* FAMILY

Generally, a loner, tramp, hobo, and people without families were considered punished by fate and God. Having a family and children was as necessary as an integral and natural as to work.
    The most significant moral authority together holds the family. This authority usually belongs to the traditional head of the family. However, the combination of leadership and moral authority is optional. Sometimes, such power was granted to the grandfather, one of the sons, or the "big one" (wife), while the formal rule has always belonged to the man, husband, father, and parent.
     Kindness, tolerance, and mutual forgiveness of wrongs develop in a good family into mutual love despite the diversity of the family. Curses, envy, and selfishness were not only considered a sin. They were personally disadvantageous for any family member. Love and harmony among family members initiated loving relationships beyond home limits. It is in vain to expect respect for others, neighbours in the village, the township or the county from a man who does not like and does not respect his own family.
 Even inter-ethnic friendship has its source of love for family and kinship. To expect the baby to be ready to love, for example, his uncle or aunt, is absurd; his love does not extend beyond the mother initially. The moral sphere expands with the physical expansion of the scope of knowledge.
The child gradually starts to pity the mother and father, sisters and brothers, grandmother and grandfather; finally, the family feeling becomes more vigorous than it can apply to aunts and uncles. Then, a direct blood relationship indirectly becomes the foundation for kinship because a quarrelsome, not respecting their daughter's old woman cannot be a good mother-in-law, as a coarse daughter will never become a good sister-in-law.
Compassion and love for relatives by blood are prerequisites, if not for love, then at least for deep respect for distant relatives. Just on this boundary line originate the springs of altruism flowing beyond the home. A contentious and quarrelsome disposition as a character's property is considered a punishment of fate and evokes pity for their carriers. Active response to such manifestations of nature did not bring the family any good. Giving in, forgetting the insult, answering well, or remaining silent was necessary.
The formal hierarchy in a traditional Russian family, as in the village and township, does not always coincide with morals, even though there was a desire for such. Therefore, the children respected and obeyed even a weak father; even a not-very-lucky husband enjoyed the wife's confidence.
    When the time came, the father would give away tacit, self-evident seniority to even a not-so-bright son. The strictness of family relationships was based on traditional moral principles, not the tyranny which excludes tenderness toward children and care for the elderly.
 For centuries, gender relations evolved in the peasant family, for example, between a wife and her husband and between sisters and brothers. Particularly evident are these relationships appear at work. The woman rolling onto the cart a colossal log or waving a hammer in the foundry was as absurd as a spinning yard blacksmith or milking a cowman.
    Widows usually picked up a hatchet only because of the great need, and the man (too often widowed) sat down with the pail under the cow.
All the executive power in the household held a "big one" - woman, wife and mother. She was in charge, as they say, with the keys to the whole house; she kept track of hay, straw, flour and other food. All the cattle and all domestic livestock, except horses, were under a "big one" supervision. Under her watchful control was all that was associated with family meals: fasting, baking bread and cakes, a festive table and the daily table, handling laundry and clothing repair, textile, and bathhouse.
 Of course, she needed to do more of this work. Children who barely learned to stroll, along with the game, began to do something useful. "Big-one" was not shy regarding rewards and punishments in the household. Over the years, the title "big-one" quietly passed management to the son's wife.
`The host, the head of home and family, was primarily a mediator in the relationship of the farmstead and the land society, the family and the powers that be. He was responsible for significant agricultural activity, plowing, sowing, construction, logging and firewood. He and his older sons carried all the physical burden of peasant labour on his shoulders. The grandfather (the owner's father) often had not only advisory but the casting vote in all these cases.
    Apropos, in a respectable family, any crucial matters were decided at the family councils and openly in the presence of children. Only distant relatives (or infirm paupers, living in the house until their death) wisely did not participate in these councils.
The Peasant family has evolved over the centuries; the people selected its most necessary "dimensions" and properties. Thus, it could be destroyed or provided to be inferior if the family needed to be more complete. The same happened with the sizeable superfluous number when, for example, two or three sons got married. In the latter case, the family becomes, to put it in a modern way, "unmanageable," so a married son, if he had brothers, sought to secede from his father's household. The parish would cut him a piece of land from a public fund, and the house was built with help from all the family. Daughters, growing up, too, left their father's house. Moreover, each was trying not to marry before her elder sister. "You do not thresh each other sheaf,» - said about the unwritten law of this priority.
     Children in the family are considered to be the subject of general worship. The unloved child was a rarity in the Russian peasant life. With age, people who have not experienced parental and family love as a child become miserable. Widowhood and orphanhood have been considered tremendous and irreparable sorrow since ancient times. Offending an orphan or widow meant to make one of the most grievous sins. Growing up and standing on their feet, orphans would become ordinary people, but the wounds of the orphanage did not heal in the hearts of each of them.

**INFANCY * *

Not that a woman would be ashamed of pregnancy, but she became restrained; many, many things for her at this time would become not so important. She would avoid unnecessary exposure to people. It was believed that the fewer people knew about it, the less gossip, and the less gossip, the better it was for mother and child.
    A word or look of an evil person can injure the soul, hence the expression "evil eye" and the belief in "curse."
Nevertheless, women are almost to the last day working in the field and taking care of the animals (still, it is unknown what is more useful during pregnancy: to sit for two months at home or work in the field). Relatives were to protect women from heavy work. Yet children are often born in the fields, under the sheaf, in the hay barn.
     Most women feeling the approach of labour were hiding in another house, behind the stove or oven, in the bathhouse, and sometimes in the barn and sent for the midwife. Men and children should not have been present at labour. The child's grandmother, either her mother-in-law or mother, has helped with delivery. She shamelessly slapped the baby on the tiny red ass, causing it to cry. The baby's screams mean it is alive. The navel was tied with a strong linen thread.
    Prayers, wishes, and various signs accompanied the birth of the baby. Often, if the bath was not ready, grandmother climbed into a large oven. With water warmed in the samovar, she washed the child in a hot oven underlaid by a rye straw. Then the baby is tightly swaddled, and only after all this is delivered to the maternal bosom and put into the cradle. The squeak of the cradle was accompanied by mothers' or grandmothers' lullabies and sometimes even grandfathers'.
Within weeks, a child begins to sing along to his nanny. Falling asleep after eating or crying, he hummed a ditty under the nose in rhythm to swinging and grandmother's song: Ao-ao-ao.
    Milk was poured into a ram's horn with a specially treated teat of cow's udder; the baby was swaddled in long linen tape. Swaddling comforted a child, did not let him mess around and "kick," and was not allowed to harm himself.
    A soft cradle, woven from pine sticks, hung on the elderberry handle to the wooden mast. The mast is a flexible rod attached to the ceiling log. Although the cradle was swinging quite strongly on a good mast, it gently moved up to seven feet from the floor. Such a swing from the birthday gave a special hardening: sailors of peasant origin rarely had sea sickness.
 The cradle served man the very first, the smallest of space; this scope soon expanded to the size of the hut, and suddenly, the world opened once to the baby in all its breadth and grandeur. The village street went far into the green summer or white winter field. The sky, houses, trees, people, animals, snow and grass, water, and the sun were never the same, and their combinations were replaced every hour, sometimes every minute. And how big is exciting, fantastic and varied joy in one, the essential being your own mother! How rich becomes the world with her brief appearance, as infinitely beautiful, calm and happy feels a tiny creature in such moments!
    Father rarely takes the child in his arms; he almost always appears harsh and causes fear. But how memorable is his fleeting, affectionate smile... And what is a grandmother who rocks the cradle, sings songs, spins yarn, who is omnipresent? Almost all the feelings: fear, joy, resentment, shame, tenderness - are already present in infancy and usually contact the grandmother, who "babysits," rocks the cradle, and takes care of the baby. She also teaches order, gives everyday skills, and introduces the joy of the game and that the world does not consist only of pleasure.
First, simple games, for example, "ladushki," or play with her fingers. After "spitting" the baby in the palm, the old woman began to mix "porridge" with her stiff finger:

 
"Magpie cooked porridge, called her children.
Come over, kids, to eat porridge.
To this one by the spoon - the old woman shaking her pinkie -
 to this one by the ladle - begin to "feed" the ring finger
 - To that one, the whole inch.
To this one - the whole pot!"

 
A personal appeal to each of the fingers caused the increase of interest of the child and the very narrator. When it reached the last finger (the thumb), the old woman was plucking at him, saying: "And thou, a finger-boy, did not go to the barn, did not thresh the peas. You get nothing!"
All of this quickly, with the speeding rate, results in a minor butting into the child's arm: "This is a spring (wrist), This is a spring (elbow), this is a spring ... (forearm), etc. And then there is fresh spring water!" Grandma was tickling a child under his arm, and a grandson or granddaughter came to the happy, ecstatic laughter.
Another rhyming game also has an original storyline devoid of adult guile.
"Ladushki, ladushki, where were you? - At grandma's place. What did you drink or eat? - Kasha cooked. Kasha is sweet, Grandma is kind, Grandpa is harsh.
Hit with the ladle into the forehead."
The end of the joke with a light comical clicking on the forehead caused, for some reason (especially after the frequent repetition), children's excitement, laughter and delight. Such game jokes were in dozens and instinctively made more complex by adults.
 As the child grew and developed, games for boys and girls became more and more apart and distinct. Rhymes, lullabies and other songs, jokes, and tongue-twisters were sprinkled with the baby's name, linked to the strengths and weaknesses of the emerging child character and specific conditions in the home, family, and nature.
The children slept in the cradle until they started walking. Then, however, a new baby came, and they were put to sleep "jack-wise" in the same cradle. In such cases, everything got complicated, especially for the babysitter and the mother ... It also could happen that an uncle was born after his nephew, claiming a place in the cradle. So then, before the separation of the young family, the house creaked two identical flying cradles.
Somewhere in the Russian North-West, in honour of the child's birth, especially the firstborn, the father or grandfather planted a tree: linden, mountain ash, usually birch. If the front yard had no more space, the tree was planted near the bathhouse or in the garden. This birch tree grew together with the child. It is known as Sasha's (or Tanya's) birch. Henceforth, a person and a tree care for each other, keeping the secret of reciprocity.

* CHILDHOOD *

Writers and philosophers call childhood the happiest time in human life. Carried away by this assertion, we might think facing an unhappy time in life, such as old age, is inevitable. However, people's views of life do not allow talking about it with such certainty. It would be a gross mistake to judge people's outlook on life from the mind's perspective, by which man is only happy in his childhood, that is, while he does not know about death.
 There was no opposition from one life period to another for a Russian peasant. Life for him was a whole thing. This unity is based not on permanency but on a constant and inevitable change. The boundary between childhood and infancy is unclear, as it is unclear when changing, for example, night and morning, spring and summer, the creek and the river. And yet, despite this uncertainty, they exist separately: the night and morning, the brook, and the river.
     It is best to think that childhood begins when a person can remember himself. But again, when does it really start? Smells, sounds, a play of sun rays recalled from infancy. (Some people seriously claim that they remember how they were born.)
By peasant's ways, you're not a baby anymore if you are weaned from the maternal breast. But some "babies" were breastfed up to the age of five. After that, breastfeeding was interrupted by the prospect of another child.
    Maybe weaning from the maternal breast is the first severe hardship in life. Is it not a tragedy for a little human being when he is full of expectation and confidence to mother, once clung to the nipple, smeared with mustard? The culmination of infancy was considered when the children learned to walk and get their first clothes and shoes. The ability to ignore unpleasant and horrific things (e.g., death) is probably the main feature of childhood. But this does not mean that the grievances of childhood are forgotten quickly. On the contrary, the child's soul absorbs equally greedy the evil and the good, the evil and the good impressions remembered equally vividly for life. But evil and sound do not change places in the peasant view of the world, unlike the yolks and whites in the egg; they are never mixed.
 The atmosphere of kindness around a child was considered mandatory. It did not mean pampering and indulging. The steady, kind attitude of the adult toward a child does not contradict accountability and strictness, which grew gradually. As mentioned, the degree of responsibility before society and the physical load at work and in games depended on age. They grew slowly, imperceptibly, but steadily, not only from year to year but maybe with each day. The didactic and forceful imposition of good habits caused bitterness, resistance, and opposition in the children's hearts. If the boy is being dragged by the hand into the fields, he will obey. But what's the use of such obedience? Nothing is forced to do; the child himself wants to work. Adults just wisely protect him from the crushing workload.
A typical child's desire for imitation immeasurably enriches education more than coercion. A personal example of the behaviour of adult life (grandparents, parents, siblings) stood in front of the child's inner eye. Is that why in good families rarely, very rarely come out bad people? The family has been instilled in childhood immunity to moral artifice.
 The world of childhood has expanded rapidly and every day. Then, a person was finally leaving the lived-in, familiar to the last twig crib, and the whole room became an everyday three-dimensional world.
    Behind the stove, under the stove, in the scullery, behind the cupboard, under the table and under the benches - all were studied, and everything was familiar. You are not allowed only into the trunks, cabinets and the shrine.
    In the summer, you are to new discoveries. The whole house becomes a sphere of habitual, maternal, and usual. The house (summer and winter), hay attic, upper floor, a tower (loft), county, barn, basement and all kinds of nooks and crannies. And after that, the whole street, and the entire village... Field, forest, river, and mill, where kids went with grandfather to grind flour ...
    The first night away from home, finally, the first visit to another village - all this is the first time. In childhood, as in other periods, no spring or fall was like the previous ones. After all, each year of a child's life meant something new. If you were allowed to simmer only in shallow water last year, swimming where deeper water is now possible. Thousands of such changes, innovations, and more complex skills, games, and customs had been experienced in his childhood; everyone would remember them and, of course, become familiar with them in their own children.
     Children's memories are always concrete and shaped, but everybody remembers something more, something less. So, for example, if the talk is about spring, almost all remember the feelings associated with spring tasks.
Take out of the internal window frames, and the house became brighter and fresher. The street is peering directly into the house. Set up the birdhouse with the father, grandfather or elder brother. Drain water (building dams, ditches, toy windmills). Lower the boat on the water. Grease boots with tar and dry them in the sun. Collect ants and distill the ant spirit. Undercut birch bark (for collecting and drinking birch sap). Forage the first mushrooms and crocuses. Harvest sorrel. The first game in the street. The first angling trip…
     In summer, children have faced so many things that some were lost with joy, did not know where to rush, and did not have time to experience all that fun to learn.
The play was alternated with easy work or merged with it, and valuable merged\ with pleasure quietly and firmly. A playful element in the work process, first tested in childhood, remained in many kinds of compulsory labour, if not for life, but for very long. All of these wigwams on the meadows, huts in the forest, fishing, campfires with baking potatoes, mushrooms, perch, horse riding - all of this transpassed to subsequent stages of life with a fair amount of play, child's fun
 A certain intangible edge in the transition from one state to another, sometimes the opposite, is the most exciting thing in childhood. Children are the most refined connoisseurs of such elusive- natural conditions. But even adults know that the most delicious potatoes are slightly crunched on the verge of raw and baked. Okroshka (Cold soup with kvas(a drink from fermented rye bread ) suddenly acquires a unique charm when something hot is dropped. 
    A child feels a strange pleasure, dropping snow into boiling water. A towel brought in from the cold into a warm house smells like something in particular; the blackness of the bath in the oven and the dazzling dawn in the window create an unusual atmosphere. Fractions of a second before jumping over the obstacle, a moment when the swing is moving upward but is about to begin the reverse movement, the moment before a hunter shoots, before falling into water or straw - all this creates a strange rapture of happiness and fullness of life. A sound of cracking and deflection of the thin autumn ice under the ice skates when all passes over again, and no one falls into the cold depths of the pool. 
A premonition of what the suddenly immobile float will just now disappear from the water's surface! This moment is the most beautiful in angling fish. And is not the most wonderful; is not the most thrilling love on the brink of childhood and youth in this brief and too elusive time?
In the autumn, harvest time is particularly pleasing to play hide and seek between sheaves and among the stacks, ride horses, make holes in large piles of straw, heat the barn stove, climb elderberry trees, chew turnips, munch peas ...
    And the first ice on the river opened hundreds of new experiences and opportunities for children. So the winter brings up kids; it's no less fun than the summer.
 After getting frozen on the river or in the snow, how nice it is to climb onto the stove close to the grandfather and fall asleep without hearing his story till the end! And cry if you missed something interesting. And happily calm down after the paternal or maternal affection. The temperature contrast appropriate for a child's body, repeated with the increase, has always been the foundation of physical conditioning; it was nothing for the five-year-old child to jump out of the hot bathhouse into the snow.
But children in good families were also protected from psychological contrasts.
    Tender care was not necessarily explicit, but it manifested itself everywhere. Here are some examples. When the old stove is removed ( to make a new one), someone will make a baby bird out of clay for a child; when slaughtering a sheep or calf, they will undoubtedly condition and blow the animal's bladder, put into it a few peas (a dried bladder turned into a children drum). If the father is carpentering, he necessarily chops small blocks for children. When the kholodetz (calves' foot jelly) is boiled, the boys get particular bones ("babki"), and the girls get ankles. The hunter gives a child a fluffy white rabbit's tail tied to a thread every time.
     When beer is brewed, the children trooped to gnaw stones. At the end of the summer, children have a particular pea lot in the garden. Returning from the woods, everyone tries to bring the kids a gift from a fox, hare or bear.
Giving a ride to a child on a sled or a cart was considered optional but desirable. They were woven, tiny baskets and buckets for children, and made small rakes, scythes, etc.
 In addition to general foods, children's sweets were distributed by age and merit. Some of such homemade, rather than purchased, treats were apples, bones (during cooking jelly), "yagodnitsa" (pressured blueberries or strawberries in milk), and foam from the baked ("roasted," as they say) milk. When oatmeal is cooked on the fire, a delicious crisp foam rolls on a stirring wooden wand and gives it to the children. Grilled potatoes, onions, turnips, carrots, berries, birch juice, peas - all that was available to children, as they say, by an unwritten law. But following the law was not always exciting.
Therefore, stealing vegetables and apples counted first among the classic childish mischiefs. Another grievous sin has been destroying birds' nests; those engaged were rare and incorrigible. Forbidden was thought to watch how people eat or drink tea in somebody's house (such children were called "vislyatyu" (snoopers)). However, giving someone else's child a treat from their table was considered normal.
A special place in the child's soul occupied pets: a horse, cow, calf, dog, cat, and rooster. All except the rooster had different names, characters, and good or bad qualities, in which children were dealt with superbly. Sometimes, adults are assigned to a child an individual animal, so to speak, to take personal care of.

* ADOLESCENCE *

What is the difference between childhood and adolescence? They differ in many things, but there is no clear division: all the changes are gradual, and other period features overlap and grow into each other.
 Conditionally, the boundary between childhood and adolescence can be defined as when a person shows a meaningful interest in the opposite sex. For example, one day, when the bathhouse is heated up, the mother, grandmother or sister prepares a boy to wash, and he suddenly begins to act up, hang back and throw out the "tricks." -"Well, now you're going to wash with your father!" - calmly said grandma.
     And, all at once, it falls into place. Sister, and sometimes the mother, did not know what was going on, why the brother or son began to mutter something under his nose and elbowing. The overall moral atmosphere did not require any special sex education. It spared fledgling adolescent self-esteem, encouraging modesty and chastity. Observing the lives of farm animals, people have gradually learned about basic physiology in their childhood.
  There was no need to explain how and why a child was born, what occupied the bride and groom on the wedding night, etc. This was not mentioned because everything that goes without saying and talking about it is unnecessary, indecent, and unacceptable.
    Such modesty from adolescence passes into youth, often maintained for a lifetime. It gave the stability of romantic feelings, which arranges not only sexual but also social relations. In adolescence comes a man's first and most often not the last infatuation, the first love with all its psychological bouquet. Before that, boys or girls were "rehearsing" their first real love by the previous enthusiasm for adult "objects" of the opposite sex. And if such a frivolous infatuation is ridiculed, make fun of both. The first true love is usually spared, and the family tries not to notice. Moreover, a teenager could keep his fiery secret not worse than an adult. The mystery is often revealed only in youth when the feeling is legalized by public opinion.
     The circumstances surrounding the first love explain all the behavioural features at this age. If previously, as kids, people were open, and now they become insulated, the frankness with family and friends has been replaced by silence and sometimes rudeness.
    Streetlife is also imperceptibly transformed. In childhood, boys and girls played the same games together. In adolescence, they often play separately and make fun of each other.
Building a boy's character largely depended on the teenager's games. Relationships in these games were particular. For adults, they sometimes seemed simply cruel.
    If the family was allowed leniency for a teenager, even tenderness, then a Spartan spirit reined in the peer relationship (especially in games). No allowances for age or physical handicaps existed.
Often, testing his physical endurance or being provoked, the teenager enters the game unprepared. As a result, he would "hounded" without pity the whole evening, and if he did not recoup, they moved the game to the next day. It is difficult to imagine the state of a loser, but even more, he would have suffered if peers felt pity for him and left the situation as it was. (This is only about sports and physical competitions, not intellectual endeavours.)
Adults reluctantly tried not to interfere. But nevertheless, it was absolutely fundamental: to break out, win, and win himself without assistance. One such victory while still in adolescence turns a boy into a man.
 Games for the girls did not have a similar focus; they differed by calm, lyrical playing relationship. Of course, a young person's life is allowed to have time to engage freely in games. But they have already been supplanted by more serious business, not excluding elements of the game.
    First, the teenager is increasingly drawn into the work process. Secondly, games are increasingly replaced by entertainment, peculiar to youth. Finally, adolescents of both sexes may have to mow the grass, harrow, pull, cart, hang flax, cut pine twigs, and tear bark.
 Of course, all this was done under the adults' invisible guidance and close supervision. Competition, or working, gaming and other rivalries are especially characteristic of youth. An adolescent sometimes had to hold back because he wanted to learn to plow before his peers, so all the girls, big and small, have seen it. He wants to cut wood more than a neighbour so that no one calls him a little boy or lazy. He wants to catch fish for mother's pies and gather a few berries to treat younger kids.
     Fantastic combination of a child's privileges and the responsibilities of adults observed in this period of life! But no matter how good childhood privileges are, youth were already ashamed of them, and if they used them, then with caution. So, he could still complain and beg his mother for a tasty treat at home, in the family, among his younger siblings. But if in the house turned out to be peers or just strangers, being "a little one" was shameful.
Consequently, for adolescents, an unwritten code of conduct existed. The boy at this age should have been able to (tried, anyway) make a handle, tie fishnets, harness a horse, cut pine twigs, tear bark, herd the cattle to graze, and fish. But, instead, he was ashamed to cry. He knew that fallen is not beaten, and two do not attack one, that, if made a bet, the word must be kept.
Girls at age twelve spun a the lot and well learned to weave, sew, helped to mow, knew how to knead bread and cakes, although they were not trusted with this, as the boys were not charged with such tasks as grinding an axe, killing a cock or a sheep, ride without adults to the mill.
Adolescents have the right to invite their relatives or friends of the same age; visitors could sit at a table like adults, but they could only drink non-alcoholic drinks. They imitated more senior guys who were "having fun" for real at youth gatherings. Time existed to exit the excess energy and meet the needs for self-indulgence and deliberate valour - the Yuletide. Public opinion was not exactly encouraging then, but it condescended to teenage pranks. Have fun for Christmas week, and then please behave like decent people all year. A year is a great deal. So, get used to the festive antics. There wasn't enough time. They are approaching a different time of life.
«An unbecoming girl laughs and talks with everybody, runs around the suspicious places and streets, baring breasts, sits down close to the strangers, elbows and not sitting quietly, but sings profane songs, and gets drunk. Then, gallops on tables and benches, let her be dragged to all corners like a bitch. For where there is no shame, there is no humility. Of which questioning said Lyukretsiya the truth: if a girl loses shame and honour, what else is left?" -" Youth honest Mirror" manuscript from the XVI century.

* OLD AGE *

Sometimes, there is no sharp boundary between the time of the blooming of all forces of man and old age. Smoothly, slowly, and quietly, a man approaches his old age. Time moves at different speeds in all seven periods of life. Years of maturity are most numerous, but they fly faster than years of childhood or old age. How can this be explained?
    "Life is not only for youth, but death is also not only by old age"—as the saying goes, but it is not entirely comprehensive to a modern man. So much can be said to decipher this proverb. For example, youth cannot be considered a period of monopoly with the possession of happiness and joy unless you see happiness as something fixed and unchanging throughout life…
     People believe the essence of happiness is different in different periods of life.
    "Sasha sat down on the sleigh, flying like an arrow fast, full of happiness, from the mountain of ice," wrote N.A. Nekrasov about childhood. But how can you experience the same happiness, sliding from the mountain, for example, at an age when Sasha or Masha says, "She will pass by and like the sun shines on! She will look at you, and you feel like a million rubles!"
And at the time of old age, not any peasant woman in her right mind would dream of going to the rye and seriously expect from the fate of ... "the whole piece of calico, a scarlet ribbon to braid, belt, white shirt, belted in the hayfield." All of that, she wishes no longer for herself but for her daughter. Her daughter's happiness is the happiness of her own.
    Does this mean the daughter's happiness is greater than the mother's? A question again needs to be corrected. You cannot compare the joy of youth with happiness in old age. It is quite different both in form and content. The same can be said about love or "pity." A child loves his mother and other relatives. A boy suddenly begins to feel sympathy toward a stranger of the other sex. Finally, the sympathy goes into either an incomparable feeling of love or an irresistible desire into something sublimely tragic. The complexity and drama of this moment are in a fierce conflict between the spiritual and physical, high romance and mundane reality. This contradiction is resolved with a long, almost ritualistic premarital period and the wedding ceremony.
After the wedding, love (compassion) is reborn naturally and becomes qualitatively different, less vulnerable and more thorough. From unfathomable celestial heights, the romantic feeling was tearing down, falling on hard ground, but the marriage bed, prudently stockpiled by life, softened the blow.     
    The birth of children has almost always completely dispelled a sublimely romantic haze. Compassion (love) between the spouses of each other became rougher and more profound. It was fastened to the overall responsibility for children and universal love for them.
 After the birth of children, the couple sometimes kept some of an adolescent's lofty attitude that was not condemned but not very much encouraged by public opinion. Families without children are no families. Life without children is no life. If one year after the wedding, in the house does not yet creak the crib and slatted swinging cradle, the house is considered unlucky. The wedding, in such circumstances, remembered with some bitterness and then tried to quickly forget about it. Childlessness is the greatest misfortune, entailing humiliation of women, fake relationships, rudeness of men, and adultery. Childlessness upsets life harmony and throws off the rhythm. One unnatural causes another, and the house gradually becomes a scourge.
     Nevertheless, childless families are only sometimes destroyed. On the contrary, spouses honouring the sanctity of marriage either adopting children (orphans or from large distant relatives) or bravely bearing "the cross," getting used to the grave and single lobe.
 In a typical peasant family, all children were born primarily in the first ten or fifteen years of married life. "Pogodki" were called children to be taken with a year difference. Thus, even in a large family with ten or twelve children when the last was born, the eldest has yet to emerge from adolescence. This was important because pregnancy, when an adult child is still at home, was not very appropriate. And while no one directly blamed parents for the birth of a sudden "late child," spouses with the maturation of their first child and getting older, the rest of the children were not in such a hurry to enjoy the marriage bed ... They both have gradually returned to youthful chastity. Old age marked not only that.
Even the songs sung at adulthood and maturity were replaced by other, more appropriate meanings and forms. If, during a visit, joining the ring, the mother of an adult son sings about "boyfriend" or "betrayal," no one will take it seriously. Human behaviour is changing with the maturation of children, but physical aging is still very far away. Even a mature woman gets a girl's cheeks to blush during the holiday feast, but she cannot dance the old way when looking at her daughter-bride. Father, who just turned forty, still wants to compete or play dice seriously, but he never will because his sons should do it for real.
Under cover of futility, to defend them by a semblance of a joke, and in old age, he can still go to games, go fish perch, and buy his wife fairground candy. But marital status has moved you to the other cases and brings different, diverse entertainment. Love (compassion) for the wife or husband loses something appropriate or needed in their youth but becomes something new and unexpected for both spouses: tenderness, affection, and fear of losing each other. All this is carefully clapping for external roughness and feigned indifference. The couple even slightly criticized each other, and outsiders sometimes need to understand the essence of their genuine relationship.
Only the most talkative and straightforward laid out in conversations all the ins and outs of the family. They often ratted their "half," but it was generally innocuous. Self-irony and a joke rescued people this age, protecting their family affairs from unwary influences. "We sleep together, but money keeps separate" - with a severe look told a man about his relationship with his wife. Of course, everything is just the opposite.

**SILVER AND GOLD OF CHILDHOOD**

All children love to play. A child without this passion is hardly a healthy child.
  But the situation is: a talent for the game as a talent in youth for love is given not to everybody, but everybody wants to play. Of course, children with disabilities or too shy could not participate in just any game; in this case, the people have created dozens of accessible games, in which a par with the abled children could play disabled children.
 Here is one of such simple old games. After being asked grandmother's handkerchief, one of the children, dressed up as an old woman, takes a stick and, hunched over, stomping on the road. All run for the "old lady," vying to ask: -" The old, old lady, where you are going? - To the monastery. - Take me with you. "Old lady" allows under delicate condition. All ceremoniously go to the monastery, but the pilgrims begin to make embarrassing sounds with the mouth, and "old woman" suddenly discovers extraordinary agility. everybody shrieking with laughter flee from "her" in different directions. For the sake of the happy moment another "old lady" dresses up, the game is repeated.
 Another game is "The Raven." A kid sits and digs a hole. In the pit are pebbles. Players go around him saying: "Cocoon-Kokonaevich, Raven-Ravenovich, long nose. Help you, God! "The Raven" is silent. As if not, it doesn't hear. - What, Raven, you are doing? - Shouted into his ear. - "Dig a hole" - responds at last "the Raven." - What to use for the dig? - Pebbles can be put in it. - What pebbles are for? - And your children to hit with them. With what my kids vexed you? - They ruined onions and potatoes in the garden… - How high there was the fence? Raven-Ravenovich throws up a handful of pebbles. All run away and scream: "Too high, high, we cannot jump it over!"
The ancient game of "The Duck" is also very simple, but young children are very fond of it, such as the Raven-Ravenovich game. A kid playing the Duck walks in a circle under a strange, at first glance, not a children song: "Duck Uti-Uti, you have nowhere to go, if I had a noose, I would have hanged myself, if I had a sharp knife, then cut myself, if there were a deep lake - drowned ..."
The Duck needs to break out of the circle and catch a new Duck. The game's beauty is probably connected with the psychological contrast of the sad beginning and a cheerful conclusion.
There was a game of "The sieve" when children who barely learned to walk would stand in single file, and one asks from the front a "sieve" to sift the flour and is told: "Go take it back." If the last one has time to run from the rear to the front, then you have to ask again "the sieve."
In the "Monk" game played by older children, the one who would be chased first had to guess colours - for example, "white" or "black"? If you guess right, then you are carried on the hands. You have to throw back the head and do whatever not to laugh. "Hello?" - "I cannot." - Laugh. - "I cannot." If you laugh, then you stay a monk for a second term.
Children played in the "The Haves." game in the long winter evenings. The driver was blindfolded, led up to the post, saying: - Where are you standing? - At the post. - What are you drinking? - Tea and berries. - Catch us in two years! "
The "blind" tried to catch, and if endangering him to stumble on the jamb or sharp angle, it was shouted to him: "Fire!" So the first kid who was caught became the "blind."
From a very early age, the girls loved to play the bones game at any time of year. The joint bones left from the lamb jelly were accumulated stored in individual birch boxes; on occasion, they were even painted. The game was not competitive, though very long, multi-stepped, and it helped to develop dexterity and reaction. For example, most nimble kept three or four bone ankles in the air simultaneously tossed new and had time to catch.
 In the spring, dressed warmly, but in what one can find, small children hold a game "hopscotch," usually in a sunny place.
 Two or three planks put on a rock instantly transformed into a house, thawed in the garden shards and fragments transformed into expensive dishes. Then, imitating adults, five-six-year-old girls went from a cell to a cell and made visits.
For boys of the same age, fathers or grandfathers always made "coaches" - genuine carts on four wheels. The wheels even were greased with tar, not to creak. Using the "coaches," children were taken "hay," "wood," "went to the wedding," just given rides to each other, in turn, transformed into the horses. The "coach" accompanies all the fast-passing childhood of boys, until the games and fun of teenagers.
With age, the games usually get more complex and increase physical demands.
 The game team was formed mainly from peers. So you can easily imagine how juniors looked at them. Envy, admiration, impatience has always shone in their eyes. Eventually, his mute request accepted a younger player into the game. But now, do not expect any handicap!
 There was a game called «the Fly." Each player had a bat. On a flat, reasonably extensive meadow was hammered into the ground a very flexible fir stake. If you put a wooden "the fly" on top of the stake and strike at its base, "the fly" will fly quite far. The game began with the tumbling of bats. One had to throw the bat so that it tumbled, "strode" as far as possible. Force was sometimes just a hindrance. Whose bat provided the closest was obliged to lead, run and pick up "the fly." The players have driven down small sticks along one line at a distance of four to five meters from the stake.
 Then, trying to hit the stake, they threw the bat one by one. If the "fly" flew faraway, the player was to run to get his bat and return to defend the sticks. If "the fly" flew close by or he did not hit the stake at all, then the player had to wait for the next player's turn. If the "fly" fell from the stake in a specially-defined circle, the player had to be the driver himself. Good hits kept the driver in the game by hours until exhaustion. But now everybody hit, and everybody failed. Then the last has to try. After his stroke, all run to get their bats. The chased, if "the fly" remained on the stake, could capture any stick. While the "the fly" flies, one had run to catch it and put on any "free" post. The owner of the post has a right to knock it off. From where the "fly" landed, he hits, and if he misses, he will be chased.
The game is entirely uncompromising; it does not allow handicaps because of the age, not allowing cheating, not sparing the weak or incompetent. To cry or ask permission to quit was considered the most unnatural, the most shameful. One had to stand up whatever it takes and win. Sometimes, the game shifted to the next day. What kind of night spent a boy, who lost, is difficult to imagine.
Wrestling and boxing are the oldest sports games; they held once an important place in Russian life. It is difficult to talk now about the exact rules of these games. But the fact that there were some stringent rules is beyond doubt. Fights took place on the meadow, in free time, mostly during holidays; fighters were matched on the same physical level. The game was loved by all ages, from early childhood. Young men loved to fight too, but more and more with age, it was a playful attitude to the entertainment. The fistfights apparently could initiate a massive thrill; they attracted men without regard for age or character.
During the twenties and thirties of the XX centuries, Fights still had faint signs of the ancient sport. Usually, they began with the children, for the wronged weak stood up the stronger, for them, in turn, entered even more powerful until the adults were drawn into the brawl. But when the excitement reached a dangerous point, there appeared strong and, at the same time, good-natured and fair people who separated the fighters.
Another echo of the ancient rules of fistfights was that no one had the right to use a stick or stone; it was mandatory to use only their own fists. Ignoring this rule finalized the complete degeneration of the fights. But even with the wild skirmishes with stakes, stones, weight-bells, iron sticks, even in these conditions for a long time, there was a custom to make peace. Intermediaries were elected, two relatives or named brothers of the two warring sides. The drinks were provided, and people drank to the truce, often it was new fraternization; yesterday's rivals also became friends and brothers. The ritual of fraternization consisted of a triple kiss in front of witnesses.
 Games of men, children and adolescents were drastically different for girls and women. Although the general characteristics (interest, creativity, etc.) would remain, finding a more striking example of folk tradition contrast is hard. However, the available features (curiosity, creativity, etc.) would remain. Softness, condescension, lack of excitement and harshness are typical for girls' games. Interestingly, boys, especially at an early age, wanted to play in the girls' games, such as "bones" or "cells." However, even adults, not to mention peers, regarded such a request with an ironic smile, sometimes caustically altogether.
 Tomboys have not also been respected, eager to play boyish games. This girl was called not a very honourable name "suparen" - under-boy. This does not mean that boys and girls did not play together. There were a dozen or so popular games attended by children of both sexes.
An example is the game «gal» - complicated, in several stages, the game of hide and seek, playing with a softball. Imagine a warm, windless summer evening when you did your duties, but the cattle had not yet arrived. Several key players are already hanging around on a broad street. What kind of heart did not tremble and enthusiastically freeze when you heard a call from the street? One after another, who at a gallop, who sideways, was slipping away together.
A hubbub stops after two "queens" are chosen, they immediately establish the order and start the game. The crowd is divided into pairs; they are selected not by age but by physical and psychological matching. But there are no two people, ideally identical by wit, dexterity and endurance. Therefore, each "queen» tries to guess when selecting the best. Pairs of opponents diverge away, whispering, coming up with a nickname or feature. Couples in turns approach the team leaders, first to the one, then to another, asking: "Do you take "spring" or "fall? White or black? Perch or roach? Sour or sweet"?
Even selecting nicknames begins work of imagination, fantasy, and sense of humour, if it is established by nature in a player. Splitting this way into two identical teams, children begin the game.
  "Lapta" is the best example of a popular game… The game of softball allowed the participation of all children, not excluding too shy, orphans, poor, visitors. Popular games for children of both sexes are especially characteristic of the holidays because at other times, children, like adults, could not get together because of fieldwork and school.
Returning to the girls' games, I must say about their particular lyrical property, sparing physical capabilities and promoting femininity. If a boy's game developed strength and agility, girls' games almost entirely ignored such demands. Softness and pliability were simply required. Imitation of adults, as always, played a crucial, albeit perfunctory role.
 Here's a picture of the memories from Anfisa Ivanovna. Two girls of four to five years in the tiny boots, in the sarafan with festive handkerchiefs in their hands, dance in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, on the meadow around the house. And they sing with complete seriousness about themselves: "Our little white veils burnt in the fire, Nastenka's daddy died, Manyushka's daddy went the war." What to do for an adult: cry or laugh for such a sight? You don't know. The girls arranged imaginative field works, weddings, holidays, visits. "the line" was also their favourite game, especially in early spring. A game of jumping on a flexible board placed on a log was mainly for the girls, but this game had already dominated a sports element. "Jumping" wasn't overlooked by grown-up girls, but only on holidays.
 Musical ornamentation, songs and tong-twisters for girls morphed into folk dance elements. Youth festivals, dance, all the fun of young adults, respectively, do not lose the main properties of child play. Amusements were not excluded by labour but instead were included by it. Of course, not everybody turned out well, but ideally, the national imagination always felt this way. That one who was talented in the children's game was talented in the dance and at work. Therefore, the division in the traditional aesthetics for labour, simple way of life and folklore is conditional.
"A young man stepped three times, leaned forward, put his hand on the knee briskly, with another hand-picked up the bone. He took the aim ... go away, curious people! Move away: do not interfere with the dashing Russian game." Alexander. Pushkin

** LONG GOODBYE **

 Childhood in the countryside is still permeated and coloured with diverse pure child's pleasures. Fun is combined with useful things, though...
 Fishing, for example, or working with the horses - classic examples of this unity. However, there were dozens of other cases where children's games turned into labour or when labour quietly, without much vanity, penetrated into the children's play.
     To set up brooks and streams in early spring was the privilege of children, an occupation that is not comparable in its pleasure. Doing this, the child was not only physically hardened, not only acquired the courage to play with water, but he also brought benefits, which, perhaps, he did not even know.
     Similarly, the boy takes the cattle out to the pasture, but he also guards livestock against wolves and bears. This is something different in comparison with the boring grazing. Horseback riding and riding in a cart were for them in the beginning just riding, not transportation of hay, sheaves, manure or firewood.
 The adults encouraged such fun in every way quietly, but the adolescents have had a lot of neutral concerning the useful work games. Father and mother, older brothers and sisters, all the adults seemed not to notice the useless games, sometimes even prompted them to children, but not seriously, but just in passing. So adolescents and children learn from each other such games from generation to generation.
 Among the dozens of such entertainments was making toy windmills and watermills. To make a first simple windmill and install it on a garden fence would help an elder brother, grandfather or father. But after that, you did not want someone to help you ... So the spinner was soon replaced by a model of a genuine stamp mill with the pestles. And the stamp mill is close to the dam at the spring creek with the filler wheel mill.
 This creek has yet to make a noise, but another stream is already flowing in the forest: sweet birch juice fills a small bucket in half a day.
 There, in a broad gully showed up sour stalks of sorrel, and then arrived sweet, crunchy tubes of angelica. However, they can be eaten only when fresh, soft and juicy.
 By mowing time, they become thick and hard. If you cut the biggest lower part of the reed, leaving one end hollow, pierce it with a pine needle, twist on a willow stick grandmother's tow, you get a water intake device. After being sucked into the reed water, the boy sneaks near girls playing "scotch."
 A thin, steady trickle of water goes eight to ten meters; the girl gazed in amazement at the blue, utterly cloudless sky. Where is the rain? The same reed pipe with the closed-end, if you make a longitudinal slit with a knife and give it a sharp blow, turns into a stunning tube.
 In late summer, when ash berries became ripe, from the reed pipe was made a pneumatic device. Berries from that gun silently flew meters for twenty or thirty. Sitting in an ambush somewhere in the grass or on a tree, you can be successfully firing at roosters, cats, peers, but... Let us stop here for a moment. Remember where we started and how far we went. From a short distance from that gun, you could easily knock out the eyes, and not only to just a chicken…
 The line between good and evil is barely perceptible to the child's soul. The child crosses it with a pure heart, making it overstep (crime) into the habit. The most innocent game can slyly and silently at any time go into a prank, a prank - into self-indulgence, but a step from mischief to disorderly conduct is within reach ... Therefore, elders have always nipped in the bud pranks by nurturing and maintaining clear boundaries in children's amusements, and games - the tradition and the sanctity of rules. Yet in many places, the wire guns (it can smash a button), as well as the rubber slingshot (a pebble pierced the glass in the window), eventually replaced the innocuous reed water guns, willow whistles and carved bats. We must thank the industrialization that provided village boys with steel wire and rubber bands.
 After the First World War, in the villages also appeared adult pranksters. Of course, such a "naughty boy" did not throw stones at the windows of public buildings. But, to be safe, he deftly induced the boys to do that. Still, the fun of village children and adolescents has fully preserved their traditions down to the Second World War. The diversity and vitality of games can be explained by the centuries-old selection, the complexity and diversity of labour, the natural and living conditions. Literally, everything that comes in handy could be used…
 A grandmother had no difficulty removing the headscarf, folding it diagonally and making a "rabbit" when rag dolls "sleep" and it is not time to wake them. Next, a woman reaper made a straw doll from a handful of straw (probably from here went and "straw widow"). Straight rye stalks bent in two, tied up the "waist," and spreading its dress at the bottom, the straw doll was put on the table. If you lightly tap the countertop with the fist, the doll starts to dance.
 Now imagine a child delight at the sight of a few straw puppets dancing on the table from skillful taps on a wide tabletop! Dolls then converge, then diverge, then touch each other. Finally, they will pass each other. The goal was that they danced around each other, rather than dance away from each other and not fall off the table...
 A wood splinter was used during the winter evenings for many tricks. To make a "hummer" toy was enough to have a piece of wood shingle and a thick linen thread. The children also were making "fidget spinner," which can spin seemed for an eternity. Common were confidence games, jokes, tricks with a loop and a pair of scissors or with a circle or ring. Finally, depleted fantasy put everybody to sleep, but the next day, it always recalled something new.
 For example, "chicken" is the game when into the sleeves of an old coat or jacket were put one hand and one leg, and the coat was buttoned on the back. Such "chicken" was put "on the feet," and nothing is more ridiculous was how it set foot and fell.
 In spring in the forest and in summer during haymaking, adolescents cut down the stilts, first short and then longer. Walking on the stilts across the stinging nettles and water develops strength and endurance.
 Very funny looks a rustic leapfrog game, quite unlike this game in the city. Players gathered in the street, and a good-natured volunteer took unpleasant duties. He would sit in the center of the meadow. The players piled up all their hats on his head over his own hat. Sometimes it got pretty high; you had to sit motionless for the whole tower not to fall. Then the most robust and tall player was supposed to run and jump over. The number of dropped caps was memorized. The last to jump was the smallest player, and by this time, on the head of the sitter, could be no hats left... The losers got down on all fours. The sitter was taken by the hands and feet of four guys. Then they hard slap his butt into the back of the guy who was standing on all fours. Strikes number was made as several dropped hats. Hits were completely painless and harmless, but there has been a lot of laughing. If you hit someone standing on all fours, he moved too far ahead. The funny thing was when he set out at his former place, he looked around, wanting to know what was happening behind. Before the hit, he would change his facial expression in apprehension.
 A classic Russian summer men's game was praised by Pushkin's "bones" game." Children, adolescents and young men were equally fond of it, and in his spare time, married men were not averse to play. "The bones" were joint bones of sheep and cattle, left after cooking jelly. They were accumulated, sold and bought, they also passed on as an inheritance to the younger boys. Pushkin's "sharp" bone is nothing else as a big bull joint bone. In it was drilled a hole and filled with lead. Later, the bone was replaced by a stone, and then with iron tiles, known as "bat." On the line was set one "bone," if there are not many players, then the pair. There are several types of games. Still, for all, it was a combination of a good eye, agility and endurance. The first man who threw the "bat" the farthest was chosen to start, and from the place where it landed. In some games "bones" were put not in the line but in a column by two.
 The stake in a row would be put either against the wall or in the open. In the latter case, the second series of hits carried out from the other side. In the three-class parish schools, children memorized a poem: "On the lawn near the road a lot of kids, "bones," like in a field army lined up in a row. Oh, Paul is always lucky, he again is first. And what a rich and long today is, brothers, stake.". Continuation and the author of the poem Anfisa Ivanovna did not remember. Adult players in the "bones" game attracted a large crowd of fans on holidays - girls, family people, guests ...
The set of "bones" could rival just one game: the skittles or "gorodki." It is also a beautiful game, the only match preserved to our days and legitimized in the official list of modern sports.
 Games and popular entertainment are difficult to define or separate into something, although they existed independently, separately, and clearly delineated. This is the central paradox of traditional aesthetics. What is the rural swing? Can you describe it; identify what the main thing in them is? You can, of course, but this description is again empty and uninteresting if the reader does not know the spring in the country, the swimming week, and a village holiday.
 By the way, the swing (the circular and simple pendulum) has been widespread for a long time in the North. Around those swings in the holiday bustle, in a cheerful forgetfulness, some simple games, filled with musical content, would become rhythmic, filled with melodies and acquired traits of round dance. A child is no longer a child but a teenager if he plays in the ritual dance with a teenager of the opposite sex. This game is no longer a game but is something else. A lengthy separation from play has a typical person ... Only the broken, encrusted, aged before his time, ill or completely lost the God's spark man loses the need for play, joke, and fun.