Sources: Folklore materials

In the majority of scholarly reconstructions (Straubergs 1934–1935 might be regarded as an exception), historical records were secondary to folklore materials. As the latter, collected mainly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, include both remains from the most archaic ideas as well as to some extent reflecting contemporary reality, historical records served mainly for the temporal mapping of the dynamics of mythology, allowing us to date one or other notion encountered in folklore. Folklore, on the other hand, also has its determinants: “It is of utmost importance that the collected materials be viewed as representations created in particular rhetorical contexts, employing particular

42 The works most often referred to include Cosmographia by Sebastian Münster (1550), the travel notes of Johann David Wunderer (1589) and Reinhold Lubenau (1585), a report by Salomon Henning (1589), Chronica der Prouintz Lyfflandt by Balthasar Russow (1584), annual reports of Jesuit collegiums, Encomion Urbis Rigae by Heinrich Ulenbrock (1615), Livonicae Historiae Compendiosa Series of Dionysius Fabricius (1611–1620), protocols of legal proceedings (especially witch and werewolf trials), works by Paul Einhorn Wieder-legunge der Abgötterey und nichtigen Aberglaubens (1627), Reformatio gentis Lettice (1636), and Historia Lettica, das ist Beschreibung der Lettischen nation (1649). Various customs were also described by Christian Kelch in his Liefländische Historia (1695).

Relevant fragments of almost all texts mentioned here were recently republished in Sources of Baltic religion and mythology (Vėlius 1996, 2001, etc.).

strategies in the making of the present, and that their nature as such be integrated into both their analysis and the estimation of their political significance” (Anttonen 2005: 81). Although some folksongs were collected in the eighteenth century⁴³ and some minor collections of songs and materials of other genres published in the first half of the nineteenth century, an amount of materials large enough to claim the scholarly validity of analysis based on them started to accumulate only in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Therefore an overview of only so-called fundamental editions of folklore materials is provided below, referring to publications most often cited by researchers into Latvian mythology.

From various genres, the most important source in reconstructions of Latvian mythology has been folksongs. Here – as stated in the first chapter – two ‘replacements’ of ideologically important national history perfectly coincide: oral poetry itself and the mythology reconstructed from oral poetry. In this context, the positive reception of Herder’s ideas about oral poetry as the most ancient source of a nation’s history and a form of culture expressing the uniqueness of the nation must be seen against the backdrop of Latvians having few written sources on their history, all of them representing the non-ethnic perspective, and no literary monuments, but a rich living folksong tradition. The collection process was mediated by Latvian-language published periodicals and organised mainly by learned societies, negotiated by members of the recently emerged and rapidly developing ethnically oriented public sphere. In 1878, the circle of learned Latvians in Moscow⁴⁴ decided to publish a selection of “the best Latvian folk songs”. The editorial and collection work was started jointly by Fricis Brīvzemnieks-Treuland (1846–1907) and Krišjānis Barons (1835–

1923). Barons later completed the task alone and the first fundamental edition of folksongs, Latvju dainas (Latvian folksongs), was published by Barons and Henry Wissendorff (1861–1916) in six volumes from 1894 to 1915 (two repeated editions in 1922–1923 and 1989–1994, concise edition in 1928–1932).

Conducting the tasks of collecting and cataloguing the folksongs, Barons lived outside Baltic until 1893. At the time of publication of the first volume (1894) 16 000 previously published songs and more than 130 000 songs in manuscript were already in Barons’ possession (Ambainis 1989: 67). With so large a corpus, and the number of songs still increasing, it had been decided to publish as comprehensive edition as possible (ibid.), partially also for future research needs (Barons 1894: xi). Critically revising the previous much smaller folksong editions, the author’s approach was influenced by the works of Russian folklorists, but was based mainly on his own understanding what is a ‘proper folksong’ and what could be the best way to arrange the collection (Ambainis

43 E.g. by Herder’s request to August Wilhelm Hupel in 1777 (cf. Ambainis 1989: 23).

44 Since there was no classical university in Riga at this time, Latvian intellectual centres were formed in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Dorpat (the contemporary Tartu in Estonia, then a university city in the northern part of Livland province).

1989: 68). As a result, songs were organised according to their content in chapters on the human lifecycle, daily life, economic activities, crafts and trades, social positions and classes, international relations, and defence of the fatherland. This classification not only ignored real-life performance contexts, but also served for the creation of monolithic national ideology by reflecting current ideas and needs on the structure of the edition. Barons’ editorial practices were subsequently criticised rather often (e.g. Vilks 1944, Švābe 1952a, Arājs 1959, Rudzītis 1964). The main points of this critique are summarised by Elga Melne: often separate song texts were re-arranged, eight-line songs divided into two four-eight-line songs and placed separately to fit the thematic structure of the edition, from the six-line songs the last two lines were dropped, and some words were changed, thus also changing the motif and meaning (Melne 2000). One of the essential directions of criticism points toward the relation of Barons’ criteria of authenticity in the selection of folksongs. Briefly, it is the national romanticists’ idealistic notion of pure, beautiful, unchanging folk poetry. In the introduction to the first volume Barons wrote:

Getting to the real, healthy core of our folksongs, the best ideal efforts of human spirit appear, the most beautiful, most virtuous, the deepest feelings of human heart and soul... Such an unfading core we encounter in all…our folksongs. And this sublime core is expressed in simple, but sincere, deeply felt, and relevantly significant words that deeply touche everyone’s heart. This is characteristic of a real poetry

(Barons, 1894: XVIII).

According to Barons’ criteria of authenticity, songs of obvious recent origins and popular songs (ziņģes) are left out of the edition together with apparently counterfeit, faulty, and incomplete texts. The selected texts were further divided into types consisting of “original songs”, repetitions, and variations. Barons’

conception of authenticity here demonstrates obvious similarities with Herder’s and Grimms’ ideas, leading to similarities in editorial practices (p. 26–28). In 1928, Barons’ work was followed by the publication of Latvju tautas dainas (Latvian folksongs) in 12 volumes by Roberts Klaustiņš. In 1936, the Archives of Latvian Folklore published Tautas dziesmas (Folk songs) – a sequel to Barons’ edition, consisting of newly collected texts. After World War II, exiled Latvians in Copenhagen published Latviešu tautas dziesmas (Latvian folk songs) in 12 volumes (1952–1956), combining editions of Barons and the Archives of Latvian Folklore. At the same time (1955), a selection of folksongs was published in Soviet Latvia by the successors of the Archives of Latvian Folklore, the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore. All three volumes of this edition came up with a new classification system, one that foregrounded social relationships. Such classification was based on the newly constructed dis-ciplinary identity, related to Marxist-Leninist dogma that folklore necessarily reflects the ideas and endeavours of the working people (p. 155–159). The first

volume of the contemporary academic folksong edition Latviešu tautasdziesmas (Latvian folksongs) was published in 1979. This work continues today and nine out of the 15 planned volumes have been published.

The first fundamental collection of Latvian folktales and legends was published in seven parts by Ansis Lerhis-Puškaitis (1859–1903) in 1891–1903.

The second half of the seventh part remained unpublished until 2001 due to the editor’s death. Lerhis-Puškaitis both organised activities of the narrative folk-lore collecting and included in his edition previously published texts. The pub-lished material is not differentiated according to folklore genres; it includes fairytales and legends, beliefs, stories, etc. Arrangement was influenced by the author’s disposition towards the so-called anthropological school, fore-grounding the principles of animistic theory: the origins of supernatural beliefs and myths from the cult of the dead souls. Consequently, the main content of folktales was also presented:

The basic ideas of legends, folktales and fairytales stem from the same root:

meetings between beings of this world and beings of the netherworld. Although hero-tales and fairytales are dressed in sweet and lovely depictions…, the real matter and body of this splendour peeps through: also their dead souls (veļi) go and dead souls come – the same way as in simple tales on witches, dragons, riding-hags, werewolves, misleaders (vadātāji), and [buried] money

(Lerhis-Puškaitis 1903: iv).

From more recent perspectives, the main weakness of Lerhis-Puškaitis’

approach was interpreting all folklore material with a single explanation;

moreover, he claimed that all Latvian folklore is created by the Latvian people and invariably transmitted from generation to generation, and that there are no influences from other nations or religion, such as Christianity (cf. Ambainis 1989: 72; Pakalns 1985); therefore this edition also demonstrates the similarities with rhetorics exploited in Grimms’ prefaces to KHM. Twenty years later, Arveds Švābe started arranging materials published by Lerhis-Puškaitis according to the classification of Antti Aarne (Švābe 1923–1924). The corpus was also supplemented with new tales; after the publication of two volumes, Švābe’s work was continued by Pēteris Šmits, resulting in still the most voluminous publication of folktales in 15 tomes (1925–1937). In a similar way to the folksongs in Copenhagen, the Latvian exile community republished Šmits’ edition of Latviešu tautas teikas un pasakas (Latvian legends and folktales, 1962–1970) in the USA, supplemented with an introduction by Haralds Biezais and motif index by Liene Neulande. Latviešu pasaku tipu rādītājs (Latvian folktale type index), based on the Aarne-Thompson classi-fication system, was published in 1977 by Alma Medne and Kārlis Arājs in Soviet Latvia.

A collection of folk music melodies was published by Andrejs Jurjāns in six volumes of Latviešu tautas mūzikas materiāli (Materials of Latvian Folk Music, 1894–1922, the last volume published post mortem in 1926). Charms, beliefs

and customs for the researchers of the first half of the twentieth century were available mainly from publications in periodicals, the collection of Fricis Brīvzemnieks-Treuland (1881), appendices of Barons and Wissendorff’s folksong edition and materials gathered in the Archives of Latvian Folklore.

Latviešu buramie vārdi (Latvian charms) was published in two volumes only in 1939–1941 by Kārlis Straubergs, and Latviešu tautas ticējumi (Latvian folk beliefs) in four tomes in 1940–1941 by Pēteris Šmits (post mortem). The fundamental edition Latviešu tautas paražas (Latvian folk customs) was published in 1944 by Kārlis Straubergs. Overall, the publication history of fundamental editions reflects the intertwined demands to legitimate national history, or, as it has been worded often, to demonstrate national treasures on the one hand, and the availability of the sources for research on the other hand.

Consequently, the editions represent the political agendas of the collectors and publishers, contemporary trends in the classification and publication of materials, and theories related to these trends. Moreover, several publications of folklore materials also reflect editors’ understanding of mythology; for example, integrated in the overall framework of the edition as in Lerhis-Puškaitis folktales, or manifesting in separate chapter of “the mythological folklore” as in Straubergs’ charms edition. Thus, the particular conceptions of mythology influence the selection and arrangement processes of its research sources.