Res Humanitariae

From the earliest descriptions and studies, the Prussian Lithuanians, or Lietuvininkai, and their sung folklore have usually been treated as one unit. However, the ethnographic region of Lithuania Minor is a vast territory stretching over 200 kilometres from north to south. Two distinct areas of ethnic Lietuvininkai music can be identified within it. This article aims to investigate the musical features of the folklore that existed in the Klaipėda district, and to reveal its uniqueness in the context of Lietuvininkai sung folklore.

The ethno-linguistic origins of formation of miсrotoponymy of Sloviansk area and its regional features are explores in the article; the author states that an overwhelming number of language units have Turkic origin; as it turns out the Sloviansk toponymic nominations are its archaic and established layer of the vocabulary where “preserved” the coherent linguoethnogeographic story of analyzed lands.

Simple and clear at the first glance, the word sea, having Indo-European parallels which have practically the only meaning ‘sea’, on a closer examination turned out to be not so clear. Linguistic and ethno-linguistic, including folklore, data of Slavic traditions make it possible to interpret the word sea in Slavic languages and dialects in the sense of ‘water’ in general, and especially – the vast expanse of water – regardless of salinity, flowage and other properties of water. Moreover, the same semantics are characteristic of many, if not all, Indo-European denominations of the sea, and many words of non-Indoeuropean languages as well. Aspects of future studying of this topic can be seen in the explanation of other words with root *mor-/mar-, identification of their semantics, motivational relations and etymology, as well as other lexems, denoting the sea, the causes of their emergence or preservation in i.-e. languages and solving a number of other problems of diachronic aspect.

In terms of date of recording the earlier and most interesting Lithuanian musical folklore material, the 64 songs of Prussian Lithuanians collected in the 19th century and preserved in the L. Rėza archival legacy, have more or less never been considered in terms of influences from a multicultural environment. The aim of this article is to discover and reveal the Lithuanian and/or German/European relationship in the songs. Analysis of the songs showed the archaity of the melodies in the L. Rėza legacy, traditionally associated with the spiritual culture of the ancient Prussian or Lithuanian tribes, is highly suspect and a matter open to debate. Many of the rare individual songs turned out to have “foreign melodies”, i.e., local variations arose based upon direct or indirect influence by German or common European melodies.

The article discusses problems connected with Balto-Slavic mythological parallels, including typology of mythological characters, lexical similarities resulting from genetic affinity and borrowing, as well as the influence of mythological systems of neighbouring peoples. Some new Balto-Slavic parallels have been suggested, viz. Rugių boba – Baba Ruga (Roga); Pikulas – pikulík; nelabais, and nelabasis – nelapši, nelapszy, with the focus on their ethnolinguistic aspect, both as mythological characters and as elements of the mythological lexicon. Special attention has been paid to the etymology of these words. The new parallels between the two groups of related languages provides additional material related to Slavic and Baltic ethno- and glottogeny.