ABSTRACT
No performer of traditional folklore could describe contemporary life in the language and imagery of the traditional bylina as effectively as Marfa Semenovna Kriukova (1876–1954) from Zolotitsa on the Winter Shore of the White Sea. When she began composing noviny, Kriukova had been singing byliny for more than forty years. Her phenomenal repertoire of traditional songs (129 were published in a two-volume edition in 1939–1941) was more than twice as large as that of her mother, Agrafena Kriukova (1855–1921), who knew more than two-thirds of all the bylina subjects. 1 Marfa Kriukova learned her traditional songs from her family, from inhabitants of her native Zolotitsa, and from travellers. Books were important sources of byliny for the entire Kriukov family. Marfa Kriukova herself was an avid reader who did not like to return books she had borrowed. As adolescents, she and her sister Pavla (1879–1946) learned several byliny from printed sources and taught them to their mother, who sang them to the folklorist A. V. Markov in 1899. Like many singers from Zolotitsa, Marfa Kriukova was an accomplished improviser in the formulaic style of the bylina.
