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).