DEVIL IN WOLF’S CLOTHING VARIATIONS ON THE THEME OF “SPEAK OF THE WOLF / DEVIL AND HE APPEARS”

Main Article Content

József Attila Balázsi
Elisabeth Piirainen

Abstract

The proverb Speak of the wolf (or: of the devil) and he will appear leads back to early folk belief that uttering the name of a demon could serve to summon it. Correspondences of the proverb exist in a large variety of languages in an abundant morpho-syntactic and lexical variability. Especially the parallelism of WOLF and DEVIL raises questions that can be answered only within a wide range of cultural contexts such as folklore, mythology, symbolism, tabooing of names, Christian exegesis, fairy tales and literature, among other things.

Article Details

Keywords:
concepts of WOLF and DEVIL, etymology, folk belief, symbolism, taboos, widespread proverb type
How to Cite
Balázsi, J. A. ., and E. Piirainen. “DEVIL IN WOLF’S CLOTHING : VARIATIONS ON THE THEME OF ‘SPEAK OF THE WOLF / DEVIL AND HE APPEARS’”. Proverbium - Yearbook, vol. 33, no. 1, Aug. 2016, pp. 29-50, https://naklada.ffos.hr/casopisi/index.php/proverbium/article/view/741.

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