Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
in Georgian Folktales
By
Michael Berman
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements .................................................................................... vi
Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
The Prologue: The Tale of Tales ............................................................... 15
Chapter 1: The Earth will take its Own ..................................................... 17
Chapter 2: Davit ........................................................................................ 37
Chapter 3: About the Young Man turned to Stone .................................... 47
Chapter 4: The Horse Lurja ....................................................................... 59
Chapter 5: The Daughter of the Sun .......................................................... 68
Chapter 6: The Pig Bride ........................................................................... 85
Chapter 7: Tsikara ..................................................................................... 90
Chapter 8: The Frogs Skin ....................................................................... 99
The Epilogue: The Kinto and the King.................................................... 108
Bibliography............................................................................................ 111
Index........................................................................................................ 116
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
Viticulture may well have begun either near the Caspian or in a region including
Colchis, where at two sites dating to the fourth millennium BC the earliest material
evidence has been found, in the form of grape-pips in accumulations associated
with stores of chestnuts, hazlenuts and acorns, these too being for food, at the same
sites. These accumulations could indeed have been the outcome of food-gathering
rather than of harvesting of cultivated vines, but this seems rather unlikely
(Burney & Lang, 1971, p.11).
Introduction
folktales and bizarre or quaint festival rites (Ruck, Staples, et al., 2007,
p.3).
This is very much what occurred in the case of Georgian paganism too.
Not only can reminders be found in the traditional dances, songs, and rites
still being performed, but also in the folktales still being told. Bilocation
(the apparent ability to be in two places at the same time), having animal
familiars and / or healing powers, undertaking spiritual journeys, carrying
out soul retrievals, and practising divination, are all elements to be found
the stories chosen for inclusion in this collection, and they are also, as we
shall see, all elements typically associated with shamanism.
[A]lthough Georgia has been a nominally Orthodox Christian country
since the 4th century, an indigenous pre-Christian religion was actively
practiced in many parts of Georgia up to the beginning of this century and
even more recently in some areas, where, with the restriction of official
Georgian Orthodox activities under the Soviet regime, syncretistic
Christian-pagan rites conducted by the village elders had become the sole
forms of worship (Tuite, 1995, p.13).
Introduction
Moreover, none of these problems that the Westerner faces can be fully
solved by background reading, however extensive such reading might be.
On the other hand, as an outsider, the Westerner can see the narrative with
a new pair of eyes, and thus appreciate aspects to it that the insider might
not perhaps consider or that the insider merely takes for granted and
glosses over. And for this reason, though fraught with obvious difficulties,
the outsiders attempt to understand and to present appreciations of such
narratives is still an enterprise that is more than worth undertaking and one
that can, without a doubt, pay rich dividends, as hopefully this study will
show.
As well as the Saint George of the mountains, there is also the Saint George of
the Georgian plains, the only divinity whose worship has been more or less
preserved in Plains Georgia. Possession plays an important part in his rituals, but
unlike in the mountains, the possessed are generally women, whose souls are
seized to punish them for sins they are said to have committed (see Bonnefoy,
1993, p.257).
Introduction
This marked the child's definitive transfer from the the lineage of the
mother to the father's clan and the newly dead followed the same
pathway, being escorted by their mgebari to the equivalent of a clan in the
"Land of Souls", known as Suleti.
For further evidence to support the hypothesis that some form of
shamanism was once practised in the region, we can point to the images of
Dl in Svan oral literature and ritual, in which she takes on the form of a
shape-shifter, an attribute again commonly associated with shamans, in the
story of Dl and the doomed hunter, for example:
The story starts off with an encounter between the goddess and a
legendary hunter called Betgil, selected by Dl to be her lover. She gives
him a token of their love in the form of a bead, ring or charm (depending
on the version of the story) and then makes him promise to avoid all
contact with human females from that day on, even including his own
wife. For as long as he remains in the goddess's good graces Betgil enjoys
remarkable success in the hunt. When one day, however, he breaks his
promise, sleeping with either his wife or his sister-in-law, the goddess
changes herself into a white chamois and chases after him as he tries to
escape by climbing up a mountain. On reaching the summit the goddess
resumes her original form and confronts the terrified Betgil, who falls (or
some say jumps) to his death on the rocks below (see Tuite, 2006, p.166).
Xevsur shrines that are consecrated to Samdzimari by name, or other
female spirits with similar characteristics, are known to every Pshav and
Xevsur community. And associated with the male-gendered patron deities
(called xvtisshvilni "children of God") of villages are auxiliary goddesses,
not only capable of assuring the health and fertility of people and their
livestock but also with the potential of bringing harm, thus reflecting what
Introduction
10
Introduction
11
As for the shrine, the sacred space where ceremonies are performed, it
is known as the khati. It is the place
where people gather to make offerings, to eat and drink and sacrifice and
also to dance and sing ritual, improvised songs, the kaphiaoba. The word
khati has other significant religious and spiritual meanings [too]: it is the
name given to the Sons of God, pre-Christian deities like gudani and
lashari, to whom the mountain people gave special devotion, and it also
means icon or just image (Anderson, 2003, p.97).
What we can see from this is that shamanism, albeit it under different
names and in various forms, has thrived for millennia and, it has to be said
that it is hard to imagine a tradition surviving for so long in so many
cultures unless there were effective components to it (see Walsh, 2007,
pp.120).
In her paper South Siberian and Central Asian Hero Tales and
Shamanistic Rituals, the Leipzig researcher Erika Taube suggests that
Folktalesbeing expressions of early stages of the development of human
societyreflect reality: material culture, social relations, customs, [and]
religious beliefs. When folktales were being formed and appeared as vivid
forms of spiritual and artistic expression in correspondence with the
general social development, those elements, which nowadays are usually
regarded as phantastic creations of human mind, were strictly believed
phenomenons, i.e. they were accepted as facts. Therefore, it is not at all a
new idea that such tales sometimes reflect shamanistic beliefs and
conceptions (Taube, 1984, p. 344).
12
Introduction
of belief as, not being able to get inside other peoples minds, we cannot
possibly know what was actually the case.
On the other hand, as Emily Lyle (2007) points out in the abstract to
her paper Narrative Form and the Structure of Myth, what we can be
reasonably sure of is that At each stage in transmission of a tale from
generation to generation, modifications take place but something remains.
Thus there is a potential for material to be retained from a time in the
distant past when the narrative was embedded in a total oral worldview or
cosmology. In view of the fact that in the past shamanism was widely
practised in the regions where the tales in this study were told, it is
therefore highly likely that a shamanic worldview and shamanic
cosmology is to be found embedded in them.
Stories have traditionally been classified as epics, myths, sagas,
legends, folk tales, fairy tales, parables or fables. However, the definitions
of the terms have a tendency to overlap (see Berman, 2006, p.150-152)
making it difficult to classify and categorize material. Another problem
with the traditional terminology is that the genre system formed on the
basis of European folklore cannot be fully applied universally.
Consider, for example, Eliades definition of myth. For Eliade the
characteristics of myth, as experienced by archaic societies, are that it
constitutes the absolutely true and sacred history of the acts of the
Supernaturals, which is always related to a creation, which leads to a
knowledge, experienced ritually, of the origin of things and thus the ability
to control them, and which is lived in the sense that one is profoundly
affected by the power of the events it recreates (see Eliade, 1964, pp.1819). However, many stories are lived in the sense that one is profoundly
affected by the events they recreate without them necessarily being myths.
Moreover, a number of the stories that will be presented in this study could
be regarded as having the above characteristics but would still not
necessarily be classified as myths.
Another problem encountered is that a number of the definitions of
what a myth is are so general in nature that they tend to be of little value.
For example, the suggestion that a myth is a story about something
significant [that] can take place in the past or in the present, or in the
future (Segal, 2004, p.5) really does not help us at all as this could be
applied to more or less every type of tale. For this reason a case was
argued in Berman (2006) for the introduction of a new genre, termed the
13
shamanic story. This can be defined as a story that has either been based
on or inspired by a shamanic journey, or one that contains a number of the
elements typical of such a journey. Like other genres, it has its own style,
goals, entelechy, rhetoric, developmental pattern, and characteristic roles
(Turner, 1985, p.187), and like other genres it can be seen to differ to a
certain extent from culture to culture. It should perhaps be noted at this
point, however, that there are both etic and emic ways of regarding
narrative (see Turner, 1982, p.65) and the term shamanic story clearly
presents an outside view. It should also be pointed out that what is being
offered here is a polythetic definition of what the shamanic story is, in
which a pool of characteristics can apply, but need not.
Characteristics typical of the genre include the way in which the stories
all tend to contain embedded texts (often the account of the shamanic
journey itself), how the number of actors is clearly limited as one would
expect in subjective accounts of what can be regarded as inner journeys,
and how the stories tend to be used for healing purposes.
In his Foreword to Tales of the Sacred and the Supernatural, Eliade
admits to repeatedly taking up the themes of sortie du temps, or temporal
dislocation, and of the alteration or the transmutation of space (Eliade,
1981, p.10), and these are themes that appear over and over again in
shamanic stories too3.
Additionally, given that through the use of narrative shamans are able
to provide their patients with a language, by means of which
unexpressed, and otherwise inexpressible, psychic states can be expressed
(Lvi-Strauss, 1968, p.198), it follows that another feature of shamanic
stories is they have the potential to provide a medium through which
psychic states that might otherwise be difficult to put into words can be
expressed.
Finally they are all examples of what Jrgen Kremer, transpersonal
psychologist and spiritual practitioner, called tales of power after one of
Carlos Castanedas novels. He defines such texts as conscious verbal
3
Despite the criticism now levelled against Eliades work, without him the current
interest in shamanism would probably never have materialized. So instead of
dismissing Eliade out of hand as someone who merely popularised various
ethnographic reports written by others, by casting a critical eye over what he has to
say and by being selective, it is felt there is still a lot of value to be found in his
writing and thus justification for referring to it.
14
Introduction
Though history has of course since disproved this, the theory clearly
had a great bearing on what was written in the former Soviet Union about
shamanism, and also on peoples attitudes in the former Soviet Republics
towards such practices.
On the other hand, it has been suggested that all intellectuals driven
by nationalist sentiments directly or indirectly are always preoccupied
with searching for the most ancient roots of their budding nations in order
to ground their compatriots in particular soil and to make them more
indigenous (Znamenski, 2007, p.28). Although this might apply to
searching for the roots of Christianity in Georgia, when it comes to
searching for the roots of pagan practices, interest on the part of the people
of Georgia, at least in my experience, has not been so forthcoming. This
impasse, coupled with the effects of the repressions against religions,
including shamanism, unleashed by the Soviet government between the
1930s and 1950s, along with the recent surge of interest in the Georgian
Orthodox church, a backlash to the seventy years of officially sanctioned
atheism, makes research into the subject no easy business. However,
hopefully this study will at least in some small way help to set the process
in motion.
THE PROLOGUE
THE TALE OF THE TALES
16
So much the better, the old man told him. Neither can I. Those who
read have stories of their own they keep locked up in books. We have ours
and they are better for they live with us day by day in our hearts.
But I am afraid I might not remember every word of the story exactly
right.
What difference does that make? No two people ever tell any story
the same way. Why should they? A story is a letter that comes to us from
yesterday. Each man who tells it adds his word to the message and sends it
on to tomorrow. So begin.
Well, the boy said, There was, there was andHe looked around
the circle and saw all the eyes watching him and the rest of the words
turned to pebbles in his mouth and he stopped.
Go on, the old man said, Go on, or you have no right to listen any
more. To listen to stories without ever telling one is harvesting grain
without sowing seeds; it is picking fruit without pruning the tree.
When he heard this, the boy knew he could hesitate no longer and so
he began:
CHAPTER ONE
THE EARTH WILL TAKE ITS OWN
18
Chapter One
This version of the story was taken from Georgian Folk Tales,
translated by D.G. Hunt, published in 1999 by Mirani Publishing House in
Tbilisi, Georgia. To the best of my knowledge, nobody else has worked on
the interpretation of this story in English before and this version, together
with three variants included in the same volume, is the only English
translation that is currently available.
The tale, which was translated into Russian, was then translated by
Hunt from Russian into English. It has been suggested, however, that
poetry is a kind of speech which cannot be translated except at the cost of
serious distortions; whereas the mythical value of the myth is preserved
even through the worst translations (Levi-Strauss, 1968, p.210). And if
that is indeed true, the poor quality of this translation can be said to be of
less significance than might otherwise be the case.
19
There lived a certain widow and she had an only son. The son grew up
and saw that only he had nobody he could call father. Why does
everybody else have a father and only I dont have one? he asked his
mother.
Your father died. What does it mean died? Does it mean that he
wont come back to us any more?
He wont come back to us but well all go thereto where he is, said
his mother. Nobody can run away from death.
The young man said, I didnt ask anybody for life, but Im already
alive and I dont want to die. Im going to find such a place where they
dont die.
For a long time his mother begged him not to go, but her son did not
listen, and he set out to look for such a place where they do not die. He
went round the whole world. And wherever he went, he asked the same
question, Is there death here?
There is, they answered him.
The young man became sad: there is no such place where they do not
die. On one occasion, when he was walking across a plain, he saw a deer
with high branching antlers. The young man liked the deers antlers very
much, and he asked the deer, Dont you know somewhere where they
dont die?
Theres no such place, said the deer, but until my antlers grow up to
the sky, I wont die; but when they grow up that high, my death will come
too. If you like, stay with me and you wont die while Im alive.
No, said the young man, either I want to live eternally, or I might
just as well die where I come from.
The young man went on further. He crossed the plain, he went all
through the valleys and reached the mountains. He saw a raven sitting on a
crag, cleaning himself, and shedding his downy feathers into a huge deep
gorge below. The young man asked the raven, Dont you know a place
where they dont die?
20
Chapter One
No, said the raven. Here Ill live until all of this gorge is filled with
my downy feathers, but when its filled, then Ill die. Stay with me and
live on until the time when I die.
The young man looked into the gorge and shook his head. No, he
said, either I want to live eternally or I might just as well die where I
come from.
The young man went on further. He passed through the whole world,
and approached the sea. He walked along the shore, not knowing where to
go. One day passed, two days passed, but nothing could be seen. On the
third day he saw something shining in the distance. He walked towards it
and there stood a crystal castle. The young man walked around the castle,
but he could not find any kind of door. For a long time he was tormented,
but at last he noticed a small streak, and he guessed that this was really the
entrance. He pressed with all his strength and the door opened. The young
man went inside and saw, lying there, a young woman of such beauty that
the sun itself would envy her if it saw her.
The young man liked the woman a lot and she fancied him too. The
young man asked, Beautiful lady, I want to get away from death. Dont
you know a place where they dont die?
Theres no such place, said the young woman, why waste your time
looking for it? Stay here with me instead.
He said, I wasnt looking for you, Im looking for such a place where
they dont die, otherwise I would have stayed there, where I have come
from.
The young woman said, The earth will take its own, you yourself
would not want to be immortal. Come, tell me, how old am I?
The young man looked at her: Her fresh cheeks, the colour of roses,
were so beautiful that he completely forgot about death.
Fifteen years old at the very most, he said.
No, answered the young woman, I was created on the first day of
the beginning of the world. They call me Krasoy, and I will never become
old and will never die. You would be able to stay with me forever, but you
21
will not want tothe earth will call you. The young man swore that he
would never leave her.
They began to live together. The years flew past, like a moment. Much
changed on the earth. Many died. They turned into dust. Many were born.
The earth changed its face, but the young man did not notice how the time
had flown. The young woman was always just as beautiful, and he was
always just as young. Thousands of years flew past.
The young man missed his old home, and he wanted to visit his people.
He said, I want to go and see my mother and family.
She said, Even their bones no longer remain in the earth.
He said, What are you talking about! Altogether Ive only been here
for three or four days. What could have happened to them?
The young woman said, As Ive been telling you, the earth will take
its own. All right, go then! But remember that whatever happens to you,
youve only got yourself to blame. She gave him three apples and told
him to eat them when he started to feel miserable.
The young man said goodbye to her and went. He walked, and he
walked, and he saw the crag that the raven had been sitting on. The young
man looked: all the gorge was filled up with his downy feathers, and there
was the raven himself, lying all dried up. It grew dark in the young mans
eyes, and he wanted to go back again, but already the earth would not
allow him, it drew him forward. He went further, and he saw, standing on
the plain, the deer. His antlers reached the sky, and the deer himself was
dying. The young man realised that much time has passed since he left
home. He went on further. He reached the area where he had been born,
but he did not find either relatives or acquaintances. He asked people
about his mother, but nobody had even heard of her. He walked alone and
nobody knew him. At last he met a certain old man, and told him who he
was looking for. The old man said, That woman, as I heard from my
grandfather and great-grandfather, lived once; but how could her son be
alive now? There went though the whole land the rumour about this
person. But what they say about him! They regard him as some kind of
freak.
22
Chapter One
The young man carried on walking alone. He came to that place where
once there stood his home, and he found only ruins, which were already
reddened with moss. The young man remembered his mother, his
childhood, his companions, and he became sad. He decided to eat the
apples that the young woman from the crystal castle had given him. He got
out one apple, ate it, and suddenly there grew on his face a long grey
beard. He ate the second apple, and his knees gave way, the small of his
back bent and he fell to the ground without any strength. He was lying
there, unable to move either an arm or a leg. He called a passing boy,
Come close to me, Boy. Get the apple out of my pocket and give it to
me. The boy got the apple, and gave it to him. He took a bite of it and he
died right then and there.
The entire village community came to bury him.
***
During the course of the following pages, the intention will be to show
how the tale does not exhibit the functions that are generally
acknowledged to be typical of fairy stories that were isolated by Propp
(whose research was based on an analysis of Russian tales), how it does
not fit into any of the forms described by Choloqashvili (a Georgian
expert on the folktales of her native country), how it need not necessarily
be interpreted psychologically, and how instead the story exhibits a
number of features that are characteristic of the shamanic journey as
previously described in this study. And from this the conclusion will be
drawn that all this strengthens the arguments for seeing the tale as a
shamanic story rather than as an example of any other genre.
Although The Earth will take Its Own would at first sight seem to
contain a number of the elements typically found in a fairy talewith one
of the members of a family (the young man) absenting himself from home,
with the interdiction to seek eternal life being violated, with Krasoy
playing the part of the villain, and with the apples (introduced as a gift)
serving as the magical agent or helpera number of the functions Propp
(1968) lists are clearly missing. For example, the hero and the villain
(Krasoy) never join in direct combat (cf. Function XVI), the hero is not
branded (cf. Function XVII), and the villain is not defeated (cf. Function
XVIII). Moreover, the last two functions proposed by Propp are entirely
missing from the talethe villain is never punished as in Function XXX,
23
and the hero is not married and does not ascend the throne as in Function
XXXI.
When I contacted Rusudan Choloqashvili (author of the 2004
publication Imagery and Beliefs in Georgian Folk Tales and a Professor of
Philology at Tbilisi State University) and asked her whether she though
Propps functions could be applied to Georgian tales, her opinion was that
they could but she agreed this particular tale was clearly an exception. (We
spoke on 3/8/2005 with the help of an interpreter). Professor
Choloqashvili pointed out in the course of our conversation that the
sugestion the story might be based on a shamanic journey would of course
not have been acceptable in Soviet times and was consequently not one
she had ever considered before, though she agreed it was a distinct
possibility.
Choloqashvili refers to three types of folktale that can be found in the
Georgian traditionanimal tales, fairy-tales, and what she refers to as
novelistic tales. A character of an animal tale fights to get some food; a
character of a fairy tale fights to find a fiance; and a character of a
novelistic tale strives for a tremendous property (Choloqashvili, 2004,
p.183). Our tale would seem to fit into none of these categories. She goes
on to add that In spite of the differences between these subgenres on the
whole they have a common plot: the hero goes to get a marvellous thing,
overcomes obstacles three times, gets the desired thing and returns as a
winner (Choloqashvili, 2004, p.189). Our hero, however, has no such
luck.
Another observation Choloqashvili makes is that It is inconceivable
to end a fairy-tale with the death of the hero (Choloqashvili, 2004,
p.187). Yet once again our tale proves to be the exception. In fact, the only
way in which our tale can be said to be characteristic is that in a tale we
observe rewarding of a customs keeper, as well as punishment of a
customs infringer (Choloqashvili, 2004, p.187). In other words, our hero,
by trying to live forever breaks with convention and suffers the
consequences of so doing.
As The Earth will take its Own does not seem to fit comfortably into
any of the three categories described by Choloqashvili, it remains to be
ascertained which category, if any, it does fit into. It would not be
inaccurate to describe it as a shamanic fairy tale. Contrary to what one
might expect, fairy stories are not necessarily safe in that they frequently
24
Chapter One
confront the child with the basic human predicaments we inevitably have
to face in life. For example, many such tales start with the death of a
parent, as this particular story does, thus creating the most agonizing
problems just as it would in real life (see Bettelheim, 1991, p.8). If one
has found true adult love, the fairy tale also tells, one doesnt need to wish
for eternal life If we try to escape separation anxiety and death anxiety
by desperately keeping our grasp on our parents, [or a lover who becomes
a substitute for the parent] we will only be cruelly forced out (Bettelheim,
1991, p.11).
For the shaman natures wilderness is the locus for the elicitation
of the individuals inner wilderness and it is only here that the inner
voices awaken into song. The inanimate sermon of pristine deserts,
mountains, high plains, and forests, instructs from a place beyond idea
concept or construct (Halifax, 1991, p.6). In other words, it is only when
the young man leaves home and sets out on his quest through unknown
territory that the inner voices come into play, and the journey he embarks
on can in fact be interpreted as an inner journey.
It is only in non-ordinary reality that time stands still, where Krasoy
can remain forever young and so can the young man, if he chooses to stay
there. So it can be seen that it is clearly into non-ordinary reality that the
young man journeys, thus justifying the tales inclusion in this study as an
example of the proposed new genre.
Hanging on to ones immaturity when it is time to become mature
brings about tragedy for oneself and those closest to one (Bettelheim,
1991, p.140) The young man is tempted into trying to remain forever
young and then has to live with the consequences of the decision he
makes. Gaining independence and transcending childhood require
personality development, leaving the safety of the home and journeying
into the unknown, but the young man merely transfers dependence from
his parent to his lover and by the time he realizes his mistake it is too late
to do anything about it. In this respect, the story can be seen to highlight
the dangers of a childish dependence clung to for too long a time
(Bettelheim, 1991, p.142). However, while a psychoanalytical
interpretation of a tale like the one we have chosen to analyze here can be
highly illuminating, at the same time it has to be remembered the term
psychoanalysis had of course never been heard of when tales like this
were first told, and it thus only presents us with part of the picture.