Dmitriy Mandzhiev, Incantations

Dmitriy talks about three incantations: When one’s child’s baby tooth falls out, one of the parents wraps the tooth in a piece of bread and gives it to a dog, saying these words: ‘Take my bad tooth, and give me your good tooth, so that I can eat hard bones’. During a thunder storm my grandmother used to say ‘Dyark, khyarkhn’ or something. When Kalmyks sharpen a knife, they say the following: ‘Let it get stuck in the forehead of a Tatar, in the head of a Russian, but spare a Kalmyk’.Sponsored by Arcadia Fund, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwi