Funerals

"You can dodge the draft through bribes,
 you can be rescued from captivity,
 but from under the damp Mother Earth, there is no exit,
 no exit, not even a whispering... "

 As mentioned before, death in old age was considered a natural and necessary event.
 In some cases, it was awaited and called for by the elderly, who were embarrassed to continue to live.
 "I am spending somebody's time, and they are looking for me in the other world," - said Julia Fedosimova from the village Lobanihi.
 Ivan Afanasievich Neustupov of Druzhinina village, feeling the approach of the end, fashioned a coffin out of the whole trunk by himself.
 The coffin stood on the roof of the shed for almost a year. From the outside, it looked somewhat eerie.
 But in the popular perception of death, there is a strange, at first glance, combination of respect for mystery and calmness.
 To die with dignity in old age meant the same as to live your life well.
 Death was feared only by the weak in spirit; people in the prime of life died harder, as also people who were lacking something in life, and so on.
 To die without pain and suffering and not cause many troubles for the loved ones seemed to an average person as the greatest and the most recent blessing.
 As in the Christening, the Christian rite of the funeral here merged with the ancient customs of forgiveness and burial.
 Communion, anointing, and parental blessing are supplemented by request to forgive all offences and an oral testament of personal property (clothing, professional and musical instruments, ornaments).
 In the Russian peasant family, the deceased was washed, and clothed in clean, sometimes very expensive clothes under any circumstances.
 A dead person was put on the bench, head in the red corner, sheltered in white canvas (shroud), hands folded on the chest, a white handkerchief in the right hand.
 The funeral being had to be done on the third day, especially revered dead were carried by men instead of using the hearse to a cemetery.
 Tears and lamentations accompanied all this. In the Russian North existed professional wailers as professional storytellers.
 Often they are also regarded as a fortune-teller and healers.
 Many of them, possessing a true artistic talent, created their chants, complementing and developing the traditional imagery of folk funeral poetry.
 The death of an old man was not considered a cause for grief; laments and wails, in this case, were more formal. A hired wailer could instantly be transformed, break crying with some trivial remark and continue screaming again.
 Another thing was when lamenting about their close relatives or when death was premature.
 Then a traditional form took a personal, emotional, sometimes deeply tragic hue.
 Funerals always were finished with memorial feasts for which unique commemorative dishes and meals were prepared.
 The funeral feast is attended by all family members and participants of the funeral.
 Family and friends also paid respects on the ninth day after death and the fortieth day.
 People visit the cemeteries on the Parent Saturday - a day of remembrance of fighters killed during the Kulikovo battle.
 Also, every spring, the graves of relatives were put in order.
 The current fashion of fencing graves was utterly alien to our predecessors; they fenced all the cemetery, not individual graves.

Christening

CHRISTENING

 The wedding ceremony has strong roots in the pagan strata of Russian folklife. However, the influence of Christianity on this popular ritual was expressed only in some religious stylization.

 Apparently, this cannot be said about the Christening. Here pagan echoes were weaker, and it was dominated by the Orthodox church baptism.
    In general, the Russian Orthodoxy, in its popular expression, has tolerated pagan everyday elements of life; the official church also largely avoided antagonism. Christianity in the Russian North had not opposed itself to paganism, it adapted without vanity to the prevailing, existing folk culture, and they influenced each other. The church service has evolved with the influence of ancient dramatized folk customs.
    It would seem that the birth of a new person - one of the significant life events - should be accompanied by a ceremony like a wedding. But this rite either did not reach us or did not exist. A reason for a trivial treatment of the birth of a child may be pretty frequent births and high infant mortality. Women would give birth to 15-16 babies, but about one-third of children would die.

 You can, however, suggest something else: the beauty and usefulness of ritual depend on the aesthetic side of events. A man is born in pain; normal death is also associated with temporary pain. But people understand that physical suffering cannot be beautiful; instead, it is accompanied by hideous. A baby, just released from the maternal womb, looks unattractive. Also, the unattractive are dead, just succumbed to death. Only later, and even then, not for everyone, the face of the deceased becomes spiritual or its likeness. Ugliness means being devoid of the image. Every day, an ugly baby that just experienced the torment of birth changes aesthetically. It becomes more beautiful and attractive because of spirituality. By the time of the wedding, people reach the zenith, full acme, internal and external. Perhaps, that is why the Christening pales compared to the wedding ceremony ...

 Yet, it could be called a dramatized ritual, which operates in the presence of mother and baby and many others. Firstly, the "babushka," in other words, a midwife, who helps with labour, maybe a grandmother or a stranger. "Babushka" not only performs midwifery duties and helps a newborn baby make the first breath, but she also leads the whole ritual: ties the umbilical cord and pronounces the spells. The cries of a baby are the first sign of life. The louder the child screams, the more it is considered healthy. While the mother rests from childbirth, the baby is washed and swaddled. In the morning, all the neighbours bring goodies to the new mother.

 Church baptism was essential in the life of Russian peasants. According to popular belief, the devil administered the souls of unbaptized children. Often mother grieved the child's death, not because it was gone, but because the child died unbaptized. Godfather and godmother were required for the Christening. A godchild, as a rule, loved and revered them very much.

 Presently, the described ritual has disappeared almost everywhere. However, the domestic and vital need to celebrate children's birth will not go away and probably will remain until there is life. Proof of that is the walls of maternity hospitals covered with these, for example, inscriptions: "Hurray! I have a son Petya!" Dates and names are accompanied by names, sometimes not coinciding with those which will be put on the birth certificates. But blame not only the collateral damage of women's emancipation but also the low spiritual and moral level of the fathers...

Wedding

Alexey Korzukhin. Girls Only Party, 1889. 
Credit: ru.wikipedia.org: Русский свадебный обряд

Wedding is the most striking example of the dramatized ceremony, one of the main episodes of the great drama of life, a drama whose length is equal to the length of human life ... A wedding ceremony lasts many days and nights, it involves a lot of people, relatives and non-relatives, sometimes people not only from other villages but also from other counties.

 The inevitability of the ceremony is simple: it's time to get married, and the need for marriage has never been doubted. Naturally, therefore, the wedding for young people and their loved ones is just one of life episodes, though this particular episode is the most, perhaps, remarkable. Marriage is an essential link in an unbroken chain of life, prepared by all the previous links: childhood, the events of adolescence, youth affairs, aging of the parents.

 Let's recall this "turned, spun, chopped and anguished" plot of this popular drama heavily used in the books. The ceremony starts early, sometimes during the village festivities, perhaps in childhood, but its acts are always transparent and vivid. It begins with matchmaking.

 In the old days, in the places surrounded by a lot of water was a custom of the tribe Chud to bring their daughters on boats to the festivities and fairs. Such brides were called "driftwood" brides.        Father, brother or mother of a "driftwood" girl would leave her along with the dowry under the upturned boat while they went to the village to participate in the festivities. The local lads, grooms, immediately appeared on the shore. They overturned the boat after another, looking at and choosing a bride.
    "Can there be a defect of the private man which is revered by the whole nation?" - thoughtfully asked Pushkin. Russians are not squeamish about the customs of the neighbouring nations, although they were picky. However, this custom in Russian villages did not have a wide acceptance. Getting guys and girls together occurred at the summer and winter festivities.

 In winter, at the beginning of the new year, the groom's parents start to estimate and discuss what and how, whether the son by himself be able to find his future wife. A confident groom did not allow the options of several candidates, but not all guys were like this. Many needed parents' help often simply because they were shy.

 On the appointed day, after selecting a "route" and praying, the matchmakers - the parents or close relatives set out for a proposal. It is difficult to describe and list all the courtship signs, conventions, and figurative details. From now on, until the first wedding's morning, everything has particular importance, presaged a fortune, or misfortune, everything took their appointed place. You had to know: how, where and after whom to step in, what to say, where to put this and that, notice everything that happens in the house and around, everything to remember, to predict and to think over.

 Even sweeping snow off the boots on the porch, drying mittens at a stove damper, the behaviour of cattle, creaking of the floorboards, the wind's noise, everything takes on special meaning in the external design of matchmaking. Despite the clarity of calibrated by ages basic rules, each suit was unique, different by form from the other; the same expressions proverbs were told differently. By some, it came out particularly vividly, by others less so. Of course, all of this was recorded in the unwritten village annals. Later, the least interesting was totally forgotten, and all the other remarkable passed to the next generations. Traditional expressions retold by people without a spark inside them sounded trite.
 The tradition, however, did not fetter imagination; on the contrary, it gave the original push, unleashing an oratorical gift even of the most tongue-tied matchmaker. However, a tongue-tied go-between it's like a horseless plowman or the opera singer without a voice. Therefore, one of the matchmakers certainly was a smooth talker.

 They would drop in without notification, as always. People would cross themselves; take their seats, exchange greetings. Then, the bride would leave the room with sagacious hosts at once, tune to a specific way. Then, a real verbal duel would begin. Even when everything was decided before-head, father and mother of the bride would refuse at first, they say, we have to wait since our goods are first quality, they say, she is still young, you don't have enough land, etc. Then the matchmakers would act even more passionate, praising the groom and setting in motion all their eloquence. How to look people in the eye if the whole affair ends in failure?

 There were times when, having achieved nothing, the matchmakers at their own risk took another bride, younger, or even older, an old maid sister, or went to another house or even to another village, if the groom was not very picky, and need for marriage became urgent.

 Conventionally, traditional ploys and tricks go hand-in-hand in courtship with authentic, natural rituals related to specific circumstances of material and moral qualities. But it turned out that the conventional, permitted in such cases tricks would help participants of the ceremony. The folk customs spare pride. They seemed to help out the poor, knock off extra arrogance from the rich, encourage timid, and hold down too cheeky.

 The proposal rarely ended with a firm promise; nevertheless, people would catch a shakiness of the voice, ambiguity of refusal. Sometimes while one of the bride's parents vehemently refused, the other would make secretly a subtle sign that says: everything will be okay, do not despair. Finally, in the end, after having worked hard, everybody parted, and the parents of the bride, as if out of favour or out of respect for the groom's family, promised to come and to see the place.

 Visiting the place, seeing the house, where will live their "darling daughter" was the second step to the wedding. The bride's parents tried to come by chance, to see things as they are, but the bridegroom's relatives were also on alert. To not fall with the face into the dirt, surreptitiously, they were preparing for the visit. This folk tradition allows a minor forgery: it was allowed to borrow the goods from neighbours to show-off, and sometimes people brought blankets and fur coats into the groom... And yet it happened that by only the place appearances, the bride's parents firmly decided not to give away their daughter; but to not offend the groom, they would look for a pretext for refusal.

 The bride's parents went around the house looked into the shed and into the yard, curious how much cattle and utensils the groom had if there was enough food stored if there enough bedding and in what condition is the bathhouse. Only after this would it become apparent if the suit is successfully accomplished or the groom has been rejected. If the suit has been denied, new matchmakers would be engaged...

 In case of success, there is a brief pause, followed by the third part of the wedding action. In different places, it was called differently: handshake, contract, or bond. But the essence remains everywhere the same. At this moment, people finally decide to intermarry, plan the wedding date, the place where to live young, the amount of dowry.

 Henceforth, a bride is engaged and begins work on the trousseau. (Now the canvases, which have been saved in the girl's chest since childhood, become handy!) The period between the wedding and the engagement was especially rich with chants, songs, omens, etc. Nothing has given so much to folk poetry as this part of the traditional Russian wedding ceremony! During "devishniks" (girls-only parties), when girls help her friend with the trousseau, several thousand first-class poetic lines...

 The arrival of the gifts is the fourth act of the wedding's act. The final act is the wedding and wedding feast. Any part of the action, such as the suitor's "handshake," is an expanded and completely independent dramatic phenomenon.

 An element of improvisation was present in all parts of the wedding, especially regarding the bride, matchmakers and the best man. The traditional structure allowed dozens of lament and song variants for a broad scope for self-expression.

 The bride's lament was full of images but always expressing certain circumstances. A singing request and a response to it were also original, maybe unique in its kind, only depending on the family composition, characters, and other circumstances. There were no identical wedding songs, as there were no similar villages, families and brides. Melodies and most of the following wedding moments were consistently psychologically stable. Over the years, they fine-tuned and all ingrained in the ritual. These mandatory psychological factors often conflict with the emotional state of the wedding participants.

 For example, like a current entertainer in the all-inclusive resort, the best man was obliged to entertain and amuse people. For this purpose, only traditional words and techniques are not enough, inspiration and talent are needed, and a serious man does not always want to joke. Likewise, respecting tradition, the bride had to cry in certain moments, but not every bride wants to cry at her own wedding. And the same rule allows a merry bride to secretly rub her eyes with onion to induce much needed at this moment tears.

 Can we call this the need for hypocrisy? Hard to say… Probably not, because bigotry is not combined with the public, generally accepted concepts, it is more suitable for personal characteristics. In addition, the traditional rule at once would lose its force, ceasing to allow exceptions. If the bride did not cry at her wedding, it would be discussed by the whole parish, but the condemnation was not unanimous. Everything depended on the circumstances. Many, despite tradition, even encouraged such behaviour; others criticized, but not seriously. Soon, however, all differences were forgotten.

 The traditional rules of folk custom are so surprising that their explicit rigidity permitted thousands of options suitable for different conditions and for any character. But the custom always and everywhere created the organizing principle, eliminated chaos, and helped reveal an individual's abilities.

 Sometimes the best man began to amuse people not by inspiration but formally, as required. Gradually, he got into a mood, forgetting his inhibitions. So also, the bride, forcing herself to cry and wail at the beginning insincerely, steadily infected with the element of the traditional lament, began to cry for real. Her songs and chants are taken nature of improvisation soon, but improvisation is not insincere. Gifted artistic personalities create the most outstanding folkloric value in moments like these.