Das barocke Bild "Tod als Braut" in der Folklore und die Wanderung eines Balladenmotivs

The Baroque image of 'Death as Bride' in folklore and the spread of a ballad motif. The essay focuses on the spread of a probably Baroque broadsheet song in Slovakian folklore: the macabre dialogue 'Conversation with Death'. Historical sources and field research document the song throughout the Slovakian region over the last two centuries. It also spread in contexts of folk custom. The analysis of the material is based on the dichotomy between variable and invariable, and relevant functional, generic and semantic aspects. The analysis shows that the key aspect of the process of dissemination of the image of 'Death as Bride' is the semantic level. Function and genre are unstable components in the process of folklorisation of texts, while the semantic core remains relatively stable.