TRADITIONAL BALLAD AND WINTER RITUALS IN THE CARPATHIANS

The place of the traditional ballad in the winter rituals of the Carpathian Ukrainians is considered, and examples from Romanian ethnography are also cited. Among Christmas songs, there are many carols with an epic component, which paint pictures where the owner is a voivode, before whom the “unfaithful kings” bow their heads, his wife is a wealthy lady, to whom the servants bring a nineorned aurochs from hunting, his son is a proud gentleman, before whom the “captive, the king’s daughter” dances. In all these carols, the owners are wished God’s blessing, health, and wealth. Meanwhile, there are many carols in which dramatic ballad plots are revealed. A ballad about the return of a beloved with a magic potion can be accompanied by the Hutsul caroldance “Kruhliek”. A ballad about a dove with a dove can be performed during the Hutsul carol procession “Plies”.In the village of Velikyi Kliuchiv (Hutsul-Pokuttia borderland), this ballad is included in the cycle of widow's carols,it is performed with the carol refrain "Hoy, day... Zhe!". On the Hutsul-Pokutia borderland and in the Boiko region, a carol is recorded about how a mother-in-law treats her son with wine and her daughter-in-law with wormwood, the son and daughter-in-law, having exchanged drinks, die together. It is also performed with the traditional carol refrain. The carols describe both what the life of the owners and their children should be like, and what should never happen to them. That is why the carol-ballad about the poisoner mother-in-law is sung to the bachelor, about the death of a brother from the curse of his sister -–to the owners, etc. On key festive dates of the traditional calendar, people again and again “breathe life” into the events of sacred history (carols about the creation of the world, about the crucifixion), and sometimes - into national history. The performance of ballads at Christmas is no less important, since the ballad resolves the eternal questions of good and evil, and gives a moral assessment of the actions of ballad heroes, who are mostly ordinary people. In this we see the second function of the ballad in Christmas and New Year's rituals: “speaking” of ritual prohibitions, “anti-behavior”, which is also very important for the further life of traditional society.