Livestock motifs in Tatar tales

Abstract

Cattle breeding had a huge impact on the traditional worldview system and the views of Tatars. It is an ancient branch of Turkic-speaking people economy. The attitude towards a horse is distinguished particularly. Like many Turkic peoples in the Tatars' economy, it occupies the main place and performs the functions of labor and transport, guaranteeing the reliability of life communications, serves as the most important factor of family well-being, provides nutritious high-calorie food, provides leather, hair and tendons in Tatar economy like among numerous Turkic peoples. At the same time, a horse was worshiped, proud of, it was considered as the property of the Tatar family. Tatars still have the echoes of ancient beliefs of nomadic culture concerning the horse cult. It is particularly pronounced in folklore. Mythical white horse "акбүз ат" is one of the most active artistic images of folk lyrical songs, magical and adventurous tales, dastans. In the conspiratorial - spellcasting tradition and in occasional ceremonies, the mane and the tails of horses are still used, which, according to the Tatars, protect from evil spirits, demons and dangers. An old horseshoe, which, according to the Tatars, does not let the impure force into a house, hammered to the threshold of an entrance door of a residential building, continues to perform its protective function. There is a lot of such examples related with the traditions of domestic cattle breeding. But, unfortunately, these phenomena are practically not studied in the Tatar folklore studies. Taking into account this fact, the authors will try to reveal the mechanisms of viability of the pastoral traditions among the Tatars, expressed in folkloric phenomena, in our case in the Tatar folk tales for the first time within the framework of this article. Due to the limited amount of this article, we will focus only on the image of a horse.