Metaphorization of the image shows that the different words and actions in
the folklore texts have certain meanings. These meanings include primitive people’s
rhythmic, effective, subject, personified interpretations connected with the
surrounding world and cause multivariance of metaphors. Metaphors which form
imaginative notions about food, birth, death in the different combinations and
variations, structure literary genres, plots and become their morphological integral
part.
Death symbolism is often closely related to natural, landscape, cultural
objects of a micro-and macrocosm. Metaphorization of any element is a
phenomenon that occurs as a result of long observations. Both in the regional
dialects, patois and the literary language, there are units formed in ancient periods,
original speech codes expressing death. Passing the centuries they have survived to
this day and are used in the same meaning not only in the folklore texts but also in
the everyday life, in the process of communication. This is proof of the stability of
ethnopsychology and mentality, resistance to external influences.
Conventional symbols of death of a mythological – poetic nature based on
the metonymic transference having spread among the people became traditional.
Such linguistic units occur in the various folklore genres. There are both examples
of small genres – paremias, lyrical and epic examples among them. In many cases,
the death metaphors are images of the different birds (owl, crow, falcon, hawk,
pigeon etc.). It probably comes from the following fact: these birds are perceived as
creatures that bind the earthly world with the Netherworld. In other words, birds’
ability to fly, rise high into the heavens caused them to be perceived as mediators.
The connection with the world of spirits subsequently determined transformation of
birds into a zoomorphic image of death itself.