“Jedinstvo” (Fieldwork material from Croatia)

Folkloristics 9/2 (2024): 193–214
Author: Dražen Nožinić
Text:

In the period from 1986 to 1991 fieldwork research was carried out in the territory of Croatia, in the scope of which the data about the funerary rites of the Croats, Serbs, Czechs, Slovaks, Lemka, and Hungarians were collected. On that occasion a number of ways in which a gravely ill person would be given a kind of relief and his dying would be sped up were noted down. Among one fraction of the Croats (in the territories of Lika, Kordun, Banija, Pokuplje by Petrinja, Pokuplje and Posavina by Sisak, southwestern Slavonija) and only in one case among the Serbs (in Uštica by Novska), it was noted down that, for that particular purpose, a special kind of prayer was prayed by a gravely ill person entitled “Unity.” The paper presents fourteen variants of the folk prayer which had the purpose of helping a gravely ill person either to die or to recuperate.

Keywords: “Jedinstvo”, folk prayer, funerary customs, facilitating death, Croatia.