Pre-Christian Eschatological Motifs in the Ukrainian Dumas and Spiritual Verses and Their Germanic Parallels

Abstract

The Ukrainian folklore genres least studied in a mythological context are the epic songs: dumas and spiritual verses. In particular, it is possible to find concepts of the beginning and the end of the world in these works. In many aspects, they are close to the Old Germanic ones, especially concerning the mythological connection between natural cataclysms and the breaking of family ties, as shown by several archaic examples. This article deals with these cosmogonic and eschatological notions in Ukrainian and Scandinavian epics. The author points to a similar outlook in both epic traditions and a similarity in emotional and evaluative identifications of events. These parallels must be owed to Germano-Slavic contacts in the early Middle Ages.

1. Introduction

The genres of Ukrainian folklore that are least studied from a mythological angle are dumas and spiritual verses. The dumas are folk epic and lyrical epic works performed as a recitative accompanied by a stringed instrument, the bandura (kobza), or a hurdy-gurdy (lira) and possessing a specific literary form (imparisyllabic lines, lack of separate verses, using commonplaces (‘loci communes’), etc.). Although some of the traditional dumas are lost, many have been preserved by folklorists. The dumas depicting the deeds of the Ukrainian Cossacks contain many archaic elements both in their poetics and content. Still, researchers have tended to notice mostly their heroic, historical, social, and moral aspects. For instance, Borys Kyrdan and Marko Pliseckyy noted only the heroic, epic, and moralizing character of the dumas, eulogizing warriors’ feats and patriotism as well as their promotion of tribal and family morality. They date the origins of the dumas back to the late Middle Ages and regard them purely as a reflection of political events of those times (Kyrdan 1962, 1965; Pliseckiy 1963; Pliseckyy 1994). At the same time, the mythological motifs in the dumas have remained beyond the scope of all subsequent studies. The connections of the dumas with the folklore of other peoples were similarly ignored.

A similar fate befell the Ukrainian spiritual verses which had the same performers as the dumas—the kobza and hurdy-gurdy players. They were professional singers who lived mostly from their art. To be a kobzar or a lirnyk, a person had to be blind. Because they did not farm as did the rest of the population and relied on the charitable impulses of their audiences for their living, they were associated with beggars. But Ukrainian minstrels were much more. They were the repositories of tradition and culture. They were the disseminators of the word of God and the major source of folk historical and religious information. The phenomenon of epic folk nomadic minstrels was typical of both the Ukrainians and the other Slavic peoples (Kononenko 1998, p. 3; Bowra 1954, p. 3, 38, 282; Lord 1971, pp. 14–17; Mikhaylova 2006; Michajłowa 2010). Ukrainian folk singers, especially kobzars and hurdy-gurdy players, were witnesses and active participants in historical events throughout a number of eras. In the 16th–18th centuries, numerous events are known when they went on campaigns together with the Cossacks, raising the fighting spirit of the combatants by the power of their art. They called on the Ukrainian people to fight for freedom, for which many of them were imprisoned and executed. After the twilight of the Cossack epoch, nomadic blind singers remained the primary custodians of Ukrainian epic poetry. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, they were united in guilds and performed their songs at fairs, religious festivals, and pilgrimage sites, traveling from one settlement to another (Kononenko 1998; Cheremskyy 2002; Kushpet 2007; Hrytsa 2015, pp. 70–77, 80–83). Spiritual verses were non-canonical oral compositions reflecting the folk perception of religion. These religious songs, which also provided spiritual services for the audience, formed the central portion of the blind singer’s repertory. Usually called psalmy, they were not really psalms as such, but songs on religious topics. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, they interested researchers much less than the heroic epics and historical songs. The external religious nature of the Ukrainian folk singers’ repertory was less attractive to academics as it was perceived as a sign of the performers’ repertory degradation and lack of sophistication in comparison with the epic genre (Noll 1993, p. 20; 1994, p. 41; Kononenko 1998, pp. XII–XIII, 19). That is why studying the aspects of Ukrainian epic related not to historical events, but rather to its mythological basis, is of special importance. It concerns the depiction of magic, transformations, the presence of supernatural forces, and the reflection of ancient concepts about the world, its origins, and future end in the dumas and spiritual verses. The aim of this article is to study cosmogonic and eschatological motifs in Ukrainian epic, comparing them with the folklore of other Slavs and the mythologies of other European peoples in order to demonstrate their ancient origins.

2. Cosmogony in Ukrainian Dumas

One topic that remains virtually untouched by Ukrainian epic researchers of past years is the beginning and end of the world, a topic that is addressed periodically in the folklore of most peoples. Concepts of the origins of the world present a fascinating page in man’s spiritual history, as reflected in early literature and folklore. The need to ask about origins and destiny and to receive an answer is inherent in everyone, not only in the first years of life, but among every people in the early stages of their culture. The forces of nature; the change of day and night; the seasons; light and darkness; the origins of the sun, stars, people, plants, and animals; and the origins of the world in general are questions reflected, without exception, in the folklore of all ancient peoples. Cosmogony and some cosmogonic concepts can be found even in the most ancient literary works.

The development of mythology was an essential stage of human linguistic and spiritual evolution. In religious studies, the mythological school of the 19th century understood this, and Friedrich Leberecht Wilhelm Schwartz came to the conclusion that human spiritual life must have experienced an unparalleled revolution when people began to lift their previously downward gazes to the sky, the sun, the moon, and eternal constellations; to the dawn which brings the day; and to wind-driven clouds. Active forces of nature were perceived as living entities, and the thinking process assumed its modern form. Schwartz believed this period to coincide with the origins of religion. His studies showed that the sun and other celestial bodies attract less attention themselves than the changes happening to them (Schwartz 1879, p. VIII; 1864, p. XVII). Studying cosmogonies of the ancient peoples, Franz Lukas acknowledged both similarities and differences in cosmogonic concepts and theory. He deems the specific nature of the Germanic cosmogony, which is completely based on mythological notions about nature and does not resort to any abstract concepts, as one deserving attention and showing qualities absent in other cosmologies (Lukas 1893, pp. 231, 236). Among the songs about the gods of the Edda, a special place is given to cosmogonic narratives—Vọluspa, Vafþrúnismál, Grímnismál, Alvissmál. Some of the oldest Germanic conceptions of nature were reflected in folk legends about the creation of the world. The entire world is either created from the body parts of the original human being or, conversely, the most essential constituent elements of nature are included in the human body. Thus, at the basis of world creation there is the equation ‘human = world’, and the Germanic legends equate the microcosm with the macrocosm. According to the Eddas, the constituent parts of the world and Earth were created by gods from the body of the giant Ymir; in particular, the celestial lights were his eyes, and the stars came into existence when the gods threw fiery sparks into the sky, designating the place and the way for each star, together with the sun and the moon, to light the sky and Earth so that day and night could be told apart. The Scandinavians called the sun, the moon, and the stars ‘the eyes of the sky’, and the human eye ‘the sun’, while they called the eyebrows ‘the stars’ (Hildebrand 1876, p. 3; Buslaev 1861, pp. 143–45). Jacob Grimm noted that similar notions were preserved in the anthropogonic beliefs of the Friesians even after their Christianization (Grimm 1841, p. 2). At that time, Aleksandr Afanasyev and Fedor Buslaev identified traces of similar notions of the world’s origins from the body parts of an anthropomorphic creature in the Slavic tradition, namely, the Russian and Belarusian medieval spiritual verse The Dove Book. The main part of The Dove Book is a long sequence of riddles. In a series of answers to those riddles, ‘the most wise’ King David explains the origin of light, the sun, the moon, and social classes. This verse presents a cosmogonic plot according to which the world arose without the participation of divine will as a result of the emanation of light, dawn, and heavenly bodies from the body of God. After the story of the creation of the world, an anthropogonic myth is presented, a story about the appearance of the first people and classes (Afanasyev 1865, pp. 50–52, 63, 118, 139, 157, 218, 285, 785; Buslaev 1861, pp. 144–45). The rebirth of academic interest in Slavic cosmogonic mythology occurred in the late 20th century, together with heightened activity in Slavic and Indo-European studies. Numerous conclusions made by the mythological school and undeservingly rejected by later academics have been rehabilitated. There were attempts to reconstruct Slavic myth and its cosmogonic motifs from a structuralist point of view. Now, The Dove Book is again being researched for its traces of the ancient Indo-European mythological heritage—insofar as written Christian apocryphal texts cannot serve as a source for such data (Toporov 1971, pp. 43–50; 1978, pp. 150–53; 1988, pp. 169–72; 1993, pp. 57–62; Seryakov 2005, pp. 42–65). The possibility to find pagan antiquity, that is, the legacy of pre-Christian mythological beliefs, in oral folkloric compositions also forces researchers to look closer at similar motifs in the Ukrainian dumas.

The introduction of a very defective Ukrainian duma about Sevriuk, recorded in the Poltava Governorate near the town of Lubny, includes an interesting mythological element—the cosmogonic commentary of the main character, an immensely strong warrior, who describes the hierarchical structure of the world: «Sevryuk—vin ne prostoy syn… Sevryuk vse znav, /yak svit nastav, /yak sonechko zakhodyt, /tak i misyats zykhodyt, /i zoryushky po pidnebesyu blyshchat» (‘Sevryuk, he is not an ordinary son… Sevryuk knew everything, /how the world began, /how the sun sets, /how the moon sets, /and the little stars shine across the sky’) (Yanchuk 1919, pp. 545, 551). The duma (mistakenly labeled as a bylina) was set to music by the composer Vyacheslav Paskhalov who dedicated it to the performer—a Ukrainian singer and a teacher, Professor Anatoliy Dolivo (Chernyshevskaya 1974, p. 32).

The same account of the elements of cosmic structure can be found in the text ascribed to the Don Cossacks from the village of Yesaulovskaya describing the same character: «Ay, kto by, kto by-to doznal, doznal, /Kak belyy svet nastal, nastal, /Nastal, nastal, nastal!/Krasnoe solntse zashlo, zashlo, /Yasnyy mesyats vzoshel, /Ay, solntse krasnoe, mesyats vzoshel!/A Sevryuk-to doznal, doznal, /Kak belyy svet nastal, nastal, /Nastal, nastal belyy svet, /Krasnoe solntse zashlo, zashlo, /Mesyats yasnyy vzoshel, /Ay, krasno solnushko zashlo, /mesyats vzoshel. /«A vy-to, lyudi starodavnie. /Davno zhivetya vy, /Davno, davno zhivetya vy!/Nichego-to da ne smyslitya, /Vot vy ne smyslitya» (‘Hey, who could know/How the world came to be, /came to be, came to be, came to be!/The red sun set, it set, /the Bright Moon rose, /Hey, the red sun set, /the Bright Moon rose. /“And you, people of old. /You live for a long time, /Long, long you are living!/You don’t know anything, /it is nothing that you know!”’) (Listopadov 1949, pp. 172–73, 235).

In the Belarusian text from the Surazh District in the Chernihiv Governorate, the performer asks a number of cosmogonic questions: «Oy khto zh toho nyaznaŭ, /yak belyy svet nastaŭ? Jak i solnyshko vzoyshlo, /yak i yarki mesyachko, /yak i chastyya zvyozdochki, /yak i tsyomnyya khmarychki, /yak i silnyya dozhchachki» (‘Oh, who did not know that/how the bright world came to be? How did the Sun come up, /how did the bright Moon, /how did the clear starts, /how did the dark clouds, /how did heavy rains’). Furthermore, there is a hint that an indomitable hero Syavruk knows the answers to all those questions (Schein 1893, p. 178).

This duma is erroneously believed to be a version of a Russian historical song of the 16th century Kostryuk (Mastryuk) about the events dating back to the reign of Ivan the Terrible (Loboda 1895, pp. 17–19; Karski 2001, pp. 559–60; Pliseckiy 1963, pp. 396–97; Pliseckyy 1994, p. 260). But there exists the opposite point of view according to which the Belarusian song about Sevriuk contains traces of the ancient worldview and, like the oldest relics of the Indo-European tradition, asks essential cosmogonic questions (Demin 2000, p. 341). It is not only the protagonist’s name (compare the Czech Seveřan ‘Scandinavian’, severský ‘Scandinavian’) (Tyshchenko 2006, pp. 338–47, 392, 395), but the geography of folkloric mentions of Sevriuk that might possibly point to Gothic traces and their cultural influence.

It should be noted that the word combination ‘knew all’ is used as an epic formulaic expression based on the verb ‘to know’ when knowledge inaccessible to others is mentioned. The seeress in Voluspá says the following about the World Tree: «Ask veit ek standa, heitir Yggdrasill» ‘An ash I know, Yggdrasil its name’. In Alvíssmál, before each question about cosmogonic ideas that Thor asks the dwarf Alvis (‘All-Knowing’), he repeats: «Segðu mér þat, Alvíss!/ọll of rọk fíra/vọrumk, dvergr, at vitir» ‘Answer me, Alvis! thou knowest all,’. Addressing the king Gripir (Grípisspa), who was considered the wisest of all people and knew the future, Sigurd says each time: «Segðu mér, ef þú veizt» ‘To me, if thou knowest, say’. In the same way, Odin, while competing with the giant Vafthruthnir in a battle of wits (Vafþrúðnismál), repeats before each question: «Segðu þat/alls þik svinnan kveða/ef þú, Vafþrúðnir, vitir» ‘Answer me well, if thy wisdom avails, and thou knowest it, Vafthruthnir, now’ (Hildebrand 1876, pp. 6, 63, 82, 178; Bellows 1923, pp. 9, 73–80, 186–93, 342). Interestingly, the giant, one of the forces of chaos, is seen as knowing more about the future than the chief of the high gods (McKinnell 1994, p. 102; Burrows 2013, p. 205). Vafthruthnir is a giant, and in the Desna region there were legends about strong and cruel giants—severiuks—who preceded modern man (Bernstam 2011, p. 38). According to the explanation of the performer of the duma, «Sevriuk buv bahatyr sylno-mohushchyy; teper yikh znystozheno» (‘Sevriuk was a giant of great strength; now they are all gone’) (Yanchuk 1919, p. 554). The song of Vafthruthnir is regarded by modern academics as dedicated to wisdom. Their interest is focused on the rules of the battle of wits, and they attempt to explain why Odin, despite his wife’s urgent warnings, risks his life competing with Vafthruthnir in order to gain information about the end of the world. Some scholars think that he is obtaining new knowledge from the giant, while others insist that the battle of wits can be successful only when the questioner can check the answers (Wanner 2007, pp. 323–24; Larrington 2002, pp. 59–60). In ancient Indo-European riddles, the question is actually more important than the answer, and in the myth the questioner can be wiser than the respondent and does not need the answer, but the respondent must find the answer on his own and enter the true dialogue about the higher sacral entities (Toporov 1993, p. 57). As for Odin himself, it should be noted that his magic, wisdom, and knowledge are inseparable (Dumézil 1986, p. 143).

Where the earth and the sky come from, where the moon walks across the sky, where day and night come from—these are the questions that in Vafþrúnismál Odin asks of Vathtruthnir and receives his answers. The ways Odin’s question and Heidrek’s answer demonstrate the cosmogonic beliefs about Earth and its lighting are given in a variant of a poetic song about the king Heidrek recorded on the Faroese islands in the late 19th century (Mannhardt 1855, p. 127). Heidrek the Wise, according to the Germanic epic tradition, ruled the land of Reidgotaland on the right bank of the Dnieper (Heinzel 1887, pp. 21, 56–57, 59–61). Myths of celestial bodies that move in chariots and about the phases of the moon and their connections with the tides are important in Scandinavian mythology (Petrukhin 2010, pp. 78–82). The alternation of day and night, winter and summer, sundown and sunrise, the waxing and waning moon—all these natural phenomena were finally portrayed by the Old Germanic tribes in a myth about the death of a good god who dies at the hands of his evil rival, which subsequently causes the world to go into mourning (Sozonovich 1889, p. 65). Here, the demise of the hero Sevriuk in the related duma should be mentioned: «Yoho kost ta rozsypalasya, a sustavtsi rozletilysya, yoho holos po pidnebesyu pishov» (‘His bones turned into dust, and his joints fell apart, his voice flew to the sky’) (Yanchuk 1919, pp. 552, 554). Together with harmony, the creation of the correct forms of space, and the steady flow of time, the Nordic gods brought death and destruction into the world. The universe is created from the body of a slain giant—the primal creature who was evil but did not commit crimes. The world built on blood is doomed to perish—and both the gods and people fear it (Petrukhin 2010, pp. 82–83). The Voluspá poet imagined that all gods taking part in the final battle died (McKinnell 1994, p. 121). The anticipation of this death of the world is already present in the cosmogonic dialogue between Odin and Vafthruthnir. Thus, cosmogony is bound to contain an element of eschatology (Buslaev 1861, p. 127). Scandinavian parallels point to the archaic nature of the image of the giant-hero Sevryuk, who knows everything about the origin of the world, elements, and celestial bodies, in the Ukrainian duma.

3. Eschatology in Ukrainian Dumas and Spiritual Verses

The theme of the end of the world, which is described differently from Christian teaching, is also widely reflected in Ukrainian dumas and spiritual verses. These eschatological images are considerably different from those of both the Biblical Book of Revelation (the Apocalypse of John the Theologian), the only apocalyptic book in the New Testament and one of the most enigmatic works in the Christian canon (Bauckham 1993; Collins 1984; Ehrman 2004), and from the apocrypha (Orlov 2007, 2020), including those belonging to South Slavic dualistic heresies (Obolensky 2004, p. 228). Most of all, they are close to the Northern European pagan versions of the end of the world. Scientific interest in non-Christian concepts of the end of the world arose as early as the 19th century. According to the German philologist and poet Karl Joseph Simrock, mythology is not just a mere list of gods and heroes, their actions, and fates. Myth is the most ancient form of experiencing the world for the pagan spirit of the people. Myth contains truth in the form of beauty. It is the oldest and most respected form of folk poetry, truth, and poetry at the same time: truth in its meaning, poetry in its form. The ancient epic works of the Northern people express not only their happiness from observing the world, but also their long reflections on the imminent demise of everything in it. Scandinavian poetry is known for this note of sadness and melancholy. And still there is a striking poetic tendency to show much brighter scenes against a generally dark and gloomy background. Changes in the astronomical order and in nature, including the sun, the stars, the earth, the sky, the wind, the clouds, and the rain, and also unusual states of plants and animals were seen with unease and fear; a lack of order in the usual natural processes was considered to be a sign of the imminent destruction of the current world or, more specifically, the beginning of this process (Simrock 1864, pp. 1–5; Olrik 1908, p. 25; 1922, p. 437). Tatyana Toporova notes the ‘autonomy’ of the Old Germanic eschatology. While many mythologies lack the theme of the great catastrophe—despite the relevance of the topic ‘beginning—end’—and this theme is replaced by the notion of dissociation, or the gradual transformation of different stages of existence of the universe, Germanic eschatology stresses the theme of destruction and annihilation; the depiction of the world reborn is apparently secondary to its destruction. The topic of ‘the end’ is essential for the Old Germanic model of the world. Different lexemes for ‘the beginning’ (Gothic frumisti, anastdeins, Old Icelandic upphaf, byrja, Old High German ana-fang, Old English an-gin) are contrasted with the word ‘end’ common for all the areas—*andjaz (Indo-European *antjos, Germanic *andia), Gothic andeis, Old Icelandic, Old Saxon endi, Old English, Old Frisian ende, and Old High German enti (Toporova 1987, pp. 132, 133, 136; de Vries 2000, p. 102).

As the fates of people were limited by their birth and death, then, according to the old belief, the world was to start and end in a similar fashion. Unlike ancient Greek mythology, Old Germanic mythology limited the time of existence of gods who did not enjoy the concept of eternity. The Scandinavian gods, unlike Greek and Roman deities, were not considered immortal (Golther 1895, p. 198). The Germanic concepts of the end of the world are largely found in the large circle of legends and songs of the Scandinavian Edda (van der Leyen 1919, p. 227). Two Eddic songs speak about the end of the world—Vọluspa and Vafþrúnismál. They depict the apocalypse as follows: «Griotbiọrg gnata» ‘(Stone) mountains crumble’; «Sól ter sortna, /sigr fold i mar, /hverfa a himni/heiðar stjọrnur/geisar eimi/ok aldrnari, /leikr hár hiti/við himin siálfan» ‘The sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea, the hot stars down from heaven are whirled; fierce grows the steam and the life-feeding flame, till fire leaps high up to heaven itself.’ (Hildebrand 1876, pp. 14, 15; Bellows 1923, p. 24). Völuspá possibly mentions the dead returning to the world of the living: «troða halir helveg» (Olrik 1922, p. 49; Mundal 2011, pp. 278–79). The giantess Hundla sees the storm, whirlwinds, and then the world fire in Hyndluljóð: «Hyr se ek brenna enn haudr loga» ‘Flames I see burning, the earth is on fire’ (Golther 1895, p. 533; Bellows 1923, p. 233). Parallels can be found in a poem spoken by a jötunn cited in the thirteenth-century medieval Icelandic tale Bergbúa þáttr (‘The Tale of the Mountain-Dweller’). The poem of the giant contains many references to Norse mythology as well as prophecies that mountains will tumble, the earth will move, men will be scoured by hot water and burned by fire, and so forth, and this may be a mix of the destruction of the race of giants and the final end of humans, as in Ragnarök (Lindow 2001, pp. 73–74). Fire and water are transformed from sources of life to destroyers. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, most Scandinavian folk beliefs, with the exception of Iceland, already lacked the motif of a huge conflagration threatening the inhabited lands (Olrik 1922, p. 43). The Old English epic work Christ III calls fire deađleg ‘deadly fire’ and heorogrifre leg ‘hungry fire’, and it states that when the world is destroyed water will burn like wax (byrned wæter swa weax). The Old Bavarian poem Muspilli suggests that the entire universe will burn (prinnit mitilagart), the sky will be on fire (suilizot lougiu der himil), water will dry out, and swamps will disappear (aha artrunknent, muor varsuuilhit sih). The Old Saxonian text of Carolingian times Heliand states that fire will burn everywhere, destroying both the land and people (ōđar fiur al brinnandi ia land ia liudi. lōgna farteride). Muspilli relates that no tree shall remain standing on Earth (poum ni kistentit enihc in erda); Heliand and Christ III say that meadows will die (teglīdid grōni uuang; wongas hreosa). The Old Friesians believed that water would burn at the end of time (burnath alle wetir), and the stars would fall from the sky (sa fallath alle tha stera font ha himule). Stars falling from the sky are also brought up in Christ III (steorran stredađ of heofone) and Heliand (fallad sterron). Christ III states that winds will howl (swogad windas), storm and wind will destroy everything in creation (se storm ond seo… lyft brecad … geseaft), and mountains and tall cliffs will fall apart (beorgas gemeltad and heahchleofu). According to the Old Friesian legends, the mountains will be leveled and the rocks will crack (the berga werthath eifnad sten tobrekth) (Toporova 1987, pp. 136–37). The notion of the celestial circle cracking is present in Cynewulf’s poem Christ II (Olrik 1922, p. 129). The Icelandic Homily Book refers to the stars which will fall down from the sky (stjǫrnur munu falla af himni) (Hultgård 2022, p. 287). The Germans had a concept of a big world tree Yggdrasil or a huge pillar Irminsul supporting the sky which was to fall when the world ends. The Scandinavians and the Sami believed the North Star to be a nail in the sky supporting the entire heaven. If this anchorage were to come loose, the end of the world would come. Falling stars were possibly the source of beliefs about the entire starry sky falling down (Olrik 1922, p. 399; Wirth 1928, pp. 66–67).

In the Ukrainian region Podillia, there were similar beliefs about the entire earth burning in the end, while the sky was expected to curl up in a ball and fall down to earth (Chubinskiy 1872, p. 221). Descriptive expressions for the end of the world in the Ukrainian moral verse, recorded by Pavlo Zhytetskyy in the Ushytsya District of the Podillya Governorate, look similar to the Old Germanic ones: «A vpadut zori z vysokoho neba, /Zaymetsya more y hlyboki krynytsi, /A zirvutsya vitry—a duzhe buynyi, /A poznosyat hory, shcho budut rivnyi» (‘The stars will fall from the high sky, /Sea will burn in the deep well, /winds will blow—of great force, /and the mountains will be knocked down flat’) (Zhytetskiy 1893, p. 64). A variation of this spiritual verse was heard by Valerian Borzhkovskyy in the Vinnytsya District: «…Bude zemlya hority, /A zhyvi to y mertvi budem vsi vydity, /Yak zirvutstsya vitra tak sylno buynii, /A vysokhnut riky khoch yaki bystrii, /…Iak zirvutstsya vitra a barzo buynyi/Akh iznysut hory; hory z dolynamy stanut vsi urivni…/Yak zirvutstsya vitra tak sylno buynii, /Yak zhe spadut doshchi tak barzo tushnii, /Tak barzo tushnii, tak barzo vohneni/A pohorat v poli vsi travy zeleni, /A pohorat skoty, a pohorat skoty, /Strakh vylykyy bude shche y ne buv nikoly» (‘… the land will burn, /and the living will see the dead, /Strong winds will start blowing, /And the rivers will dry out, no matter how fast they are, /… How the strong winds will start, /How the heavy rains will fall, /Very heavy and very fiery/And green grass will burn in the field, /And animals will burn, the animals will burn, /Great fear will reign, the kind of fear unseen before’) (Borzhkovskiy 1889, pp. 694–95). The global catastrophe was similarly described in Western Podillya, in Buchach District: «Vohnevyya riky budut klykotaty, /Kohda skvernu zemlyu budut vochyshchaty» (‘Rivers of fire will roar, /When they will scour the dirty earth’) (Hnatyuk 1896, p. 71). «Zviyut sa vitrovy tak barzo buyniya, /Zhynut hory z dolynamy, vsi budut rimniya. /Zaymet sya zymlya i bude hority… /Pohorat hory, usunut sya skaly, /Shcho ny budy lysta, nyi na zymly travy. /Strashnaya tryvoha na sey svit nastany» (’Winds will twist so violently, /Mountains and valleys will perish, all will be equal. /The earth will catch fire and burn… /The mountains will burned down, the rocks will be removed, /That there will be no leaf, no grass on the ground. /A terrible anxiety will come upon this world’) (Hnatyuk 1896, p. 70).

In the Sosnytsya District of the Chernihiv Governorate, this description was supplemented with other features: «V tyi dni more vozmutyttsya/Prevelykoy hroznoy burey/I svyripymy volnamy/Ustrashyt smertelno/Vsi zhyvushchy na zemli… /V tyye dni sontse ne dast svita. /I pokryyet mrak vselennu. /Z neba zvizdy stanut padat» (‘In those days the sea will be choppy/With a great storm/And with fierce waves/It will frighten to death/All living on earth… /In those days the sun will not give light. /And darkness will cover the universe. /Stars will fall from the sky’) (Speranskiy 1904, p. 228). In Chernihiv they sang: «Sontsa, mesets zhe pomerknet, /Chastyye zvyezdy z neba soydut, /Preteche reka vohnenaye, /Vorzhe vsyye (t)var(i) zemnyye…» (‘The sun and the month will darken, /Close stars will come down from the sky, /A river of fire will flow, /It will devour all earthly creatures…’) (Luhovskyy 1926, p. 163), as well as «Yak soyduttse vietry/Nachnut bushevaty, /De hory-dolyny, /budut ravnevaty. /Da vdaret pahody, /pahody zharkiye/ta vysokhnut travy, /travy zelenyye:/Da y stanut pasushi, /pasushi sukhyye/Da y vysakhnut vody, /Da ryeky bystryye» (‘As the winds come down/They will start raging, /Where there are mountains and valleys/They will be leveled. /And the weather will strike, /Hot weather/And the grass will dry up, /The green grass, /And there will be a drought, /a dry drought/and the waters will dry up, /And the swift rivers’) (Luhovskyy 1926, p. 174).

In a spiritual verse from the Volhynian Governorate, the end of the world was sung about: «Ohnenyi riki budut klekotaty/I skvernuyu zemlyu ochyshchaty» (‘Rivers of fire will roar/And the desecrated land will be cleansed’) (Stecki 1864, p. 107). In the Ostroh District of the same governorate, folk singers explained that «vohon spade, zemlya zaymetsya» (‘the fire will fall down, the earth will catch fire’) (Malinka 1894, p. 441).

Hurdy-gurdy players sang in Kyiv region: «Tohda protechet rika ohnenaya/I pozhere vsyaku tvar zemlyanuyu… /Tohda sontse y misyats pomerkne, /Chastyyi nebesnyyi zvezdi z nebes spadut/I svityty ne budut» (‘Then a river of fire will flow/And devour every earthly creature… /Then the sun and the moon will darken, /Thick heavenly stars will fall from the sky/And they will not shine’) (Malinka 1895, p. 61). In the village of Ksaverivka in the Vasylkivsky District of the Kyiv Governorate, a hurdy-gurdy player sang: «A kohda pryyde chas, pryyde vremya, a nashe zhytiye zakinchytsya, /Tohda zelo zemlya potryasetsya, /A sontse y misyatsʹ predminytsya, /A shasshiyi zvizdy z neba soydut… /A protechutʹ riky ohnenniyi» (‘And when the time will come, the time will come, and our life will end, /Then the earth will shake exceedingly, /And the sun and the moon will change, /And the extinguished stars will come down from the sky… /And rivers of fire will flow…’) (Demutskyy 1903, p. 39). In the city of Zhashkiv, they sang: «Bude zemlya hority… /Pohoryat skaly, pohoryat hory… /Velykyy strakh bude, /Shcho y ne buv nikoly… /Izirvutsya vitry/Tak bardzo buyniyi, /Iznesutʹ hory i skaly:/Vse budut rivniyi. /Izirvutsya vitry/Ta budut buyaty;/Yaki hory y skaly—ne budut stoyaty. /Vdaryat posukhy/Tak bardzo sukhiyi, /Tohda vysokhnut riky/Tak bardzo bystriyi…» (‘The earth will burn… /The rocks will burn, the mountains will burn… /There will be great fear, /Like never before… /Winds will blow/So violent, /Mountains and rocks will be blown away:/All will be equal. /The winds will blow/But they will rage;/These mountains and rocks will not stand. /Droughts will strike/So very dry, /Then the rivers will dry up/So very swift…’) (Demutskyy 1903, p. 40). In the village of Bohatyrka in the Tarashcha District of the Kyiv Governorate, it was also sung that «ohnenniyi riky/Budut klekotaty, /Osvitlishchu zemlyu/Budut osvishchaty» (‘Rivers of fire/Will roar, /Defiled land/Will illuminate’) (Demutskyy 1903, p. 42). In the Przemyśl region, the Ukrainian wandering singers also sang about the end of the world, when the river of fire will roar and cleanse the defiled earth (Kolberg 1891, p. 90).

In the village of Kalyuzhyntsi in the Pryluky District of the Poltava Governorate, kobza players were also convinced that «ohnennyyi riky budut klekotaty/I vsyakuyu skvernost stanut na zemli ochyshchaty» (‘rivers of fire will roar/And cleanse all filth on the earth’) (Chubinskiy and Rusov 1874, p. 31). Even back in the 1980s, this spiritual poem was performed in the Slobodian Ukraine: «Ohnenniyi riky budut klekotaty/I hrishnuyu zemlyu budut ozaryaty. /Pidnimutsya vitry ta y budut buyaty, /Ni skeli, ni hory ne budut stoyaty. /Horitymut hory, horitymut luky…» (‘Rivers of fire will roar/And the sinful land will be illuminated. /Winds will rise and will rage, /Neither rocks nor mountains will stand. /Mountains will burn, meadows will burn…’) (Tovkaylo and Tovkaylo 2022, p. 179). The analogies for this world catastrophe can also be found in the Belarusian and Polish spiritual verses (Bessonov 1863, pp. 98–102; Karski 2001, p. 569; Kolberg 1883, p. 285). It can be assumed that the binary oppositions (light–darkness, up–down, fire–water) are of a similar nature to the beliefs of the Old Germans and the Ukrainians, as reflected in folklore. A similar notion of apocalypse including fire, darkness, and death exists in Ukraine in our times (Snytko 2012, p. 317). In Central and Southern Ukraine, the end of the world was associated with the black moon, which will appear in the sky during Lent (Nomys 1864, p. 9; Chubinskiy 1872, p. 267; Maksimovich 1877, p. 463; Manzhura 1890, p. 156). According to the beliefs of the modern population of Vinnytsia and Cherkasy regions, during an eclipse the sun and the moon may collide and fall to earth, and then the end of the world will come. So Ukrainian folk beliefs about solar eclipses were closely related to eschatological ideas. The belief about the destruction of the world as a result of the collision of celestial bodies and the fall of one of them to the ground, recorded in the village of Berezivka of the Mankivka District in the Cherkasy region, reflects the connection of the sun with fire, and the moon with water (tides, floods) (Fedorovych 2014, p. 128).

Unusual atmospheric phenomena such as solar and lunar eclipses and the disappearance of stars become the harbingers of the approaching catastrophe. For the Old Germans, light was the symbol of happiness and bliss, while darkness signified horror and fear. According to Otto Lüning, the influence of light and darkness on the environment is the deepest reason for happiness caused by light, and horror provoked by darkness. Poetic works of the Old Germans readily reflect joy from sunlight, and most often it is expressed by those who need sunshine the most, namely the Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons. Among the four things most important for a man, Edda names eldr (fire), solár sýn (being able to see the Sun), hailinde (health), and at lifa án lọst (the need to lead a sinless life) (Lüning 1889, p. 8; Hildebrand 1876, p. 95). Tatyana Toporova stresses the fact that the adjective *swartaz ‘black’ is related to the concept of destruction, as micro-motifs ‘the black Sun’ and ‘black fire’ are oxymorons: the sun and fire, the epitomes of light, get dark (Toporova 1987, p. 139).

During the days of intense national and religious struggle in the 16th and 17th centuries, the ideas of the end of the world were very popular among the broad strata of the Ukrainian people. It was then that Christianity partially influenced folk oral creativity. But it did not completely supplant the ancient pagan mythology. Folk eschatological concepts were present in the repertory of kobzars and hurdy-gurdy players almost throughout the entire Ukraine (Popov 1927, p. 18). Ethnolinguists say that the image of apocalypse can help to demonstrate a high level of negative assessment. The global catastrophe symbolizing the end of all living things on Earth is perceived as the image of planetary-scale destruction, as a result of which man loses not only his past and present, but also the future—his descendants (Snytko 2012, p. 317). Iranian texts also say that at the end of the world many earthquakes will occur and increasingly wilder winds will blow (Hultgård 2022, p. 266). Many medieval European chroniclers interpreted earthquakes along similar lines, as the result of God’s wrath or as warnings thereof, as apocalyptic signs (Smoller 2000, p. 164). In his study of Old Germanic epic, Friedrich Leberecht Wilhelm Schwartz connected characteristic features of thunderstorms with the mythological world of animals, stating that the wailing of the storm, zigzags of lightnings, and thunderclaps were turned into celestial wolves and dogs, snakes, bulls, and horses in the human imagination (Schwartz 1864, p. XI). In the Eddas, the emergence of monsters stealing the celestial bodies (tungls tiugar), dusk when the sunlight gets dim in summer (svọrt verða sólskin/um sumur eptix), are mythological moments connected with a dangerous storm or thunderstorm (veðr ọll válund), but the main ending of the drama is the universal fire symbolized by bright-red and black-and-red roosters (fagruðr hani, sótrauðr hani) (Hildebrand 1876, pp. 10–11; Bellows 1923, p. 19). Friedrich Schwartz reported that the Scandinavians of the 19th century compared a storm with the end of the world, and ‘It is all like the end of the world is coming’ was a usual saying during a heavy storm (Schwartz 1879, p. 169). Similar sayings connecting thunderstorms and storms with an incoming end of the world are common in modern Ukraine (Lomatskyy 1958, p. 67; Tubaltseva 2007, p. 184).

If one compares the above-mentioned Ukrainian spiritual verses with the Eddic prophecy, it can be seen that the land is not flooded by the sea even though the sea is mentioned. The explanation for this can be found in the works of the prominent Danish folklore scholar Axel Olrik. The notion of the earth being flooded by the sea came into existence on the Northern European coast. This connection with the sea came to be because of nature. Only people who knew the power of the sea and feared it could regard this cataclysm as the crucial one in the end of the world. The emergence of this theme required an island or coastal environment. As Axel Olrik said, for those living in the mountains the sea is not likely to elicit fears of the world’s imminent demise. But on an open coastline, where the stormy tide brings its tall waves and the sea ‘consumes’ the dry land as it advances, an irresistible thought about the consequences of this horrific power comes to mind. In particular, Olrik noted that in the middle of the 18th century the Danish peasant Nis Callesen mentioned an ancient legend: ‘It is said that the world will die by fire, apart from our land which will die by water’. But there were exceptions. In a village of Upper Palatinate, it was said that when the Antichrist is killed by lightning from the sky, the earth will turn into boiling water (Olrik 1922, pp. 24, 26, 34).

It is notable that eschatological motifs were reflected in scaldic verses of secular content. In the middle of the 10th century, a certain Icelander Kormákr speaks about his love to a girl named Steingerđr in an eight-verse poem similar to Völuspá: ‘Stones will float on water as easily as grain, magnificent big cliffs will fall in deep waters—before another girl as fair as Steingerđr is born’ (Olrik 1922, pp. 23, 46). Another example of such a formula is the medieval Scandinavian ballad Sven i Rosengård. The mother asks the protagonist Sven when he will come back and he answers: ‘When the raven becomes white, when the granite floats’, which implies never (Hultgård 2022, p. 36). These phrases are reminiscent of the formulaic expressions for the impossible in the Ukrainian dumas and historical songs where a Cossack promises his sister or mother to come back when the stones float up to the surface of water (Kyrdan 1965, pp. 222–32; Kyrdan 1983, pp. 219–22). When Torfinn, a mighty jarl of the Orkney Islands, died in 1064, the court scald Arnórr honored his memory with a laudatory song containing echoes of the concepts of the end of the world: ‘The bright sun will go black, the earth will be drowned by the dark sea, the heavy load of the sky will fall, the entire sea will rise higher than the cliffs—before another such jarl is born on the islands’ (Olrik 1922, p. 24). Such expressions of impossibility are characteristic of the Ukrainian folklore tradition. With no doubt, eschatological motifs, including militant aspects, also were crucial among the Ukrainian Cossacks during their struggle for independence.

It is characteristic that, despite different theories of the non-Slavic origin of the Cossacks, the epic eschatological tradition of the Ukrainian Cossacks has nothing in common with their nomadic neighbors in Central Asia. Only the Altai Turks, very distant from Ukraine, have slightly similar prophecies about the end of the world in poetical form, but their prophetic poetry has been composed under direct Buddhist teaching (Chadwick and Zhirmunsky 1969, pp. 167–70).

4. Moral and Ethical Element of Ukrainian Epic Eschatology

While analyzing elements of nature in Ukrainian and Old Germanic eschatological notions, it is possible to trace their similarities. However, the apocalypse affects not only the environment, but also the moral sphere leading to the environment’s horrific degradation (Golther 1895, p. 533; de Vries 1970, p. 399). When human depravity becomes so pronounced that avarice starts to lead people to fratricide and family feuds where a son goes against his father, it can signal the approaching end of the world (Simrock 1864, p. 130). The Edda seeress speaks about the end of the world in this manner: «Brœðr munu berjask/ok at bọnum verðask, /munu systrungar/sifjum spilla;/hart er í heimi, /hórdmr mikill, /skeggọld, skálmọld, /skildir ‘ru klofnir, /vindọld, vargold, /áðr verọld steypisk/man engi maðr/ọðrum þyrma» ‘Brothers will start to fight each other, close relatives perish in strife; the world is harsh and full of sin, it is the age of swords and axes, the shields will crack, the age of storms and wolves comes closer to the demise of the world; a man shall not spare a man’ (Hildebrand 1876, p. 12; Bellows 1923, p. 25). Among the Eddic poems, Vọluspa alone touches on this theme (Hultgård 2022, p. 266). Muspilli also highlights the breaking of family ties: «verit mit diu vuiru dâr ni mac denne mâk andremo verit denne stûatago in lant, viriho uuîsôn: helfan vora demo muspille» ‘Then the day of retribution will come to the Earth, visiting people with fire: and then no kin shall help another to save themselves from Muspilli’ (de Vries 1970, pp. 392–93). Heliand says that at the end of the world a family will lead an armed host against their own kin (endi heri lēdid kunni obar ōdar), there will not be any peace anywhere, a big war will start (than nis friđu huergin, ac uurđit uuīg), and then the people will die from great need and fear (than thorrot thiu thiod thurh that githuing mikil, folk thurh thea fortha) (Toporova 1987, p. 138). Scandinavian legends predicted that people would become worse and weaker at the end of the world, everything would change, and brothers would become enemies (van der Leyen 1919, p. 231). The Germans of Mecklenburg in the 19th century associated the end of the world with a horrific battle where nearly everyone was destined to die (Jahn 1889, p. 39). Thus, the end of the world is connected with the reign of evil. The Ukrainians also thought that the deterioration of the world and its imminent end were marked by the decline of healthy family relations. Parents get angry with their children, children raise their hand against their parents, brothers fight against brothers, sisters against sisters, while wars, hatred, and bloodshed disrupt the societal solidarity that is based on family relations (Hrushevskyy 1994, p. 254). In the Ukrainian duma The Cossack’s Farewell to His Family recorded in Kamianets-Podilskyi, a prophecy of the end of the world is similar to an Old Germanic prediction: «Spohanily lyude, bo na viynakh svyet pochavsya, /svyet pochavsya i kinchayetsya, /zloye vremya nastupaye, /bo syn otcya ne vvazhaye, /a shhe hirshe nastupaye, /bo syn ottsya ne vvazhaye, /a shche hirshe nastupaye –/dochka matir proklynaye, /brat na brata vorohuye, /brat na brata vorohuye, /y druh druhu smert hotuye;/sestra sestru ne shanuye –/yidna druhu obcharuye» (‘The people have grown foul as the world started with wars, /the world started and ends, /evil times come, /as a son disrespects his father, /and even worse things come, /as a daughter curses her mother, /a brother goes against his brother, /and they prepare death for each other, /a sister does not respect her sister –/and one bewitches the other’) (Hrushevska 1931, p. 217).

The wars with which the world started are reminiscent of the first war remembered by the Eddic seeress—the one between the Aesir and the Vanir (Hildebrand 1876, p. 7; Bellows 1923, p. 10). «The twilight of the gods» (Ragnarök) is not only the result of the end of the world, but largely its cause. Georges Dumézil notes that the Scandinavian gods and, seemingly, the gods of the continental Germans, were very close to the surrounding people in terms of their morality (Dumézil 1986, p. 137). Good gods aimed at increasing a respect for legality and love for everything good and beautiful among people so that evil could not triumph over good. Human beings were supposed to direct their life and aspirations toward the common well-being, toward the harmonic development of the national spirit, so the people themselves could defeat evil together with the gods. The main rules of conduct for people come from Odin’s mouth in the archaic Scandinavian principles of life wisdom from Havamal—the longest song of the Edda (Hildebrand 1876, pp. 86–99, 173; Bellows 1923, pp. 29–67). But in Eddic songs, people disregard the wise advice and kept forgetting about their responsibilities and warnings from the gods. Evil forces exert their negative influence on the human race. Selfishness, avarice, and various addictions multiply and cause enmity among both different families and family members, leading to savagery and a disrespectful attitude toward law and order. And due to these changes, the enemies of the existing world order start to grow stronger and unite to destroy the world. It should be noted how the destruction of Earth comes directly after the disruption of blood relations and fratricidal wars. And it is this loosening of moral bonds that causes the end of the world and breaks the chains that restrain the monsters. It is moral savagery that leads to the universal end. The gods are no longer viewed as the ultimate moral authority. During vargold (the time of wolves), the celestial lights are swallowed by a wolf-like monster that previously kept chasing the lights but could not catch them, ‘and the winds in that day shall be unquiet and roar on every side’. Snorri Sturluson calls him Mánagarmr when he cites the stanza, but just úlfrinn (‘the wolf’) when describing Ragnarök. This belief influences how the Northern people perceive the atmospheric optical phenomenon known as the halo. In Denmark and Norway, this phenomenon was known as solulv, in Sweden solvarg. In modern English it is known as sun dogs (Olrik 1922, pp. 38–39; Meyer 1891, p. 294; Grimm 1865, p. 212; Jacoby 1974, p. 80; Martin 1972, pp. 130–32; Lindow 1997, p. 47; Wanner 2012, pp. 13–14, 19, 21, 23). The cause of the ‘time of wolves’ is the demonic origins of those beasts of prey assigned to them by Germanic myth. As Wilhelm Grimm notes, besides úlfr, in the languages of the Northern people another word is used to name this beast—varge (varg, vargur, vargr), which, apart from ‘wolf’, meant ‘criminal’, ‘villain’, ‘oath-breaker’, ‘outcast’, ‘evil spirit’, and ‘monster’ (Grimm 1865, pp. 203–4). In the Icelandic language, varge meant any predator, as well as a wicked and godless person. Gothic gawargjan and Old English wiergan mean ‘to curse’ (de Vries 2000, pp. 645–46; Jacoby 1974, p. 12). Similar meanings are noted by Wilhelm Grimm in Slavic languages (Czech wrah, Polish wrag, wróg, Serbian, Slovenian vrag) (Grimm 1865, pp. 203–4). Max Vasmer considered this etymology unreliable (Vasmer 1986, p. 352), and the modern etymological dictionaries of Ukrainian and Belarusian followed his suit (Melnychuk 1982, p. 426; Martynaŭ 1978, p. 195). Still, Franz Miklosich, Václav Machek, Jan de Vries, Anna Harder, and Gerhard Mueller shared the former view (Miklosich 1886, p. 395; Machek 1968, p. 698; de Vries 2000, p. 646; Harder 1938, p. 2; Mueller 1986, p. 219). In Ukrainian, in particular, the word vrah has, besides its poetic meaning ‘opponent’, also a pejorative one ‘devil, evil spirit’ (Hrinchenko 1907, p. 258). In Ragnarök, cataclysmic events include a great battle foretold to result in the deaths of the gods Odin, Thor, Freyr, and the giant Loki (Martin 1972, p. 71; Carey 1996, p. 71; Lisboa 2011, pp. 51, 54).

The catastrophe happens because the wolf-like monsters gorge themselves on blood and dead bodies for three years, grow immensely in size and power, and cast off their restrictive bindings. The Germanic peoples do not feel aversion to war; they relish battles and fights. The cause of the end of the world lies in this sinful strife, the war of brother against brother, and family feuds. Earthquakes come after the disappearance of the celestial lights, caused by other monsters being freed from moral norms. The land gets flooded; the world of people dies alongside the demise of the gods (Saubert 1895, pp. 29, 34, 35; Simrock 1864, pp. 124–26). The most serious crime condemned by the Old Germans was a crime against family members. Numerous curses in the Edda aimed at those who commit such crimes testify further to this (Meyer 1889, pp. 20, 110). Kin-slaying is a terrible act which diminishes the perpetrator, and revenge is self-perpetuating—such wolfish acts should be outlawed (Clark 2007, p. 38). The same ideas persisted even after conversion to Christianity. Sometime before 1016, the English archbishop Wulfstan of York began his most famous sermon with the ringing phrase ‘this world is in haste, and it nears its end. And it is always this in the world: the longer things go on, the worse they get’ (Abram 2019, p. 125). And the listeners of Ukrainian spiritual verses were urged to avoid all sins so as to be saved from damnation. All of the Last Judgement songs tell how the righteous will rejoice on the last day and how the sinners will mourn. These songs, again, urge proper behavior before it is too late (Kononenko 1998, p. 20).

The moral dissolution and the selfishness of human beings as eschatological signs also occur in some Iranian texts. The motif of kin-slaying is particularly prominent in the texts, which foreshadows that the son will kill his father and mother and the younger brother will kill the older one and take what he owned. Indic tradition frequently dwells on the notion of moral decay and killings within the family during the end times (Hultgård 2022, p. 273). The Ukrainian music scholar and folklore researcher Dmytro Revutskyi noted that the unabated power of the family foundation is the most prominent feature specific to the Ukrainian dumas (Revuckyy 1919, p. 18). Breaking family ties was regarded by both the Ukrainians and Old Germans as a sign of the imminent end of the world.

5. Conclusions

Returning to the partially reconstructed Ukrainian epic texts of cosmogonic content, some statements summarizing the main points of this paper can be made. Among the Ukrainian dumas and spiritual verses, there exist archaic texts reflecting the topic of creation and the end of the world. We find pagan and Christian themes audaciously juxtaposed and interwoven in them. The passages in which the dumas directly contradict Christian teaching may reasonably be taken to preserve some version of pagan Slavic mythology. The comparison of texts reveals numerous parallels between the Ukrainian and Old Germanic religious, ethical, and social concepts pertaining to cosmogony and eschatology. In both cases, the giants of chaos are portrayed as knowing more of the origin of the universe than other animate beings. The whole catastrophe of the world’s destruction is also described in the Ukrainian dumas and spiritual verses more closely to Scandinavian pagan texts than to Christian teaching. This is a succession of cataclysms and natural disasters, and parallels for several of them—including conflagration and winds—can be cited from the Poetic Edda and the Germanic half-pagan apocalyptic texts. The premonition of the end of the world will be the violation of clan norms, the bloody conflicts of relatives, and moral chaos. These dumas and spiritual verses could be considered as an attempt to forestall destructive social trends which, its singers would have us believe, would lead to the end of the world. Such beliefs which went back to Slavic pagan traditions and myths have been preserved in Ukrainian popular culture where fate and destiny were often thought in collective terms and eschatological ideas. The presumption of the approaching end of the world is deeply ingrained in Germanic myth. Moreover, the latter even regards the end of the world as the central concept, a feature that Ukrainian epic holds in common. If there is an influence on Slavic eschatological beliefs, the question arises as to which period tended to favor such an influence the most. Possibly, we are dealing with an ancient Indo-European mythologeme. Ethnocultural interaction between the South-Eastern Slavs and the Germans—above all, the Goths—during the Migration Period could have also contributed to this specific feature. Protagonists of Germanic penetration in this respect have hitherto advocated the Gothic period as the likely influential span. In addition, there are some parallels with Iranian eschatological ideas of family crisis and natural disasters as warnings and forerunners of the upcoming end of the world. At any rate, these parallels show the archaic nature of the Ukrainian dumas as reflected in the ancient pagan worldview concepts in them and point to the importance of the kobzar repertory in late medieval and early modern Ukrainian society.