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The article by V.L. Klyaus “A doll with golden eyes: about а unique fairy-tale-mythological plot in the folklore of Russians in Mongolia” was published in no. 2 for 2024 of the scientific journal “Languages and Folklore of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia” (Institute of Philology, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk).
The article analyzes the text of a mythological tale about a doll with golden eyes that was recorded from descendants of Transbaikal Cossacks who moved to Mongolia in the 1920s. Its plot is unique, with no variants found in fairy tale and non-fairy tale East Slavic folk prose. Comparisons with the Trinity rites, with the traditions of making ritual dolls and with the songs sung on Dukhov Day preserved among the Russians of the European part of Russia lead to the assumption that this fairy-tale-mythological plot may have appeared under the influence of the way the Cossacks of Menzenskaya stanitsa of the Transbaikal Cossack army once imagined Trinity dolls and perceived the customs of their production.
