Using today’s notes, including numerous fixations of demonological narratives and respondents’ beliefs are essential in the process of synchro-diachronic analysis. It testified quite an active existence of texts about different characters of the Carpathian traditions (witches, lisna, bisytsya etc.), allowed to identify the most typical changes influenced by social and cultural circumstances and set the continuity of tradition on the ideological, thematic and formal levels.
The dissertation is one of the initial comprehensive studies of the Ukrainian demonological stories of the Carpathian region. The undeniable relevance of this work is caused by the lack of the theoretical information about the ethnic demonological prose of Boykos, Lemkos, and Hutsuls. This dissertation investigates the process of recording and analytic review of the above-mentioned region which was initially related to the «Rus’ka Triitsia». It contains lots of the details about the collecting and editing activity of the XIX – early XXI centuries (V. Gnatyuk, I. Franko, V. Shukhevych, I. Sen’ko, N. Varkhol, V. Sokil etc.). The dominant elements of the folklore discourse are distinguished (reviews of individual motives, plots, images of the demonological texts). A lot of attention is paid to the terminology, the theories of the Ukrainian and foreign folklore regarding using different titles and characteristics of the following region's compositions. The usage of the term «demonological story» is scientifically substantiated, its genre definition is clarified due to the content characteristics and functions (where narrator is a direct participant or a witness of the event, the events are explained in the recent past tense, the national beliefs and conceptions were mentioned, and the contact with a demonic creature took place, etc.).
The emphasis is placed on investigating the list of characters and analyzing the motivic fund of the demonological narratives. All the feminine characters are separated into such groups: the master spirits of the natural locus (mayka, lisna, bisytsya; mermaid; viternytsya, litavytsya, perelesnytsya), the disease, epidemy, death spirits (plague, cholera, fever, colic, pyrexia; death), the spirits of evil and calamity (happiness, misfortune, fortune, distress), personifications of time (poludnytsya, Friday, Wednesday, Varvara), demonized human beings (a witch). The characters are analyzed based on the following scheme: names, appearance, the way of communication, time-and-space characteristics, relations with other demonic creatures and people, functional nature, plot-and-motive fund. The regional character specificity of both the entire Carpathian region and several ethnic groups (the Hulsuls' lisna, Boykos' bisytsya etc.) is ascertained based on the detailed analytic review of their texts. The parallels with an all-Ukrainian folklore tradition are conducted, and the common and distinctive treats of this region's narratives are pointed out.
