Watercourse, Calibasa, Girl: A New African Fairy-Tale Type “The Drowned Girl”

Abstract

The author has identified the African fairy tale plot “The drowned girl” (“The wife of the water spirit”), which has not been taken into account in the subject indexes. This work contains the published tale versions which are circulated in the oral tradition of the Bantu peoples. With the help of ethnographic material of the peoples of Africa, the author undertakes a semantic analysis of individual elements (motives) of a new fairy tale plot. An interdisciplinary approach was used in the work, which made it possible to reveal the close connection of the fairy tale with traditional ideas, rituals, initiation practices and social institutions, that constitute a single semantic field, some aspects of which exist in an inextricable functional relationship.