نشریه فرهنگ و ادبیات عامه
پیاپی 38 (خرداد و تیر 1400)

Because weather forecasting is directly related to peoplechr('39')s lives, it is widely reflected in proverbs and it is often in full accordance with scientific facts. The signs related to the falling or not falling of rain in Ghohestan culture are very deep, diverse and wide, and show that the people of this region have paid special attention to the meteorological knowledge from the distant past, highlighting their great genius in discovering the signs. They have been able to predict the amount of precipitation and mitigate the adverse effects of the dry period that occurs periodically in this region. Folk proverbs and sayings, which are one of the most prominent manifestations of folklore, contain beliefs and customs that are passed down from generation to generation, and originate from the culture of the masses. Based on the astronomical beliefs of the past and the villagerschr('39') relationship with nature, proverbs about weather forecasting have been formed and become popular. Since the study of popular culture plays an important role in strengthening national and cultural identity, in this study, we have tried to explore the issue by using the proverbs, beliefs and sayings that are common among the people of the region. Using a descriptive-analytical method, we deal with some of the most important popular beliefs about meteorological knowledge in Birjand region.

Oral literature has been in line with human history since the past, and without its knowledge, it is not possible to know the history of nations, but unfortunately it has not been considered as it should be. Research in proverbs and popular culture gives us access to the most basic concepts of the political, social, economic, and educational culture of the people, and informs us on the social and individual way of life, the degree of education and civilization, the basis of progress and degradation, customs, beliefs and ideas of a nation. One of the main branches of folklore knowledge is traditional meteorology, which used to be critical for farmers, ranchers, and travelers. Based on the astronomical beliefs and the villagers’ connection with the nature, sky, stars, and animals, some Birjandi proverbs have been formed and popularized about weather forecasting. Here, we have tried to study and analyze cases of weather forecasting in the proverbs and beliefs of the people of Birjand.

Background research

Hedayat (1999) and Zolfaghari (2015) have dealt with the beliefs of the Iranian people about meteorology. On the beliefs of the people of Birjand about meteorology, Rezaei (2002), Farjadzadeh (1374), Shateri et al. (2013), and Zamanipour (2012) have collected some instances, but we have not found any work dedicated to a specific comprehensive study of the traditional meteorology in this region.

The data collection method here is both in the form of field research, and interviews the author has done with the informants, besides some library methods. Here, the people’s meteorological knowledge has been studied in a descriptive-analytical way by using popular beliefs, astronomical sources, and traditional meteorology.

Because climate plays an essential role in human life and can determine how people work and live, it has been widely reflected in proverbs. The people, due to their ancient civilization, have had deeply-rooted meteorological knowledge and had different methods for the raining forecast: they predicted climate change, rainy, and wet or dry years by signs such as: the state of cloud and fog at the top of the mountains, the lightning and the time when it occurs, the type and the blowing of winds such as Farah-baad, chelleh-baad, siyah-baad, kiblah-baad, and shomal-baad (northern wind); the state, the halo of the moon, and the redness around it; the position of rain-making stars such as Canopus, Sirius, Pleiades, the star of ewes and lambs, and the forecast of rain by the stars’ movement or luminosity; the conjunction between the moon and the Pleiades in winter and spring which causes storms and rain; the state of the sun, solar eclipses and spots around the sun, and the yellow-red circles surrounding it; the prediction of raining on certain days and months of the year, such as the Shisheh days, the Sagittarius month, the chelleh-e bozorg and chelleh-e kuchak, and the battle period between them at the end of the chelleh-e bozorg and in the beginning of the chelleh-e kuchak; raining forecast according to the condition of certain plants; the raining forecast through divination on the night of the Sadeh festival, and also by taking into consideration the sheep’s intestines, slaughtered on the night of parwarkoshan (slaughtering of fattened animals); the raining forecast based on the animals’ strange and meaningful behaviors before the onset of raining, and the birds’ movement and migration; the raining forecast according to popular beliefs and their trust in witchcraft to prevent raining or drought due to raindrops falling into graves and becoming gurband.

According to the above-mentioned evidence, Birjandi people were using different methods to forecast the weather, rainfall, cold weather, storms, wet and dry years, taking into consideration the birds’ song and movement, the state of clouds and fog, wind, thunderstorms, plants, divination, animal behaviors, raining on certain days of the spring called "shisheh", the position of the moon and sun, the movement of rain-making stars such as Canopus and Sirius, and the conjunction of the moon and Pleiades, which caused certain climate changes. Such predictions have been reflected in the beliefs and proverbs of the people of Birjand, which indicate the deep connection of human with nature concerning popular culture, and the people’s knowledge of astronomy, which they used to predict the weather. Traditional meteorology in low-precipitation areas of the region has always been of interest to the people leading them to gain a lot of knowledge which they can use to succeed in setting up their cultivation plan, and producing and storing food. Therefore, the benefit of the studying proverbs in folklore culture is to achieve the most basic concepts of social, economic and educational culture of people, and the anthropological, sociological and historical study of proverbs for researchers in these areas. As sociologists use common proverbs in each locale to study the spirits and morals of the ancients, metaphorical proverbs have an educational function representing the relationship among humans, the environment where they live, and their knowledge of the nature and celestial bodies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the status of women and their role in literature of Qajar era in classic religious schools. We have selected seventy fairy tales from popular folk tales in the Qajar era. The conceptual model of this research is a combination of literary and sociological theories as well as qualitative research method and content analysis. After reading the textual body and extracting the data, we used the conceptual model of the study to examine the actions of women in the stories. The aim was to explain the various roles of women in stories. The findings show that considering the predominance of masculine discourse and gender-biased mentality, the political and social role of women in stories is prominent and their cultural, educational, and legal roles are very limited. The rest of the womenchr('39')s roles are located these two maximum and minimum poles.

Karami and Hesampour (2005) have examined the image and position of women in the folk tales of Samak Ayar; Darabnameh. Bayat (2010) has analyzed the role and position of women in these stories by examining the heroes of forty Persian folk tales on the subject of love and marriage. Bagheri (2013) has studied the active and passive role of women in twenty-two stories focusing on the theme of heroism and Ayari, which comes from Samak Ayar in the classical period to Amir Arsalan Rumi in the Qajar era. Mohammad Hassani Lor and his colleagues (2016) have also investigated Kelileh and Demneh, Samak Ayar and Darabnameh to study the image of women in folk tales. A brief review of this background does not provide a comprehensive answer to the questions we consider in this study as our research is different in the text body, method, and type of variables.

Research objectives and questions

The main question of the article is: How are women represented in home school literature? Is this type of literature expressing the social reality of the Qajar era? The importance of this question becomes apparent when we know that classic religious schoolschr('39') literature became one of the most important factors in the socialization of children and adolescents, who later became men and women in the society. Zolfaghari and Heydari (2012) have published the literature of Iranian libraries during the Qajar period, which includes seventy poems and prose stories. Our textual body in the present article focuses on these seventy stories.

Data collection

In this study, we have examined the special role of women in the form of four social roles including the legal role in the family institution, the economic role, the political role, the educational role, and the cultural role.

The legal role of women in the family

Due to the courtly atmosphere in the stories, there is no cohesive family, but the woman has accepted the roles of child, wife, mother, and sister.
The study of child value is based on the issue of childbearing (the importance of the son or daughter) and the valuation of the daughter in the family institution. In most of these stories, the girl is miserable and unhappy. Due to the existence of polygamy and having a harem, a woman in the role of a wife is deprived of many of her natural rights, and equality in marriage is seen only in love affairs. The social class of the spouses is usually the same and the man is often higher. The wife has no identity; she is anonymous or marked with general and related letters such as shrine, so-and-so wife, family, so-and-so mother, etc. The woman in the role of mother is mostly a means of reproduction that disappears after the birth of a child and is replaced by a midwife (46 times a father and 16 times a mother). The honorable mother has only a moral and religious dimension. Using metaphors such as mother of the days, constellation, assemblage, universe, the woman carries the manifestation of guilt, error, and fall. The woman in the role of sister also has an active and effective presence next to her brother.

The role of women in the education system

Due to the very limited literacy in this respect, the educational role of women has been mentioned only in four stories (Kolsoomnaneh, Daleh and Mokhtar, Najma Shirazi and Bahramoghandam) as a religious teacher and letter writer.

 Economic role

Gender discrimination and the ideology of the breadwinner and the housewife are prominent in the stories. Men have an economically active role by gaining superior social status and middle and inferior status, but women are more likely to engage in the economic activity in service roles (midwife, broker, maid) to meet the need for economic activity.

The cultural role of women

Culturally, a man is considered valuable (strong, a hero, and a protagonist) and a woman is considered worthless (weak, an object, a shrine, and a cunning). Devaluation includes psychological and verbal violence against women, which includes obscenity, descriptive and metaphorical interpretations of gender, general naming, and specific naming of instruments and norms such as the norm of violence against women (psychological and physical).

Political role

Women do not have a clear political role in the stories of the Qajar era, but their power and involvement in decision-making and their actions and reactions in order to survive and develop is a kind of hidden political activity: decision-making power in love, marriage, repelling the rival, saving the beloved, removing the obstacle, satisfying the sexual need (33 times) and using cunning to satisfy the need, repelling the calamity, achieving the desire and saving the life, property, honor and family (15 times). The use of magic has come for sexual, financial and revenge needs (13 times), and greed and domination (8 times).

The literature of the Qajar era home schools is a clear reflection of the ruling discourse and the patriarchal and sexist ideology that marginalized women as the other and the second sex. The study of the cultural and social dimensions of the role of women and their presence in stories, while highlighting the resistance of the bold and impudent women who are rejected by the patriarchal society, manifests the dominance of male power.

Recognizing the history of culture governing the currentchr('39')s traditional societies is one of the important and significant issues which has been studied by domestic and foreign investigators. Archaeologists are among the researchers, accompanied by other interdisciplinary investigators, who can reconstruct the culture of our ancestors through the findings obtained from exploration, and match them with various aspects of nomads and tribes. In the present investigation, it has been tried to study the customs of Bakhtiari people. The main aim is to study the micro-cultures which have been expressed in the life of Bakhtiari people in the form of some customs of ancient Ilam. The assumptions of this investigation are based on the following questions: which customs of ancient Ilam have been inherited by Bakhtiari people? Which aspect of their life have been influenced by this expression? The method is descriptive-analytical along with field survey via a historical approach. In this investigation, 23 archaeological works from ancient Ilam civilization have been studied. The results of the research indicate that the customs of people who are now known as Bakhtiari are somewhat the lineage of the people who lived as a strong government of ancient Ilam in the region. Although the cultural and population complex of Bakhtiari has significantly changed during thousands of years, there is still an evidence implying that they are the heirs of old culture of ancient Ilam.

Analyzing the content as well as the common themes in Tazieh poems acquaints us with the culture, language, and common idioms in this field. Due to the aesthetics of the Tazieh poems and its narration, which mentions the sufferings of the martyrs of Karbala, as well as the multifaceted dimensions of the Tazieh and the characteristics of its representation, less attention has been paid to the text of the Tazieh works. This study aims to figure out what has been the most effective aspect of these poems on the general audience. Accordingly, in this research, the poems of Tazieh ceremonies have been studied in three parts. The first part focuses on the content, the second part is the descriptive analysis of the poems, and the third part focuses on the variety of poetic forms of the text. Relying on the content elements of the text, the functions of the poems in attracting the audience have been analyzed. So far, no research has been done in the field of content analysis of poems in Tazieh. This research is based on the manuscripts of Tazieh gatherings entitled The collection of Tazieh battles of General Resurrection - in eight volumes which are currently being performed in the month of Muharram in the Tazieh gatherings in Damghan city. The research method is descriptive-analytical.

"â?i:ka" is a lullaby in the region of Sistan. Given that "â?i:ka" is usually sung to the child, its melodiousness and musicality are of great importance, and the present article aims to see what characteristics can be enumerated for the Melodiousness and Euphony of Sistani "â?i:kachr('39')s"? The result of the research shows the use of prosodic rhythm, rhymes, and rows in the song. So far, the "â?i:ka"of Sistan have not been collected in an independent book, and there are only some books that have dealt with the folk culture of Sistan, mentioning some examples of the â?i:ka. In this article, two research methods have been used. Some of the â?i:kachr('39')s that have been present in various works have been collected by the library method, but most of the ”â?i:kachr('39')s” used in this research have been collected through field method. Then, using the analytical method, â?i:kachr('39')s melodiousness and its various aspects of music are described.

This paper aims to study and analyze the issue of Zaum in popular literature because popular literature has been and is a suitable platform for the appearance of Zaum. It is basically one of the most frequent elements and motifs in Zaum popular literature. Examples of this research are selected from the popular literature of Torbat-e Jam region. Zaum refers to words that deviate from linguistic logic and have no meaning or are nonsensical, but by creating music in poetry and also in proverbs and songs, they cause emotional motivation and sweetness. In literary research, the term comes from the Russian school of futurism. It was first introduced into Persian literary studies by Shafi’ï Kadkani. According to researchers, Zaum is divided into three categories: semiotic, morphological, and phonetic. This division is based on word-of-mouth Zaum and it is based on Zaum at lexical level. The findings of this study show that Zaum also occurs at the level of hemistich or line (sentence). Nonsense poetry and injection have sentence Zaum. Though meaningless, Zaum produces and increases music. As a result, this music compensates for the meaning charge. In some folk poems, where the poet does not have a high level of poetic mastery, he creates Zaum. In children poetry, Zaum is more prevalent, because music is more important than meaning.

Tone is an inclusive term with manifold definitions. Each researcher, therefore, interprets it differently depending on how he/she approaches it in the text. In fact, tone is the echo of the writer or poet’s voice communicating with those who are willing to hear such mesmerizing songs. As a principal element, tone is divided into many minor (local) tones. In this research, colloquial tone has been examined in various stylistic tendencies and genres of present-day Mazandaran poetry. To this purpose, researchers have introduced, classified, and analyzed the processing techniques of tone in the poetry of forty Persian poets from 1972-2021. Findings indicate that in order to achieve colloquial tone, Mazandarani poets have benefitted from five main techniques (framework, sound, music, language, and rhetoric) and 25 minor techniques in their poetry. Given the research data, the musical features and four minor techniques have had significant frequencies. Moreover, regarding linguistic techniques, local-ethnic and humorous tones are found to be significantly frequent. Research methodology used in this study is mixed method (qualitative and quantitative) which makes use of reference documents and reliable Internet sites.

Lullabies are one of the most important and valuable branches of popular culture in any ethnic group. The theme of lullabies is the reflection of thoughts, beliefs, spiritual reflections, social and political concerns, emotions, prayers and individual and social aspirations that can affect the geographical, cultural, social, and political conditions of a society. Because lullabies are not specific to a particular culture or country, they can have a lot in common, which may be in terms of rhythm, theme, concepts, as well as religious topos, natural, social, geographical, and political motifs and themes. In this descriptive-analytical study, 40 written Sabzevari lullabies have been collected by the library method to be examined. While identifying the method of the motif formation in them, the most commonly used motifs are presented in order to introduce the native lullabies of Sabzevar and to understand the reflection of religious ideas, social conditions and personal concerns of mothers of that time. After examining the various motifs in these lullabies, we were able to divide them into four categories: religious motifs, nature, places and relatives. Among the motifs used, the motif "flower" (the name of different types of flowers) with 26 items and the motif "Baba" with 16 items had the highest frequency. The results of this study show that the speakers of these lullabies have used a variety of motifs to enrich the theme of their lullabies because their poets have based the existing images and themes on various motifs, most of which form a network of images, their intellectual and emotional themes. Without analyzing them, recognizing the main peculiarities of the concepts in these lullabies could not be understood.

Tehranian women performed in their private gatherings without menchr('39')s presence. It seems that these performances were the manifestations their temporary dreams since their life conditions were much influenced by the culture of the society in which their freedom and power were threatened, and consequently their dreams were limited. In such situations, womenchr('39')s activities were done in hidden, away from the societychr('39')s control. This raises a question: What is the relationship of these ritualistic performances and the womenchr('39')s dreams on the one hand, and what is its relationship with their condition as a second sex? The research method is document analysis and field study. 27 Tehranian women between 60 to 70 years old were selected and their memories were recorded. There were some interviews regarding their narrations of these rituals; however, the main data consisted of the documents analyzed. The data analysis was through thematic analysis. Firstly, Turnerchr('39')s symbolic anthropology and Schechnerchr('39')s performance theory were employed for analyzing the ritualistic performances, and then Gluckmanchr('39')s theory of reversed customs was used to investigate the paradoxes within the elements of the performances. The findings shows womenchr('39')s dreams of having a safer environment and more power like men to establish security for themselves.

Despite the differences that recently have arisen in determining the meters of the folk poetry, it can be said with confidence that the meters of the folk poems follow the rules of syllabic accentual meters. Work songs (work poetry) is a branch of folk poetry which is read in harmony with the rhythm of the work and it has work-related content. Workers recited these poems in groups or individually to refresh themselves, making work easy and faster. In this article, at first, we have defined the work songs and its types and characteristics, and then analyzed the meters of these poems from two perspectives: the quantitative meters, and the syllabic accentual meters. We have found that the work songs follow the syllabic accentual meters and there is a significant relationship between the meters of work songs in a specific branch. The work songs also match the rhythm of the work. Also, by changing the work rhythm, it takes on different rhythms as well.