On one archaic mythologeme of hail

Abstract

The article analyzes possible non-linguistic grounds for the nomination of the rare Slavic nomination for hail каменец / kamenec, known in the Slovak language and dialects and in the Ruthenian dialects of eastern Slovakia. Based on the assumption that obvious linguistic metaphorical motivation may have deeper roots, ritual contexts of isofunctionality and mental cor-relation of hail and stone, as well as the corresponding mythological beliefs of the Slavs are considered, bringing also comparative material of some other Indo-European and non-Indo-European traditions. The formation in Slavic dialects of the correlation of these concepts occurred, obviously, in the Carpathian region, as shows the presence of similar connections between hail and stone in languages and traditions that were in contact in this region, including Germanic dialects, the refl ection of the “stone” semantics in the name of the weather demon in Romanian tradition, and to some ex-tent motifs of the “stone hail” in Turkic and Mongolian traditions.