On Some Onomatopoeias in the Roman Patericon, or How the Devil Scares People

Abstract

The themes of medieval literature prevent the penetration not only of separate lexemes, closely related to the everyday life of the Bulgarians into the literary Old Bulgarian language but sometimes this affects entire classes of words. Onomatopoeias are one such class. The question of these words is completely unexplored historically. One of the stories in the Slavonic translation of the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great allows for observations on the ways in which three times in Old Bulgarian literature an adequate translation was sought for the animal sounds with which Satan tried to drive the bishop of Milan out of his house.