Belarusian and Estonian mythological and legendary narratives, especially aetiologies, share a number of similar motifs and characters, despite the fact that Estonian and Belarusian belong to different language families and share no common borders. However, some matches in the motifs are so complete and expressive that they, we believe, cannot be explained by typology or universals. Since the topic of ties between Estonian-Belarusian folklore is relatively unexplored, along with their historical contacts, the aim of this article is to point out the similarities in the motifs of Estonian and Belarusian legends regarding the first people in the context of Slavic and Finno-Ugric legends, as well as to represent some of the original Estonian and Belarusian aetiologies. The motives under examination are the recreation of humans, the skin of the nails, creation of a woman, the death of the first people, the motifs of the snake, eel, and weather loach, the cross of Christ, and others.
The Covid 19 era presents yet another instance of the symbiosis between viral pandemic and pestilence in the political culture of the moment. Through a brief reprise of plague-riven history dating from antiquity, this article explores the symptoms of the current epidemic and offers a number of keywords that characterize the current maladies as viral plague and as political pestilence. The coupling of the viral and the political dates from the third century Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius who took the measure of the plague and political corruption of Rome during his reign. The lexical compendium offered here could constitute a study in cultural epidemiology that defines the exhibited symptoms of pandemic disease in its concurrent medical and socio-cultural manifestations.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.