The plot “Didona’s trick” (AT 2000*2400) in the South Ural: the history of collecting and some characteristics of functioning

The article claims to identify some specific features of functioning of the archaic plot “Didona’s trick” in Bashkir folk narrative tradition. Comparison study of the texts that were written down by folklorists in the end of 19th – the beginning of 21st century shows that the plot was not only the text itself but also a “common place” in many texts about the past. The stability of the narrative structure that saves general motifs of a mythological plot and also of later historical legends of different countries and religions is based on the main character (a trickster)’s tricks which is known from a tale. The dynamics of changes in word skin: changes of historical names and appearance of ethnographic details, – is a result of narrator’s interpretations of old events and of choosing narrative methods that are important to make the story more convincing. In some texts one can find social and utopian ideas of the past “golden age”