The collection as a text-forming mechanism: A case study of a playful bachelor song

Abstract

Based on the example of the Old Polish song “Pannom świat, / A mężatkom niebo, / A wdowusiom raj, raj, raj, / A babkom piekło” (En. lit. ‘For maidens the world / For married women heaven, / And for widows paradise, paradise, paradise / And for crones hell’) and its many variants in Polish song folklore, the author discusses the text-forming mechanism of the basic collection: maiden — married woman — widow — crone, which is the starting point to introduce some coupled, or mirrored collections of the type: heaven — paradise — purgatory — hell. The concepts of collection and complex are applied here as useful analytical tools which allow for identification of culturally stable stereotypical sets, and for labelling them with the use of superordinate lexemes, e.g. VEHICLES: coach-in-four — royal coach — stagecoach — wheelbarrow; DRINKS: wine — beer — weak, home-brewed beer — water, etc. The analysis of a multi-variant song, performed in the present study, leads to the conclusion that Albert Lord’s oral-formulaic theory of a text of folklore needs to be extended by introducing a more general idea of the “textual pattern” active on the level of individual text elements, as well as on the level of an entire text. In the case discussed in the present paper, the factor that integrates the whole message is constituted by a mocking intention assigned to the male (“bachelor’s”) point of view.