Dankó Imre: Jelentés a gyulai Erkel Ferenc Múzeum 1962. évi munkájáról (A Gyulai Erkel Ferenc Múzeum Kiadványai 40. kötet. Gyula, Erkel Ferenc Múzeum 1962)

QUESTIONS OF SLAV APPLE SYMBOLICS This paper is a „side product" of the author's study published in .,Ethnognaphia" (Hungarian aspects of the apple symbology, volume LXXIII (1962) No. 4.). The apple is the symbol of love, of fertility and as such is playing an important role in the traditions of the various peoples in marriage customs, in love- and-fertility magic. The paper consists of two parts. In the first part the author deals, after a general introduction, with the fact that apple symbology is very ancient and practically general. He tries to find its origin in those times when biological observations of plant life have been applied to human conditions and in the domain of comparison. From the point of view of the origin, spreading and enrichment in motives of the apple symbology he particulary draws the attention of the reader to three areas of spreading, the Semitic-Christian, the Greek-Latin and the Turkish one. In the other part of his study the author deals with the modern Greek, Serbian, Croatian (Catholic Serbian, Sokac, Slovenian), Krasso-Serbian, Bulgarian and Roumanian datas. In the description af these datas he states that the Slav, but particulary the Southern Slav apple symbology has not been taken over from the Turks, as thougth before, but that it is an alloy of the traditions of the above mentioned three large areas of diffusion. The Southern Slavs have notonly spread the apple symbology, they also developed it. The „yabuka", the apple given as earnest when sueing for the hand of a girl developed with the Serbs. The yabuka may be considered as the highest degree concretization, having a legal function, of the apple symbology.