Dodola also known under the names Paparuda, Perperuna or Preperuša is a pagan tradition found in the Balkans. A girl, wearing a skirt made of fresh green knitted vines and small branches, sings and dances through the streets of the village, stopping at every house, where the hosts sprinkle water on her. She is accompanied by the people of the village who dance and shout on the music. The custom has attributed a specific type of dance and a specific melody. According to some interpretations, Dodola is a Slavic goddess of rain, and the wife of the supreme godPerun. Slavs believed that when Dodola milks her heavenly cows, the clouds, it rains on earth. Each spring Dodola is said to fly over woods and fields, and spread vernal greenery, decorating the trees with blossoms.
Names
The custom is known by the names Dodola and Perperuna. Both names are used by the South Slavs, Romanians, Albanians and northern Greeks. Albanians also use the name Rona and the masculine nameDordolec. The name Perperuna is identified as the reduplicated feminine derivative of the god Perun. Sorin Paliga suggested that it was a divinity from the localThracian substratum. The name Dodola is possibly cognate with the Lithuanian dundulis, a word for thunder and another name of the Baltic thunder-god Perkūnas. D. Decev compared the word "dodola" with Thracian anthroponyms and toponyms, such as Doidalsos, Doidalses, Dydalsos, Dudis, Doudoupes, etc. Paliga argued that based on this, the custom most likely originated from the Thracians. A much more likely explanation for the variations of the name Didilya is that this is a title for the spring goddess Lada/Lela that got turned into the "name" of a goddess. Ralston explains that dido, means “great” and is usually used in conjunction with the spring god Lado.
Ritual
The first written description of the custom was left by the Bulgarian hieromonk Spiridon Gabrovski in 1792. He tells how in times of drought young boys and girls would dress one of themselves in a net and a wreath of leaves in the like of Perun or Peperud, who Spiridon mistakenly believed to be an old Bulgarian ruler. Then they would go around houses singing, dancing and pouring water over themselves. Villagers would give them money, which they later used to buy food and drink to celebrate in Perun’s honor. South Slavs used to organise the Dodole festival in times of drought, where they worshipped the goddess and prayed to her for rain. In the ritual, young women sing specific songs to Dodola, accompanying it by a dance, while covered in leaves and small branches. In Croatia Dodole is often performed by folklore groups. In folklore of Turopolje on the holidays of St. Juraj called Jurjevo five most beautiful maidens are picked to portray Dodola goddesses in leaf-dresses and sing for the village till the end of the holiday. Serbian ritual chant sung by youngsters going through the village in the dry, summer months. Naša dodo Boga moli, Da orosi sitna kiša, Oj, dodo, oj dodole! Mi idemo preko sela, A kišica preko polja, Oj, dodo, oj, dodole!
Dodole in Macedonia
The oldest record for Dodole rituals in Macedonia is the song "Oj Ljule" from Struga region, recorded in 1861. The Dodole rituals in Macedonia were actively held until the 1960s.
