the neck. Sweat shshokami grow a large keel. Tagge and kilyo were taken to the horses.

It is possible to get rid of the kila only through special rituals combining verbal and nonverbal actions and performed by "knowledgeable" people. By itself, "no kila does not pass." They untie her, dissuade her, remove her, take her out: Shoptushki yez, so they will untie the dog from you. To someone again it is necessary to iti, to talk this kila. Defka fya f kile, it is necessary from milk cream. She said something funny, she smeared it, but they wrapped it up. Kortoshki should be rubbed raw, sentences should be made, and the kilos will be removed.

To do this, they read conspiracies: As mother nochenka burns, mayet and freezes and melt on the servant of God ... fse these damned dvenatsyat kil, sweat and burn, do not give any disease.

The keel grass can help in getting rid of the keel: Boils-ti, they will say, planted a keel – the keel root is used. Our bapka knew the keel grass, it's like a fern. It is not necessary to impose burdocks on the naryf fsyaks of the keel.

O. B. Khristoforova, when considering the mythical keel disease based on the material of Perm dialects, correlates it with another ailment – hiccups ^{[10, pp. 201-207]}. This correlation is also relevant in the analysis of Arkhangelsk dialects (for more information about hiccups, see ^[5]). Examples in which kila and hiccup are used in the same context are common: Don't get on the hiccup, there are kils impaled and hiccups; And hiccups planted hiccups – like these words are thin, and if they plant a kilyo; They plant a hiccup, they plant a kilyo. They planted that keel; she was a hiccup, she planted hiccups. What do the hiccups do when they sit down, and again the keel when they sit down boils.

Probably, first of all, this is due to the general situation of the "hit" of the disease to a person: firstly, the participation of the sorcerer - hiccup and the expression of his evil will, secondly, the method of sending damage: both the keel and the hiccup are planted, imposed and let down the wind, thirdly, the habitat of the disease is the body a person. However, when common features are found in the morphology of kyla and hiccups, they never mix on the territory of the Arkhangelsk region and denote different painful conditions. In addition, kila and hiccups have different localization foci: Kila can be planted everywhere, and hiccups are only in the middle. The hiccup will be planted in the middle, and the keels can be planted on the finger. Kilu can be imposed anywhere. Neither with tovo nor with sevo the skin will swell, the bubble is filled with water, such a lump. A different situation is observed in Perm dialects: "in Verkhokamye, contamination of these folklore images occurs, the kila is perceived as a demonic creature causing seizures, or, more often, the hiccup is attributed to the function, in other places usually associated with the kila, to cause growths on trees" ^{[10, pp. 201-207]}.

The considered dialect material showed that the belief of a modern dialect speaker in the possibility of sending a disease is a defining feature of the national consciousness. The reason for malicious influence on a person or livestock is often either envy or bad relationships. If it is possible to disgrace and harass by accident, having an "evil eye", but not having special magical knowledge, then only a sorcerer plants a kila with a specific purpose – to harm. The person on whom the magical effect was directed becomes very ill, experiences physical suffering. Sent diseases can even lead to his death. It is possible to get rid of damage or the evil eye only with the help of knowledgeable people through conspiracies and special rituals. Medicinal herbs are also of great importance. Both a talisman and a special ritual action will help protect against the diseases sent. Such ideas about the diseases that have been sent are primarily due to the fact that the daily life of a villager is permeated with faith in the "efficacy" of a word or look. Magical rituals and rituals, filling all spheres of life of dialect speakers, still occupy an important place in the structure of rural life.