The Yukaghir tale of the little moose hunter: Semantics of the image (in comparison with the Yakut fairy tale)

The purpose of the study is to reveal the semantics of one of the characters of the oral folk art of the forest yukaghirs – a small moose hunter. The variant texts of the Yukaghirs with this character are analyzed in comparison with the Yakut folklore material, where there is a plot similar to the Yukaghir one. The scientific novelty consists in revealing the original meaning of the image of the little elk hunter and individual elements of the plot about him in the context of ethnographic data, folklore studies. As a result of the study, it is shown that the actions of the hero characterize him as endowed with magical skills: he commands the winds associated with different sides of the world and uses them to move in space, which is interpreted as a journey through the worlds; with an effort of thought, he materializes a boat and returns home on it, which goes back to crossing a water barrier as the border between worlds; gets moose, being inside it, like those with supernatural abilities. The symbolism of these actions is associated with the themes of transition to the other world, death and rebirth. In the story of a small craftsman, mythological codes are hidden behind the general content of the fairy tale, which focuses on the external data of the hero, who eventually dies in an absurd way. The shift in the meanings of folklore narration allows us to consider a fairy tale as a humorous plot, a tall tale.