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History and Legend in Stone - to Kiss the Baba (CROSBI ID 132744)

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Vince-Pallua, Jelka History and Legend in Stone - to Kiss the Baba // Studia ethnologica Croatica, 7/8 (1995), 281-292

Podaci o odgovornosti

Vince-Pallua, Jelka

engleski

History and Legend in Stone - to Kiss the Baba

The subject of this contribution is a stone, not any stone but one known as a BABA (old woman). Field research began in Punat on the island of Krk (April, 1994), one of the most archaic of Adriatic islands. Many ancient traditions still live there, including the legend linked with this stone, the legend of kissing the baba that the author heard (and taperecorded ) from all informants. She photographed two babas in Punat: Vela baba (the Great baba) in Vela draga and the baba in Pucunel. The first is a large rock that looks like a woman in profile, jutting out from a cliff above a chasm. The second baba, amorphous in shape, was more difficult to locate because it was not easy to single out among the rocks, dry-stone walls and deserted sheepsteads. A third baba is situated on the PodupËiÊ ; ; ; i locality on the way to Baπ ka. There is one other great baba-monolith on the coastal slope of south Velebit too. On a certain day shepherdesses used to leave fruit or some gift for the baba on this stone, or scatter wheat and oil on it for good pasture and fertilety of livestock. One other baba is known as π mrkava baba (slimy baba). This is a stone head on a well beside the road leading across Openski vrh to © ; ; ; korklja and Trieste. Here, too, children are frightened by being told that they will have to kiss the slimy old woman when they come to Trieste for the first time. Slimy, of course, refers to water and the humidity near the well. The author has heard tell about threatening children with having to kiss a baba on the way to Trieste from another place, from Vodice on ∆ iÊ ; ; ; arija in Istria. Here, however, the folk tradition about kissing the old woman is somewhat different because children are threatened that they will have to kiss an old woman´s arse. In this case the tradition about kissing a stone baba was transferred to a living old woman, with the obligatory lascivious folk addition. Here, too, kissing the baba is only retained in tradition and reduced to threatening children in child folklore. We must ask ourselves what the stone babas personify, why they are given fruit and wheat and what is the meaning of the legend about kissing the old woman. The author´s most valuable contribution to this research came in the form of a most figurative answer, both in the symbolic and metaphorical sense. She discovered a very unique baba in Grobnik near Rijeka, the only such extant example. The Grobnik baba is not an amorphous figure but a grotesque female figure carved out of live rock, just over life size, on which a large head and emphasized feminine attributes (wide hips and gigantic breasts) are immediately noticeable, no doubt symbolizing fertility and fecundity. The author considers that the shape of this quite unique Grobnik baba confirms that the amorphous babas on Krk and Velebit really do represent the female figure. That this really is the same thing is confirmed by the fact that here, too, the same tradition about kissing the baba exists. The Grobnik baba must also be kissed when one comes to the town of Grobnik for the first time, and she, too, is slimy and muddy, again linked with the ever-present water. Through the amorphous stone babas in coastal-Mediterranean regions (islands, Istria, Velebit area) and the legends linked with them, and also through this especially important Grobnik baba, the author has tried to show that the traces we find today, especially if a living tradition is still spun around them, are not only the remains of the material culture, but can reveal some features from the, roughly speaking, spiritual or sometimes social life of earlier periods in these regions. It must be said that these are regions once inhabited by the Liburnians who almost regularly nurtured female cults. The author believes that all evidence points to the babas being part of the female-cult. She considers that giving fruit and other gifts to the babas can be explained in that context, where they are viewed as cult stones, the incarnation of the female spirit of fertility. She finds confirmation that fertility and fecundity are essential properties of the babas in the fact that a constant feature of all “ our” babas is the element of humidity, the presence of water that is connected with all of them. In some cases it is an epithet, slimy or slippery. In others wetness, as a precondition for fertility, is physically present and the baba is found in the immediate vicinity of water: near wells, cisterns, waterholes, streams etc. On Krk this is confirmed by the place-names Pucunel, from the Italian pozzo, well, and PotoËina, that was named after the stream (potok) that runs there. As well as these elements, that conclusively confirm one of the essential features of the stone baba, i.e. fertility, fecundity, the author discovered the crowning confirmation for her thesis in the unique example of the Grobnik baba. In folk tradition such female figures bring luck and overall prosperity both to individuals and to their site- town, so gifts must be made to them and they must be kissed when they are seen for the first time. In that context the author presents arguments to support her thesis that the statue of Eve on the old town hall in Ljubljana is a Christianized form of “ our” baba. It, too, is a genius loci, and it must also be kissed when the town is visited for the first time. We may conclude that features of archaic culture, supressed and sublimated, live on through symbolical undertones of the mythlogical and legendary heritage in a kind of syncretistic reality of cults and legends.

babas; monolyths; fertility; mythological heritage

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Podaci o izdanju

7/8

1995.

281-292

objavljeno

1330-3627

Povezanost rada

Etnologija i antropologija

Poveznice