Kielak Olga
Faculty of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, pl. Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej 4A, 20-031, Lublin, Poland.
J Ethnobiol Ethnomed. 2025 Jul 25;21(1):53. doi: 10.1186/s13002-025-00787-z.
According to folklore, some plants are created by divine beings and holy persons, while others appear on earth through demonic intervention. It is commonly believed that plants of divine origin are "good" plants, useful to humans, while plants of devilish origin are "bad" and not useful.
This article analyses folk beliefs regarding the origins of selected plants, identifies which of them are considered to have a divine origin and which a demonic one, and examines whether the perceived divine or demonic origin of a plant influences its usefulness or harmfulness to humans.
This article first compares folk beliefs regarding the origins of selected plants, identifies their divine and demonic origins, and then evaluates the characteristics of these plants (edible/inedible, desirable/undesirable in cultivation, used in folk medicine, used in rituals, blessed throughout the year, used in apotropaic practices, associated with the devil/used in black magic). The aim is to determine whether there are any correlations between these characteristics and the plants' divine or demonic origins.
The analyses carried out have shown that a given plant's divine or devilish provenance does not determine its usefulness or lack thereof, because in popular folkloristic imagery about plants we can find many characteristics that "escape" the sharp division into "good" and "bad" plants. Plants whose origin in folk imagery is associated with the activity of divine agents are edible plants, desirable to man, commonly used in (annual and family) rituals and in folk medicine, while plants associated with the devil are plants that are often poisonous, harmful, dangerous, stinging and prickly, undesirable as crops and classified as weeds, representing a dwelling place for forces hostile to man on the one hand, yet used in an apotropaic capacity on the other. At the same time, "devilish" plants were sometimes eaten as famine food, blessed and used in folk medicine, while "divine" plants, treated as weeds, were considered the abode of demons and used in black magic.
The study shows that the divine or devilish provenance of plants can be interpreted as information about the source of a plant's power-either divine or devilish. The article provides new insights for research on the perception of plants in Polish folk culture and also helps to promote Polish ethnolinguistic studies within the international academic discourse.
据民间传说，一些植物是由神灵和圣人创造的，而另一些则是通过恶魔的干预出现在地球上。人们普遍认为，源自神灵的植物是“好”植物，对人类有用，而源自恶魔的植物是“坏”的且无用。
本文分析了关于特定植物起源的民间信仰，确定哪些植物被认为具有神圣起源，哪些具有恶魔起源，并研究植物被感知到的神圣或恶魔起源是否会影响其对人类的有用性或危害性。
本文首先比较关于特定植物起源的民间信仰，确定它们的神圣和恶魔起源；然后评估这些植物的特征（可食用/不可食用、在种植中受欢迎/不受欢迎、用于民间医学、用于仪式、全年受祝福、用于辟邪做法、与恶魔相关/用于黑魔法）。目的是确定这些特征与植物的神圣或恶魔起源之间是否存在任何关联。
所进行的分析表明，特定植物的神圣或恶魔起源并不能决定其有用性或无用性，因为在关于植物的流行民间意象中，我们可以找到许多“逃脱”了“好”与“坏”植物这种鲜明划分的特征。在民间意象中其起源与神灵活动相关的植物是可食用植物，对人类来说是受欢迎的，常用于（年度和家庭）仪式以及民间医学，而与恶魔相关的植物通常是有毒、有害、危险、带刺且多刺的，作为作物不受欢迎且被归类为杂草，一方面代表着对人类怀有敌意的力量的栖息之所，但另一方面也用于辟邪。同时，“恶魔般的”植物有时被当作饥荒食物食用、受祝福并用于民间医学，而“神圣的”植物被视为杂草，被认为是恶魔的居所并用于黑魔法。
该研究表明，植物的神圣或恶魔起源可以被解释为关于植物力量来源的信息——要么是神圣的，要么是恶魔的。本文为波兰民间文化中植物认知的研究提供了新的见解，也有助于在国际学术话语中推动波兰民族语言研究。
