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Аннотация: В статье рассматривается мифопоэтический образ яблони и ее ритуальное использование в традиционной культуре и фольклоре славянских народов. Работа выполнена на фольклорном материале с привлечением этнографических и язы-ковых фактов, уточняющих и развивающих фольклорную символику яблони.Исследование показывает, что этот образ складывается из нескольких достаточно автономных фрагментов. Яблоня и яблоки на ней являются своего рода семейной метафорой и символизируют мать и ее ребенка. В свадебном фольклоре по преи-муществу яблоня соотносится с невестой, а также указывает в целом на свадебный обряд, не говоря уже о том, что ветки яблони широко используются в самом обряде (в качестве ритуального деревца, материала для изготовления свадебного знаме-ни, венков для новобрачных, украшений для свадебного каравая и т. д.). Еще одна ипостась яблони в фольклоре -это образ древа познания; он связывает яблоню с большим количеством легендарных этиологических сюжетов, таких как искуше-ние Евы змеем, грехопадение первых людей, происхождение адамова яблока (ка-дыка), запрет есть яблоки до Преображения и некоторыми другими. Вместе с тем при всей их автономности фрагменты мифопоэтического образа яблони являются частью единого фольклорного универсума, в рамках которого они активно взаимо-действуют друг с другом. Abstract: The essay focuses on the mythopoetic image of the apple tree and its ritual use in traditional culture and folklore of the Slavic nations. The work employs folklore material alongside ethnographic and linguistic data that accentuates and develops the folklore symbolism of the apple tree. I argue that this image is comprised of a number of relatively autonomous fragments. The apple tree and its apples are a family metaphor of a kind symbolizing a mother and a child. In wedding folklore, the apple tree stands for a bride as the wedding ritual testifies; apple tree branches are widely used in the ritual itself (as a ritual tree or as material used in the making of a wedding banner, wedding wreaths, decorations for a wedding loaf [karavai], etc.). Another manifestation of the apple tree in folklore is the tree of knowledge; it relates the image to a large number of legendary etiological plots such as: Eve's temptation by the Serpent, fall of Eve and Adam, the origin of Adam's Apple (adam), prohibition to eat apples before the church holiday of Transfiguration and some others. At the same time, their autonomy regardless, the fragments of the mythopoetic image of the apple tree form part of the solid folklore universe and counteract with each other within this framework.

Among Slavic charms for children who suffer from insomnia, there are texts depicting mothers going out of their houses, carrying their babies while looking at the forest or a single tree and reciting a magic spell addressed to a mythological character, asking for the creature’s help in taking away the baby’s cries and restoring the baby’s sleep. One variation of such texts originates from a manuscript called Summa de confessionis discretione. This text was compiled in Latin by a monk named Rudolf, evidently in the middle of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century. The fact that the magic spells for insomnia in children seem to have existed already in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, and that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries they were widely spread on the broad territory where Eastern, Southern, and Western Slavs lived, testifies to the ancient origins of this type of magic spell.

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The article is devoted to the similarities between the Balkan-Slavic and the Ukrainian charms, namely, to the story, involving the “life” of things, or so-called operational plot. Parallels with the Balkan-Slavic charms that contain а “life story” of things (foodstuff s or plants) are found not throughout the entire space of the Ukrainian ethno-dialectal zone, but along the southwest-northeast line: in the Hutsul region and Bukovina, in Podolia and the Dnieper area, as well as in the Left-Bank Ukraine. There are four versions of this plot presented in charms: “the story of bread”, “the story of fl ax / hemp”, “the story of cheese / butter” and “the story of fi sh”. The article notes that all four versions are known both among the Balkan Slavs and the Ukrainians, although “the story of cheese” dominates in the Balkans, while “the story of bread” prevails in Ukraine. It is shown that in the Balkan-Slavic and Ukrainian traditions the coinciding plot elements of the charms, containing “life stories” of foodstuff s or plants, appear not as atomic facts, but as elements of a system. In particular, this is refl ected in the fact that the functions of individual versions of texts and the features of their poetics coincide.