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AbstractÜlo and Aivar Voitka, who had been found guilty in petty offenses during the Soviet period, hid from the authorities in the woods for 14 years, conducting robberies also during this period. The capture and the following arrest of the Voitka brothers was a media event which attracted the attention of both the entertainment and commercial circles. The Voitka case prompted a public dialogue about social and political values in the Estonian society. The article analyses how heroic legend repertoire has influenced the media case of the Voitkas, its literary associations and the historical Estonian forest brother lore*.

Abstract:The article analyses rumours about Putin's disappearance from the public eye during the ten-day period in March 2015. Parallels with earlier rumours about Russian leaders before Putin are thus revealed and differences between English and Russian sources of information are pointed at.The data presented here comes from both traditional and social media: the global official news coverage of Putin's disappearance, and the unofficial information spread in social media via Twitter hashtags #WhereIsPutin and #PutinUmer. Using this data, the authors describe the differences between English-and Russian-language social media sources and indicate the recurring and more influential belief motifs in the stories told about the political leaders in Russia in the junction of various genres (above all rumour, humour, and news). The analysis sheds light on the inner workings of rumour and humour in social media. The comparison shows that even if the world is a 'global village' and news, travelling fast, quickly become known around the world, there is a fissure between the content and the ways particular events or cases get represented in the official media outlets and social media. The differences arise from the cultural and historical context of the producers and consumers of the news: collective memory, folklore, vernacular belief, etc.

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This article studies the way the meaning of a tradition has changed over time. It is based on four text samples, all representing similar motives. The story reflects a former popular belief that if you hold on to a wild animal's tail, the animal will jump clean out of its skin. The Man Nails the Tail of a Wolf to a Tree (ATU 1896) is a popular folk tale with an international distribution. Texts of this type have also been called Munchausen tales. The changed message of similar traditions reflects the change in our attitude towards nature, but also the growing distance of man from nature.Keywords: animal abuse, comic legend, joke, Munchausen tale, social narrative, tall tale, urban legendIn the modern world, folktale texts reach us through various channels: they are spread in oral communication, and can be read in fiction books, on the Internet and in the written press. We can listen to these texts, read and sometimes even watch their adaptations in television programmes, feature films and theatre plays in the visual media. For a folklore researcher, issues of texts and their relation to the tradition are as important as the issues of the context and meaning in these texts.The folkloric text, once learnt and stored in the memory, be it a small product remembered verbatim or a longer narrative that can be reproduced according to a plot scheme and key lines, is in its latent inactive state in the mind, open or devoid of meaning. Yet the situation, in which the product enters the consciousness, is recalled, actualised, produced and performed, is full of meaning. In defining the meaning of a narrative, the time-related ideologies of narrators, of their audiences and also of researchers play a crucial role. The genres are also dominant factors in the organisation of communicating tradition.Genres could be conceived of as units of communication which focus, direct and limit meaning, favour some and avoid other topics, regulate expression and encourage typical ways of speech and action. (Honko 1986b: 52) Several researchers have pointed out that while the Märchen incorporates narrative motives into an artistic story, the legend employs them as credible facts (e.g. Dégh 1971: 62).The contextual approach suggests that in folklore texts are more stable than their meanings (Honko 1986b: 40). Researchers of narratives are generally aware of the fact that the meaning of a text is relative, that their interpretations are subjective and may change in time.Consequently we may well question the validity of such fixed constructs of interpretation and of the "evidence" they produce. The history of ideologies can be read from that of interpretations. The meaning of text is not a fixed constant but is a variable, determined by the development of culture and ideas, fashions and trends, and dependent on rules and ruling ideologies, not to forget the education and cultural awareness, the sex, age, religion and ethnic group of the consumer. Cultures are systems of meaning. (Röhrich 1986: 128) The same narrative can be int...