ИСТИНА

The paper is based on materials collected during fieldwork at Pomak villages in Greece (Xanthi region) and Bulgaria (Zlatograd) in 2018–2019 by E.Uzeneva and K.Klimova. Pomaks are Slavic-speaking Muslims, descendants of Bulgarian Christians who converted to Islam during the Ottoman period, Pomaks live mainly in the Rhodope Mountains (Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey). The process of everyday communication at Pomaks’ villages in Xanthi in Greece can be called multilingualism. Pomaks prefer to speak Pomak in their everyday communication on basic topics, while it seems to be the main language code in the most conservative rural area to the north of Xanthi. The lowland villages to the south and east of Xanthi are gradually converting to Turkish. The folk mythology in the traditional Pomak culture is represented by key characters (genies, witches, flying snakes (dragons)) and peripheral mythological characters (smok, juda, mrava, stupan, lamjo). Elements of Muslim culture: are of great importance in the Pomak mythological believes (hodjas as antagonists of witches, the Quran as the main amulet and means of fighting with demons, etc.). The tendency of the dominance of the Turkish language observed at the linguistic level influences the traditional mythological level too. Initially, the Slavic mythological characters (smok, juda, mrava, stupan, lamjo), are gradually being replaced by characters from the Muslim tradition, with the common name dzinovi ‘genies’.