FOLK SONG ABOUT A THIRSTY GIRL ON FORBIDDEN FAIRY WATER – HISTORY OF RECORDING AND INTERPRETATION

Abstract

The subject of this paper is a Serbian ritual folk song that Zoja Karanović and Vesna Đukić recorded in in the village Selačka (Southeastern Serbia) in 1997. The main thopic of this song is related to a thirsty spinster girl on the water which was poisoned by a fairy who bathed her child in it. In the past, the song was a part of ritual practice and was performed by gearls on Pentecost and around Midsummer day. The song used to be popular everywhere among Serbs. And it can be traced in records from 1780 to the present days. This song about forbidden and poisoned fairy water with its context of performance, figurs, verbal constructs, and their symbolic potentials, as well as variant manifestations, provokes the possibility of interpreting its content within the rite of passage, which is the subject of analysis.