The main goal of this master's thesis is to present the reality that has been explored through the historical and etiological traditions rooted in Croatian oral literature. The most important of these traditions are the stories of the past and the period of the Ottoman occupation. They also provide information on a large number of Turkish crimes, testimonies about the trial of the Illyrian Queen Teuta and the assassination of the Croatian King Dmitri Zvonimir and his loyalty to the Holy See. The volume also presents a number of stories about the heroism of the Croatian hajduks and soldiers who, with their valour and sacrifice, protected the people of the country from Turkish crimes and injustice. One of them is Andrijica Šimić, after whose virtues the Croatian football club from Split is named. After the fall of the Turks under Vienna, numerous legendary liberations took place. One of the most famous of these is surely the miraculous defence of Sinj. On the other hand, the final part of the series describes the etiological passages which provide us with information about the origin of the names of certain localities and graves. Numerous archaeological excavations have confirmed the truth of such legends, and one exemple is the grave of Diva Grabovčeva, which was investigated by the famous archaeologist Ćiro Truhelka at the beginnig of the twentieth century.