Chicken god
Chicken god, place of discovery: Lohme, island of Rügen
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Chicken god, place of discovery: Below the Königsstuhl, island of Rügen
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Chicken god, place of discovery: Dänholm
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Chicken god, find spot: California
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Linsenstein, place of discovery: Vienna
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In Germany, a stone with a naturally formed hole is popularly referred to as a chicken god (Hascherlit in German). In Great Britain they are "hag stones" ( German "Hexensteine" ) and "Snake's eggs" ( German "Schlangeneier" ), in Welsh Glain neidr , in Cornwall "Adderstanes", in Scottish Gaelic Gloine nan Druidh ( German "Druidenglas" ) , called "aggry" or "aggri" in Egypt.
Description and occurrence
Stones of this type are often flint bulbs with weathered chalk deposits. The “real” chicken god has a hole about the size of a pin head up to a few centimeters in diameter, sometimes a remnant of a fossil sea line stem that was once stored (see Paramoudra for the theory about the origin of the holes). In Germany, chicken gods can be found on the East and North Sea coasts (for example on the beaches of the North Frisian Islands) and in the inland ice-age rubble and are a popular souvenir among holidaymakers as a lucky charm. Elsewhere in Germany, such formations are rarely found or are not known as a term.
- Chalk-crusted flints
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Superstition
The name chicken god and the idea of being able to protect domestic fowl against evil spirits with appropriate objects interpreted as amulets come from a very old Slavic popular belief. In the present case, it is a question of warding off the harmful influence of a female household ghost, the so-called Kikimora .
The Kikimora is an old Slavic deity rededicated as a poltergeist . It is said, among other things, that it spins threads, rumbles, brings bad luck to those who see it - and steals domestic fowl or prevents it from laying eggs. To ward off the evil influence, the severed neck of a jug or a stone with a natural hole must be hung by the stables. Read, for example, in the resultant in the 19th century and to this day among scientists as saying laymen very popular dictionary of the Great Russian language of Vladimir Dal . The assumption that this is a belief of the Crimean Tatars , as it appears, for example, in the story of Yevtushenko mentioned below, falls short of the mark . The Crimean Tatars have with some likelihood adopted ideas from their Slavic neighbors.
The word Kuriny bog (Russian куриный бог ; chicken god ) in turn denotes not only perforated stones in the Slavonic language area, but also other used and smashed objects, such as old vessels without a bottom or worn bast shoes.
Perforated stones as protective amulets have played a role in the past throughout Europe and beyond. This is documented, for example, for the Germanic, for example the Anglo-Saxon and Alemannic, as well as the French folk beliefs. In Switzerland and France, for example, they were hung up in cow and horse stables to protect cattle from misfortune. Such ideas were also widespread in Germany. Although the perforated stones were called "Trutensteine", "Schratensteine" or similar, it was just like the chicken god to ward off witches and ghosts, the "turkeys" (alternative spellings: Druden , Truden ) or the " Schrate " and theirs evil magic thought. Interestingly, this popular belief also has an analogue among the Eastern Slavs, which was called the cattle god ( skotij bog , Russian скотий бог ). Similar to the chicken god , perforated stones were used for this, among other things, which were hung in a clearly visible place in order to avert "evil looks" and to conjure up the pagan Slavic god Weles, who was regarded as the protector of cattle . It should be mentioned here that the described in some relationship of Hühnergötter the Germanic god of thunder, Thor , is not unreasonable (Donar), the said to have been among others the chicken holy, for the Slavic deities Veles (Volos) and Perun (Weles 'Antagonist, who is usually regarded as the main Slavic deity) and the Germanic gods Thor and Loki (both also antagonists), show a number of similar traits.
Occurrence in literature
Since the term Hühnergott is missing in older German-language reference works of the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in the dictionary of the German language of the Brothers Grimm , it is considered neologism . For a long time it has been assumed that the German term goes back to the 1966 translation of the 1963 novella by Evgeni Jewtuschenko by Thomas Reschke . In the meantime there are several proofs that the term Hühnergott has existed in German for a long time. Even before Reschke, the Balte René Drommert (1905–2002) translated Yevtushenko's story with the title “Der Hühnergott” from January 1963 for “Die Zeit” in sequels.
The oldest known evidence to date, as friends of Reschke found out at his request, comes from the book by D. Zelenin on East Slavic folklore published by de Gruyter in 1927 in German. In fact, such terms were used in German-language literature as early as the 19th century.
The term "chicken god" was used in the novel "Iwan III." By Valeri Jaswizki, published in 1953 by Rütten & Loening in the translation by Alexander Böltz. There is in Volume I, page 98: "On their necks [the chickens] were tied with twine colored stones, the 'chicken gods' who protected them from disease."
The term found its way into the GDR Duden in 1975 , but was deleted again in the Duden which was shared after 1990. The 22nd edition of the volume The German Spelling , published in 2000, lists it again.
In Austria stones with small holes are also called lens stones: if you look through the hole, everything appears enlarged.
Synonyms
Lochstein , Drudenstein, Linsenstein.
literature
- Rolf Reinicke : Flints - Chicken Gods . - 80 p., Numerous Fig., Demmler Verlag , Schwerin, 2009, ISBN 978-3-910150-78-2
- Gerhard Priewe, Jürgen Bummert: Chicken gods : lucky stones from the beach . - 79 p., Numerous Fig., Hinstorff-Verlag, 3rd edition (2007), ISBN 978-3-356-01186-9
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Felix Haase: Volksglaube und Customs der Ostslaven , limited preview in the Google book search, Georg Olms Verlag, 1980, ISBN 3-487-06995-4
- ↑ Franz Lerchenmüller: Baltic Sea: Is that a chicken god? In: zeit.de. July 30, 2009, accessed December 2, 2014 .
- ^ Yevgeny Evtushenko: The Chicken God. In: zeit.de. January 18, 1963, accessed December 2, 2014 .
- ↑ Dmitrij Zelenin: Russian (East Slavic) folklore. Outline of Slavic philology and cultural history . Edited by Reinhold Trautmann and Max Vasmer. de Gruyter, Berlin, Leipzig 1927.
- ↑ P. v. Stenin: Superstition in the Tambov Governorate . In: Globus. Illustrated magazine for country and ethnology . tape 63 , 1893, pp. 76 f .
- ↑ Adolf Bastian: The Culturländer of ancient America: A year on the road. Cruises for collecting in transatlantic fields of ethnology. Berlin 1878, p. 410 .