‘Spring Ritual Song in the West and among Slavs’ is a work by historian of literature and folklorist Eugeny Vasilievich Anichkov (1866-1937).The first part of the book, ‘From the rite to the song’ was publ. in 1903; the second one, ‘From the song to the poetry’ – in 1905. For historians of religion the first part is of special importance (the author also mentioned it in the preface); there is a comparative historical and ethnographical research of agrarian rites of European peoples.
In chapter 1 of that first part, A. gives an introduction to the problematic. He declared the phenomenon of spring rites through all Europe, makes a survey of the historiography (research methods by Grimm, Schwartz, Kuhn, and Manngardt), compares the spring rites with a popular calendar and economical activities. The songs allow him to restore the ancient worldview, using the comparative method. The western scholars ignores the East European material; and A. N. Veselovsky, and A. after him, worked at the solving the problem. On the opinion of author, the rite makes the song more stable, and the Slavic folk songs should be studied from the ritual point of view.
In chapter 2, ‘Welcoming and honouring the spring’, the author sets the problem of difference between the spell and the prayer: the first one is born from the terms of existence and demands; the second one is concentrated at the person of god – giver of goods. Through that the author explains keeping spells after changing the religious systems. Then, he works out the motif of spelling the spring on material of Belorussian, Czech, Serbian, French, German, English, Ancient Greek, and Latin songs. In chapter 3, he considers the spring purification, its kinds, and a link with funeral rituals. In the end, the author sets an issue of the origin of religion. He did not go further the common view of his time, that the savage had not seen a distinction between determinism and supernatural phenomena. He argued, that the primordial man had known hypnosis, hallucinations, distant contacts, and other psychological phenomena. And it had not been a disability to divide natural and supernatural, but an act of free choice. On A., limiting the cognitive field, a man could bring to life an unconscious brain activity on the border of inspiration.
The author argues that many characters of the folk songs, for instance, Baltic Ūsiņš – Russian Avsen’ – was just a ritual figure, not a god of popular mythology. A similar point of view was developed later by V. N. Toporov, who supposed that names Avsen, Usin and similar ones were produced from a verb meaning the sunrise, the start of the light period of the day or a year.
The second part of the book, ‘From the song to the poetry’, includes a depiction of feasts, songs, and dances connected with the rite. Enrichment of imagery and ‘the diversity of spiritual excitement’, typical for the festival mood, later enriched the poetic form, according to the author.