WINTER

 "Winter! A triumphant farmer tries the path in the snow on the wood-sled..."
 Pushkin did not say anything for nothing, for rhyme or no reason. Anyone who knows the village life immediately understands why the farmer is triumphant, sensing the snow and a horse dragging a trot. Some children delight in the peasant making a path in the snow, but in his horse is something good-natured, cunning, and connected with the triumphant peasant. Where is he heading, and why? It is not necessary to be aware of every minute. Maybe for firewood...
   Recall too the poem of Nekrasov: "And marching importantly, in calm staid, a horse by the bridle is led a little peasant ..." Here the poet explained to us all, to the point, what kind of mittens he wears, but the excellent plot details compensate extravagance. Perhaps a Pushkin farmer went for hay. And probably for spruce needles, which will be cut down for the litter to cattle, saving straw. The smell of snow, the unusual condition of the feet (cold, rugged boots or soft, warm felt boots - there's a difference?), a new way to ride without cart shaking and creaking, and hundreds of other more minor further details - all this makes the rider is triumphant.
   Winter labour is unlike summer one; you don't have to rush. Raspberries, as they say, will not fall off. Weather doesn't speed. Mosquitoes, ticks, mosquitoes, and horseflies don't bug you. You don't sweat… Frost invigorates, and the body is asking for some action. And action is where to display, especially in the forest.
    Women get together in an old house or barn to scutch flax. The job is dusty and unpleasant, but working together is more cheerful. They sing, tell stories, and gossip a bit. The men transport hay, cut wood and take out timber. The day is short; it only takes a round trip once, and darkness falls. Unharness the horse. Such exercise is not a burden for a horse and man but fun. Both have rest. Gain strength for a new spring.
    In winter, if wood and hay are taken care of, all other work is around the cattle and the house. Many do carpentry and tinkering, try out other crafts, and go fishing and hunting. As at any other time, there are a lot of holidays. And if you overstay in different villages with relatives, friends, or anyone else, you have to invite people reciprocally. Soak rye for malt and brew beer.
    Our winter is long, so there are a lot of things you can do. Not even past the Shrovetide, a grandmother checks a hen: is there an egg by chance? Cows fawn. Women are prepared to arrange weaving looms to weave canvases. Most players in "knuckle-bones" clean up a barn, so on the first day, which falls warm, put the game. Once again, spring from a distance creeps into the village, whistling blue ice crust in the wind. Became blue the boundless sky- another year had passed. It passed unnoticed.
    New kids are born in the village, and some of the old are tidied by Mother Earth. Took them away… But life goes on, as the sun goes its course every day. It has made its great circle in the sky, and peasant life, too, has made its annual cycle. Annual cycles roll year after year, but nothing is repeated in human life. Plowman starts the furrow every spring with excitement, as if for the first time. A reaper cuts the first of a handful of rye each time with excitement. Almost all work tasks for the rural resident are intertwined with nature, and nature is full of rhythm: one follows another, and all are connected inextricably. A man has always felt their unity with nature. So, in alliance with it, he created himself and the high beauty of his soul, as reflected in the work culture.

AUTUMN

Spring goes into summer covertly; summer appears as if by accident and, for a long time, does not lose many properties of spring. Also, the entire early autumn permeated with the summer mood. Yet, there is something new from the upcoming season at any time of day. Nature seemed to establish a reliable and quiet force of tradition.
 Rhythm shows in repetition, in the annual change of one thing by another, but these repetitions are not monotonous. On the contrary, these repetitions are always different because a maturing man continuously changes. The very novelty here is rhythmic. The symmetry and harmonious world order could be explained by the rhythm. Where there is novelty and harmony, beauty is inevitable, which cannot appear from nothing without tradition and selection.
So, thanks to harmony, rhythm, and a people's peculiar relation to rural labour, it has acquired its aesthetics as something inseparable from other parts of life.
Using the skills polished over centuries, a physically weak man who knows how to mow cuts more hay in a day than a not-very-bright, strong man. But if the age-old skills add to his talent, the mower is not just a mower; he has a personality, a creator. To work beautifully is not only easier but more enjoyable. Talent and work are inseparable. The labour burden is insurmountable for incompetent workers; it quickly gives an aversion to work. That is why slowness, similar in appearance to usual laziness, and good luck of the talented person sometimes cause envy and misunderstanding of mediocre people who spare neither strength nor time.
True beauty and usefulness are also interrelated: those who can mow more beautifully, just as someone who knows how to do carpentry beautifully, build bigger and better, and do not pursue the stretched dollar.
As a natural phenomenon, the work of a peasant is not all sharply divided by the seasons. For some (primarily weather-related) reasons, they are not finished in the summer; some tasks are gradually completed in the autumn. Still, if not finished in the autumn, they are completed in the winter. Yet, it is better to thresh just after the harvesting, not to procreate extra mice and to allow time, for example, for carpentry.
It is best to scutch flax right away and spread it out quickly so it can lie under the autumn dews and be removed in time before the first snow. In the fall, during the dry Indian summer, it is necessary to harvest everything from the field, including straw, so as not to regret it when the rains begin.
When work in the fields has been completed, it is not a sin to go to the woods and pick mushrooms. Berries are not the last thing in peasant life, particularly for children and women. (The first strawberries are for the children, especially the youngest ones.) The bigger the harvest of berries, the higher the age children can enjoy.
Bilberries are also available in the summer. This berry is harvested for real; it is, like all others, not only medicinal but also delicious. Raspberry, currant, and cloudberry are collected along the way with the grain harvesting. People travel on horseback from many villages to pick up blueberries and cranberries.
 Rural inhabitants must dig potatoes during the dry season, put them in the cellar, root them up, and cut onion and garlic. Then, during long rains, turnips and swedes are pulled; swedes appeared in our region in the late nineteenth century. (It was nicknamed "Holland a" because of its foreign origin.) Swede is pulled out of the ground and is cleaned of roots with the knife, piled in a heap, then brought under the roof and cut-off tops. The tops are hung on a perch in the autumn, and winter is an excellent dressing for cow mash. The cabbage whites in the beds until the frosts, but it is finally harvested. To cut out, peel and chop thinly or by "dice," i.e., halved cabbage heads, is not challenging and sometimes very joyful work; cabbage squeaks in the hands like just brand new rubber galoshes. Everybody munches on cabbage white cores.
In the fall, in the early morning, the knocking of threshing flails and smells of smoke are heard far around. The stacks get enclosed. Now, the cattle are grazing in the fields, and the shepherd has received his pay from the village and will rest. He is free until the new spring.
Many men do autumn plowing. Women raise flax and put it on the end so it gets dry, but it still needs to be linen but flax hay. The flax is fastened with straw plaits in large bales and moved under the roof.
Once the first frost hits, people reduce the cattle and slaughter extra sheep and calves so as not to waste hay. In the winter, they will be left only animals for breeding. Heads of young cocks are chopped. Headless birds shy away to the side, sprinkled with blood on the porch or firewood; some even take off and are relatively high. Not everyone can tolerate such a spectacle. Some men call a neighbour to slaughter a sheep. Such a man's weakness is forgivable; people pretend they don't notice it. Because of the blood of animals of the same colour as the man...
During the autumn holiday, young people already walk in the pitch dark, but without the presence of mosquitoes—torturers.

PART ONE "YEAR ROUND" SPRING

Spring

Long ago, everything in Russia began in the spring. Even the New Year. The Christian church calendar peacefully co-existed with omens of the Pagan calendar; nearly every day had its own proverb:

 March 6 - "Saint Timothy sends strong wind."

 March 12 - "Saint Prokop stuck in the snow."

 March 13 - "Saint Vasily when icicles start to drip."

 March 14 - "Saint Evdokia wets the skirt."

 They said if Saint Evdokia gave the chicken water to drink, Saint Nicolas (May 22) would feed the cow. Omens born from many centuries of contact with nature are always well defined and devoid of mysticism. For example, save time sowing the peas if the swallows have arrived.

 There are unclear boundaries between the four seasons in the North of Russia. But there is such a difference between winter and summer here.

 The Spring took place in the year between the first drops of icicles and the first thunder.

 March 17 - "Saint Gerasim – who welcomes the rooks."

 March 30 - "Saint Alexis sends water from the hills."

 April 4 – "Saint Vasily - the Sunshine.

 April 9 - "Saint Matryona sets ice-crust,"

 April 14 - "Saint Mary - lights up snow, plays ravines,"

 April 28 - "Saint Martin-fox-runner",

 April 29 - "Saint Irina crashes the river-banks."

 In peasant labour, there were no breaks after the Shrovetide. One thing follows from another, only manage to turn around. That may be why they say all year round. Yet the spring brings people its own unique joys. In the field, in the woods, on the threshing floor, in the house, in the stables - everywhere there is every day something new, inherent only to spring alone and forgotten during the year. And how nice to meet good old acquaintances! Here, the lightest thawed water came to the bathhouse – it was time to pull out the wooden boat and warm up the smelling thick resin. At the same time, you waterproof the leather boots with the resin and put away the heavy felt boots you were tired of wearing during the winter. Just flew in a first rook and then, from day to day awaited the arrival of the starlings. You cannot get away with that; you have to put up the birdhouses - a joy for children. And then suddenly thaws out a mitten lost in the garden during winter... And you would remember a December winter road taken to get logs for a new bathhouse.

 By the way, take your time thinking about what happened. It happened, but now it has passed. While the road is still OK, it is necessary to remove the remaining hay from the woods and bring in the pine needles as the litter for cattle and firewood; along the path, collect traps on the skis by large and small trails.

 And the horse, snorting, trots from the village in the morning. There are half a dozen vertices on a cart so as not to drag them separately later. (Any day now, pike spawning can start; you need to make holes in the lake and put in traps.) There is a cart with hay or fir needles back in the village. While the horse rests and crunches green hay until the sun does not melt the blue crust, you have to go into the thicket to look out and mark the trees for cutting to make sap. Also, you need to get a pine resin, which a grandmother asked for to make a potion.

 The wife hinted that bringing home pine twigs for the broom would be nice. A helpful thing indeed. How long would it take? A task that takes a minute, but it feels good to recall; also, you can build the wigwam on the way: the grouses just started to court... Another chore is to chop birch twigs for the threshing floor brooms. Only later, when the horse trots toward the house and the tugs start making crackling sounds, you can nap on a cart or sing a song about Ivan-steward...

 In the spring, women bleach canvas on the ice crust. The food and seed potatoes are pulled out of the cellars and sorted out; at the same time, kids are treated to juicy rutabagas and carrots, just like from the garden bed.

 Every fur coat and clothing is aired, hanging in the sun's heat because the moth fears the sun. The girls continued to spin flax at the evening gatherings, and the men and boys focused on carpentry. The household equipment—harnesses, carts, and harrows—was being repaired. People weaved ropes and pushed down snow from the roofs.

 Thousands of eternal omens are set in motion, and people wonder what kind of spring will be and what to expect from the summer.

 Many cows have already calved by this time. Other households are waiting for this event from hour to hour. The hostess gets up even at night and walks into the pen to check on a cow. Children cannot stand waiting; they are already fed up without milk. And suddenly, one morning, behind the stove, there is something clacking with the trotters. Big eyes, wet lips. Silk fur. The family walks, in turn, one by one. On the first day, milk, or rather colostrum, is only for the calf, and then if the Lent is over, it is slurped by all. The peasant families did not drink milk as it is nowadays; it was gulped with spoons, a piece of bread, jelly, oatmeal, or berries.

 The cattle are happy, just like humans, after a long winter standing in a stuffy, dark pen. They ask for the air, in the sunshine. And when the cows are briefly released into the yard, some jump up joyfully.

 Meanwhile, it became pretty warm, and the roads were gone. The fields and meadows began to break free from snow. The old people are looking at the sky, listening to themselves: what kind of spring will be coming? A prolonged and cold one or a short and warm one? It is essential not to miss the planting season. Those peasants who parted with the three-field system and used the progressive crop rotation have already planted the clover in the fields covered with ice shards in the morning.
 People come with a worry about watching the winter crops: did it get soaked? Did it survive the winter? But, as the saying goes, the mother-rye feeds all around. It feeds the cattle, the poultry, and the peasant family.

 All this is OK, but when should we sow? Another hustler went to plow when the earth was still frozen. He is in high spirits and hurries horses needlessly. He planted the seeds in the cold soil - you'll see, in fall, his children would go begging for food. Another one needed to be prepared on time: not enough seeds, then the horse hurt the shoulder. This one will also rip a lousy harvest.

 There are few such eccentrics in a good village...

 Everything is ready, but when to start?

 It is difficult to make out in jest or seriously, but people used to say this: "Go out into the field and sit on the ground with the bare ass. You will know if it's time to sow or wait for a little. "

 But then, the most experienced, prudent farmer dragged the plow and harnessed the mare in the morning. And everybody rushed into the field as if by the command...
 Tugs smelling of tar are creaking, and the plough is cracking small pebbles. Larks are singing their hearts out in the sky over the field. The plowmen whistle and give orders to the horses: "Straight! Straight!" Or, on the turn, "And what, have you forgotten during the winter where is right and left?"

 And the horse, ashamed, wages its tail and turns whichever way it should be.

 In general, there should be a complete mutual understanding between a plowman and a horse during the sowing time. If they started to brawl, nothing would work. A good farmer plows without a stick doesn't use foul language with the horse, and does not scold it. Instead, he interacts with the horse with kindness and persuasion and sometimes shames it like a person. A restive horse is not suitable for plowing.

 A furrow follows you and goes, and the rooks immediately sit down, pecking with their beaks in the freshly ploughed soil.

 This is the land that feeds and waters, clothes and caresses you. It brings joy with flowers, fans coolness, and drains your exhausted sweat. It will take you in, hug you, and give the rest forever when your last deadline comes. Meanwhile, the black furrow goes on and on like a strip. Layer by layer, it adds to the field. And your father, son, wife, or sister had already harnessed another horse to harrow, to level this spring soil.

 A grandpa or a grandma has already poured white oats seeds into a large basket. Here, the eternal sower slowly walks along the strip, waving his hand from side to side. A step, the second step, and golden rain fly from a handful. Bouncing off the basket, grains fall on the fresh soil. The sower mutters to himself some kind of eternal spell, whether he is singing or praying.

 Nearby, in the pine forest, children lit a fire. The girls pick up more snowdrops and sing the "Spring Song."

 The soil dries up, and it is required to immediately harrow the seeds.

 Usually, flax was sown after the oats, just one or two strips, then peas and barley.

 There was such a sign: you need to stand under a birch tree and look at the sun. If you can look through the crown without blinking, it is useless to continue to sow. Seeds will be spoiled. If the foliage is not more than a penny in size and the sun easily breaks through it, then a day or two can still be used for sowing.

 After the sowing, a bath is necessary. During this week, people and horses became exhausted: a man sweated out his fatigue in the bathhouse, and a horse rested.

 And here comes up the first grass.

 The event's first run of the cattle to the pasture is not insignificant. On this day, the shepherd is a king's king ...

 The grass grows rapidly. Alive. If the day is warm in the forest, some stalks stretch an inch from the ground by the evening.

 You'll see, it's time to plant vegetables in the gardens. People spit the seeds of vegetables into nurseries. A woman will take in the mouth-pre-soaked seeds of cabbage or rutabaga and spit them out with full force. Seeds are evenly scattered throughout the greenhouse. At night, the nursery is covered with linen bedding or even fur coats if the elderly predict frost and if the cat clings to the warm damper at the oven.

 Putting a fence around a vegetable garden is also crucial; without the wall, the cattle will destroy everything during the summer. Good owners have juniper posts, aspen poles, and spruce fasteners; the fencing will never wear out. Unfortunately, a lazy one makes a fence from whatever he finds, so it is necessary to re-build the wall every spring.

 Spring ends with the first warm rain and the first rolling thunder. While hearing the thunder, the girls have to do somersaults so they will not have lower back pain during harvest time. And have time to do it until the thunder has not subsided. However, they still do somersaults in a puddle or on the meadow, be it an everyday sarafan or a festive costume. Laughter, cheers and enthusiastic girlish shrieks do not calm down with the thunder.

From the author

Folk life is boundless and incomparable to anything. Nobody had ever comprehended it totally and, hopefully, will never succeed. So the main attribute of science is an unquenchable thirst for knowledge: its greatness and weakness. But people have an unquenchable thirst for beauty, too.

How different are these two human needs, and how are they identical in their power and origin! And if the world is only Time and Space, science interacts more with Space and art with time... People's life in its ideal, comprehensive sense never knew this kind of separation. The world was a single entity for a person. Centuries created and polished the way of life formed back in paganism. 

 All customs that were unnecessary, cumbersome, or unsuitable for common sense, the national character or climate conditions were sifted away with time. But things that had been missing were partially added by people, partly borrowed from other nations and quickly asserted throughout the state. Such order and stability can easily be called stagnation or immobility, as some "researchers" of Russian folklife pointed out. But, unfortunately, they deliberately ignore the rhythm and cycles that prevent life's stagnation and immobility.

The principle of rhythm is one of the conditions of life. And the life of my ancestors, the northern Russian peasants, was basically and mainly associated with the rhythm. Any violation of this rhythm (wars, pestilence, crop failures) put a fever on all the people and the states. Likewise, interruptions in the rhythm of family life (illness or premature death, fire, adultery, divorce, theft, imprisonment of a family member, death of a horse, recruitment to the army) destroy the family and impact the family's life the entire village.

The principle of rhythm manifests itself in everything, forming the life cycle. You can talk about the daily and weekly cycles, cycles for the individual and the whole family, summer or spring cycles, the annual cycle, and the entire life cycle: from conception to the grave's grass...

Everything was interconnected, and nothing could live alone or without each other; everything had its place and time. Nothing could exist outside of the whole or appear out of turn. At the same time, the unity and integrity of life do not contradict beauty and diversity. Beauty cannot be separated from functionality, and functionality cannot be separated from beauty.

A craftsman was called an artist; an artist was named a craftsman. In other words, beauty was omnipresent rather than localized as it is now. So what do we need to learn with close attention to detail about this long-standing and largely disappeared way of life of the Russian North? Any knowledge of what was before us is desirable and essential.

Young people usually bear the brunt of the social development of society. And today's young men and women are no exception. But wherever they spend their boundless energy: whether at the taiga construction site, whether in the fields of the Black Earth region, whether in the factory shops - everywhere the young person needs above all the high moral standards because of physical conditioning, level of academic knowledge and professional excellence by themselves, without these ethical criteria, are worth nothing. But it is only possible to cultivate high moral principles by knowing what has been before us. Even modern technology does not appear out of nothing, and many working processes have not changed in their essence.

 For example, the cultivation and processing of flax preserved all the oldest elements of the so-called linseed cycle. All the processes have just been accelerated and mechanized, but the flax should be pulled, spun and weaved, as was done in the Novgorod villages ten centuries ago.

Culture and folklife have a profound continuity. You can take a step forward only when the leg pushes away from something solid; moving from nothingness or out of nothing is impossible. That is why our young people have a great interest in the past. Future generations cannot do away with our generation. They also will need our moral and cultural experience, as we now need the expertise of people who lived before us. 

The book is not by chance called "Harmony" and talks about harmony rather than discord of the peasant life. It was conceived as a collection of Northern life and folk aesthetics sketches. However, I tried to talk only about what I had known, experienced or seen myself or by people close to me. Half of the materials are written from conversations with my mother, Anfisa Ivanovna Belova. 

Recollections and impressions of the days are proved to be too many. Willy-nilly, I had to organize the material, giving the story some, albeit relative, order dictated by the book's composition. I had to repeatedly reduce or remove facts, primarily the general reflections. 

Funerals

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

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

Christening

CHRISTENING

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wedding

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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