Dodola (also spelled Dodole, Dodoli, Dudola, Dudula etc.) and Perperuna (also spelled Peperuda, Preperuda, Preperuša, Prporuša, Papaluga etc.) are rainmaking pagan customs widespread among different peoples in Southeast Europe until the 20th century, found in Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. It is still practiced in remote Albanian ethnographic regions, but only in rare events, when the summer is dry and without atmospheric precipitation.[1][2]
The ceremonial ritual is an analogical-imitative magic rite that consists of singing and dancing done by young girls or boys in processions following a main performer who is dressed with fresh branches, leaves and herbs, with the purpose of invoking rain, usually practiced in times of droughts, especially in the summer season, when drought endangers crops and pastures, even human life itself.
According to one interpretation, the custom could have Slavic origin and be related to Slavic god Perun, and Perperuna could have been a Slavic goddess of rain, and the wife of the supreme deity Perun (god of thunder and weather in the Slavic pantheon). Recent research criticize invention of a Slavic female goddess, and indicate as possible both Slavic and old-Balkan influences. In Albanian ritual songs are invoked Dielli (the Sun), Perëndi (the Sky, or deity of weather), and Ilia (Elijah, who in Christianized Albanian and South Slavic folklore has replaced the Sun god and the thunder or weather god, Drangue and Perun).
- ^ Qafleshi 2011, pp. 51–52.
- ^ Ministria 2014, p. 66.