Mythological elements related to earth factors in folk songs

Folk songs which contain all the features of the community, emotions, thoughts, dreams etc. are narrative treasures and expressed in different tunes. We come across different elements of mythology that based on narrative in different folk texts. We see traces of Shamanism in Central Asian Turkish culture. These traces also appear in different ways in folk songs. The roots of folk songs are in the society in which they are formed. Folk songs, which are the proof of common living together in the lands where Turks lived from Central Asia to Anatolia, became a treasure of culture by carrying indispensable traces of mythological periods. When we look at the history of Turkish culture, we see that sacred trees and plants, sacred birds, sacred other animals, sacred numbers and cosmological elements are mythological elements that continue their existence in society. It is clear that these mythological motifs and symbols give us many clues about the society in folk songs that best reflect the characteristics of the society in which they emerge. Folk songs, which have the characteristics of a kind of social memory, have also succeeded in preserving the traces of mythological elements in the globalizing world where the borders of the country are almost to remain, with the role of cultural carrier in the historical process. In this thesis, we have examined "Mythological Elements Related to Earth Factors in Folk Songs". The thesis consists of four chapters: "Introduction", "Folk Songs and Mythology", Mythological Elements of Earth Factors" and "Conclusion and Evaluation". In the second chapter titled "Folk Songs and Mythology", the concept of folk songs, the history of folk songs, the functions and characteristics of folk songs, the definition of myth and mythology concepts, the functions and characteristics of myths, the folk songs-mythology relationship took place. In the third chapter "Mythological Elements Related to the Factors of the Earth" which constitutes the main part of the thesis, the mythological elements in the texts of folk songs are evaluated. The results obtained from these main sections are given in the "Conclusion and Evaluation" section. At the end of our thesis, the list of sources that we used during our study was added.