* FAIR *

The way of life of a Russian peasant has united both aesthetic and economic aspects. A Russian fair is a striking example. Trade commercial exchanges are necessarily accompanied by the cultural exchange when emotions of the trade deals often become more important than their economic sense. At the fair, the material of interest for many people was simultaneously a cultural and aesthetic interest.
Let's recall Gogol's "Sorochintsy Fair" novel, full of folk humour, which in this case is equivalent to the people's optimism.
 Although the forms were quite different, the Northern fairs had the same Gogol's essence, more restrained, and the same remarks or details play pretty differently in the South and the North. Gogol's works are still unsurpassed in describing this truly national phenomenon, but it will remain unsurpassed, as the fairs disappeared a long time ago.
Nevertheless, the spirit of the fair elements is so strong that even now has not been weathered from the national consciousness. Many of the elderly remember the details of long-gone times.
Fairs in Russia were counted by hundreds as if they pulsated country-wide, periodically flaring up here and there. And each market had its unique qualities. There were different fairs by seasons, by the prevalence of specific or related goods and, of course, by size.
A few villages held small fairs. At a fair, which is a bit bigger, the harmonica sounded differently, but one still could dance and sing under unfamiliar accompaniment. For example, at the famous Nizhny Novgorod at the large fairs, you could hear different languages and music from other provinces and other nations.
Trade, therefore, was always accompanied by an exchange of cultural values. National melodies, ornaments, the elements of dance and costume, gestures, and finally, the national vocabulary borrowed and reinforced from a cultural wealth of other nations without losing their foundation and identity.
The fair, of course, cannot be put on a par with the wedding ceremony, which is a purely dramatic act. The performance at the fair breaks up into many small comedic, sometimes tragic scenes. However, many fair scenes, such as the arrival, lodging, setting up stalls and shops, the first and last transactions are reminiscent of the ceremonial.

*THE HUT *

 The most spartan hut, which used to be built for single people and temporary housing, consisted of a log cabin, with only one partition, that is the fifth wall, separating the cold porch without a ceiling from the living room quarters.
In the same way were cut bathhouses. The hut could be with the gabled, as well as with the pent, sloping roof. Whit the pent roof, a slant was hacked at each side of the wall. The rafters were put directly on the walls. However, the pent roof and a small-sized bath or cabin didn't have the beams at all.

 The logs were fastened with individual spines and studs. A window not destroying the integrity of the wooden wall is called "portage," it was inserted inside with the board, embedded in longitudinal grooves.

 A bigger window with the jambs, holding the cut-off ends of logs, called "jambs." In the jambs and the lower and upper beams of the window and door openings, was cut out the quarter for the frame or the door leaf. Plugged-in thresholds or the jambs of the windows were cut into the logs and to the structures very solidly and were planted on the moss.
Under the window, the bottom frame was put birch bark, so the lower trunk would not rot, as in the winter at the window continuously accumulate moisture. A large gap between the upper beam in the doorway and the top jamb was filled with moss and covered on both sides with the planks. In general, all was done in double to keep the warmth: the floorboards, the roof slate, and the board, of which were made door leaves.

 A hut, which stood on the rocks, sometimes was not touching the ground, the wind-swept under it that was why it does not rot, but the heat was kept well thanks to the second "black" floor. Between "black" and natural floors was the soil on the ceiling in the attic. The density of the floor made by a competent carpenter was such that water couldn't get through the cracks. No wonder in one of the tales, Ivan the Fool pours beer from the beer tub and swims the house in the trough as if in a boat.

 However, the most exciting thing in the Russian hut was the roof to resist all the winds and storms without having a single nail. Ancient carpenters had to do away without metal: even the door hinges were birch excrescence, and the sash frames were sliding. Any, embedded in the spine and fixed with the wedge wooden piece or structure kept stronger than nailed with a nail.
Like the whole house, the roof was made so that each successive part was attached to the previous, lower, and higher, the stronger so as it was not carried away by the wind. However, this tenacity is not needed at the bottom since a stable build depends on the house's weight.
So in the logs that hold the roof was cut-in frames, supported with a load of those logs. Into the cut-frame were put small logs called "hens" that keep the individual log called 'flow." Troughs inserted into the lower ends of the roof in the notch in the "flow," and their upper ends clamped a massive carved block of wood. That large log was mounted on the roof with the pins through the upper cut-frame into the top logs. Fasteners were fastened to the roof to not rise from a hail of wind. In turn, with lower wedge-shaped cross members, boarded hollowed pinholes. After such an attachment, no wind could disrupt the roof of a bathhouse or cottage.

 The first row of full, hewn troughs put in the notch roof up and the second set of grooves up or down hump. Shingle is called transverse lower second roof, on top of it was making plank "rifled," that is, with rain grooves. Troughs in ancient times were made of two halves split by wedges of thick logs, which were selected straight-grained trees. A twisted, non-concentric tree is impossible to cut into halves. But in the wall, the tree does not rote for 80-100 years and being in a dry place, there was a virtually unlimited number of years. So troughs, also known as planks, later began to not hack and saw. There was a widespread roof-slatted for a time, now the same everywhere houses covered with slate. Thatched roofs were considered a sign of economic failure in the Northern villages.

*LOG HOUSE *

 In old times, people used to build rather quickly. For example, the Church of the Savior-ordinary in Vologda was built and consecrated in one day. A year and a half after the frequent fires were rebuilt, entire large villages. People didn't spare wood. Men slept well only in winter, and the axes were sharpened more often than they took a steam bath.
     A characteristic feature of the Northern wooden architecture is that any building (church, house, barn, bathhouse) can be taken apart piece by piece and thus be transported from place to place, and damaged or rotted logs can be replaced. Some existing houses were rebuilt three or four times, and you can say without exaggeration that they have kept details, made during the times of Ivan the Terrible. If they are under the roof and ventilated, thin, oblique, pitch-covered logs are virtually stayed forever, while the imperfect logs go bad after five or six years. Consequently, the quality of the wood was valued for construction.
     It is known that a felled tree cannot touch the soil because it immediately starts to rot. A material force that coupled the wooden structure and the earth served by either stone or sometimes resin or burnt stump of thick trees, not prone to measurable decay.
     If you put on four stones dug into the ground two logs and cut out logs ends and put on first two another two, you get the square, called the log foundation. The diagonal distances between inner opposite edges were measured to make the corners straight. They must be the same.
 The log cabin grew up row by row. At the bottom of the following log was carved a hollow using the axe as per the upper part of the lower trunk. To do this, the high beam was marked. Two good carpenters cut down five or six rows a day, which amounted to half of the average log cabin height.

 Logs were rolled up to the wall on the rails with ropes.

 The most straightforward log cabin is a timber shed or a hayloft with no floor or ceiling. The logs' surface wasn't made even, so the wind penetrated the cracks, and the hay was dry. That kind of building was cut on the spot. The house was not disassembled, whereas the log cabin intended to retain warmth. Logs were marked by the numbers, then rolled out and connected using the moss. "How many guests, so many beds," - said in a riddle. A moss layer was stacked the entire length of two adjacent logs and was clamped down by two subsequent logs.
 It was impossible to build a log house when the weather was windy, as the moss gasket was blown away from the logs. A settled-down log house becomes much lower because the moss is compressed. "If not for the wedge or for the moss - and a carpenter would have croaked," - says the proverb.

* MILL * WINDMILL

 Large parishes were located among the forested hills on the banks of rivers and lakes, stretched out in length, or curled into a ball. Villages were separated with small fields, reap, water, or groves.

 Villages with 40 to 120 homes, with their buildings, either silver, covered with a patina of the wood, or white, with an amber tint, looked very picturesque. But the village without the church seems flat, kind of dispirited and homely. Northern peasants correctly understood that. The vertical, completing and complementing a horizontal architectural ensemble was usually a windmill or a chapel. In larger villages, the parish built the church with a bell tower.

 The windmill - technically not a pretty simple structure - was of two types: dome and barn types. It was built about one-third higher than the highest house in the village. There were some crush mills, often dome-like. The artistic impression of such "vertical" is because of the height and the unusual contour of a landscape.
 A mill was built somewhere near the village, on the open hillside. In some communities, such as Kupaiha of Azelitskii parish Kadnikovsko county, five or six or eight mills were already too many. From afar, such a village looked absurd and positively not quite beautiful.

 The windmill enlivens the appearance of the countryside, residential slots and even groups of villages, completing their architectural appearance with amazing new details. However, the beauty of the watermill is different.
 The wild, untouched nature, the woods or meadows, rapids or broad "quiet" rivers, sky, water, and wind are all around. Suddenly, amid all, a single, entirely made structure is working noisily and incessantly. Nature around such an architectural object transformed and became very dear.

NOT ONLY BY THE WORD *

 "And for the old-style play,

 For the music of the horn,

 To the native land, a long road home

 I'd passed a hundred times."

 ~ Aleksandr Tvardovsky


 A lullaby melody began to be heard over the cradle immediately after a baby's birth. The umbilical cord dries under the rhythmic creaking of the crib. So, it turned out the rhythm and melody met a man after birth and did not die down throughout one's life. Instead, they continue to be present and after his death ...

 A lullaby song differed with a slow, monotonous-sleepy rhythm. Its melody was tender and somewhat sad. Mother, grandmother or older sister, expressing their love for the baby, put into a lullaby song sorrow and tenderness, but never cry and rudeness was present in a lullaby. True, sometimes the mother, offended by in-laws or grandmother, not sleeping at night, rarely allowed herself to vent frustration and get rid of bad feelings through almost a family satire.


 "You, tooty, do not hum,
 Mother does not wake up,
 My mother is gloomy,
 Began to spin and fall asleep,
 A pig came and pushed her."


 The baby did not notice the ill representation of their grandmother by his mother, all of which are sung with the same melody, with the same tone as an ordinary lullaby. But what a terrible rift began in the child's soul when the child has once learned the meaning of such songs!

 Instead of lullabies, mother and grandmother sometimes sang many other long songs appropriate to the rhythm of falling asleep.

 Melodies of mourning or lament, just like a lullaby, were not very diverse. A lamenter, especially hired, often crossed to the recitative, and the real anguish of deceased relatives differed more in verbal than melodic imagery. Even the lament of the bride at a wedding was rather monotonous. But the wedding lament now and then is punctuated by girlish songs, different in the rhythm.
 Melodies of wedding songs are also varied, but the action is constantly changing, so the Russian folk wedding is very similar to a day's long opera. In any case, all the main features of the opera: drama, choral and solo performance, mass and choreography at the wedding are required. No matter how abundant drinks and food are, a holiday party was considered inferior without singing. Songs of celebration rang for hours - it was primarily festive fun, though, of course, not everyone knew all the words and melody.

 As in all things, singing is essential leadership, the ability to strike up a song, take the initiative and assume tacit leadership. So often at the table someone was able to strike up a song without knowing all the words, another person knew the words, but he could strike up a song or unsteadily knew the melody, and it seemed that the song was about to get dumped, like a fire on the moist autumn wind. But at the table always was someone essential at this point, and the song is not interrupted.

 However, there were, however, in each village one or two, maybe even more outstanding song experts with excellent hearing and voice, who knew hundreds of texts, with the ability not only verbal but also musical improvisation.

 The fate of Russian folk art of singing is, in its own way, tragic. Just as the national identity was split during Nikon's ecclesiastical reforms, and this split was exacerbated during the reign of Peter the Great, the united sea of songs began to get shallow and segmented and then finally divided into spiritual-religious and mundane, everyday parts. Both branches of the singing art separately slowly atrophied, contributing to city and western modernist trends.

 People still sang for some time such beautiful melodic songs like "Murmur of the reed" or "I am forgotten, forsaken." But they quickly disappeared, ridiculed by biting satire in the district and provincial newspapers. And the limericks completed the final blow...

 Unfortunately, the song tradition was interrupted. People do not sing old Russian songs, which a great singer Fedor Shalyapin did not even know. Only rarely "Golden Mountains" or "Peddlers" could be heard. Beautiful melodies of the war years, created by Soviet composers, lost statute too.

 Of course, a quickening of dance rhythms was going on at the expense of melodic variety. Aesthetic norms have changed. Soon people began to think that if the louder, the better, the faster, it is more beautiful. As a result, even the singing rhymes degenerated, declined artistic requirements, shouting and dirty dancing became available to all, the ability to sing and dance fell.

 Before these limericks, melodies were not uniform. In 20-es ditties were sung during the feast, as many long songs. They were sung during the festive walking in the village streets and entirely different in the choral dance and square dancing.
         The ancient Russian summer festivals combined gaming, dancing, and song elements. Degeneration began with the gradual loss of this harmony. Initially, the circular dance disappeared the game part, the storyline, then, along with the quickening pace of dancing, choreography and the lyrical content became more primitive …
 The runaround is gradually replaced by ever-increasing dancing in a circle.
      The melodically diverse choral songs through the quadrille slowly turned into couplets. Thus, in a monotonous dance were levelled summer and winter dances ... The winter circle is too small. In the crowds, there is limited space, no matter how large is a party hut. In such circumstances, paced, slow, but meaningful dance followed by a rapid tap dance in one place, born and fashion for a dancing competition. Mass participation and democracy of the choral dance are impossible and in the dance, involves only two (with the accordion player - three participants). All the others turn into the audience. But to dance and sing at a party want all, so the dancing competition often becomes the cause of some stupid scuffles...

 Ancient dances are pretty diverse in their subject, but they always served the interests of young people (acquaintance, choice, courtship). Echoes of these round dances have survived until now, but separately: in the game, in the songs, the dances. For a long time, until the early postwar years, Kharovsk region of Vologda region kept a choral "Snowstorm" dance reminiscent of the urban quadrille. Older people and now on holiday dance "in a circle," slowly, all together, first in one direction, then the other. This choir sings ditties to the accordion. Figures of their dancing movements did not differ with rollicking. The dancers do not throw their legs above the head, do not jump like circus performers, and do not swirl at one place, waving their long dresses, as is done in many professional ensembles.
     The top of women's dancing skill was considered to walk in a circle slowly and gracefully as if carrying an expensive vessel with some precious contents on the head. A female dancer's feet under a long sarafan move, lead count and tap, while she seems to float on water. Men danced more freely but without somersaults over the head and crack of palms on the top of boots.

 A good dancer could not humiliate himself with indecent behaviour in the circle: a drunken appearance, ease, singing obscene songs, etc. On the contrary, even having lost the rhythm while dancing or singing, he considered it essential to apologize to the public and explain the cause of the failure ...
 "Sorry, the song got me confused,
 Things are not fun,
 I was promised this week
 To be cheated on."

 It could be that after such a revelation, a frivolous girl would change her mind, and betrayal would not happen...
 Similar song apologies were quite typical for the traditional folk festivals.

" Excuse me,
 I made a stranger to play.
 And my loved one
 I left far away."

 In the prewar years, when it became fashionable to ignore as musty village opinion, still people bolted to the sides from drunken dancers...


"In an unfamiliar village
 I came and even danced.
 And I ask no strangers.
 To make any comments!"

 More and more got heated and pushy the unrestrained hooligan. These, so to speak, dancers provoked the whole campaign against dancing in general: the accordion and folk rhyme became the attributes of backwardness and barbarism, in villages and towns became trendy so-called modern dancing.

 "The Madam" dance, as embodied in its Glinka "Kamarinskaya," was the basis of folk dancing as the musical as choreography senses. All sorts of variants allow dancers to be different from each other.

 The excellent dancers were famous in the surrounding townships; the bad was laughed at.

 The collective choral dance in the 1930-es began to be displaced by the couple and single dancing. Most fashionable became so-called "pereplyas" (in a dance contest of endurance) which can be put in one row with competition in speed and volume of singing. Men danced on the bet, showing pride before women. Dancing in these cases resembled the athletic contest in which participated and the accordion player. If the dancers competed with each other, then the accordion player, at times to exhaustion, competed with both of them. He had to "outplay" them.

 Before, some people danced for fun and sometimes from sorrow.

 Some men and women dancers were very fond of dancing barefoot outdoors. But, indoors, just opposite was favoured "the tap" shoe, as sang in the limerick:

 "Badly the felt boots pound,
 I will put on the high boots.
 To get hooked up with a good girl.
 Hey, friend, please help me."

 There was dancing (and playing the accordion) that was serious with a total sense of responsibility for its aesthetic and moral side. But later, more and more often, people danced as if in jest, boastfully and awkward. The swagger of a man allegedly gave him a right to lousy game and clown's dance. This kind of dancer would come out on the range, begin clowning and hiding behind this behaviour his artistic failure with loudness, and sometimes bawdy ditties.

 Even the least capable person, but taking to the dance in earnest, with dignity, evoked in people more respect than a skillful but an affected dancer. Interesting that good serious dancers, who got wounded in the war and returned home lame, continued to dance at festivals. To make fun of their dance to anyone even did not occur.
 Anfisa Ivanovna (author's mother) told me that in Timonikha lived a shepherd Pavlik (accent on the last syllable). He rose at dawn, slowly walked down the street and loudly blew in a birch horn... Lazy, sleepy housewives grumbled at him but rose to the feet. They headed out the cattle. They fired the oven. They went to the well to fetch water. They kneaded the dough for bread or pies.

 Life in the village started with the dense sound of that long, six-foot, covered bark tape tube. Sometimes for convenience, it was flexed in a ring (its principle sounds the same as that of the copper horn). Sometimes some shepherds had a set of these bass pipes.

 From the sounds of dulcimers, nozzles, bagpipes now are left only distant echoes ... But the softly-sad tone of the hornpipe / (temper is a "smell" of a musical sound) and the same familiar, pervasive tone of the horn sung by poet Tvardovsky, still speaks in a rustic wind, can be heard in the murmuring of a brook, felt in the bitterness of the morning stove smoke. Like just yesterday, the horn and hornpipe were played on among those gray pine log cabins, trimmed with greenery palisades and meadows.

 In the sheep's or a bull's horn in the hollow middle was inserted only one reed, and how gently and in own unique way sings the horn! It was talking while singing...

 From the ancient flute remained a monotonous willow whistle. But if you take the spring willow twig, "drill" the core, burn a hole in the side five or six holes, then plug one end and carefully split it, make an incision with a razor blade, a peculiar wind instrument will come out of it. The sound of this whistle will not be similar to any other. A bell made of birch bark bands (the same one from which woven bast shoes) changed and amplified the sound of the horn that can play tunes of average complexity.

 Balalaikas were self-made too, and the higher was the master carpenter's art, the better was the sound of an instrument, fused from thin spruce planks with the fish glue. Instead of the strings were put twisted and dried lamb intestines. Savvy people made musical sounds of the most primitive, it would seem entirely inappropriate things, for example, from the papers and the natural horny comb, of a hollow reed, of a broad tree leaf, birch bark, etc. As percussion instruments at any time could be used regular spoons or shepherd's tambourine. When at hand was nothing at all, when all the accordion players have gone to the war, the girls danced with the voice and tong imitation. But this desperate situation happened quite rarely.

 The accordion was entrenched in people's lives because of its "sonority," which may be due to urban influence. Countless talyanki, livenki, bologovki, trekhryadki, hromki (all kinds of accordions) for some half a century filled not only the Russian North-West, but, apparently, and the whole of Russia, indignantly wrote F.I. Shalyapin. And he was right, speaking of the loss of public choral art. The accordion and the limericks almost wholly replaced the culture of polyphony, as well as old songs of Dorian and Phrygian harmonies.

 Traditional folk instruments - trumpet, flute, balalaika, hornpipe subsided, not able to withstand the pressure brassy, somewhat cheeky singer.

 But no matter how we treat the accordion, we have to give tribute to this newly-minted and self-confident companion of national life. It long and faithfully served the Russian people. Yes, it still does, although club officials are often persecuted, probably because of its too excessive familiarity ... In space, it has not yet been taken. Still, on the tanks and destroyers, it already has lived. It has visited many European capitals.

 One can not recall that the accordion has gone off the primitive talyanka to quite decent musical instrument capabilities.

 The accordion in a peasant family was an heirloom; it was cherished as the apple of the eye. By value, it was equal to the rifle, a good cow, a new bathhouse, a pocket watch or a three-piece man suit. An accordion player, who owned it, was the first guest at weddings and holidays. He was treated as a close relative. The girls were singing to him; the friends protected him during fights. By the style and tone of accordion playing, people would find out who and where goes for a party.

 Folk musical aesthetics is inconceivable without a natural rhythm, without a variety of world voices. Even the crackling logs in the oven and the noise of a flame affected the mental state. Deafening shots in the frosty Epiphany night slightly interrupted the slumber of a commoner as if to remind them that everything was okay. A rooster's singing secured the sensation of the night calm. And how diverse are the forest noises, depending on the weather and the nature of the forest! Or the splash of the lake or seawater, putting to sleep a tired fisherman.
      The thunderstorm (and it only happens in a time when there is no time for rest) frightens stirs the soul with their mighty roar and terrible splendour of lightning. The noise of an intense night wind also does not let a person sleep; they rise from the bed and drive into the field to remove the remnants of the harvest. Merging sounds of nature and musical sounds evokes a feeling of magic.

 Imagine the endless summer forest with its fading, then re-growing, infinitely large noise, with few alarming cries whether woodpeckers, whether little hares, with a barely perceptible sound of mosquito bands. And suddenly, to this broad ecumenical noise adds singing some fantastic musical bird. The shepherd's horn's sad and gentle voice is so necessary, among these temperate natural forests! It leads a melody, and it is like a thin thread that connects the world's vastness with man's soul.

 Imagine, as into the forest murmur or the sound of splashing in the lake water are pouring in measured, thick strokes of a large but distant bell.

 However, to imagine is one thing, and listening in reality - is quite another. To listen, for example, some solemn and joyful bells among the windy spring noise and the first bird singing under the hot sun, cold blue water and the freshness of the original newborn green. A ringing of bells among the autumn clarity, in the chilling silence seen again in new ways. We will not recall the terrible roar of the alarm bells among the silent night ...

TRUE STORY **

 A situation when a person is bored and does not know what to do is unknown in the peasant's life. So you work hard now and then alternate, give a manageable, feasible work for the elderly and children, mix farm work with domestic work, purely peasant chores interlaced with the crafts.

 Monotonicity of many labour functions was brightened with songs, games, conversations. In such cases, the boundary between work in its purest form and entertainment is vague. But during this respite from heavy physical labour, there is always in some degree of collective action, in the intervals between work and sleep started deliberately, special entertainments. Among such distractions could be listed storytelling of true stories, jokes, and fairy tales.

 Storytelling and singing songs at the gatherings could be accompanied by work like weaving basketry and bast shoes, knitting fishing gear, and shoe-making. But this is the case when the narrator is at home, in normal circumstances.

 Outside the house, spending the night on the road, in the forest hut (at the time of logging or hay-making), sleeping in the barracks while rafting, fishing, on pilgrimage, at the fair, people were telling "true stories" for purpose while resting.

 Particularly would strike a child's imagination, still untouched by the rust of analytical distrust. Let's imagine an evening in warm and smoky winter quarters, where anyone who wants to sleep sleeps and whoever wants to listen listens.
 The gates are opened, any of the neighbours may leave or enter at will. But, while there is light from the splinter, fantasy and stories, no one goes. Fighting to stay awake with bated breath, children listen to stories about wizards and witches, eyes keep closing, and the heart stops in fear, the narrator's voice flows smoothly and casually, and only the burning birch splinter crackles.

 Another time, when you go on the road, you wake up in unfamiliar surroundings, and in the darkness, you hear the same flat, husky voice. Behind the wall of the cabin noise, the forest wind makes a sound, and someone from the audience snoring is out of rhythm to the narrator. Again, a true story entwined in your sleep, and in the morning, you cannot make out what was a dream and what you heard.

 During the Yuletide, after running in the cold, you would drop in with two or three friends in a hut near the collective farm stables, where hang on pins and saddle clamps, dries up after a day's proceedings felt, the stove is burning, and on a wooden cot sits a narrator. However, you at any moment can become a storyteller, talk drivel as you want, and you too will be listened to. But this is for the first time. But whether they will listen to your second time?

 Or you arrive at the watermill for overnight work. While waiting your turn, you doze off from fatigue and mosquito ringing and then fall asleep dead to the world. And suddenly, you wake up from the same smooth, slightly muffled voice:

 "Here, my friend, I'll confess to you, I was a little naughty toward that horse, but in the evening, I got drowsy. I poured a full basket of kolkhoz barley and the other three stupas milled oats. The miller was sleeping. I locked the barn and went back to the cabin. I ate some soup, but I felt something was wrong. I think I must get up and go check but can move neither hand nor foot. Suddenly the horse's hoof hits the wall. I can not get up as I am chained, the horse again kicks, but it does three times. I sleep, and the miller is asleep. We awakened at the dawn that is half the sky. I, my boy, rushed to the mill, thinking that from the millstone were left only bits and pieces. I looked and saw that the wheel and the water were stopped. And the tray is dry. And in fact, the pestles still are working. Here's how he gave me the lesson. I swore at him, but he was still good to me ..."

 A true story is entirely dependent on the character and life experiences of the narrator. But not all experienced people know how to talk about what happened in their life. Others, having less experience in life, were much better storytellers. The narrator's talent is often combined with the skill of an artisan, but there were storytellers by birth, getting inspired by the conversation. They invented a plot; images appeared suddenly in the story by themselves. They gradually began to believe in what they told, adding to the actual facts something of their own, imagining, fantasizing, and augmenting reality. Finally, after several repetitions, the fantastic image was hardened and stood for the improviser for an objective fact ...

 In contrast to the legends, the true stories lived precisely as long as minutes of their telling, but one or another account or plot could come up for any reason and at any place. But borrowed plots lost their charm, though... A born storyteller rarely repeated himself or others, though a colourful individual language does wonder even with the most hackneyed plot.

 By genre, the true stories can be divided into hunting, fishing, military, love, sorcerer, visions, etc., but such a division would be very arbitrary. In any group of true stories could be elements of the different group, and not even one. Still, multiple, realistic images can alternate with fantastic because everything depends on the storyteller's talent, the circumstances at the time of improvisation, and the audience's composition.

 On biases in the prevalence of domestic material is not always possible to guess the professional identity of the narrator. Thus, the story about the dog, abandoned by the hunter one on one with the bear, could be born in an environment far removed from hunting. Many "true stories" are created by so-called "visions." Specific details in such "visions" are so realistic, accurate and imaginative that not believing in the story is very difficult.

 Recall the story of the centurion's daughter and her stepmother. A terrible howling cat disappeared when the stepdaughter hit her with the father's sabre. Stepmother appears the following day with a bandaged hand. The subject werewolf with a similar plot is present in many Northern true stories, but instead of a stepmother could be a wizard, instead of a cat - a wolf and the sabre can become a bread knife or a sickle. Interestingly, in these stories, good forces do not win and triumph each time, though the moral orientation is always clear and definite. A peasant, who in his youth dropped the church bells, has his hands starting to dry off, a guy who was unfaithful to his fiancée "burns" from vodka, losing himself into drinking to his death.

 The power of authentic stories reaches its limits just on the elusive border between real and fantastic worlds. Village girls danced with some really very insolent strangers, and suddenly one of them stepped on the girl's foot. But because every country girl knew the difference between a hoof and a human foot, she immediately realized what kind of outsiders they were. In other cases, nothing supernatural happens. For example, grandfather-wanderer, who was given a shelter for the night, fed and offered drinks, in gratitude for all this led from the house all the cockroaches. And then suddenly a woman cannot start the oven in the morning, and it turns out that the reason was some night sin. The frivolity of many true stories was neutralized by a familiar moral tone. Thus, it appears that an unfaithful husband, who took his wife's money for adultery, was not dealing with a lonely neighbour but with his own spouse. In the morning, boasting with cash in front of him, his wife says: "When they sell hay, then they will provide more."

 The military folklore is also rich in short amusing stories. Miraculous stories from the sentries standing guard, the stories about the evil force, opposing soldiers' tricks, interspersed with original episodes here and unusual cases, abundant in the front and a soldier's life.

* NICKNAMES *

 Separation of the verbal craft from the household is impossible; they are inseparable; they form a coherent whole. And best illustrate this unity are nicknames.
 This folklore genre's mocking, satirical tone causes a temperamental person quite violent protest in vain: the nickname assigned to him sticks even stronger.
 There have been cases when people are moved to another parish to get rid of the nicknames in vain! But one wise guy decided to outwit everybody, invented a new (of course, more harmonious) nickname and secretly began to introduce it to life, hoping in this way to get rid of the old. But, alas, it did not work out. The old nickname has proved more resilient.


 Such an experience for an intelligent person may not remain in vain. Self-irony is the universal sign of a more developed mind. Humour dissolved an offence and, at times, quite liberated people from nicknames. So, a little man, who has inherited the nickname "Balalaikin," ending a speech at the village meeting, asked: "Do you want me to strum some more or to sit down already?" Such people were respected, and a respected person was called by name and patronymic even behind their back. However, Humour, protecting dignity, can not be confused with buffoonery, when people in the artistic fervour of self-abasement now and then call themselves by a nickname.


 The breadth of distribution of nicknames in antiquity confirms the fact that even the great princes have not always avoided the second name (Ivan the Gate, Dmitry Shemyaka, Vasily the Dark).

 The power of images enclosed in Russian nicknames did not mercy individuals but also entire nations, lands, and countries. The satirical tone of these nicknames was no more substantial than in the nicknames given to own regions and provinces. People of the Arkhangelsk province, for example, have long been nicknamed Seal-eaters, the Vladimir province as Cranberry-eaters, Borisoglebtsk people as Sour-nesters. Vyatka inhabitants were dubbed Blind-born because in 1480, coming to the aid of the city of Ustyug too hastily opened the battle against the Tatars. They suddenly discovered that they beat their own at dawn, who came to the rescue.
 Vologda people were dubbed "Calves," people from Bryansk as "Teases." Novgorod people called either Tug-eaters, then "Hammers." Muromets citizens were dubbed Saint-drivers because, in the XIII century, they expelled Bishop Basil from his town. Counties, municipalities, and individual villages were usually honoured with their nicknames.


 The variety of personal nicknames is truly immense. Here are a few women's nicknames prevalent in Sohotskoy parish: Pelya, Small Onion, Small Cockroach, Moss, Card, Pole, Stove Gate.


 One of the shoemakers was assigned a new name - Bunion.


 Many peasant nicknames transformed into surnames at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries.


 When leaving their homes, many people changed not only surnames but also their first names. This habit occurred for different, sometimes menacing, social reasons.


 In other cases, these reasons weren't hazardous. For example, a farm boy and a correspondent of the newspaper "The Red North," living in a remote village of Vologda, signs his letter with the name Filman. The other guy, not on their own and for the ability to speak, has earned the nickname Mothman. The old woman, who came to him with some distress, called him "Father-Mothman." This event alone was enough to diminish his bossy authority permanently.


 Typically, the nickname was given on psychological grounds, but not less frequently and by appearance. In the village Korgozere Vozhegodskiy district, there are some exciting stories of some Cabbage heads and Tower nicknames. Cabbage |Head allegedly escorted Tower from a party to her home and started to annoy her, for which she pushed him with his harmonica into a river. He was called Cabbage Head because of his thick mop of hair, and she was called Tower for her height.


 Male nicknames were quite tricky: Tilima, Cardan, Butya, and Kulyban. Many of them were given names of birds, animals, and insects (Jackdaw, Sparrow, Beetle, Rabbit, Cat, Otter, etc.).
 Often nicknames became characteristic of adjectives: Smart, Impertinent, Buttered. The meaning of the nickname was often counterintuitive. Thus, a six-foot truck driver was nicknamed Little Nicky, and an utterly bald driver - Frizzy Nicky. The chairman of a collective farm who was sent from a big city and did not know the difference between spring and winter sowing immediately got the nickname "Timiriazev (Burbank)." And he learned about his nickname only on the day of his final departure from the village.

* RIDDLE *

 During winter evenings, at parties without dancing, the riddles greatly assisted in games and entertainment. Adolescents and children amused themselves with this matter at any time, also forcing adults who knew more riddles. And the meaning of the riddles was very much in presenting them rather than coming with the correct answer. Solving it was not necessary.
 Propose a puzzle known to all is annoying, but give an unknown or just invented that is very difficult to solve. So, the riddler, whetted the curiosity to the limit, usually himself gave out the answer. And really, try to guess who is speaks with whom in this example, the riddle: "Crooked and sly, where it did run? Clean-cut and shaven, but it is not your business" Even the most intelligent person would not immediately imagine the stream, curling among mown meadows or a harvested field.
 The question: "What is higher than the forest, thinner than hair?" is easier to answer because we talked about nature. Wind and water are inseparable even in fairy tales. So, by association, it is not difficult to guess, "What kind of road is half a year is a walk, half a year is a ride."

 Remembering the river, be sure to remember the ice hole: "In the afternoon, the round window glass is smashed. But, during the night, it is again intact." And if after all this to ask: "Which plant grows with the root up?" - Perhaps there is a wit, who would guess that this is an icicle.

 "And which grass even a blind man knows?" - a grandmother asks her grandson, knowing that after a while, she will hear a scream of delight: "Stinging Nettle!" A riddle about the rooster - "Twice-born, never baptized, and the first singer in the world" - could make work up fantasy even for adults. Such a riddle as: "Through a cow and birch the pig linen drags" - could be born only in the professional, in our case, cobbler's environment. A riddle: "Two little brothers belted with one belt"- makes sense only in the Russian North, where the basis of the fence is two stakes woven with the willow's switch.

 Some riddles sound like proverbs, and, conversely, many proverbs may well be used as riddles.

 Widely are known ambiguous riddles, sounding almost obscene. An unseemly form of such puzzles was compensated by the complete moral sense. A humorous riddle ("A cat is sitting on a window sill, and its tail looks like a cat's tail, but it is not the cat.") were replaced by whole guessing charades and problems with the numbers:

 "Thrushes flew and landed on the field to peck. If they sit by two on two birches, one birch remains empty, and if they sit by one by one, then one thrush has nowhere to go. How many birds flew, and how many birches stood?"

 Heroes and characters from folk tales also often tried to solve each other riddles.

* CHARM*

 The word is "sharper than the awl's sting, the hatchet blade," from it "friends and I can not hide out, not wash out in the bath, which "cannot be water down with a sour drink or with a bland drink neutralize" - that word really had a mighty power.
 It protects not only from a toothache, but also "from the flying arrow, from iron wrought and non-wrought, and from blue damask steel, and the red and white, and arrows tempered, and of copper, and from the wire, and from all the animals and their bones, and from every tree, Russian and overseas, and from every bird feathers in the forest and field, and from any human race, Russian and Tatar, and Cheremis, and Lithuanian, and German, and enemies and adversaries."

 Many spells and charms later become prayers. The Christian religious terminology in them coexists side by side with the Pagan.
 "Save me, the cross of the Lord, have mercy on my cherished friends and me, and fly the arrow into a tree with the tip, and with the tail in a bird and the bird in the sky, and the glue in the fish, and fish in the sea, and iron and lead, throw in the Mother Earth from me, the servant of God (name), and from my fellow advisers. Amen, Amen, Amen."

 But "the devil cannot be driven out by an "Amen" - as the saying goes, and the word protected people though probably in conjunction with other weapons... Pronouncing a spell, a person has strengthened confidence in the success of initiated work, awakened in his spiritual strength, and was tuned to a particular way.
 A hunting charm against the evil man, recorded by N. A. Ivanitskii, says: "I will rise with blessing, I'll go with the sign of the cross out of the door of the hut, from the door to the gates into an open field for the dark ravines, into the forest primeval, the quiet marshes, on the high mountains, I'll hunt in the woods precious animals, squirrels, martens, hares, foxes, game birds, wolves and bears. I will hunt geese, swans, and gray ducks on the blue seas, lakes, and rivers. If an evil man will hold malice against me, that let that evil man eat all sand from the shore of blue sea, and drink all seawater, count all trees in the forest and all roots and stumps of spruce and aspen, wear out barley chaff in the eyes and to gnaw gravel stone. As God's mercy in the storm rises, the same way would have bones and joints of the evil man ached. And like by God's grace thunder booms and the arrow flies over to the devil, it would have the same arrow fell on the evil man. Be my words are strong and precise."

 There were enough charms and spells from the fire, cattle diseases to attract and to dispel shepherd's magic, as well as spells against unjust judges and clerks. But, as you can see with the hunting and military incantations in the old years, men used spells and women, and later charms became the exclusively female privilege.

 Apparently, the effect of spells had the same psychological basis as the present-day hypnosis or self-hypnosis.

 Many common household spells were created just before action.
 Sitting down, for example, to milk the cow, a woman whispered or spoke softly, to be heard only by the cow: "As long as I, servant of God, Katerina milk you, my Spotty, you stand still, milk milking, stand as the high mountain, flow of milk rivers stands still, not move, not wave the tail, don't step from one foot to another."

RAP

 To speak rap fluently - means rhythmically, in rhyme, briefly, accurately and vividly. The eloquent speech was not only the individual quality of the few people, to speak fluently aimed at all.
 The difference between the talented and obtuse speakers was that the first improvised, while the latter only repeated what had once been heard. There was no sharp difference between the two.
Nature provides the ability to all people, but not all equally and not all the same. And the boundary between everyday speech and stylized speech is also undefined. Many people, however, have a very pronounced ability to speak in rhyme and even the ability to make poetry.

 Any such poet lived almost in every village, and in some communities, they had not just one, and they held unique tournaments, competing with each other.

 In Timonikha lived a peasant Akindynos Sudenkov, a real poet, composing verse for any funny occasion using the limerick's rhythm and size. In the Druzhinin village lived Ivan Makarovich Senin, who also composed limericks. A long-time old chap Efim lived at the lake, like Sudenkov, writing a poem about how they all together drove away from the "tyutyu" (an owl with frightening cries). They joined the collective farm and completed the plans of cutting and hauling wood.

"If we do not overtake with fallen down,
 Then catch up with thrown-down, "

 were composed by Efim about the competition of spring hauling wood. (This was about that in the spring when the snow melted and the roads became impassable, to carry out the plan called for people to throw snow on the street with shovels.) About his wife, who was a social worker, Efim composed as follows:


 "If my honey, dear wife
 Would not have been  the manager,
 The village council would not come,
 And would not give me punishment.


 Efim carved poems on the spinning wheels he made, on the milk pails, etc. On the beater made for a neighbour, he may be, in defiance of his wife, cut the following words: "I give Nastasyushka a beater, to show her my endless love."

 Many Azelitskii hamlets of Kharovsk District remember half-blind Vasya Chernyaev, who occasionally made the pilgrimage. After opening the door and crossing himself, he got up in the doorway and intoned a prayer, or whether some song-spell, long and smooth. He called the saint force to guard the house and its inhabitants "from the sword, from the bullet, fire, plagues, from the dashing man" and other afflictions. He was given generous alms. Vasya Chernyaev, ashamed of his situation, acted to earn his living.

 An excellent example of rap could serve jingles, which says the best man at the wedding, not in vain best men were appointed most agile and most outspoken guys.

 Sometimes the entire tale, anecdotes and true tales were spoken in rhymes. In other cases, original fables like this: "Written-spelled about Ivan Denisov, was written not for the novel, all without cheating. Here came Uncle Vlas, if only to me this time was given power, and a flock of sheep, I would become their spiritual father, all to confess and put them into the pile".

 Such a creation of words was peculiar only to men. A woman, speaking in rhyme, was a rarity.

LIMERICKS ***

 Feodor Chaliapin detested the limericks; he considered the harmonica a German instrument contributing to primitivism and degeneration of the mighty and ancient vocal and choral Russian music.

 Wondering about this, he asks: "What happened to them (i.e. the people) that they forgot songs and started to sing a ditty, this bleak, this intolerable and mediocre vulgarity? Maybe we need to blame the factory, maybe those shiny, rubber overshoes, a wool scarf, for no apparent reason envelop the neck on a bright summer day when the birds sing so well? Maybe a corset is worn over a dress by rural women? Or is it damn German harmonica, which he so lovingly holding under his arm, a working man on the day of rest? I simply cannot explain... I only know that the limerick is not a song, but a magpie, and not even a natural bird, but an obscenely painted mischief. And how well people used to sing! They sang in the fields, in the haylofts, on the banks of rivers, the streams, forests and at the evening works."

 However, no matter what was said about the limericks, no matter what was thought by fate, it became the most common, the most popular of all the living folklore genres. Accumulated over many centuries energy of the language does not disappear with the demise of any (e.g. epic) style. It can appear in the most unexpected forms, such as folklore and literature.

 Fedor Ivanovich Shalyapin had a reason to be indignant: the limericks occupied too much space in the family of folk art. Once upon a time, in addition to choral singing at the parties, street choral singing lived and prospered. Still, the long choral songs gradually became short. Simultaneously, dance steadily degenerated into contemporary dance.
 You could even say that the degeneration of long songs into limericks accompanied the transformation of a circular dance into the dance. At the end of the last century, the slow pace of choral tempo was gradually replaced by fast dancing tempo, communal dancing by couples, and single dancing. Along with all this, a long story breaks up into many small pieces at a relatively rapid pace.

 And the limerick went for a walk-in Russia it could not be stopped either by any social trouble or by the adoption of amateur art in every village or small town.
 It lived and lives on its own, by its own rules. Nobody knows how many limericks exist, considering whether there are thousands or millions. Apparently, many folklore collectors did not even understand that the limericks, even to a greater extent than the proverbs, embedded in the way of life, so when they seized from its ethnic musical and verbal environment, it died immediately. What will understand a reader, for example, from such four-liner:


 Another girl because of her lover

 Lost the appetite,

 But in my case, after betrayal.

 I was eating like a pig.


 Readers need a considerable imagination to see noisy rustic festivities, imagine a "coming out" to the circle, dancing and challenging, with the expectation to be heard singing. One needs to understand the state of a girl, who was betrayed, her sometimes strange condition when she laughs through her tears, is cheerful and desperate at the same time, and hides her misfortune with jokes.
 According to some researchers, women's ditties were created chiefly by men; I don't think it will hold water. Limericks are created and established for a specific occasion, often while dancing, sometimes in advance to make one or another statement. For example, there could be a love confession, the threat to a possible rival, encouragement of not a very brave suitor, the announcement of the break-up, asking a friend or someone to "hook up" with somebody.

 A love limerick is the most common and most numerous. After March, recruits and work limericks, if I may say so, appeared political, expressive of candid social protest in some periods. Prison, bullying and obscene limericks accurately reflect changes and developments in the moral structure of everyday life ignorance of the artistic tradition.

 It would be foolish to assert that there were no obscene ditties in traditional folklore. Of course, they were present, but they were sung very rarely and then only in particular, mostly male company, as if furtively. To sing a bawdy ditty for all the good people could just the last drunkard, who does not value his excellent name. "Progress" in the spread of talent, but bawdy ditties began at the turn of the XX century with some lines such as: "I wanted my honey to press to the woodpile, the pile rolled out, and my honey ran away." Excessive frankness and directness compensate by the fantastic vividness. Later the same obscene rhyme becomes more cynical, untrustworthy, abstract. The relationship of such folklore opuses with drunkenness is apparent.

 Interestingly, limericks were sung in cases where it was fun or when people were bored. Sometimes it was singing during unbearable grief, taking the form of a confession or a complaint against fate. Thus, during the street dance, a young widow sang and cried at once:


 My dear was killed,

 Yes, and I would gladly die.

 Neither that one nor this one

 Would regret about us.


 And the dancing and singing in such cases assumed functions of weeping, lamentations.

 The meaning of many limericks, like proverbs, is sometimes ambiguous. It is revealed only in certain circumstances, depending on who, where, how and why a person sings.


 "The chairman of the collective farm, you are golden,
 The Brigadier, you are silver.
 Let me take a day off,
 Today is a rainy day."


 Again, you need to know that you have to work, mow or reap on a sunny day, and you can rest in lousy weather. You can sing either way, whether with internal sarcasm or sincere respect. But this, for example, limerick, one can hardly sing in any other way:

" My dear, cherished,
 By the braids noticeable.
 During harvest on the strip,
 A scarlet thread in the braid."


 At the table and in the public dancing "circle," the second half of the ditties sung collectively, the familiar words were picked up immediately. To start singing could help any one of those who were present. Maiden dance brought to life a unique limericks dialogue, during which they expressed worldly joys and grievances, asked intimate questions and told responses, rivals are criticized or unkind relatives.

 A limerick dialogue in dance could occur between two friends, between rivals, between a man and a woman, between two lovers, between two relatives. The threat, flattery, compliment, calling, denial - all the things that people are ashamed or afraid to express directly, easily and naturally in folk songs.

 In the popular rhyme (monologue) is reflected confessional energy. In folklore, storerooms are any limerick to express any feelings, any shades of mental state. But if appropriate lines cannot be recalled or a singer does not know them, they invent entirely new ones.

 Quite many are couplets addressed to the accordion player. Sometimes they sound downright flattery, even fawning. But, you could do anything to dance once in a blue moon, to pour out the soul in song! Especially in those days, when so many accordion players have settled on an eternal sleep in their graves unmourned (after WWII).

TREE-CARVING, WOOD-CARVING**

 "Oh, country views!
 Oh, incredible luck to be born
 In the meadows ..."

 ~ Nikolay Rubtsov



 Embracing man from ancient times, the thirst for creation is mysterious and inexplicable by ordinary means. What motivates a person when he builds something? Where and how emerges the spirit of creativity, overcoming static inertia and incites the creation of beautiful, unique, and sometimes physically unsustainable work?
The ancient people extracted not much material utility from the Acropolis or the Roman Forum. And it's utterly incomprehensible that rational men build the stone statues of Easter Island.


 The urge to build, to create, people experience in early childhood when playing, they are building palaces, bridges and houses are not similar to any other, though drawn from the example of other children. Probably not only creativity is involved in building and construction. In their dare to the infinity of the eternal world, people restrict this infinity with a pretty understandable area accessible to ordinary human feelings. Thus, the planet Earth is something definite in the infinity of the world for us. In turn, on the Earth, there is observable by the eye plains or mountains where you live, and on this plain, there is your house, but even in this house, there is the most comfortable place for you.


 Architecture is, above all, an organized space alienated from the infinite Universe by the power of the artistic image. Take away from the immensity a well-defined particle - hence represent, formalize this uncertainty, to make a cozy corner of the cold infinity of space.
 The desire for such a restriction of the area is very pronounced in children in their games, the seriousness of which is not so often taken seriously by adults. For example, the child builds a house by playing in the "cage" (limited to three planks stacked on bricks).     
The conventionality of such a restriction is not alien to adults either. The thin tarpaulin tent that separates from the Universe the accommodation place (a place of comfort and a sense of home) - the bound is more apparent than material, the wall more than expected than exists, as, for example, in a brick cell in the monastery. Still, the traveller finds in the tent his home.


 Comfort is associated with children with a sense of home, a desire to search foxholes. A craving for confined spaces, to the trenches and outcrops containing an element of the labyrinth, the stairs, hills, platforms at different levels, thrust quite close to the architectural creativity. Often, it moves from childhood into adulthood. The roof over your head is the essential thing in life. Being homeless is like being an orphan. Therefore, people built a house above all else—Wandering and vagrancy in many countries prohibited by law. But the moral code is always more robust than the formal law.

 Marya, nicknamed Pachina, remained in Timonikha alone, without a son, with an unfinished hut. After going to ask for alms, she returned to the village in an empty wooden house (without a roof and the ceiling). She was saying: "It's too good to stay at home."

 Another Marya, being a widow, without anybody's assistance, built herself a hut.

* SONG *

 "The fairy tale unfolds on the way, but the song is a true story." In other words, the fairy tale can be changed on the move, while a song on the fly is much harder to create. Therefore, it must exist before the performance.
 Of course, the singing does not exclude the improvisation, one the same song was played often in different ways, even in a few melodic variants. Such freedom gave space for individual abilities; everyone was free to the best of their ability to improve the lyrics. As a result of natural perfection, continuous and incremental appeared in popular culture, hundreds of thousands of songs and gems such as this:

 "Do not sit there, girl, late at night,
 You do not burn, do not burn wax candles,
 You do not sew, do not sew the brocade canopy,
 And do not spend, do not waste gold.
 After all, you will not sleep in the canopy,
 You will rest, the girl, in the blue sea,
 In the blue sea on the yellow sand,
 Hugging the steep banks,
 Kissing the gray stone."


 Nine of these lines with imaginative saturation would be enough for the song, but this is just the introduction. The girl's response to the threat of death is this:


 "Do not make me angry, good fellow!

 I'm a girl not without the family,

 I have a father and a mother,

 Father-mother and two charming brothers.

 I'll ask my brothers to shoot you.

 Shoot you; consume the soul.

 I will build a bone tower,

 From the ribs make floors,

 Out of the hands and feet build the seat,

 From the little head make the salt shaker,

 From joints cut cups,

 From the bright eyes - wine charms,

 From your blood brew beer.

 I'll call all my girlfriends,

 I'll set them all on the benches,

 And I will sit on the seat.

 You girlfriends, my sweethearts!

 I will give you a riddle,

 Very hard and impossible to guess:

 I live in my lover, walk over him,

 Drink him, drink his sweet blood."


 Distant echoes of the pagan past can be felt in these words as if from the very womb of the Earth's history. This is not congruent with the time of Christianity.

 The tragic confrontation between the sexes, their disparate equality and unity is felt in another, more pre-Christian in its spirit song:


 "In the forest, it was, in the hazel-wood,

 Was a black horse standing by,

 For three days, it was not fed,

 For a week, it was not given to drink.

 There is wife finished husband,

 Stabbed him with a sharp knife,

 The heart pulled out.

 At the damask knife, the heart roused itself,

 And the wife then grinned.

 Put it into the cold cellar,

 Stamped with the right leg,

 Right elbow on the window

 Bitter tears flow out of the window."


 Judging by these songs and at a certain percentage of frivolity, one might think that the women of ancient and medieval Russia only were doing that were killing their husbands.
 (Incidentally, just this logic is used by the researchers of vulgar-sociological, as well as openly demagogic persuasion. He then selects and sometimes tries to discover history.)
 The songs, for example, the epic like a fairy tale, have selected the extreme expressions of hypertrophied rituals. National identity has expressed its interest to underline the evil deeds with a figurative exaggeration. The evil is portrayed in its intense concentration in such a clot, horrifying the listener. Such imagery also played the role of kind of vaccination: better to try and survive the evil (in songs, fairy tales) than the actual harm. That's why the folk ballads have clearly defined plot structure:


 "As I go, young man, on the road,

 Catching up with me two friends,

 In my eyes, they make fun of me, a fine fellow,

 That my wife left the house,

 Doesn't care for our love the child,

 She travelled on all the horses,

 Worn out some young people.

 I returned, young man, to the vast courtyard,

 The young wife came out and greeted me,

 She was wearing a white shirt without a belt.

 I took out, young man, the sharp sword.

 I cut off my wife's unfortunate head,

 The head rolled off to the horse's feet.

 I went, young man, to the stables,

 All my Raven horses are well,

 I went, young man, to the nursery,

 My dear child is swinging happily in the cradle.

 ... Oh, why I had listened to somebody's opinion!"


 Natalya Samsonova used to sing a song with the same plot but with a different tune:


 "Cossacks were coming, Cossacks were coming,

 Cossacks were coming home from the service in the army."


 These Cossacks "have the shoulders epaulets, on the chest straps." One Cossack was met by his mother, and she said that his wife gave birth to somebody's child. So Cossack kills his wife, goes to the cradle, and by the "appearance" in a child learns that he is his own son, then kills himself.

 Another song is about a husband who had left home for an overnight robbery and how he "came back home in the bright light morning."


 "... He sent me, young wife,

 To wash the bloody dress.

 I washed half of it,

 And another half threw into the river,

 I found the brother's shirt …."

 The same commitment to the ballad is clearly seen in the later songs, such as "By Don walks" (incidentally, terribly spoiled by a modern pop-single execution, recorded on the LP), "The colour crimson moon," "I remember when I was still young." These songs have already been impacted by the powerful influence of literary poetry. The romantic plot goes hand in hand with melodic degeneration, associated with the disappearance of folk tradition and a general decline in song and choral music.
 Thus, the lyrics "In the Garden of the Valley," which was very popular in the '30s and '40s, cause a smile by its naivete. The form there seemed to be deliberately contrary to the in-depth folk content. However, the contradiction mentioned above may well be traditional. This concerns mainly gaming and choral songs, the semantic content of which is expressed not so much by words as by rhythm and melody. Such songs are composed of the traditional figurative pieces:
 "In the net in the field of the white birch sits a bird peacock." Birch in the songs can easily be replaced by a curly rowan tree, the peacock by the nightingale. It has been allowed a total plotlessness.

 Anfisa Ivanovna (my mother) says that as early as adolescence, girls of the village Timonikha sat on logs and sang, "In the field, there is a birch." The ending of this beautiful, at first almost story song is remarkable:


 "Hunters ran out,

 Gray hares were chased ..."


 What has to do with the birch, which "no one twisted"? - Asks a reader, expecting songs to have an excellent plot and special meaning? But that's the thing that really has nothing to do. This song should be sung, at the very least, to be enjoyed. One has to sit on logs in the spring or participate in a dance to comprehend the soul of another song:


 Chuvel, my Chuvel,

 Chuvel-Nevel, Vel-Vel-Vel,

 One more miracle, the first miracle,
 Marvel, my native land!


 The rhythmic set of harmonies, incomprehensible (in fact: what is this "Chuvel"?), completes a strange expression of joy, a logical address to the land, called "the first miracle." And what is this homeland, small or large? - Once again, I will ask the miracle-rationalist. But I will not get the answer.

 The song ties together the verbal richness of the people with a wealth of music and ritual.


 LAMENTATIONS *


 Lament, weeping, lamentation is some of the oldest types of folk poetry. In some places of the Russian North-West, it has survived to our days, so a lament, like the Lament of Yaroslavna of the eighth century "The Story of the Army of Prince Igor" can be heard even today.

 A lamenter in some places was called a wailer; in others - just a crier. Of course, as storytellers, they often become professionals, but the lament was available to most Russian women on one or another artistic level.

 Lamentation was always individual, and the reason for it could be any family grief: the death of a close relative, somebody has gone missing, any natural disaster.

 Because with grief, like happiness, there is no standard, similar to sorrow in another house, then the laments may not be the same. A professional lamenter must improvise; a deceased relative is also specific in mourning. She laments for a particular person - for her husband or brother, son or daughter, for a parent or grandchild. Traditional images that have lost their freshness and power because of frequent, for example, repetitions of tales concerning a particular family to an inevitable tragic occasion bring incredible, sometimes terrifying emotions.

 Crying out about an unbearable, even unimaginable in normal conditions, grief was almost a physiological necessity in everyday life. After bawling, a woman would overcome halfway the irreparable trouble. Hearing the lamentations, the world, people share grief and take over the burden of loss. Grief seems to be spreading out among people. In mourning, besides the sobs and tears as it were, in order, their physiology goes into the background, the suffering becomes spiritual through imagery:


 "You surge up, now, a menacing cloud,

 Fall down a gray stone,

 Crumble the mother-damp Earth,

 Split in two the grave!

 You go-to, the winds boisterous,

 Swing so thin shrouds,

 Oh, give it, Lord God,

 To my breadwinner-father

 In the frisky legs a walking,

 Into white hands strength,

 In the mouth of a speaking …

 Oh, I know, yes, I know,

 Knew by my thoughts it would not happen,

 From the army duty, you can buy way out,

 From captivity, you can come to the rescue,

 But from the mother-damp Earth.

 There is no exit, then, no exit,

 Not even an echo…."


 Death is the chaos and the ugliness overcome here by imagery, beauty, and poetry struggle with nothingness and win. Terrible grief, death, oblivion softened with tears, dissolved into the words of the lament and shared around the world. The world, the nation, people, as you know, do not disappear; they were, are and will always be (at least, so thought our ancestors) ...

 For example, lamentations have practical significance in another case at a wedding. A wedding ceremony would imply the game, a reincarnation, and therefore, as already mentioned, the bride does not always lament sincerely. A sad mood of the traditional wedding weeping contradicts the wedding, its spirit of fun and life renewal. But just that is the uniqueness of a wedding lament. In the course of the marriage, a bride was obliged to weep and wail, and tears are insincere, unnatural often become genuine, honest; such is the emotional impact of the image. Not allowed to go too far in crying, artistic wedding tradition in some places would switch the bride to a different tune:


 "Please give me, my God, father-in-law.

 Yes, for this length of service,

 Three boils in his chin,

 And the fourth under the neck,

 Like a red sun.

 He will get lost at the stove.

 And with soup, he would be scalded..."


 Modern lament that uses folk songs, even echoes of the epic, literate lamenter can write down, for this she needs some initial shock, that will awaken the emotional memory. Then starts working poetic imagination, and lamenters create their own work on a traditional basis. This happened with the collective farmer Maria Erokhin from the Vozhegodskiy district of the Vologda region. Starting with resentment ("I got married too young"), Erokhin vividly recounts all the significant events of her life:


 To go down the aisle - I was forcefully carried...


 A wedding ceremony is well described by Erokhin:


 I can not say that I am beautiful,

 But I had talent; people praised me.

 From my side, that's what they say.

 "Oh, what a berry we gave away,

 Like poppy flowers, the girl is worth the gold!"

 And those from the groom's side: "We are not worse than you,

 We are also worthy of your Maryushka ...


 Before carrying the bride into a "God-given home,"


 Says father of the bride to her future father-in-law:

 "Now she's your daughter, dear father-in-law,

 You are given a bell, with it even on the corner".


 Honestly, the people's attitude towards the family felt more in the chants: grudges are forgotten, and everything seems to go on:


 And I got used to everything,

 I don't mind mother-in-law.

 She has a hot temper that quickly subsides.

 If you abide by scolding words,

 then you can live, nothing to cry about.


 But Maria's husband became ill and died, leaving five orphans.


 I mourned, wept severely,

 How shall I live as a bitter widow,

 How to raise children, how to give them education,

 How I, a widow, bring them up?

 And all of these fell on my head,

 All the work, all the worries,

 All man's and woman's work.

 I run the house, while people are asleep,

 With the men together go into the field.

 And do ploughing for all day, almost to the night.

 All the trades I have taken,

 All the troubles I went through, and all the adversities,

 I was a lumberjack, and yes, I survived,

 I did timber rafting, and yes, not once nearly drowned,

 But good people will save you in any place.

 I gave education to all my sons,

 They are good men now and no worse than all.

 And next, I awaited an easy life,

 And I thought, pitiful sorrow:

 It will be easier to live; take a rest now.

 Oh, no, I wasn't born for this!

 Great grief fell on my head,

 My weak heart was wounded,

 It's never be cured,

 The only cure is the grave!

 That's the fate has done to me,

 It had robbed me of my two sons ...


 Surprising is the ending of this composition:


 You believe me, good people,

 I did not lie, did not invent anything,

 I wrote the whole truth,

 And that is only one-hundredth of it.

 I wrote it only for two days,

 But I've been already suffering for forty years ...

PROVERBS * *

 "Without death, you will not die," used to say Michael Grigorievich. But how to understand this proverb? What kind of philosophy is behind this maxim, which repeats the simple truth. Without death, you will not die … 

Emphasis is on the first word. Apparently, this is not the mere negation of suicide, contrary to people's worldview. Suicide on such a perception is a great sin. Another proverb says "Death is terrible by your sins." (Recall the popular belief of the sorcerers who cannot die until someone else does not take from them the sin of relationship with the evil spirit.)

 Michael Grigorievich slept four hours a day but believed even those four hours were lost. The best time for him was tea time. "Oh, to live in your own presence!" - He kept saying at such moments.

 To live in your own presence ... Again, something incomprehensible to the modern perception and rationalistic mind.

 "Don't do good deeds, and then you will not be cursed" - is one of his favourite sayings. That person always intended one thing: to do good and live by the Gospel ...

 This is strange! The proverb excludes hundreds of others, speaking about the power and necessity of good. But it is only at first glance. Recall how rushed Don Quixote was to do good, liberate a little shepherd tied to an oak, and later, the same shepherd jumped at the poor knight with abuse, accusing him of all his troubles. Folk wisdom is ambiguous and multi-layered.

 "Wealth gives birth to mind," - says a proverb. No, "Loss is to augment mind," - says another. Which of them to believe? And the whole point is that they do not contradict each other. Simply, each of them is suitable in certain circumstances. Perhaps the first is composed by philosophers, the second by merchants, but it may, on the contrary, probably be for both. Can we assume that an average person becomes wiser as with good fortune and a loss, that only for fools it does work neither one thing nor the other?

 Nothing is more infectious than reading the Dal's Book of Proverbs. Caught once your attention, the book firmly grabs you; you do not want to be alone, encroaching on the innermost. But proverbs are not equal, so reading the book of Proverbs is deceptive. Your consciousness adapts and switches not only in meaning but also in the magnitude of emotional impulses. Interest is rapidly becoming unnatural, painful and intrusive. Perception is dulled. Soon appears the illusion of complete understanding, full contact with the folk wisdom. In fact, the sense hides behind the line farther and more profoundly, as if considering you unworthy of her.

 And how can all the folk wisdom be contained in one, even such a big book? Many thousands of proverbs gathered together in one place somehow do not play and may also interfere with each other. They are crowded in the book. They have no air to breathe. They live only in the context, in the element of everyday language.

 What a lively, full-blooded thing it becomes each of the spoken language's proverbs (even a lousy one)! Nevertheless, (a blessing in disguise!) the meaning and beauty of most good proverbs could be understood when thinking it over, that is when reading ...

 Let us open a manuscript collection of proverbs, which is dated 1824. Judging by the handwriting and font selection, the collector was educated. He began the manuscript by saying, "You can't get rid of the devil with an "Amen!" "The gang is strong because of the leader," - says next. If you read without pondering, it just gets annoying. But let's think about it.

 "They argue but leave the words for peace" - what is it? It turns out that when people fight, there is no time for talk; let the blood of each other in silence. Words are suitable for a quiet conversation; only you can avoid battle in a discussion.

 The proverb sounds relatively modern.

 "Above the forehead, ears do not grow." It seems understandable, but the main point here is that no one can comprehend more of his capabilities.

 We read further: "The thief does not always steal but always takes," "They sing to you, and give us head-ups," "Guest does not stay long but sees a lot (especially from overseas, we would add on my own), "A hungry wolf will unscrew the locks," "Sorry for a girl, but we lost a guy."

 Whatever it goes, there is a mystery. Our modern perception is superficial. We are poorly penetrating into the depth and meaning of such proverbs.

 "Knowing the enemy, why not have the feast?" "Reluctantly go with your husband if there are no takers."

 Even two such excellent proverbs, but placed side by side, interfere with each other, and for this case also, there is a proverb: "One talks well, two talk gaudy." In fact, is it possible to read the second proverb without understanding the first? But even if we know first, we want to wait to switch to the theme of women's emancipation ...

 The alphabet is big, years pass fast, and time is short. So let's go further: "The drums are loud behind the mountains, and when they brought to us, they sound like baskets," "The goitre is full, but the eyes are hungry," "The stock will not damage the sack," "The serpent dies, but it grabs the potion," "Mother Superior takes the glass, and sisters take the bucket," "A frightened animal runs far away," "Throw bread back, it will come from ahead."

 ... I want to write them down all. But how to understand even this proverb about bread? What does that mean? Is the tighter the sack with food behind the back, the farther you can go?

 In the letter "F" an anonymous collector, a contemporary of Pushkin, recorded such sayings: "The fox will not muddy the tail," "For lazy, there is always a holiday," "People walk without making noise, but if we put the foot, always a bang," "Horse in the collar works as it can."

 Over the last proverb and the previous, a modern man thinks and thinks (the sayings above are not about peasant transport). "We sit at the party because of people, and people, because of us, do not sleep at night. "Not everyone immediately gets what is said here about the thieves, secret night robbers.

 The proverb "A young moon doesn't shine in one night" was created by a woman. It is about an inexperienced, very young husband or a lover, but it is also ambiguous, as the expression "Mother-night, everything went all right."

"Bear is guilty that it ate a cow, and the cow is wrong that it has gone into the woods," 

"Not everything grayish is the wolf," 

"They do not hit upon the age. They hit into the ribs," 

"Don't sing with the butt if there is no voice," 

"Neither this nor that; it was boiling and then got burnt,"

 "For a rotten product, a blind customer is needed," 

"There are no wizards for a sin," 

"The ardent horse needs not the stick, but the cart-load" (about a willful wife ),

 "The dog's foot doesn't know how to lie on the plate,"

 "One devil is not the devil at all," 

"I'll give you a bone: you can gnaw it, or you can throw it "(about a married daughter), 

"By the dog's hair, its name is given," 

"Hit the soot, stroke the soot, any way you get black," 

"The front one is a road for the last one" (in a pessimistic sense of the deceased, in the optimistic - about the newborn).

 Let's take at least a short respite. In this example, consider a proverb: "The spilled doesn't live fully." What broad associative capabilities of those several words! Of course, it tells nothing to a man who cannot think metaphorically. He will not recall this proverb at the sight of after-thunderstorm clouds, wounded in the war man, will not come to mind at the view of the ruined house.

 Let's see what is written next:

 "Old traditions, strong love," 

"The dog barks even at the bishop,"

 "Get off someone else's horse in the middle of the dirt,"

 "Your own sore is a big lump," 

"People with a lot in common are reluctant friends," 

"The blind leads the blind,"

 "A small tear in the youth becomes a great hole in the old age," "Something propped the old devil to run,"

 "Fight with the son, hide behind the stove, fight with the son-in-law, run away from the house,"

 "This is not a disaster if the money is gone,"

 "Bear it the head; you are pinned down in the bones," 

"Grieve for youth as about the county" (health), 

"A calf died, more bread in the barn" (i.e. blessing in disguise).

 No, alphabetical order, whatever you say, is not suitable, a simple enumeration of almost nothing when dealing with proverbs. But, of course, one such saying, "Grace can brag even in the court," may be the subject of a separate discussion. But we have no time for such talks...

 "Who has bile in the mouth, has also everything taste bitter," "Having stolen the Breviary hear, O Lord, my plight!", "The money has no eyes" (compared with the fact that "money does not smell")," "They drank at Fil's place, and yet Fil got beaten," and "He praises the foreign land, but doesn't put his foot over there."

 There are sayings for every occasion, for any contemporary phenomenon, and the moral maximalism of many proverbs does not age:

 "What you do not know how to praise, do not criticize," "What's terrible, that is honest," 

"A buffoon is not reliable in friendship," 

"An obvious sin creates a little guilt,"

 "A daring belongs to God, and the drunk staggers by the devil," 

"Do not love the agreeable; love the contrarian,"

 "The Truth is brighter than the sun,"

"The sleep is a brother of death,"

 "Sow with tears, reap with joy."

 It is seen that the collector wrote with a quill pen. Bold cross cancelled this inscription: "This notebook I can remember, I wrote back one year ago, in 1824, the month of January, the 5th of the eve of the Epiphany, 1825 of January, the 10th day".

 The missing signature reveals the author's modesty and reluctance to any vanity. But after that, more than three hundred excellent proverbs are written down. Here are some of them:

 "Near the king is near the honour, near the king is near death," "For a fugitive, there is one way, and for the pursuer - a lot," "The kingdom of the blind has the blind king,"

 "On the road, father and son are comrades," 

"Bends without care, and when breaks, it doesn't bother," "Where is the king, there and the horde."

 In each such line, the history shows, and other sayings sound for a modern mind almost cryptic:

 "A rope is in the beard, and cover-up is in the water," 

"It looks at water, but the fire burns,"

 "Head lice have seen the water, and people heard laundry being done,"

 "Good silence could stand for the answer," 

"The blind cries because he doesn't see a thing," 

"Two bows and both are strong," 

"Good news, if there is time to eat," 

"It feels good to beat someone who cries," 

"Nobles need beautiful service,"

 "The hand is killed by the hand, and the leg lifts the leg."

One can guess the proverb "The mare lies, and dough-trough runs" talks about the man and the woman. But what does this proverb mean: "The key is stronger than the castle"? Or: "Miller is rich with the noise"?

 It is not clear, and the expression "Between the two naked." "Without nursing, one will not gain the enemy," apparently meaning that not every kindness and friendship is good. (Maybe this is close to a proverb: "Do not do good, do not get scolded.") And what does this proverb mean: "The eagles fight - dashing guys get the feathers?" The best proverbs are ambiguous, the average ones are linear and two-dimensional at best, and the poor ones are boring and straightforward. Also, the perception of proverbs was multi-faceted. The more global the proverb's meaning is, the more it has local interpretations. Take a well-known proverb: "From a song cannot throw out a word." Treating proverbs superficially, we need to notice that the proverb is not about the song but something more meaningful and profound. For example, it is about human life, and not necessarily a happy and carefree life, like a bird's song. Then, the "word," which can not be thrown out of the song, can represent some inevitable events (marriage, conscription, etc.).

 It is hard to resist the temptation not to quote a few more proverbs from this amazing notebook:

 "The need changes the law,"

 "God will inflow on the quiet, but the playful inflict it on himself."

 "Only for adults couch potatoes are in honour."

 "If you rob the beggar, the money will smell of the beggar's bag."

 "An innocent soul, an unjust death,"

 "Do not be afraid of the plaintiff, but fear the lawyer."

 "He talks too much from the mind overflow."

 "Look back, check whether the town is on fire."

 "A weak prince gets licked by calves."

 "An old crow doesn't crow without reason."

 "A well-fed Sexton will share donations even with the priest."

 But there is no end to the proverbs... As we can see, the proverb, even hidden within the book or manuscript, does not die altogether. Moreover, the saying does not disclose their wealth to emotionally non-awakened and ignorant folklife readers.

 For some unknown reason, folklore experts sometimes put a proverb alongside a saying, a genre boundary that is generally not noticeable. The saying can be called any figurative expression. Phrases may have no meaning at all but only music and rhythmic appearance, amusing hearing with sound mix and exclamations ("Oh, Christmas trees, sticks in the dense forest," "Pullout of teeth," "Blood and milk," etc.). The saying was present everywhere. Teaching children how to count went, like: "Two, three - wipe your nose," "Nine, ten - water weight." "Eleven, twelve - on the street, people meddle."