Národopisná revue 3/2024

The text concerns contemporary Euro-American rituals, discussing the challenges of defining what a ritual is and suggesting the use of Victor W. Turner’s concept of liminality. This concept focuses on the internal processes of ritual actions, which, by disrupting the usual order, create exceptional situations where anything becomes possible. Rituals thus reflect crucial social messages, values, and arrangements–and at the same time open up the possibility of reflecting and reshaping them. The analysis delves into the practice and context of Euro-American rituals, particularly through the themes of (1) the transformative power of rituals, (2) experiences of comfort and discomfort, and (3) the distinction between reality and the unreal.

This paper provides an overview of two spring calendrical rituals, llazore and rusica, historically and contemporarily practiced in Polena, a village in Southeast Albania's Korça region. These rituals, linked to Orthodox Christian feasts, are vital to the community's cultural and religious life. Despite challenges like globalization, societal changes, and demographic shifts, the rituals persist, reflecting the local community's commitment to preserving and transmitting them. The study examines the rituals' historical context, evolution, and enduring role in maintaining cultural identity and social cohesion amid modern challenges.

One of the calendar customs in the Czech lands was the tradition of knocking on fruit trees on St. Matthias Day to ensure a good harvest of fruit. This superstitious practice was still widespread in many parts of Bohemia and Moravia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and originally took the form of a family custom with elements of magic. It disappeared almost everywhere in the first half of the 20th century. Until the 1950s, the tradition was preserved in a few areas, in some of which it continued to function in an almost identical form, while the belief in its efficacy gradually disappeared; in other localities, the tradition was transformed into children's carols with traditional rhymes, which, however, no longer consciously preserved their original content. The paper traces the evidence for the preservation of the custom in East Bohemia, as documented in literature and municipal chronicles, and confirms the data found by field research conducted in the selected area.

The article presents illustrative examples from the practice of constructing monuments and adapting sacral spaces in the ethnically mixed region of southern Slovakia. The presented structures, the sacral spaces that define those structures, and the related celebrations of significant religious and national holidays contribute, often in a complementary manner, to the creation and preservation of local, regional, and national identity. The sacral spaces observed reflect the layering of structures and the temporal shifts in the highlighting of their legacies. The primary motivation for constructing many of these structures was purely religious; however, there is also a secondary connection of the sacral with national/ethnic or local history. The formation of modern European nations strengthened the significance of national patron saints, and since then, the national has gradually predominated over the sacral, as evidenced by the text of the study presenting the results of field research conducted in two localities with a mixed Slovak and Hungarian population.

Within the study of the service tree (Sorbus domestica), twenty-two old trees in the open landscape were ethno-biologically monitored. The results show that the service tree was, and often still is, a family tree or boundary tree. In all cases it is accepted by the community as a tree with medicinal fruits. Following the changes in land use after 1948, the importance of landmarks disappeared as many roads and boundaries were ploughed and have not been restored to date. Many trees became inaccessible to their owners. The social importance of service trees was such that many were not felled during the land consolidation process. Since 1989, the interest and care of the trees has often been taken over by enthusiasts, local authorities or state organisations, and many have been declared heritage trees. To this day, old service trees still bear witness to the original mosaic landscape – the places with former roads, orchards, vineyards and stories on private land before collectivisation.