UNPUBLISHED SPIRITUAL POEMS RECORDED BY ALEKSANDR PETROVICH VERESHAGIN

Since Russian spiritual poems have their origin in medieval Russian literature, it is not surprising that at first glance they display fewer territorial variations than epic poems (byliny) or historical songs. The study of this genre from a regional perspective requires a comparative analysis of the greatest possible number of records of spiritual verses and epic spiritual verses that have largely vanished in the modern world. From this perspective, the identification and publication of archival records is becoming essential for scholarly research. This article presents a publication of spiritual poems that Aleksandr Petrovich Vereshagin, a teacher in the Onega district school, recorded from a peasant of the village of Nimenga, located on the Pomorskii coast of the White Sea. The recording occurred in the city of Onega in the middle of the 19th century. The texts present plots about Anika the Warrior, Egorii the Brave, and Piatnitsa and Worker-Pilgrim (Trudnik). Brief comments, which accompany the publication, compare these texts with records taken in other regions of the Russian North and point out some of their distinct features.