ИСТИНА

The focus og the paper will be done at methods of the Russian School of Ethnolinguistics, e.g. the transfer of linguistic methods to the study of the Modern Greek folk culture, with an emphasis on the historical (diachronical) and genetic aspects of research. The study of verbal, actional and subject codes of traditional culture of Modern Greece can contribute significantly to the reconstruction of archaic Balkan elements and to the research of their origin. The centuries-old history of numerous contacts of Greeks with other peoples of the Balkan and Mediterranean areas had a great influence on the formation of the current folk mythological system, and we can speak about general Balkan mythological types, e.g. Christmas demons (kalikantzaroi-karakondžula-karakondjul), or female mythological characters (nereida-vila-samovila) etc. The historical conditions of constant contacts of Greeks with the languages ​​and cultures of the southern Slavic area led to the appearance in the Greek system of some new mythological characters, which come from the Slavic tradition. This is the case of the characters mora and smerdaki and corresponding lexemes (μόρα, σμερδάκι), which were adopted by Greeks from Slavs. In other cases, only the word was borrowed, for example, rather early in the Greek language came the Slavic lexeme v’rkolak> βρυκόλακας, then it became widespread, but some basic characteristics of the Slavic character did not pass in the Greek cultural tradition. In addition to lexical borrowings in the sphere of mythology, some conceptual motifs (e.g. 'shadow', 'noon', 'Saturday', 'wind') can be found, they are common to the folk culture of Greece and South Slavia. As the research has shown, a commonality of the beliefs and the similarity of the motives for the mythological character's nomination are caused by certain unified general Balkan beliefs about this or that phenomenon, for example, "Saturday" people (savvatogennimenos, savvatianos, sbotnjak etc.) with the internal form "Saturday", "vampire, walking dead". The paper is based on the materials collected during our field work in Greece (1998-2016) and on the data base for Modern Greek mythological system collected by the author.