Plots of Gothic Origin in Ukrainian Folklore Prose

Abstract

The article deals with plot elements of Gothic origin present in Ukrainian folk legends and other prose works: people and cattle sinking into the earth, and witches’ curses. Those motifs can be traced back to the Migration Period when the Germanic tribes entered the Circum-Pontic region. Despite the significant time lapse, the relics of those times still remain in the European folklore in the form of certain plots or plot elements. A widespread legend about a person punished by God for tilling the earth at Easter is comparable to an accident with some Gothic troops crossing a bridge across the river in Jordanes’s Getica. The beliefs about the reasons of the Gothic empire’s downfall are to some extent similar to those about the Zaporizhian Sich’s demise.