5. Eliezer Papo

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Tamar Alexander - Eliezer Papo ON THE POWER OF THE WORD daković-Petrov, to the intercultural reciprocal that prevailed between the Jews and their environment precisely in the folklore channel. However, though, unlike the Jewish text, the Serbian text is not uttered in the first person. Moreover, the protagonist in the Serbian text is a man. Yet, it must be stressed that in Serbian culture, too, folk-healing was perceived as a feminine profession. In any event, it seems that in the Serbian context, a violent struggle is understood as the bailiwick of men—and the women of the group, even in imagined reality, have a need of a male figure who will deal with a disease aggressively. But even the shepherd fries the evil eye (the cooked item symbolizing civilization) while in the Jewish text the healer swallows the snake alive (a raw item symbolizes primal nature). 123 The second prikante in this group is intended to treat spindža, which is also a skin disease called lichens planus. EXAMPLE 12 Andando por un caminico, escontri una leona, que gritava y bramava y la spindža se llevava. On a path I was walking, I met a lioness She roared, she growled, The spindža she took away. The healer passes a knife or a safety pin over the affliction and whispers the prikante given above. In contrast to the previous example, in this prikante there is no nullification row at the conclusion. Moreover, even the fashioning of the image of the healer is less aggressive. The healer, to be sure, encounters a terrifying, frightening beast, but she does nothing to fight against it. The lion is considered the king of the animals, but here the prikante chooses to refer to the female, to the lioness. This usage befits the feminine context of the prikantes and their recitation. The lioness takes the evil of her own free will, without direct intervention on the part of the healer. Passing the knife or the safety pin is related to the folk belief that metal intimidates goblins and demons. A safety pin symbolizes closing and capturing; a knife symbolizes attack and aggression. 124 123 C. Lévi Strauss: The Raw and the Cooked, New York & Evanston 1969. 124 In comparison, the Jews of Morocco customarily place a knife under an infant’s pillow to ward off goblins. Among Sephardic Jews it is common to stick a safety pin into sheets folded in a cabinet so as to intimidate the demons from using them. Yellow stains on sheets attest to the demons having used them. 96
Tamar Alexander - Eliezer Papo ON THE POWER OF THE WORD In this prikante, as with the others in this group, the healer encounters the supernatural entity in an undefined way. In the text the path (caminico) is accompanied by an indefinite article (un) rather than a definite article. This path is located in a different time dimension and in the space of another world. The choice of “a path” rather than some other place emphasizes the shift from one point to another or between one dimension and the other. That is, the path, according to the terms of Victor Turner, 125 is a liminal area fraught with many dangers. The third prikante in this group is intended to be used for treating usagre, namely, abscesses on the face and near the ears which are a side effect of the eruption of milk teeth. EXAMPLE 13 Caminado por саminico, escontri un padre у un ijo. Le demanda el ijo al padre: Mi padre, loque arde su(to) el monte Le dice el padre al ijo: Usagre! Demanda el ijo al padre: Con loque se atabafa Responde el padre: Con sal y vinagre y tiera de la calle! On a path I was walking, a father and son I met. The son asked his father: My father, what is burning under the mountain Said the father to his son: Usagre! The son asked his father: With what can one put it out Replied the father to his son: With salt, with vinegar, with the dust of the street! In this example, too, the healer acts as an observing witness, but here she listens. She meets a father and his son (apparently supernatural figures). The son looks at a natural phenomenon (burning fire) and seeks, as a curious child, an explanation from his father. The father’s answers are surprising and do not belong to the world of nature from which the questions came. The father explains that the fire is a disease and tells how to treat it. The healer listens to their conversation and from it learns the diagnosis of the illness (usagre), as well as how to deal with it (with salt, with vinegar, with dust of the street). The metaphor of an abscess as a burning mountain is obvious. The healer treats the illness through common materials whose magical power derives from information given to her through the figures from another world. 125 V. Turner: Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society, London 1974. 97
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5. Eliezer Papo

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