نشریه فرهنگ و ادبیات عامه
پیاپی 35 (آذر و دی 1399)

One areas of study in popular culture and literature concerns the beliefs of the tribes. The Turkmen are one of the Iranian tribes that have different beliefs. The common Turkmen beliefs stem from their thoughts, beliefs, ideals, feelings, emotions, and lifestyle. Since some popular beliefs and ideas are instructive and worth pondering, this study tries to introduce some of the different Turkmen tribes, and some of the common popular beliefs among the two Turkmen peoples (Goklan and Yumut), which are reflected in Nader Ebrahimichr('39')s novel Fire, without Smoke. This study employed a library-based and analytic-descriptive method. The results show that the popular beliefs of the two tribes could be grouped into 4 categories: 1. Philosophical and mythological beliefs, 2. Beliefs about life and its stages, 3. Medical beliefs and general treatment, and 4. Calendric and meteorological. Some of these beliefs are rooted in religious teachings. Some are derived from Iranian culture, which are found not only among Turkmen but also among other ethnic groups. Some others are due to the Turkmen way of life and are specific to the culture of this people, while still others are baseless and unrealistic beliefs that stem from superstitions.

Girl who Never Laughs. Making the girl to laugh is the condition for marrying her. This motif is a magical act leading to the girlchr('39')s gestation. It is also a sexual act that links to sexual intercourse. Because of the connection between fairytale and old religious beliefs, it is possible to apperceive two kinds of magical-religious thought in the mentioned motif: based on the first idea, a woman does not need a man to get pregnant and thus pregnancy is related to magical performances like laughter.  In the second idea, the role of men in the process of childbearing has been recognized and accepted. Moreover, based on the connection between myth and fairytales, we can retrieve the myth associated with this motif which is now unknown among Iranian mythology.

Folk poems are one of the most pleasing types of oral literature among the Iranian ethnic groups, which represent the spirits, thoughts, and ideas of the masses, and arise from their natural and daily needs. Songs and poems are forms of popular literature and are diverse in the cultural geography of this land. Folk poems in Kerman province are titled differently and are mostly composed in the form of couplets having a particular prosody. The common couplets of this region in different ceremonies have titles such as Sharma, Ajaghboos, Birghi, Kheloon, Mordekhani, Abado, Sar-Asyabi, Aino, Biabani, Kurdish reading, Hujlashshoon, Gharibi Khani, Hanabandi, in the bathroom, etc. These poems fall into the realms of server, mourning, work, sleep and caressing poems, lullabies, game songs, entertainment, and prayer. This study employed the descriptive-analytical and library methods in order to introduce the folk and local songs of Kerman province, and analyze and classify the poems based on their themes so that the cultural prospects and local elements can be obtained.

The animal groom a theme of folk tales. In these stories, the protagonist (girl) goes through a series of events in the struggle to bond or escape from marriage with a creature called the animal groom. This study employs a method of content analysis and analytical-descriptive approach. While comparing the stories of the groomchr('39')s animal in terms of structure, it explains the frequency of different types of animal grooms, the structural pattern of this type of stories and the analysis of some data. The findings of this study show that in a total of 89 stories of animal groom, the demon, with 40 cases, has the highest frequency among different types of animal grooms, and these stories follow the same pattern from a total of 18 groups of similar stories.

The kidnapping of a girl by the demon, her imprisonment in a place like garden or palace, and the demonchr(chr('39')39chr('39'))s demand to sexual intercoursegirl with girl are among the subjects that have always been popular in oral legends type 467 (according to the world list Arnedt-Thompson) look Tanbaloo legend cited in different ways in different areas. The girlchr(chr('39')39chr('39'))s blood turns into bouquets after dropping into water. Believing in this motif (plant growing from human blood) has always been prevalent among various tribes and its base in Iran can be seen in the story of Kiomars in Banhash and the growth of the Ribas from his seed. The demon, always wanting the girl to have sex, is a symbol of  human rejected by society for his bad moralities and now wants to return to society by resorting to marriage. However, the girl, a symbol of society, refuses to accept the demonchr(chr('39')39chr('39'))s request, and eventually, with the arrival of the hero, the glass of demonchr(chr('39')39chr('39'))s life is found and the demon is eradicated by the hero. The study tried to gain an analysis of the reason behind demon’s behavior and to root the motifs as much as possible with a comprehensive look at this theme. The research method in this article is descriptive analysis.

Most of the epic poetic texts in the west of Iran have been written in the literary language of Gorani. Some of these texts correspond to the Shahnamehchr('39')s report, some according to the narrative texts and some independent epic narrations. The oldest remained hand-written manuscripts of these works were written in the eighth century AH, but the narrations of these texts often have very ancient epic elements. Seven Army, written by Mustafa bin Mahmoud Gorani, is one of the valuable surviving texts in this language, which has often been considered to be composed by Almas-khan Kondolei. Numerous manuscripts of this text are kept in the libraries of Iran and around the world, some of which date back to 150 years. The narration of Seven Army of Gorani is to some extent similar to Naqali, and in some other aspects similar to the prose version of Seven Army. It also has prominent elements such as The Seven Khan of Jahanbakhsh, and includes stories such as "Yaghut-push and Laal-push", "Bahram Javaher-push", and the independent narration of "Rostam and Xenon". The aim of this research, which borrows a descriptive-analytic method for analyzing the ancient manuscripts as well as other library sources, is to introduce, critique, and analyze this system, express its values and novelties, discover its similarities and differences with Persian texts, introduce the hand-written manuscripts, and note the necessity of its correction.

Many manuscripts and editions of Mush-o Gorbeh [Mouse and Cat] have been listed or published as the most famous work of Obaid Zakani; however, its comparison and examination clarifies that these various editions of Mouse and Cat are significantly different in terms of language, style, and even story. These narrations are largely considered as belated and folkloric compared to Obaid Zakani’s era and language. Therefore, many people have hesitated to attribute Mouse and Cat to Obaid. In order to investigate this attribution, these works should be compared, so that their shared roots can be identified. This paper merely follows this in three phases. In the first section, different editions of Mouse and Cat are compared and grouped based on the ending verses of the story. In the second section, the ending of the story is examined in all narrations. In the final section, some hypotheses are given regarding the relationship of these narrations, their origins, and other possible narrations based on the verses recorded in these editions of Mouse and Cat. They are, then, compared with the incomplete but older manuscripts. These editions of Mouse and Cat can be grouped in nine categories in terms of narration, and in two general classes in terms of story, based on the style and language. These very differences and a few ancient recordings that can only be seen in some of the belated and folkloric manuscripts indicate that none of these editions of Mouse and Cat can be attributed to Obaid.

The historical, social, and literary significance of folk tales is a generally accepted notion. Since these stories are oral narratives that were later written, they are important in terms of narrative prose and textual structure. The Safavid period is also noteworthy in terms of profiling many of these stories. So far as the style is concerned, the combination of order and prose is one of the characteristics of fictional prose of this period. There are many poems in fiction that can be studied. However, in this study, among the popular stories of the Safavid era, the story of Bustan-i Khayal (Garden of Imagination) is selected as one of the largest and most famous folk tales with a collection of historical tales and stories of demons and fairies, written by Mir Mohammad Taqi Al-Jaafari Al-Husseini nicknamed "Khayal", and also known as Khayal Ahmadabadi. The storyteller lived in the twelfth century AH in the Indian subcontinent. The purpose of this study is to analyze the scattered poems in the story of Bustan-i Khayal, following these

It is generally believed that the origin of the Rubayi meter should be found in the meters of the pre-Islamic poetry, particularly the folk and oral poetries. Gilbert Lazard is the only person who has done a detailed analysis of the peculiarities and similarities of the Rubayi prosody with the non-prosodic features of the folk and oral poetries. This study argues that there are many stressed or semi-prosodic poems in the folk and oral poetries of Iran, the rhythm of which is very similar to the rhythm of Rubayi, but they are not related to the meter of Rubayi so far as the prosody distinction is concerned. Lazard believes that the Rubayi meter has fundamentally the same meter of the stressed and semi-prosodic local poems, but his method is rather flawed. This study, however, argues that the stressed and non-stressed syllables in the stressed poems turn into short and long quantities in prosodic poems. Moreover, the isochronism and the consonants which come after the stressed syllable or sometimes at the end of the verse, are omitted in the prosodic poems. Therefore, the isochronic meters in the stress position are firstly turned into the semi-prosodic meters and then to the fixed linguistic and quantitative meters.

In textual criticism, it is necessary to pay attention to side sources and sometimes books of proverbs. Depending on the content and the main form of the proverbs, the editor can remove some of the ambiguities of the classical texts. Gradually, the use of these proverbs becomes more limited and turn into vague expressions for the scribes so that they may change them. For example, the phrase of "Shomar e khāne be bāzār rāst nemÎayad" (The counting of the house is not acceptable in the Bazar) is an ancient proverb, which means "Not matching a personchr('39')s account at home with what he encounters in the market". This proverb at least has been used in Persian poetry and prose from the 5th century, and in our time, it has been used in Tajik Persian works. Sachr('39')adi has used this proverb in the one of the verses of his Odes, but for the scribes of Saʿdīchr('39')s Divan, it was not a familiar phrase, and hence, in most manuscripts and in all available editions of Divan and Odes, "arz e jame" (length of the clothes) has been distorted to the "arz e khane" (the length of the house). Most of the commentators of Sachr('39')adichr('39')s Odes have trusted the text without paying attention to its transformation and distortion. They have interpreted the verse in such a way that it does not relate to Sachr('39')adichr('39')s thought. In this article, the correct form of the Saʿdīchr('39')s verse has been presented relying on some of the manuscripts of Sachr('39')dichr('39')s Divan and the background and meaning of this proverb.