Dodola

The tradition & historical record

Dodola (also spelled Dodole, Dodoli, Dudola, Dudula etc.) and Perperuna (also spelled Peperuda, Preperuda, Preperuša, Prporuša, Papaluga etc.) are rainmaking pagan customs widespread among different peoples in Southeast Europe until the 20th century, found in Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. It is still practiced in remote Albanian ethnographic regions, but only in rare events, when the summer is dry and without atmospheric precipitation. The ceremonial ritual is an analogical-imitative magic rite that consists of singing and dancing done by young girls or boys in processions following a main performer who is dressed with fresh branches, leaves and herbs, with the purpose of invoking rain, usually practiced in times of droughts, especially in the summer season, when drought endangers crops and pastures, even human life itself. According to one interpretation, the custom could have Slavic origin and be related to Slavic god Perun, and Perperuna could have been a Slavic goddess of rain, and the wife of the supreme deity Perun (god of thunder and weather in the Slavic pantheon). Recent research criticizes invention of a Slavic female goddess, and indicates as possible both Slavic and old-Balkan influences. ¹

Rainmaking rites are generally called after the divine figure invoked in the ritual songs, as well as the boy or girl who perform the rite, who are called with different names among different peoples (South Slavs, Albanians, Greeks, Hungarians, Moldovans, Romanians, Vlachs or Aromanians, including regions of Bukovina and Bessarabia). The custom's Slavic prototype name is *Perperuna, with variations: ¹

Preperuna, Peperuna, Preperuda/Peperuda, Pepereda, Preperuga/Peperuga, Peperunga, Pemperuga in Bulgaria and North Macedonia Prporuša, Parparuša, Preporuša/Preporuča, Preperuša, Barburuša/Barbaruša in Croatia Peperuda, Papaluga, Papaluda/Paparudă, Babaruta, Mamaruta in Romania and Moldova Perperouna, Perperinon, Perperouga, Parparouna in Greece Perperona/Perperone, Rona in Albania Pirpirunã among Aromanians Dodola (including Serbia among previous countries, with local variants Dodole, Dudola, Dudula, Dudule, Dudulica, Doda, Dodočka, Dudulejka, Didjulja, Dordolec/Durdulec etc.). In Albanian the rainmaking ritual is also called riti i ndjelljes së shiut ("Rain-Invoking Ritual"), riti i thirrjes së shiut ("Rain-Calling Ritual" or "Rite of Calling the Rain") or simply thirrja e shiut ("Call of the Rain"), riti i thatësisë ("Drought Ritual"), as well as riti me dordolecin or riti i dordolecit ("Dordoleci Ritual"), riti i dodolisë ("Dodoli Ritual"). ¹

Some scholars consider all the Balkan names of the type per-, perper-, peper-, papar-, etc. to be taboo-alternations to "avoid profaning the holy name" of the pagan Indo-European god *Perkʷūnos. According to Roman Jakobson and others perperuna is formed by reduplication of root "per-" (to strike/beat). Those with root "peper-", "papar-" and "pirpir-" were changed accordingly modern words for pepper-tree and poppy plant, possibly also perper and else. Dimitar Marinov derived it from Bulgarian word for butterfly where in folk beliefs has supernatural powers related to rain, but according to Jakobson the mythological context of the customs and links explains the Bulgarian entomological names. Michail Arnaudov derived it from Slavic verb "pršiti" (spray). Petar Skok considered prporuša a metaphorical derivation from Slavic prpor/pŕpa (hot ash), pórusa ("when water is poured on burning ash"). Stanisław Urbańczyk and Michal Łuczyński put into question Jakobson's theonymic derivation, deriving instead from Proto-Slavic *perpera, *perperъka (in Polish przepiórka), name for Common quail, which has a role in Polish harvest rituals and the name of the bride in the wedding dance. These are also related to *pъrpati (onomatopoeic), cf. Polish dial. perpotać, perpac, Old East Slavic poropriti. The name Dodola has been suggested to be a cognate to the Lithuanian Dundulis, a word for "thunder" and another name of the Baltic thunder-god Perkūnas. It is also hypothesised to be distantly related to Greek Dodona and Daedala. ¹

The rainmaking practice is a shared tradition among Balkan peoples, and it is not clear who borrowed it from whom. The fact so similar customs in the Balkans are known by two different names the differences are considered not to be from the same time period and ethnic groups. Similar customs outside the Balkans have been observed in the Caucasus, Middle East, and North Africa. William Shedden-Ralston noted that Jacob Grimm thought Perperuna/Dodola were "originally identical with the Bavarian Wasservogel and the Austrian Pfingstkönig" rituals. Ancient rainmaking practices have been widespread Mediterranean traditions, already documented in the Balkans since Minoan and Mycenaean times. There is a lack of any strong historical evidence for a link between the figures and practices of the ancient times and those that survived to the end of the 20th century, however, according to Richard Berengarten, if seen as "typologically parallel" practices in the ancient world, they may be interpretable at least as forerunners, even if not as direct progenitors of the modern Balkan rainmaking customs. In the scholarship is usually considered they have a mythological and etymological Slavic origin related to Slavic thunder-god Perun, and became widespread in the Southeastern Europe with the Slavic migration (6th-10th century). According to the Slavic theory, it is a (Balto-)Slavic heritage of Proto-Indo-European origin related to Slavic thunder-god Perun. It has parallels in ritual prayers for bringing rain in times of drought dedicated to rain-thunder deity Parjanya recorded in the Vedas and Baltic thunder-god Perkūnas, cognates alongside Perun of Proto-Indo-European weather-god Perkwunos. ¹

Perperuna and Dodola are considered very similar pagan customs with common origin, with main difference being in the most common gender of the central character (possibly related to social hierarchy of the specific ethnic or regional group), lyric verses, sometimes religious content, and presence or absence of a chorus. They essentially belong to rituals related to fertility, but over time differentiated to a specific form connected with water and vegetation. They represent a group of rituals with a human collective going on a procession around houses and fields of a village, but with a central live character which differentiates them from other similar collective rituals in the same region and period (Krstonoše, Poklade, Kolade, German, Ladarice, those during Jurjevo and Ivandan and so on). In the valley of Skopje in North Macedonia the Dodola were held on Thursday which was Perun's day. In Hungary the ritual was usually held on St. George's Day. The core of the song always mentions a type of rain and list of regional crops. ¹

Ioan Slavici reported in 1881 that the custom of Paparuga was already … ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Dodola and Perperuna”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Dodola is old Slavic tradition, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²