Preface
Part One: Modern Russia
1. The Wedding
To which they all respond that the bride is pleasing. The researchers who recorded this custom hypothesize that it remains from the days when this might have really been the first time for the groom to see the bride. In any case, this was the cardinal moment of the wedding. In some villages, the bride then might even spend the night with the groom after the presentation before the tables, though without undressing: they might lie down and rest together, or at least sit and talk. [43]
2. The Laments.
There were masters of the prichet, who could train the bride before the wedding and even stand behind her and aid her memory during the wedding, but it was also expected that the bride would vary her prichety or think up new ones. One respondent in Balashov’s study recalled the following dialogue between the bride and her guests, in which the bride’s comment on her prichety is itself characterized as a prichet:
In the Vologda region there was a joking saying about a bride inept at laments: “Причитайте, голубушки, сколько над—наохаю” (“Lament, my darlings—I’ll sigh all you want”). [73]
On the other hand, when the bride was forced to marry against her will, her resistance could be in earnest. She could run away, the women would have to catch her, and there are reports of brides tearing their kerchiefs with their teeth, biting and hiding. One bride hid so well she could not be found for a long time. The first thing the bride would try to do was to throw her fatka (kerchief) over the candle lit by her father to pray with the groom, and put it out. There are some violent descriptions of these moments: bitten hands, torn fabric. In some villages the catching and subduing of the bride was done by married women (the girls, they say, pity the bride too much), in other place this was done by the father. In the latter case, there was no chase, and the bride’s grief was moderately displayed. [81]
Что у вас были за гости, за гостители?
А нас, родной батюшка, навек с тобой разлучители?
Не зажигал бы ты, родной батюшка,
Высокую свечу
И не кланялся бы ты, родной батюшка,
До сырой земли,
Да не продавал, родной батюшка,
Мою молодость
И не брал бы ты, родной батюшка,
С чужих людей никаких бы злат. [86]
I will ask you, my dear father,
What guest did you receive, what visitors?
The ones who will part us, dear father, forever?
I wish you would not light up, dear father,
A tall candle,
And would not bow, dear father,
Down to the damp earth
And would not sell, dear father,
My youth,
And would not take, dear father,
Any gold from strangers.
§52. A similar lament, but without the request not to sell her, was addressed by the bride to her mother:
Что я тебя буду спрашивать:
А что этo у нас были за гости-за гостители?
Это были у нас, матушка, не гостители,
А только нас с тобой разлучители.
Разлучат нас, родна матушка,
По дальним сторонушкам,
По дальним квартирушкам. [87]
Listen, my dear mother,
To what I will ask you:
What were these guest that came to us?
These, dear mother, were not guests,
But only people who will separate us.
They will send us apart, my dear mother,
Into distant lands,
Into distant apartments.
§53. The 1070-line long prichet of Irina Fedosova, recorded by Barsov in 1867–1869, is too long to cite here in full, but I quote a part of it that is especially rich in parallels to songs and clearly shows the technique of expansion. In the part that precedes the quotation, the lamenter recalls how she “herself betrothed herself,” referring to the custom whereby the bride would give the groom a token object (a ribbon, a ring, an earring) before the formal betrothal, as a sign that the agreement will be successful. In the prichet, the bride says that that was all play, that she “joked her freedom away in jokes, sang it away in songs,” that she did not understand with her silly young mind what she was doing. She then describes in dark colors the cunning, treacherous and evil svat of the groom, the officiant who came from the groom’s side to negotiate with her parents. In the prichet, the svat sits close to the parents, speaks sweetly and promises them the world (he even promises cities with suburbs). The parents at first move away from the svat, but eventually give up their daughter, not for any riches, but for “a bucket and a half of green wine.”
Всё на ласковы прелестныи словечушка!
И не начаялась, невольна, не надиялась
И во своих светах желанныих родителях,
И што изменят дорогу да вольну волюшку
260У меня да ведь у белой у лебедушки!
И как сегодняшним Господним Божьим денечком
И не утушка во бережку закрякала,
Красна девушка во терему заплакала;
И не вода да в синем море всколыбалася
265И красна девушка слезами обливалася!
Уж вы слушайте, желанны свет родители!
И не довольны, што невольница наскучила?
Я каку вину, родитель, провинилась,
И коей ногой я, невольна, поступилась?
270И родителей ли вас я пристыдила,
И светов братьицев ли я да обесчестила,
Аль свое белое личë да присрамила?
Изживаете, желанны свет родители,
И вы меня да душу-красну столько девушку
275И быдто лютого зверя да из темна леса,
И быдто лютую змею да со чиста поля;
Изгоняете, как заюшка с-под кустышка,
И горностая ль спод катуча бела камешка.
Аль белу лебедь-то со белой со березоньки,
280И серу утушку со тихиих со заводей!
И, знать, не трудничка была вам, не роботничка,
И, знать, не скорое было вам послушание,
И вам не легкая была, знать, переменушка?
Аль посылать станешь, родитель, не допошлешься,
285И буде пошлете, родители, не дождетесь,
И буде дождетесь, словечка не допроситесь!
И, знать, при мни, да ведь при белоей лебедушке,
Всё у вас, мои желанны свет родители,
Видно на дворе у вас да не плодилося,
290Видно на поле у вас да не родилося,
И золота казна у вас да не скопилася?
Изменяете вы вольну мою волюшку
На валикую злодийну на неволюшку!
И мою волюшку сейчас да поневолили,
295И меня девушку, в минуту обзаботили,
И во неволюшку, на чужу на сторонушку,
И во заботу за блада сына отечского!
И все страшит да меня, белую лебедушку,
Как судимая страшит меня сторонушка!
300И отдали стоит отсюда красовитая,
И облизи эта сторонка страховитая!
И все на сахаром сторонушка обсыпана,
И на сладкима медама-то поливана,
И все на жемчужком сторонка изнасажена:
305Изнасияна сторонушка обидушкой,
И поливана она да горючмы слезмы. [88]
255And then they gave away my dear freedom-will
In exchange for gentle alluring words.
I did not expect, unwilling me, and did not hope
From my beloved parents,
That they would exchange the dear free and willful freedom-will
260From me, the white swan!
And so today, on this God’s day,
It was not a duck that quacked on a shore,
It was a pretty maiden who cried in her chamber,
And it was not water that rose up in waves in the blue sea,
265It was a pretty maiden who poured tears.
Listen to me, my dear beloved parents!
Are you displeased because you are bored with your prisoner?
What was the fault of which I am guilty?
With what foot did I miss a step?
270Did I make you, my parents, ashamed,
Did I deprive my brothers of honor?
Did I disgrace my own white face?
You are chasing me away, my dear beloved parents,
Me, your dear pretty maiden,
275As you would a wild beast from a dark wood,
As you would a wild snake from a wide field,
Chasing me, like a hare from under a bush,
Like an ermine from under a round white stone,
Or a white swan from a white birch tree,
280Or a gray duck from a quiet pool,
And so it seems I was not a good worker for you,
And so it seems I was not quick enough to obey you,
and I did not bring enough relief to you in work?
But if you send for me, my father, you will not reach your goal,
285And if you send for me, my parents, you will wait in vain,
And if you wait long enough to see me, I will not say a word!
It seems with me, the white swan, present,
There was, my dear parents,
no increase in your household,
290It seems nothing grew in your fields,
And you did not store up a golden treasure?
You are exchanging my free and wilful freedom-will,
For a great wicked compulsion!
And now my will has been curbed,
295And I, a maiden, in one minute, acquired cares,
And [I have been given away] into captivity, into a foreign land,
Into life full of cares, to a young father’s son [the groom].
And everything terrifies me, the white swan,
The fated land terrifies me!
300From far away it is beautiful,
But from close by that land is terrible!
That land is not strewn with sugar,
That land is not flowing with honey,
It is not studded with pearls,
305That land is studded with offences
And flowing with bitter tears.
§54. The techniqe of expansion is evidently at work in the multiple parallels and repetition employed by Fedosova. A side-by-side comparison of Fedosova’ s lament with less expanded but related laments also from the Northern region makes clear both the possibilities of expansion and the persistence of traditional forms. A lament recorded from T.F. Alyoshina (born 1903) in 1983 in Zaoenzhye region contains the following verses:
И дайте девушке тропиночку с мостиночку
И мни одной пройти обидной красной девушки
И что ль ко этой ко кирпичной белой печеньки. [89]
Step aside you folks, you honest people,
And give the maiden a footpath like a bridge-board
Enough for me, ill-treated pretty maiden, to walk alone
To this white brick oven.
§55. There is a close but expanded parallel to these verses in Fedosova’s lament:
И дайте мистечка теперь, да несомношечко,
И со единую дубовую мостиночку,
Мне-ка малую со лентую тропиночку!
И не конем да мне, невольнице, проехать,
135И не на саночках, невольной, дубовыих,
И не с полком пройти, победной, енеральским,
И не с обходом-то пройти да не с полицкиим,
И единой мне-ка пройти да единешенькой,
Мне ко этой ко кирпичной пройти печеньке,
Мне к ошесточку пройти да ко окладнему! [90]
130Step aside, you good neighbors,
And give me now a little bit of space, not a lot,
Only as much as a single oak bride-board,
A little footpath for me!
Not in order for me, a prisoner, to ride on a horse,
135Not to walk, a victorious general, with a regiment,
Not to walk with a police brigade,
Just for me to walk, for me alone, all alone,
For me to talk to this brick oven,
For me to walk to the oven-shelf.
§56. Most of the themes present in various laments performed by the bride throughout the wedding are already present in this long lament intended as the first lament immediately upon her betrothal. For example, Fedosova’s lament contains an extensive description of the bride’s “green orchard,” one of the most stable symbols of maidenhood, and it also depicts the bride’s long search for a place to keep her volya (‘freedom’ or ‘will’) safe from the groom, another widespread theme, which in Fedosova’s version assumes epic proportions, with the bride attempting to hide her volya first in locked chests, then in a green meadow, in a church, in the sea, on the lake shores in the shape of a duck, in the desert with the hermits, with her mother, with the clouds, sun, moon, until she finally decides to keep it in the house until the groom arrives, envisaging her final parting with her volya in the future, when it will be washed away in the bridal bath. I will quote parts of this lament below as a parallel to other laments performed at later stages of the wedding.
1065И вдруг подходит же родитель-матушка,
И унимае меня, белую лебедушку,
И уласкае мою вольну она волюшку,
И говорит мне-ка родитель таково слово:
“Перестань да плакать, белая лебедушка,
1070И ты не плачь, моя косата летна ластушка,
И ты не трать своих девочьих ясных очушек,
И не круши да свое бедное сердечушко;
И ты послушай, моя белая лебедушка,
И ты желанную родитель свою матушку!” [91]
And I am looking, me the opressed pretty maiden,
1065And all at once my parent, my mother, comes to me,
And comforts me, the white swan,
And caresses my free and wilful freedom-will,
And speaks to me these words:
“Stop crying, my white swan,
1070And do not cry, my two-braided summer swallow [i.e. fork-tailed],
Do not waste your maidenly bright eyes,
Do not ruin your poor little heart.
Listen to me, my white swan,
Listen to your own beloved mother!”
§58. What follows these quoted words of the mother are the actual words of the mother, now performed in the mother’s voice. The mother’s lament continues the same themes as the bride’s, that is, that the bride is too young and has not enjoyed the pleasures of youth enough and that, for her, the tender care of the parental home and the playfulness of her friend’s company is coming to an end. There are also, of course, also themes peculiar to a mother’s lament: for example, she recalls the burden of pregnancy, the pain of childbirth, the cares of bringing her up, and lists the hopes she had for her daughter— that she would remain a maiden and her mother’s helper for a longer time. While the bride blames her parents for selling her to strangers against her will, the mother in turn blames her daughter for wanting to go to a foreign land and forsaking her parents. The theme of separation between the bride and her age-mates is very prominent in laments (and I will say more on it below), but in the mother’s lament the age-mates are characteristically depicted as children (just as the bride herself can sometimes be depicted as a baby in a mother’s lament). This is true of Fedosova’s lament, from which I quote:
35И твои плечика, лебедушко, узешеньки,
И твоя силушка, лебедушко, малешенька,
И у тя рученьки, у дитятка, тонешеньки,
И ум-то разум во головушке глупешенек!
И твои милыи любимы поровечники,
40И все во девушках оны да оставаются,
И оны малыма рябятама считаются,
И оны куклама сидят да забавляются,
И на уличке ведь щепками сшибаются;
И только ты, мое сердечно мило дитятко,
45И ты под тученькой сидишь да гряновитой!
И ты под облачкой сидишь да страховитой!
И не умела сдержать вольной да ты волюшки,
И на девочьей ты на бладой на головушке!
И молчи схватишься, ведь белая лебедушка,
50И по своей да по бажёной дорогой воли,
И по девочьем украшённоем живленьице,
И да ты хватишься, лебедушко, наплачешься! [92]
This is what I am sorry for, me, the sad head,
35That your shoulders, my swan, are so narrow,
That your force, my swan, is slight,
That your arms, a child’s arms, are so thin,
And that your mind in your head is so foolish!
And your dear beloved age-mates,
40All of them are remaining maidens,
And they are counted as small children,
And they sit there and play with dolls,
And in the street they play games with sticks.
And only you, my adored beloved child,
45Your sit under a storm cloud,
Under a terrifying storm cloud!
You did not know how to keep your willful freedom
On your maidenly and young head!
And you will look, my white swan,
50For your beautiful бажeной dear willful freedom,
or the maidenly luxurious [decorated] life,
And you will look and miss it, my swan, and you will cry.
§59. Just as the bride’s laments are paralleled and echoed by related choral songs of the maidens, so are the mother’s. In the following song-lament, performed by the bride’s age-mates in the mother’s voice, the mother is depicted waking up her daughter. This is a typical role for her to play, and indeed at a later stage in the wedding, on the morning of the wedding day, the bride’s awakening in many regions was ritualized and featured being woken up by the prichety of her mother (and/or friends), and then, also in a prichet, telling to her mother the terrifying dream she supposedly saw that night. On this occasion there is no dream and no actual awakening, but the mother is still pictured in her traditional role, waking up her daughter to tell her the news of her approaching wedding. Equally telling and typical is the second stanza of the mother’s song-lament, in which she imagines her daughter as a young apple tree which she reared but from which she saw no fruit. This echoes the themes of unripeness and of young plants and flowers being cut down that are typical of the bride’s laments:
Свою милую доченьку побуживала:
—Встань-проснись, мила дочь,
Пробудись от сна,
Пробудись от сна,
Я просватала тебя.
Уж ты яблонька, ты кудрявая,
Я садила тебя, насадила себя,
Поливала-укрывала,
От мороза берегла;
Я на яблоньке цветика не видывала,
Я сахарного яблочка не кушивала. [93]
Mother was walking in the room,
She was waking up her beloved daughter:
—Get up, awaken, my beloved daughter,
Awaken from your sleep,
Awaken from your sleep,
I have betrothed you.
Oh my apple tree, my curly apple tree,
I planted you, I planted you,
I watered you, covered you,
Protected you from frost,
I have not see the flowers on the apple tree,
I have not tried its sugar-sweet apples.
§60. To this mother’s lament the bride responds in surly way by threatening never to come visit her mother if her married life is unhappy (a sentiment comparable to line 2584–286 of Fedosova’s betrothal lament):
Если вдастся житье,
Я прибуду к тебе,
А не вдастся житье
Не приду никогда. [94]
The bride:
If my married life goes well,
I will come to you,
If it does not go well,
I will never come.
§61. In laments addressed to her parents, the bride’s fear of separation is often mixed with anger at their giving her away “to strangers.” In the following song-lament, the bride threatens not to visit for many years, and then only as a bird, a theme to which I will come back below and which emphasizes the finality of separation and the impossible distance that will divide the bride from her natal family, a distance that is perceived as immense in songs, even if in reality visits could be frequent and the bride could even stay in the same village:
Рано расцвела.
Родимая маменька
На гориюшко меня родила.
Не дала мне повырости—
В чужи люди отдала.
Рассержусь я на матушку,
Семь лет в гости не пойду
На восьмое летичко
Вольной пташкой прилечу.
Сяду я на яблоньку
На кудрявую в саду,
Расскажу я маменьке
Про участь горькую мою. [95]
Raspberry-viburnum
Flowered early,
My dear mother
Bore me for grief.
She did not give me time to grow up—
Gave me away to strangers.
I will get angry with mother,
I will not come to visit for seven years,
In the eighth summer I will become a bird and fly,
I will perch on the apple tree,
On the curly apple tree in the garden,
I will tell my mother
About my bitter fate.
§62. As was often the case, the same lament could be also performed at later stages of the wedding, and with variations. The same performer from whom the lament just cited was recorded, also provided the following, fuller, variant:
Рано расцвела.
Родимая маменька
На гориюшко меня родила.
На дала мне повырости—
В чужи люди отдала.
Осержусь я на матушку,
Семь лет в гости не пойду
На восьмое летичко
Вольной пташкой пoлечу.
Сяду я у матушки
Bo зелёныeм саду,
Пропою я песенку
Про участь горькую мою
Bce я палисадники
Слезами оболью.
Выйдет родна матушка:
—Что это за пташечка
В моем садике поет?
Не моя ли дитятка
Горьки слезы льет? [96]
Raspberry-viburnum
Flowered early,
My dear mother
Bore me for grief.
She did not let me grow up—
Gave me away to strangers.
I will get angry with my mother,
For seven years I will not come to visit,
In the eighth summer
I will become a free bird and fly,
I will perch in my mother’s
Green garden
I will sing a song
About my bitter fate
I will wet all the flower beds
With my tears.
My dear mother will come out:
—What bird is it that
Sings in my garden?
Perhaps it is my child
Shedding bitter tears?
§63. In many of the bride’s laments separation from the parental home is depicted as an absolute exile (even if in fact she was able to visit her natal family frequently). The bride in such laments complains of being sold or expelled from the house and imagines that she will be able to communicate her future grief only through bird-song:
Под ретиво сердечушко.
Отказал сударь батюшка
От хлеба мне от соли.
Отказала родна матушка
От платья мне от цветного.
Отказали родны братушки
От коней от вороных.
Отказали родны сестрицы
От скатертей выбранных.
Ух а выйду, горе бедное,
На красно на крылечушко,
Облокочусь о перила дубовые,
О балясы точеные.
Попрошу я, горе бедное,
Я у ласточки крылушек,
У касаточки перышек,
А у голубя голосу,
У кукушечки звонкого,
У горюшечки громкого.
Пойдет сударь-батюшка
Ко Христовой заутрени
С госыдарыней-матушкой,
Припадут ко сырой земле.
Закукует кукушка в бору,
Загорюет горюшка в сыром—
Заноют их ретивы сердца.
Не кукушка кукует в бору,
Не горюшка горюет в сыром—
Не наше ли дитятко
В чужих людях горюет одна,
У чужого отца-матери
У чужого рода-племени,
У чужих братьев и сестриц,
У чужих дядей и тетушек. [97]
It was not an arrow that was shot
Under my fiery heart.
My master-father
Denied bread and salt to me.
My dear mother denied me
A flowery dress.
My dear brothers denied me
Black horses,
My dear sisters denied me
Choice table-cloths.
I will walk out, me, the wretched grief,
Onto the front steps,
I will lean on the oak balustrades,
On the smoothed out knobs.
I will ask, me, the poor grief,
A swallow for her wings,
A swallow for her feathers,
And a pigeon for its voice,
And a cuckoo for its clear voice,
A grief-singing cuckoo for its loud voice.
My master-father will go
To morning service in church
With my mistress mother,
They will fall to the damp ground,
The cuckoo will begin singing in the forest
A grief-cuckoo will begin grieving in the damp forest,
Their proud hearts will begin to ache.
“It is not a cuckoo that is singing in the forest,
It is not a grief-cuckoo that is grieving in the damp forest,
Perhaps it is our child
Grieving alone among strangers,
With a stranger father and mother
With a stranger brother and sisters,
With a stranger aunts and uncles.”
§64. The vast majority of the wedding songs and laments were preformed by the bride in the company of her friends and by friends addressing the bride or speaking for her. As soon as betrothal was complete, a chorus of maidens entered the wedding action and began their songs, sometimes even before they could come into the house. The following song, for example, was sung in the Povolzhye region by the bride’s age-mates under her window beginning on the night of her betrothal:
Распроклятая жизнь замужняя!
Не навек житье доставалося,
Со белого лица красота сметалася!
С черной грязью смешалася!
Не летай, голубь, вдоль по улочке,
Вдоль по широкой!
Не воркуй, голубь, жалостишенько,
Без тебя, мой голубь,
Мне растошнешенько! [98]
Maidenly life is full of joy,
Married life is cursed!
Maidenly life is not given forever,
Beauty is swept away from the white face !
It is mixed with black dirt!
Do not fly, my pigeon, along the street,
Along the broad street,
Do not coo, my pigeon, so pitifully,
Even as it is, my pigeon,
I feel so sick at heart!
§65. In many songs and prichety performed immediately after the betrothal, the bride is reproached for betraying her supposed earlier promises to never marry. Often, these songs are in the form of a dialogue between the bride and her friends, even if in the actual performance there is no alternation among the singers. The following song, for example, seems to have been performed by the friends and addressed to the bride, who is, however, given a speaking part within the song:
Да душу красную девицу,
Душy красную девицу
Да за удала добра молодца
За удала добра молодца!
Да говорила: “Не пойду взамуж.”
Говорила: “Не пойду взамуж,
Да видит бог, не подумаю,
Да я людей не послушаю
Я людей не послушаю!”—
“Да уж вы милые девушки,
Уж вы глупые красавицы,
Да не сама я замуж пошла,
Не сама я замуж пошла,
Да не своею охотою,
Не своею охотою,
Да все большою неволею,
Все большою неволею.
Да похотел родной папенька,
Да поизволива меменька,
Да потакал вес(ьи) род меня,
Да собирали милы сестры,
Собирали милы сестры
Да задушевныя под(ы)ружен(и)ки! [99]
They have prayed away, they have prayed away [betrothed]
The pretty maiden,
The pretty maiden
To the valiant honest lad
To the valiant honest lad!
But she said: “I will not marry.”
She said: “I will not marry,
God be my witness, I will not think of it,
And will not listen to people,
I will not listen to people!”—
“But, my dear maidens,
My foolish beauties,
I am not getting married myself,
I am not getting married myself,
Not of my own will,
Not of my own will,
It is all with great compulsion,
It is all with great compulsion.
My father wanted it,
My mother allowed it,
The whole family urged it,
And my dear sisters prepared me,
My dear sisters prepared me
My sisters prepared me
And my bosom-friends.
§66. In Povolzhye, shortly after the betrothal (hand-slapping) was complete, during the festive meal that followed, the bride’s friends would bring in the krasota (in this case, a decorated tree), and attach it to the house or set it up inside. As they approached with the krasota, the bride addresses to her mother a lament which emphasizes her separation and absence from the group of her age-mates:
Уж родима моя маменька,
Что в середине-то окошечко,
Что не бархат расстилается,
Что не жемчуг рассыпается,
Как идут мои подруженьки,
Несут дивичью красоту!
Погляди-ка ты родимая
Кого теперь в толпе-то нет?
Уж как нет в толпе чада милого,
Уж как нет чада любимого! [100]
Look out, my dear one,
My dear mother,
Look out in the middle window.
It is not velvet being spread out,
It is not pearls being scattered,
But my friends are coming
They are bringing my maidenly krasota!
Look, my dear one,
Who is absent in the crowd?
Your dear child is not in the crowd,
Your beloved child is absent!
§67. Similar themes are present in the song performed in Siberia during the devichnik nights, the nights between the betrothal and the crowning when friends gathered in the bride’s house to sing and sew. As in Povolzhye, in Siberia the age-mates perform songs in the bride’s stead, as they gather for the devichnik while the bride sits silently, looking down:
Невесёлая-то сидит красная девица
Настасья Кондратьевна,
Сидит-то призадумавшись, припечалившись. [101]
The sunless day is without joy
The pretty maiden is sitting without joy,
Nastasia Kondratievna,
She is sitting deep in thought, deep in sadness.
§68. It should be noted that devichnik was not only practiced differently in different villages, but also comprised of different parts with their particular songs. In some places, relatives of the bride and groom were invited to these events, and the songs performed while the groom and his parents were present differed from the ones performed in their absence. On the former occasions, the songs dramatize dialogues between the bride and the groom, praise the groom, speak about the bride getting used to the “princely” ways of the groom, and interpret the (traditional) dreams that foretell the wedding. [102] The laments could be performed in the presence of the groom’s party too, but the friends of the bride stayed longer than the groom’s party and some spent whole days with her. In songs they performed for the bride she is often compared to a young bird who leaves the nest too soon, or an unripe berry, and reproached for marrying too young. The bride’s response is to say that she is not going of her own free will, but because her parents force her:
Ты к чему рано закатаешься
Ты за горы, горы высокие,
Ты за лесы, лесы темные?
Ах, ты свет то наша подруженька,
Ах, ты свет то наша голубушка
Аграфена свет Григорьевна!
Ты к чему рано замуж пошла,
Ты к чему рано задумала
За доброго молодца
За Семена свет Андреевича?
Недозрелая в поле ягодка,
Недорослая красная девица,
Не накопила ты ума разума.
—Ах! вы свет-то мои подруженьки!
Ах! вы свет-то мои голубушки!
Не сама то я замуж пошла
Не сам- то я задумала
Не своей волей охотою:
Отдает меня сударь батюшка
Свет Григорий сударь Карпович,
Государыня родна матушка
А свет Марфа-душа Фадеевна,
Присудили весь и род племя. [103]
Oh you sun, beautiful sun,
Why are you setting so early
Behind the mountains, the tall mountains,
Behind the woods, the dark woods?
Oh you, our dear friends,
Oh you, our darling
Agrafena Grigorievna,
Why are you getting married early,
Why did you think so early
To marry an honest lad,
Semion Andreevich?
An unripe berry in the field,
An ungrown pretty maiden,
You have not gathered up sense and smarts.
Oh my dear friends!
Oh my darlings!
I am not myself getting married,
I did not think of it myself,
It was not my will or wish.
My master-father is giving me away,
Master Grigory Karpovich,
And my mistress dear mother,
Maria Fadeevna,
My whole family and clan so determined it.”
In another similar lament the bride says that her parents forced her and people deceived her: they said that the “far away foreign land” to which she had to go was full of orchards and “sprinkled” with sugar—”and flows with bitter tears,” adds the last line of the song in a parallel to lines 300–306 of Fedosova’s betrothal lament. [104]
Стану вербой- то на ноги.
Схожо красноё солнышко,
Мой корминец ты батюшко,
Дак ты восьми меня на руки,
Пожалей меня, батюшко,
Старопрежней-то жалостью.
Когда я, молодёшенька,
В люльках байках кацяласе,
В пеленах пелёналаце,
Подле лавоцьку ходила,
На окошецьке сидела,
Подходил ко мне батюшко
Да брал на белые руценьки,
Говорил-то мне батюшко:
—Моё цядо-то милоё
Да дитятко ты родимоё
Да ты рости, рости, дитятко,
Да на ножках-то высокая,
Из себя-то хорошая
Волосами-то сивая,
На лицё-то красивая.
Дак заведу тебе дитятко,
Скрутку платьё хорошоё,
По правленью-то первоё
Да он людей-то отменноё.
Посажу тебя, дитятко,
В зелён сад под окошецько,
Обтыню-то тыноциком,
Назову-то цветоциком. [105]
I will prostrate myself on the ground,
I will stand up like a pussy-willow tree.
You are like the fiery sun,
My up-bringer, my father.
Take me up in your arms,
Pity me, daddy,
With your old pity.
When I, the young one,
Was rocked in a cradle,
Was swaddled in swaddling clothes,
Walked under the bench,
Sat on the window sill,
You would come to me, daddy,
You would take me in your white arms,
You would say to me:
—My dear child,
My darling baby,
Grow, grow, my child,
To stand tall on your feet,
To be fine to look at,
To have bright hair
To have a beautiful face.
I will get for you, my child,
Beautiful clothes, a dress,
Made in the best way,
Such as noone else has.
I will seat you, my child,
In the green orchard under my window,
And will put a fence around you
And call you a flower.
§70. The bride then says that she has not grown up to be tall and beautiful, and yet her farther is giving her away. Twice in the concluding verses of the lament she asks what has happened to his pity (Куде жалость деваласе?). In all cases, the bride in laments is sharply separated from her age-mates. In a prichet from another village of the same region, the bride calls herself “ungrown grass” (недорослую травоньку) and contrasts her friends’ parents, who spare their daughters, with her own cruel family, who have now betrothed her. This lament reflects the actual circumstances of a particular bride, whose father is dead and who is given away by her brother:
Мои милые подруженьки,
Как у вас-то, голубушки,
Батюшки те жалостливы,
Мамушки те слезливые.
Как у меня, молодёшеньки,
Нет корминеця батюшка,
Брателко да не жалосливой,
Мамушка не слезливая.
Отдает меня брателко,
Мной пецялует мамушка,
Силою да неволею,
Большою неохотою. [106]
My gray doves,
My dear friends,
You, my darlings,
Have fathers prone to pity,
Mothers prone to tears,
But I, the young one,
Have no up-bringer father,
And my brother is not prone to pity,
My mother is not prone to tears.
My brother gives me away,
My mother takes care of me,
By force and against my will,
Very much against my wish.
§71. In laments from the same region, the bride addresses her friends as she sees them out, inviting them to come to her every day during the pre-wedding week and saying that she would come with them, but now that she has been “closed” she cannot see far or walk fast:
Вы ко мени, к молодёшеньке,
Каждый день да на всякий день.
Посидели малёшенько,
Да пошли коль скорёшениько.
Я бы рада радёшенька
Проводить далёкошенько,
Да призакрыли, голубушки,
Много светы-то белово.
Теперь хожу потихошенько,
Сколь я вижу малёшенько. [107]
Come, my darlings,
To me, to the young maiden,
Every day and on all kinds of days.
You stay for a while and go quickly.
I, the young maiden, would be glad,
To walk far with you to see you off,
But, my darlings, they closed off
Much of the white light for me.
Now I walk slowly,
So little I see.
§72. After the betrothal, what follows for a bride in the Vologda region is a period actually called “the week:” days when her age-mates visit in the evenings to sing and sew. Both songs and prichety are performed on these occasions, and here again, the themes find parallels in the devichnik songs for other regions. With the week are associated morning prichety, in which the bride addresses her mother, who is expected to come and wake her up. The mother feels pity for her child, she “wakes me up with one hand, tucks me in with another.” By contrast, the so-called “god-given” mother, her mother-in-law, is depicted as a monster: she runs like a beast, roaring like a wild animal and hissing like a snake, as in the following example:
Побуду я дожидаласе
От своей-то корминици
От родимые матушки.
Што моя-то корминеця,
Моя корминеця матушка
Придет к моей-то постелецьке
Левой руцькой побудити,
А правой руцькой окутати:
Уж ты спи, моё дитятко,
На родимой-то стороне.
А на злой-то злодийнице
На злой татарке-то схиднице,
У чужа-то чуженина
Богоданна-то матушка,
Она ходит по-звериному,
Шипит она по-змеиному—
Придет к моей-то постеленке,
Она руками-то схлопаёт
И ногами-то стопаёт.
—Ты ставай-ко, сонливая,
Пробудись-ко, дремливая.
Проспала и продрёмала
Свою буйную голову
На чужую-то сторону. [108]
I slept and rested for a long time
I waited for an awakening
From my nurturer,
From my dear mother.
And my nurturer,
My nurturer mother,
She will come to my bed
And with her left hand she wakes me up,
With her right hand she covers me up:
Sleep, my child,
In your native land.
In that evil wicked place,
In the evil Tatar land,
At the place of this foreign foreigner,
The god-given mother [mother-in-law],
She walks like an animal,
She hisses like a snake.
She will come to my bed,
And she will clap her hands
And stomp her feet:
—Get up, you sleepy one,
Wake up, you slumbering one.
You have slept and slumbered away
Your unruly luxuriant head,
Away to a foreign land.
§73. The notion that the bride’s future in-laws are strange, foreign, and alien also surfaces at other moments of the wedding. In the Vologda region one of the last prichety, performed as the bride walks along the festive table to take her place next to the groom at the last feast at her own house, is a version of a very wide-spread wedding song, where the bride is depicted as a swan who is forced to join a flock of geese:
Как што от стада да лебединово,
Дак приставала да лебедь белая
Ко стаду—серым гусям. [109]
A white swan became separated,
Separated from the swan flock,
A white swan joined
A flock—of gray geese.
§74. In Povolzhye a version of the same lament was sung to the bride as the krasota (in this case a little tree) was carried away:
От стада лебединого
Приставала бела лебедь
Ко стаду, ко серым гусям,
Начали гуси квакати,
Красна девица плакати.
“Не щиплитe вы, серы гуси,
Не сама я к вам залётала,
Занесли меня чужи люди.” [110]
A white swan became separated,
Separated from the swan flock,
A white swan joined
A flock—of gray geese.
The geese began to quack,
The pretty maiden began to cry:
“Do not pluck me, gray geese,
I did not fly to you of my own will,
But strangers carried me here.”
§75. To return to the wedding week, once the maidens arrive, the bride invites them to sing and sew. In prichety she claims (contrary to fact) that all her clothes are old and worn, and then changes her mind and says that it is not she, but a “stranger” who needs new clothes. [111] As they arrive, the bride asks the maidens to help her “grieve this grief and lessen the sadness” (Ету пецель бы спецяловать/ Да горюшка приубавити) [112] and says that her maidenly days have been cut short, that she can no longer “wander wide and see far” (широко-то расхаживать, далеко-то разглядывать). In the evening, when some young men also come, there are prichety asking them to play a musical instrument and the maidens to sing. Characteristically, the bride says that she used to be the first to start singing and the last to stop, but now everything has changed, she has to sing an unfamiliar song, her voice does not obey, she cannot remember the words.
На вас кошульки суконные,
Шапоцьки те бобровые,
Да молодци цернобровые!
Об цём я вам канаюсе,
Да об цём в цесь докуцяюсе:
Поиграйьте ка, молодци,
Во весёлы тальяноцки.
Цясока да тепереци
Сизые вы голубушки,
Милые вы подруженьки,
Вы попойте, голубушки,
Да развесёлых-то писенок
Да по весёлым тальяноцькам.
Да я любила жо, девиця,
Пить весёлы ти писенки
По весёлым тальяноцькам.
Нацинать была первая,
Да допевать-то последняя.
Цясока да топерика,
Цяс топерешно времецько
Зацяла мне-ко мамушка
Пить мне писню ту долгую,
Долгую, незнакомую,
Голосом непоставную,
Да на словах неукладную.
Не сконцать буде девици
Вся недилька-то долгая. [113]
Lads, you bright falcons,
You are wearing coats of wool,
Hats of beaver fur,
You lads with black eye-brows!
This is what I ask of you,
This is what I beg of you:
Play, lads,
Play your joyful talyankas [a type of accordion].
And now and at this moment,
My gray doves,
My dear friends,
Sing, my darlings,
The most joyful songs
To the joyful talyankas’ accompaniment.
Oh how I used to love, I, a maiden,
To sing joyful songs
To the joyful talyankas’ accompaniment.
I was first to begin,
I was last to leave off singing.
But now and at this moment,
Now at this point in time,
My mother has made me start
To sing that long song,
Long, unfamiliar,
Unfitted to my voice,
Awkward in words.
A maiden will not finish it
For the whole long week
§76. The notion expressed in this lament that the bride used to be first among her friends, but now is no longer one of them is reiterated at multiple times during the wedding week. On many occasions and in many regions, the age-mates praise the bride as their leader, the best amongst them. Now that she is betrothed, however, she is also depicted as absent, excluded from their group, or as the last and lowest in the group:
Собирала Любочка подружек к себе,
Садила их Любочка за дубовый стол.
Садила их Любочка за дубовый стол.
Сама [о]на садилася —была выше всех
Сама [о]на садилася —была выше всех
Склонила головушку—стала ниже всех.
Склонила головушку—стала ниже всех. [114]
Lyubochka gathered her friends at her house,
Lyubochka gathered her friends at her house,
Lyubochka seated them at the oak table,
Lyubochka seated them at the oak table.
She sat down herself—she was the tallest of all,
She sat down herself— she was the tallest of all.
She bowed her head—became the lowest of all,
She bowed her head—became the lowest of all.
§77. In the Vologda region the theme of the bride as the departing leader of the group becomes explicit in one of the very last prichety performed after the father has led the bride out to the festive table (not for the presentation before the tables but on the following evening), as she walks to take her place by the groom. In one of the three canonical prichety performed on this occasion, the friends of the bride say that they have lost their “herd-leader.”
Да из стаду стадоводницю,
Дак напередь-ту хожатую
Дак всёму стаду вожатую
Дак напередь-ту всё ходила,
Дак за собой стадо водила. [115]
Oi, we have lost, my darling-doves,
The herd-leader of our herd,
The one who walked in front,
The one who led the whole herd.
She was always walking in front,
Leading the herd behind her.
In some cases, as the bride comes out, led by her father, she in fact draws her friends after her from the kut’ into the hall, leading them by their belts. In other cases, this element is absent and the friends remain in the kut’ a little longer then the bride, singing from there about the loss of their herd-leader. [116]
Да зелёная, да кудрявая,
Да на тебе ли, елка-сосенка,
Да много сучьев, много отраслей,
Да одного сучочка нетутко,
Да что сучка, самой вершиночки,
Да а у нас подружки нетутко,
Да что подружки, нашей Манечки. [117]
You, our little fir tree, little pine,
Our green one, our curly one,
You, our fir-tree-pine,
Have many branches, many twigs,
But one branch is missing,
And not even just a branch, the very top.
And among us a friend is missing,
And not even just a friend, our Manechka.
§79. The parallel between the bride’s life and a broken branch is present in the recordings of wedding laments taken down two centuries ago, and persists in the recent ones. [118] It is part of an extensive system of metaphors having to do with flourishing and then withering of plants, perhaps the most prominent theme of the “maiden party” and the wedding week. The bride’s parting with the freedom and luxury of the maidenly life is expressed through images of plants that wither, are cut down, or have to be abandoned by the bride. The long betrothal lament by Fedosova quoted above, for example, contains the following verses about the bride’s “green orchard:”
350И на горы стоял у девушки зелёный сад,
И край пути стоял ведь сад до край дороженьки,
И на красы-басы стоял да на угожестве,
И возрастала в саду травонька шелковая,
И росцветали всяки розовы цветочики
355И сросли деревца в садочику сахарнеи!
И во моем да во девочьем зеленом саду
И солетали перелётны разны птиченьки,
И как незнамы соловьи да говоручии,
И возжупляли оны разным голосочкам!
360И удивлялися им добры столько людушки,
И любовалися спорядны вси суседушки
И на мой да на девочей на зелёный сад!
И вдруг на этой на урёчной на неделюшке,
И вдруг за чудушко у нас да причудилось,
365И в зеленом саду за диво объявилось:
И посыхать да стала травонька шелковая,
И вдруг поблекли тут цветочики лазуревы,
И вдруг позябли тут сахарни деревиночки;
И малы птиченьки—чего они спугалися—
370Из зелена сада соловьи розлетались! [119]
Until this Lord God’s day
350On a hill there was a maiden’s green orchard,
It stood at the side of the path, at the side of the road,
In a beautiful place it stood, in a pleasant place,
And silky grass grew in that orchard,
And all kinds of pink flowers bloomed,
355And sugar trees grew in that orchard!
And in my maidenly green orchard
All kinds of migratory birds would gather,
And unknown clear-voiced nightingales
Would sing in different voices!
360And good folk would be amazed at them,
And all the neighbors would delight in it,
In my maidenly green orchard.
And suddenly this appointed week,
What a strange thing happened here,
365A wonder took place in the green orchard:
The silky grass began to grow dry,
The sky-blue flowers faded,
The sugar trees were bitten by frost,
And the little birds —who knows what scared them—
370All the nightingales flew away from the green orchard!
§80. The same theme is prominent in the Siberian laments performed during the bride’s parting with her krasota, while her maidenly head-dress was removed, the braid undone, and the ribbons distributed to her age-mates. In some songs the krasota is pictured as turning into flowers, as in the following example:
На матушку на сыру землю.
Урасти-ко ты, моя девья красота
Не травою ты, не муравою,
А цветочками лазоревыми. [120]
I will put my maidenly krasota
On mother-damp-earth.
Grow, my maidenly krasota,
Not as grass, meadow grass,
But as sky-blue flowers.
§81. In another song the bride asks her brother to ride and scatter her krasota in a “wide field,” where flowers will bloom next spring, except for the bride’s flower:
Придет весна красная,
Взойдут травы муравые,
Расцветут цветы лазоревые,
Пойдут-то мои подруженьки,
Пойдут-то мои голубушки
Во чисто поле, со раздольице,
Сорвут-то они по цветочку.
Мой цветок спосох, споблек—
Помянут меня подтуженьки,
Помянут меня голубушки.
Мне, молодешенькой, икнется,
Тяжелешенько вздохнется. [121]
The cold winter will pass,
The pretty spring will come,
The meadow grasses will come up,
The sky-blue flowers will bloom,
My friends will go,
My darlings will go,
Into the wide field, the open space,
And each one will pick a flower.
My flower is dry and faded—
My friends will remember me,
My darlings will remember me,
And I, the young one, will hiccup,
Will heave a heavy sigh.
§82. Both the theme of fredom and luxury lost and the plant metaphor are strongly connected to the bride’s hair, the symbol of her maidenly freedom, happy times with her age-mates, and beauty. During the ritual decoration of her braid, the bride in some Siberian village would both ritually request the members of the family to make her braid and to lament the luxury and tender care in which she spent her maidenhood and with which she was now parting. In the following examples, the bride asks first her father and then her mother to actually weave her volya (‘freedom’) and her nega (‘luxury, bliss’), the attributes of maidenhood, into her braid:
Заплети мне косу трубчату
И вплети в неё ленты алые!
Неужели-то я открасовалася,
Неужели-то я отбасовалася,
Како же было мое красование,
Како же было мое басование?
Во слезах-то я сижу, во кручинушке,
Во большой-то во заботушке. [122]
Give me your blessing, dear father,
Braid my long braid,
Braid bright-red ribbons into it.
Can it be that my beauty days are over?
Can it be that my pretty days are over?
So that was my beauty time?
So that was my pretty time?
I am sitting here in tears, in grief,
Burdened by cares.
—Заплети-ка мне трубчату косу
Мне во пятеро и во шестеро,
Во мелко пшенично зернышко.
По корень моей трубчатой косы
Вплети мне-ка волю батюшкову,
Посредь моей трубчатой косы
Вплети мне-ка негу матушкину,
По конец моей трубчатой косы
Вплети ленту шелковую. [123]
Braid my long braid,
Five-fold and six-fold,
Make it like grains of wheat.
At the root of my long braid
Braid in my free life that came from my father,
In the middle of my long braid
Braid in tender bliss that came from my mother,
And at the end of my long braid,
Braid in a silk ribbon.
§83. In other songs, the bride, on the contrary, asks that her braid not be made, because the braiding of her hair in a maidenly way for the last time hastens the arrival of the marriage. The bride yet again bewails her separation from her age-mates and pictures them playing in a verdant meadow, with all “their” flowers in full bloom, while “her” flowers grow apart in an inhospitable place, burned by the sun and lashed by the rain:
Не плети косу русую:
Коса русая не дорощена,
А краса-то девичья не догуляна.
Пойдите вы, подружки-любушки,
В зелёны луга на гулянушку
Ваши-то цвены алые
Стоят при долинушке
А мой-то цветочек аленький
При бугринушке.
Дождичком-то его так и сечет,
А солнышком-то его так и печет.
Сорвите-ка вы, подружки милые,
Цветок аленький,
И снесите-ка его, подружки милые,
К родной матушке,
И к родному батюшке:
Они на аленький цветок
Не взглянут ли,
А меня вo чужих людях
Не вспомянут ли? [124]
Do not braid it, my dear friends,
Do not braid the blonde braid.
The blonde braid has not grown enough,
And maidenly krasa has not played enough.
Go, my beloved friends,
To play in the green meadows.
Your bright-red flowers
Are in the valley,
My bright-red flower
Is on a hill.
The rain is lashing and lashing it,
The sun is burning and burning it.
Pluck, my dear friends,
The bright-red flower,
Take it, my dear friends,
To my mother,
To my father:
Perhaps they will look
At the bright-red flower,
Perhaps they will remember me
Among strangers.
§84. The freedom and tenderness of maidenly existence are firmly associated in the laments and songs with green spaces—meadows, woods, orchards. The following lament pictures such gardens and the flowering trees woven into the braid, and concludes with a description of the beautiful ribbons which will decorate the bride’s hair, but only for another week:
До меня молодешенькой!
Учеши мою буйную головушку,
Уплети трубчату косу
По единому русу волосу,
По пшеничному зернышку.
По корень моей русой косы
Плети две яблони кудрявые
Ты со волей батюшкиной!
Посередине моей русой косы—
Два садочка, два зелёные
Ты со волею матушкиной!
По конец моей русой косы
Плети конец алой-шёлковой
Ты со кисточкой жемчужною,
Со ленточкой обдирною!
Но пущай кисти катаются,
А вы, ленты, устилаются
По моим-то могучим плечам,
По моему платью светлому!
Но недолго кистям кататися,
Алым лентам устилатися:
Семиденная да неделечка! [125]
—Come to me, my dear mother,
To me, the young one!
Comb my luxuriant hair,
Braid by long braid,
Hair by hair,
Like the grains of wheat.
At the root of my blond braid
Braid in two curly apple trees
With free life from my father!
In the middle of my blond braid—
Two orchards, two green ones,
With free life from my mother!
At the end of my blond braid,
An end-ornament, red and silken,
With pearl tassels
With a gift-ribbon!
And let the tassels roll,
Let the ribbons spread
On my broad shoulders
On my light dress!
It is not long that they will roll,
That they will spread:
A week of seven days!
§85. The themes of parting with maidenhood come to a climax in the ritual of the last undoing of the braid and the bride’s taking final leave of her krasota. In Siberia even today some elements of the performance remain, and fuller versions were recorded as late as 1970. [126] In Siberian weddings, the word krasota (literally ‘beauty’) refers to an object rather than the bride’s hair, though the object stands in for the hair and is decorated in a similar way. The substitution seems similar to what can be seen in the custom of buying and selling the braid, in which the braid itself remains untouched and what changes hands is its symbolic (partly iconic) substitute, such as a branch decorated with ribbons. The krasota, too, is in some cases a branch with ribbons and paper flowers attached to it. Potanina, Leonova and Fetisova suppose that the songs refer to actions that have long become obsolete, for example, that the bride and her age-mates used to actually go to the forest with songs, break off the topmost branch of a tree, decorate it, and say farewell to it “as if it were alive.” [127] The custom is not however attested in this form: in the records of actual weddings, the parting with the krasota seems to take place at the house of the bride. For example, in 1970, in the village of Bondarenko in Khakasiya, a description of the ritual was taken from Ekaterina Fedorovna Pospelova. Here the krasota was represented by the top of of pine tree, traditionally decorated. The bride would bring it in, and walk with it from the door to the table. After that the “little pine” was undressed and its decorations given to girls as gifts. Once that was done, someone would play the role of the offended krasota that leaves the bride forever. The performer in this role would say:
На милую Катюшу рассердилася:
Дверями хлопнула, ногой топнула:
—Этому дереву не быть два раза зелёным,
А Катерине Фёдоровне не быть два раза девушкой. [128]
The maidenly krasota has walked away,
Has become angry with darling Katyusha:
She [krasota] slammed the door, she stomped her foot:
—This tree will not be green twice,
And Katerina Fedorovna will not be a maiden twice.
§86. Even in situations where there is no single performer taking on the role of the krasota, it is often personified and given a voice within the laments and the devichnik songs. What the krasota most often says is that she is not coming back to the bride and that the bride’s maidenhood is irrevocably lost. This is the case in the following example, a prigovor (versified saying) performed by the bride’s friends and addressed to the wedding officiants. It was performed in Povolzhye on an occasion similar to the Siberian one, when the krasota (here also represented by a little tree or a tree top) was ceremonially carried away, on the morning of the crowning day, before the church ceremony, as the bride was sent off from her house:
На Анну Ивановну!
У нас Анна Ивановна
В красных девушках жила красовалась,
Над ней люди любовались,
Подружки забавлялись,
Родители упивались!
Вы её тешьте и нежьте,
Хлебом чёрным не кормите,
Во лохмотьях не водите,
А белого запасите!
В лапти не обувайте,
В лес не посылайте,
А в белые туфли обувайте!
Да почаще к родителям посылайте!
Вот, смотри, Анна Ивановна,
На дивью красоту!
На тебя девья красота рассердилась,
Пошла с тобой не простилась,
Среди мосту топнула,
Ручками хлопнула,
Головкой покачала,
Печально отвечала:
“Прощай, Анна Иванована!”
Пошла дивья красота
Во зелёные луга,
Во дремучие леса,
Привилась дивья красота
К сухому этому дереву,
Не бувать ему зелену.
Тебе, Анна Ивановна,
В красных девушках не бывать,
Весёлых песен не певать,
С нами, с подружками, не гулять!” [129]
Look at the maidenly krasota,
At Anna Ivanovna!
Our Anna Ivanovna
Lived a life of beauty as a pretty maiden.
People would admire her,
Friends would make merry with her,
Her parents would adore her.
Soothe her and pamper her,
Do not feed her dark bread,
Do not dress her in rags,
Prepare some white bread for her!
Do not make her wear bast shoes,
Do not send her to the forest,
Make her wear white slippers
And send her more often to visit her parents!
Here, look, Anna Ivanovna,
At your maidenly krasota!
Your maidenly krasota has become angry with you,
Has gone away without saying goodbye,
In the middle of the bride she stomped her foot,
She clapped her hands,
She shook her head,
She responded sadly:
“Farewell, Anna Ivanovna!”
The maidenly krasota has gone
To the green meadows,
To the forest thickets,
It has grafted itself
To a dead tree.
This tree will not be green,
And you, Anna Ivanovna,
Will not be a maiden,
Will not sing joyful songs,
Will not play with us, your friends!”
§87. The krasota, when personified, may be angry with the bride, sad and distant, as in the last example, or it may cry and beg to be taken back, as in the following song, where the krasota asks to be picked up like a child, but instead is abandoned by the bride and finally cut down by careless peasants with their scythes. The song was sung as the krasota was carried from away from the table at the bride’s house:
Да красота ли, да Марьина!
Да нам куда красоту девать?
Да мы возьмем, белы лебеди,
Да во свои да белы рученьки,
Да унесем дивью красоту
Да мы во чистое полюшко?
Да во луга во зелёные,
Да во травы во шелковые!
Да отойдем да послушаем,
Да не стонет ли мать-сыра земля,
Не плачет ли дивья красота?
Да она плачет, возрыдывает,
Да на белы руки просится,
Да на белые, на Марьины!
Да вот и шли два-ти молодца
Да со косами со булатными,
Да подкосили дивью красоту,
Да её резвые ноженьки! [130]
Krasota, maidenly krasota,
Marya’s krasota!
What should we do with her krasota?
Will we take her [krasota], we, the white swans,
In our white hands,
Will we carry the maidenly krasota
To the open field?
To the green meadows,
To the silken grasses!
Let us step aside and listen,
Does the mother-damp-earth groan,
Does the maidenly krasota cry?
Yes, she cries, she sobs,
She asks to be picked up by white arms,
White arms, Marya’s arms!
But two or three young lads were walking by
With their damask scythes,
They cut the maidenly krasota,
At her nimble feet!
§88. This songs exists in many versions and the theme of the bride’s krasota, often equated with a ribbon for her hair, taken to the meadow and placed under a flower or a bush, but then destroyed by grass-cutters, is a persistent one. Here is another instantiation of it, also in a song sung by the bride’s age-mates:
Красота моя, ленточка.
Всех подружка-голубушка,
Да ты куда красу девать будешь,
Да ты куда положишь её?
“Да унесу а дивью красоту,
Да во чисто поле, на травинку,
Да под кусточек ракитовый,
Да под цветочек лазоревый!”
Да тут и шли сенокоснички,
Да мужики деревенские,
Да подкосили девью красоту,
Да подкосили и подрезали,
Да матушку дивью красоту! [131]
Krasota, my krasota,
My krasota, my ribbon!
Darling-friend,
What will you do with your krasota,
Where will you put it?
“I will taken my maidenly krasota
To the open field, to a blade of grass,
And put it under a bush of broom,
And under a sky-blue flower,
But then some hay-cutters were passing by,
Peasants from a village,
They mowed the maidenly krasota,
They mowed it and they cut it,
The mother maidenly krasota!
§89. The disappearance of her krasota sets the bride apart from her age-mates, even in those songs where she is depicted in their company. In the following song the maidens are described as full of beauty and cheer, their hair combed and decorated with red ribbons and silk kerchiefs. The bride walks with them, but she alone is gloomy, her hair uncombed and undecorated. Characteristically, the maidens in this songs come from a cherry-orchard, their verdant and flourishing habitat which the bride will no longer visit:
Из сада-вишенья
Там и шли-пришли
Весёлых девушек толпа.
Они все девушки,
Они все красныя,
Да все весёлыя идуть!
Буйны головы у их учёсаны,
Косы русые у их уплётены.
Ленты алые да в косах ввязаны,
Шёлковым платком они повязаны.
Только одна Леночка
Невесёлая идет.
Буйная голова у ней не учёсана,
Русая коса у ей не уплётена,
Лента алая в косы не вплётена,
Шёлковым платком не подвязана. [132]
From the orchard, orchard,
From the orchard, the cherry orchard
There was coming-coming
A crowd of joyful maidens.
They are all maidens,
They are all pretty,
They are all joyful as they walk along!
Their luxuriant hair is combed,
Their blond braids are made,
Their silk ribbons are braided in,
They are covered with silk shawls.
Lenochka alone
Is sad as she walks along.
Her luxuriant hair is not combed,
Her blond braid is not made,
Her red ribbon is not braided in,
Nor tied with a silk shawl.
§90. In some of the songs belonging to the ritual of parting with the krasota, the krasota sets like the sun and disappears behind woods and mountains, and the descriptions of all the obstacles that now separate the bride and her krasota convey the notion of its irrevocable loss and resemble folktale depictions of impossible quests, where the hero has to climb over mountains, cross rivers, and wander through dark forests:
Да закатилось да красно солнышко.
Да закатилась да девья красота
Что за лесы, за лесы темные,
Что за гороньки да за высокие,
Что за реченьки да за глубокие.
Проводили да девью красоты
Да за лесы, лесы темные,
Что за гороньки да за высокие,
Что за реченьки да за глубокие.
Да улетела да девья красота
Что за лесы, лесы темные.
Проводила я свою да девью красоту
Да за лесы, лесы темные. [133]
The bright sunset has burned out,
And the red sun has set.
The maidenly krasota has set
Behind the woods, the dark woods,
Behind the tall mountains,
Behind the deep rivers.
They have sent off the maidenly krasota
Beyond the woods, the dark woods,
Beyond the tall mountains,
Beyond the deep rivers.
It flew away, the maidenly krasota,
Beyond the woods, the dark woods,
I sent off my maidenly krasota
Beyond the woods, the dark woods.
§91. In another type of song performed on the same occasion the bride looks for a place to leave her krasota, but no place seems fitting, and the bride is depicted as making one futile attempt after another until she finally gives her krasota away, usually to her brother or sisters and age-mates. In the following lament the bride first takes her krasota to the “green meadows” and leaves it there, but then cannot bear it, returns, carries her krasota back, and gives it to her friends.
По светлой светлице
По новой горенке,
По сеням то новеньким,
По крылечушку по красному
Я по батюшкову широку двору,
За воротички за широкие
За вереюшки за дубовые
Я во далече во чисто поле,
Во раздолье широкое,
Во луга зелёные
И на травы муравые,
И на цветы лазореные.
Поставлю свою девью красоту
Под кусточек,
Под гнёздышко соловьиное.
Отойду я от своей девьей красоты
Уж мне жаль-то будет
Своей девьей красоты.
Оглянусь я на девью красоту
Побегут мои горючи слезы
По моему лицу белому
По платью цветному
Отойду я к своей девьей красоте,
Подойду я близешенько,
Возьму я свою девью красоту
Из-под кустечка
Из-под гнёздышка.
Понесу я свою девью красоту
Из раздолья широкого,
Из лугов зелёных,
Со травов муравьих,
Со цветов алых лазоревых
Я ко батюшке к широку двору,
Ко матушкиной новой горнице,
Ко своей-то светлой светлице,
Я поставлю за дубовый стол,
Под мать Божью Богородицу,
Под свечи воскояровы.
Я не знаю куда свою девью красоту девать.
Возьму свою девью красоты
И раздам родным сестрицам,
Я сполюбезным своим сподруженькам:
—Вы красуйтесь в моей-то девьей красоте!
Уж как я-тo, красна девица,
Открасовалась в своей девьей красоте. [134]
I will carry my maidenly krasota
Through the light room
Through the new room
Through the entrance hall,
Through the front porch,
Through my father’s wide yard,
Beyond the broad gates
Beyond the oak gate-poles,
Into the open fields,
Into the green meadows,
And to the blue flowers
I will put my maidenly krasota,
Under a little shrub,
Under a nightingale’s nest.
I will step aside from my maidenly krasota,
And I will feel pity
For my maidenly krasota.
I will turn back to look at my maidenly krasota,
Warm tears will begin to roll
Down my white face
Down my flowery dress.
I will walk to my maidenly krasota,
I will come close to it,
I will take my maidenly krasota
From under the shrub,
From under the nest.
I will carry my maidenly krasota
From the open field,
From the green meadows,
Away from the fresh grasses
Away from the red-blue flowers
To my father’s wide yard,
To my mother’s new room
To my own light room,
I will put [my krasota] on the oak table
Under the icon of Mary, Mother of God,
Under the wax candles.
I don’t know what to do with my maidenly krasota.
I will take my maidenly krasota
And give it away to my sisters,
To my beloved friends:
—Show yourselves off in my maidenly krasota!
But for me, a pretty maiden,
My time for showing off has passed.
§92. In some songs the krasota of married women is mentioned, but it is not the real krasota: instead of woodland and orchard flowers the married krasota is dirt and soot from the house. The maidenly krasota is conspicuous, seen and heard all around; the womanly krasota is afraid and ashamed to show itself, barely seen and heard even within the house, as in the following example from Siberia:
Тут сидела красна девица
Свет Наталья душа
С-по изотчеству Филипповна.
Растужилася- расплакалась
Пред своей девьей красотой,
Пред хорошей украшенной,
Что доселева русая коса
Не боялася свету белого,
Не скрывалася солнца красного,
Не стыдилася отца-матери.
Как-то нынече
Убоялася солнца красного,
Устыдилася отца-матери.
Уж и как девью-то красоту
За сто вёрст видели,
Что за тысячу слышали.
А уж бабья-то красота
По избе-то она таскалася
По подлавочью валялася,
Во смоле-то она купалася,
Черемицею обсыпалася
Под порогом-то не слыхать ее,
За дверями-то не видать ее.
Уж как девью-то красоту
За сто вёрст видели,
Что за тысячу слышали
Уж как девья-то красота
У Христа-то она в пазушке. [135]
In the field, in an broad field,
There sat a pretty maiden,
Dear Natalia our light
By her father’s name Filippovna [daughter of Filip].
She grew sad and began to cry
About her maidenly krasota—
The beautiful one, the decorated one—
That until now her blond braid
Was not afraid of the white daylight,
Did not hide from the red sun,
Was not shy of her mother and father.
But somehow now
It [the krasota] became afraid of the red sun,
Became shy of her mother and father.
The maidenly krasota,
It is seen a hundred miles away,
It is heard a thousand miles away.
But a married woman’s krasota
It dragged itself about in her house,
It rolled about under the benches,
It bathed in tar,
It was smeared with cheremitsa [a poisonous plant].
You cannot see it under the threshold,
You cannot hear it behind the door.
But maidenly krasota—
You can see it a hundred miles away,
And hear it a thousand miles away,
It is in Christ’s keeping.
§93. Just as the end of the bride’s maidenhood can be represented in terms of withering plants so too can it, though much less often, be depicted as the destruction of her maidenly attire. Her shawl, for in the following example, is bleached by the sun, her dress is damaged by rain, and her ribbons are blown away by the wind. The picture of a maiden’s house by the roadside attracting the passersby, with which the lament starts, is widely attested in wedding songs:
При путе, при дороженьке,
При дорожке широкою.
Мимо нашего терема
Ходят-издят добры люди
Коннуе да и вершные,
Вершные запряжённые,
Одержат ворона коня
За повода те шелковые,
За узды золоцёные,
Постоят да подумают,
Отойдут да переговорят:
Што во етом-то тереме
Есть девиця круцинная,
Да голова запоруцёна.
Не цють да не слышати
Громко-зыцьново голоса,
Видно, етой-то девици
Надолыс-то дивий век,
В девицях насиделасе,
Износила-то молода
Да кошульку суконную.
Ряды разносилисе,
Пуговки распаялисе,
На буйной-то головушке
Дорогую шаль шёлкову
Солнышком-то повыпекло,
Дорогой-то отласницёк
Дожжиком-то повысякло,
В коце алые лентоцьки
Ветерком-то повыдуло,
Перстеньки да колецики
Да гайташки серебряны
Да сгорели от солнышка. [136]
Our tall house stands
By a road, by a street
By a broad street.
By our house
walk and ride good people,
on horseback, riding
Riding, their horses harnessed.
They would stop their raven-black steeds
With their silken bridle,
With their gilded reins,
They would stop and think,
Walk away and talk:
That in this house
There is a maiden in grief,
Her head has been promised.
You can’t hear
Her loud clear voice.
And so it seems this maiden
Has had enough of her maidenly life,
Has been a maiden long enough,
Has worn out, the young one,
Her coat of wool,
The seams [?] have come apart,
The buttons have falled apart,
And on her luxuriant head,
The costly silk shawl
Has been bleached by the sun,
And her costly silk dress
Has been beaten by rain,
And the red ribbons
Have been blown away by the wind,
Her rings
And her silver necklaces
Have been burned by the sun.
§94. The “crowning” day brings with it more laments, some similar to the ones of the “week” and the devichnik, but many peculiar to the occasion, such as laments connected with waiting for the groom’s procession and with the dressing of bride’s hair after the church ceremony in the style of married women. First, however, come the laments associated with the bride’s last awakening in her parental home. By tradition, during the last night the bride sees a terrifying dream and on the morning of the “crowning” day she laments about it. The content of the dream is as traditional as its occurrence. One respondent, in describing the morning of the wedding day says the following:
§95. Multiple variants of these dream-songs involve flooding or fast rivers, steep and insurmountable mountains, and occasionally reeds or grass to which the bride tries to hold on and which cut her hands. In one lament, for example, the bride asks her mother to get up early and wash not with spring water but with “warm tears.” She complains, as is usual with such laments, that she did not sleep well and then tells her dream:
Речка быстрая и в этой речке быстрой
Я купалася,
Предо мною, родна матушка,
Сильная волна колыхалася,
А я, родна матушка,
Ее напугалася.
Приплыла я, родная матушка, к крутому берегу
И за травыньку хваталася.
И проснулась я, родна матушка,
И мое сердце напугалося. [138]
And I saw, dear mother, a terrifying dream:
A swift river, and in that swift river
I was bathing,
In front of me, dear mother,
A big wave rose up,
And I, dear mother,
Was afraid of it.
I swam, dear mother, to the tall river bank
And grasped at the grass.
And I woke up, my dear mother,
And my heart was afraid.
§96. In many cases, the friends of the bride are also present for the awakening, and the dream-laments are often addressed to them, as in the following example from the Povetluzhie region, where the bride, carried away by the flooding river, first tries to, but cannot, hold on to a “white birch tree” and then succeeds in grasping two plants that are painful to touch—the cutting sedge and the prickly shepita. The white birch, the last verses explain, is the bride’s mother, the sedge that cuts her hands is her future mother-in-law, and the prickly shepita her future father-in-law. [139]
Вы подружки мои милые,
Вам спалось ли ночку тёмную?
А мне да молодешеньке
Не спалася ночка тёмная,
Только много во сне видела:
Понесло мя, молодешеньку,
Вниз по матушке по быстрой реке,
Понесло меня, маледешеньку,
Ко белой березоньке,
Уж я тут было хваталася,
Уж я тут было держалася,
Не могла я сухватитеся.
Принесло мя, молодешеньку,
Что белая березонька
Что родимая то матушка.
Понесло мя, молодешеньку,
Вниз по матушке по быстрой реке;
Понесло мя молодешеньку,
Ко резучей то осоке,
Уж я тут-то сохваталася,
Уж я тут-то судержалася.
Понесло мя, молодешеньку,
Вниз по матушке по быстрой реке;
Понесло мя млaдешеньку,
Ко колючей-то щепите.
Тут я судержалася,
Тут я сухватилася:
Колюча-та шепичина—
Это свекор батюшко.
Резуча-то осока—
Свекровь матушка,
Белая березонька
Родная матушка.
Are you sleeping, white swans,
My dear friends,
Did you sleep well this dark night?
I, the young one,
Could not sleep well this dark night,
But saw much in my dreams:
The water carried carried me, the young one,
Down our mother the swift river,
I was carried, the young one,
To a white birch-tree,
And I tried to grasp it,
And I tried to take hold of it,
But I could not take hold of it.
And the water carried me along, the young one—
The white birch tree
Is my dear mother—
And the water carried me, the young one,
Down our mother the swift river,
And the water carried me, the young one
To the cutting sedge.
And here, yes, I grasped it,
And here, yes, I took hold of it.
And the water carried me, the young one,
Down our mother the swift river,
And it took me, the young one,
To the prickly shepita-plant,
And here I grasped it,
And here I took hold of it,
And the prickly shepita-plant
Is my father-in-law,
And the cutting sedge
Is my mother-in-law,
And the white birch
Is my dear mother.
Спалася ли тёмна ноченька?
А мне, младенькой, приснилося,
Что летели три ворона.
Первый-то летел выше всех,
А второй-то кричал прытче всех
А третий сел на мою буйну головушку,
Растрепал мне русы косыньки.
А я, млада, горько плакала,
Плакала по русой косе….
Вставайте, милы подруженьки,
Умывайтесь ключевой водой,
Собирайтесь на весёлый пир.
Уж как едут-едут гости нежданные и незваные.
Завалите вы, милы подруженьки,
Путь-дороженьку гнилой осинушкой,
Чтоб они не прошли, не проехали. [141]
Get up, dear friends!
Did you sleep well this dark night?
As for me, the young one, I had a dream
That three ravens were flying,
And the first one flew highest of all,
And the second cawed loudest of all,
And the third one landed on my luxuriant head,
And disheveled my blond braids.
And I, the young one, cried bitterly,
I cried bitterly for my blond braid….
Get up, my dear friends,
Wash with spring water,
Prepare for the joyful feast.
They are on their way, the guests unwaited for and uninvited.
Block their way, my dear friends,
With a rotten aspen tree,
So that they cannot pass and cannot go through.
There are also dream-laments of the bride that are more reminiscent of the songs sung during the preceding week: for example, the bride may tell a dream in which she goes to a garden to gather flowers and sees that all the flowers are fresh and bright, but one is withered and drooping. She explains that she is the withered flower, her head bowed in sadness while her friends remain joyful and pretty. [142]
Да по лугам-то по зелёныем,
Да по травам-то по шелковым.
Да уносила вода вешная,
Да уносила дочек с матерью.
Да мать об дочери расплакалась:
“Да воротись ты, мое дитятко,
Да твои ключики позабыла!
Да уж как ключик—воля вольная,
Да второй ключик от комода,
Да от комода светлы платьица.” [143]
The spring floods flowed over
The green meadows,
The silken grasses.
The spring floods washed away,
Washed away daughters and mothers.
A mother cried for her daughter:
“Return, my little child,
You forgot you little keys!
And one key is your willful will,
And the second key is to your chest,
To your chest of light-colored dresses.”
§99. The second example is over a century earlier and was recorded in the Moscow region (Ostashkovo): [144]
По лугам вода вешняя;
Унесло, улелеило
Чадо милое, дочь от матери.
Разставалась матушка,
Разставалась государыня,
На крутом красном бережке,
Что на белом на камушке.
Не бела лебедь кликала,
Мать oб дочери плакала:
Воротись, мое дитятко,
Воротись, чадо милое,
Свет Анна Михайловна!
Позабыла ты трои ключи
Что трои ключи олотные,
И со щёлковым поясом,
Со колечком серебряным,
Со витым позолеченым.
Не забыла я, матушка,
Не забыла, государыня,
Что трои ключи золотыя;
Позабыла я, матушка,
Всю волюшку батюшкину
И всю негу матушкину,
Всю красу свою девичью.
It flowed, it poured [?],
The spring flood over the meadows,
It carried, it took away
A dear child, a daughter from a mother.
The mother parted [?],
The mistress parted [with her daughter ?]
On a steep red bank
On a white stone.
It was not a swan that called,
It was a mother crying for her daughter:
“Come back, my dear child,
Anna Mikhailovna, my light!
You forgot your three keys,
Your three golden [?] keys
With a silk belt,
With a silver ring,
A gilded twirled one!”
“I did not forget them, mother,
I did not forget, mistress,
The three keys.
I forgot, mother,
All my father’s freedom,
All my mother’s tender care,
All my maidenly beauty.”
§100. The theme of forgotten keys, usually three in number, which appears in both laments can take many forms, but invariably the mother asks her daughter to return (sometimes because she forgot the keys). When the bride is represented as responding to her mother, it is, of course, always in the negative, and usually, as in the second example above, the bride denies the notion that she has forgotten the keys: instead it is her maidenhood that she has forgotten. The bride’s mother is the only participant in the wedding who is allowed a measure of sadness even during the final, joyful, feast at the groom’s house, and themes similar to the laments above continue in the mother’s songs performed after the crowning. In laments on the crowining day the mother’s sadness is nearly as strongly expressed as that of the bride herself.
Я искала три колодечка,
Приходила я ко первому колодечку,
Почерпнула там воды холодноей,
Там ведь ковшики были железные,
Я хотела взять ключевой воды,
Слышу, топают копыта лошадиные,
Слышу, едет твой чуж отецкий сын,
Он смутил всю ключеву воду холодную,
Не успела я взять ключевой воды холодноей,
Я направилась ко второму колодечку,
Почерпушечки там были не простые,
Ковшички там были все литые.
Я ладила взять ключевой воды холодной,
Тут наехал остудник чуж отецкий сын,
Не успела я взять воды холодноей,
Поспешила я к третьему колодечку,
Только взяла я ключевой воды холодноей,
Вдруг затопали копыта лошадиные,
Вдруг наехал твой остудник чуж отецкий сын.
Он сулил меня, засуливал,
Он дарил меня, задаривал:
“Ты продай ко, бедна, вольну волюшку.” [147]
I flew beyond the frightening Lake Onega,
I searched for three wells,
I approached the first well,
I drew cold water,
Since the dippers there were of iron,
I wanted to take the spring water
But I hear the clop of horses’ hooves,
I hear, the hateful one, the stranger father’s son [the groom] is coming,
He muddied the cold spring water,
I did not have time to draw the cold spring water.
I went to the second well,
The dippers there were not plain,
They were all made of cast metal.
I got ready to draw cold spring water
But at that moment the hateful stranger father’s son arrrived,
I did not have time to draw the cold water,
I hurried to the third well,
As soon as I drew the cold spring water,
Suddenly the horse’s hooves clopped,
Suddenly he arrived, your hateful one, stranger father’s son.
He begged me with promises,
He promised me many gifts:
“Why don’t you sell, you poor thing, the willful will [of the bride]?”
The bathhouse itself is alternatively described as magically luxurious, gilded, decorated with pearls, made of precious wood and silk, and cursed as the bride wishes it to fall apart, “log by log.” Equally contradictory are the words of the bride: she both asks her friends to make the bath and blames them for it, asks them to wash away her krasota, and bewails its departure, curses the friend of the officiant who made the bath and thanks her.
Где же баенна истопница,
Ключевой воды изнощица?
Где же питерска обманщица,
Вытегорская изменница?
Буди проклята советна мила подружка,
Изменила ты да волю вольную,
Изменила ты мою волю девичью.
Я пришла как в парну баенку,
Моя волюшка с головушки бросалася,
Во медны тазы она кидалася.
В чистой водушке да искупалася.
Она в печеньку бросалася,
Зрелым углем показалася.
Она в каменку бросалася,
Огнём пламенным да показалася.
Она в двери как бросалася,
Серой уточкой да показалася.
Поплыла как эта сера уточка
По широкому по славному Онегушку.
Тут по крутому по бережку
Ходил полесовал остудник млад отецкий сын.
Он убил да серу уточку
На широком славном Онегушке.
Это не уточка была,
Это была да воля девичья.
Уж родитель моя матушка,
Ведь я белая лебедушка
Без воли нунь вольноей.
Вы зовите светушков да братцов родимыих,
Пусть догонят остудника млада сына отецкаго,
Пусть отнимут мою да волю вольную,
Пусть отнимут мою да волю девичью. [149]
My beloved close friends,
Where is the one who stoked the fire in the bathhouse?
The one who brought the spring water?
Where is this deceiver from Saint-Petersburg
That betrayer from Vytegorsk?
A curse on you, my dear close friend,
You have changed [betrayed? Yes] my willful will
You have changed my maidenly will.
When I came to the steamy bath-house,
My will flung itself off my head,
It dashed itself into the copper basins,
It bathed in the clean water,
It flung itself into the oven,
It appeared as a ripe coal,
It flung itself into the stone oven,
It appeared as a fiery flame,
It flung itself to the door,
It appeared to be a gray duck.
This gray duck set out to swim
On wide and glorious Lake Onega.
There on a steep bank
Walked and hunted the hateful young father’s son
He killed the gray duck
On wide and glorious Lake Onega.
This was not a duck
This was my maidenly will.
You, my parent, my mother,
See now I, a white swan,
Have no willful will.
Call my dear brothers,
Let them catch up with the hateful young father’s son,
Let them take back my willful will,
Let them take back my maidenly will.
§104. In some laments the bride leaves her krasota in the bathhouse and send her sister or a friend to fetch it, but the sister opens the door too wide and the krasota flies away. In a lament from the region of Archangelsk the bride asks her father to get his saber and his horse and ride out to catch her krasota. To her lament the father replies, in prose, that he has already gone to look and found nothing:
§105. After the bath the braid was usually made for the last time to the accompaniment of laments in which the bride simultaneously requests that her hair be combed and expresses her resistance by asking that a sharp knife or saber be hidden in it. In the following example, the bride asks her mother to put knives, needles, and sabers into her braid so that her godmother will cut her hands when she undoes the braid:
Ты в мою русу косу
Два ножа, да два булатные,
Две сабельки острые,
Две иголочки колючие!
Да приеду я, молода,
Я ко усыплению ко светлому,
Ко звону заунывному!
Только станет крёсна матушка
За мою косу братися,
Да и обрежет крёсна матушка
Свои белые рученьки
По самые кисточки! [151]
Braid, mother,
Into my long braid,
Two knives, two damask knives,
And two sharp sabers,
And two prickly needles!
I will arrive, the young one,
To the light Assumption
To the doleful bells [i.e. to church].
As soon as the godmother
Touches my braid
The godmother will cut
Her white hands
Up to the very wrists!
§106. The striking notion of knives (or needles, or sabers) braided into the bride’s hair is very widespread in laments performed on the morning of the “crowning” day. As the braid is undone for the last time before the procession to the church, the bride in her laments may warn her age-mates not to cut their hands or wish that the groom’s attendants may do so. The following example come from Povolzhye and is addressed to the friends of the bride:
Мои милые голубушки,
Уж ко мне вы, дороги гости,
Уж в последние, в остатные!
Попрошу тебя, голубушка,
Моя милая подруженька,
Не расплетай-ка мне русу косу.
Как в моей-то во русой косе,
Есть два ножечка точёные,
Есть два серпика зубрёные,
Уж не порежь ты белы рученьки,
Уж не порежь ты в алу кровь. [152]
Welcome, friends,
My darling doves,
Come visit me
For the last remaining time!
I will ask you, darling doves,
My beloved friends,
Do not undo my blond braid.
In my blond braid,
There are two sharpened knives,
There are two jagged scythes,
Do not cut your white hands,
Do not draw red blood.
§107. In some regions of Zaonezhye the brother of the bride, who often had a special role to play in her wedding, also performed the decisive action in the ritual of the undoing of the braid. When the braid was made for the last time, it was woven very tightly, with many knots and ribbons, and the bride would resist its dissolution by holding its end firmly. The brother would loosen the bride’s grip, undo the braid, comb it, and put a silver dollar in his sister’s hair; he then took the ribbon (kosopletka), made a bow out of it, and pinned it on his chest. As he performed these actions, the bride’s friends sung:
Пожарче воску ярого.
Слёзно плачет наша умница,
Горько тужит наша разумница
По своей ли по вольной волюшке,
По своей по девочьей красе.
Ты не плачь-ка, наша умница,
Не тужи, наша разумница,
Мы тебя ведь не в полон даем,
Мы тебя ведь замуж выдаем.
Брат сестрицу уговаривал,
Брат сестричушке наказывал:
—Ты сестрицюшка родимая
Туды выйти надо навеки,
Жить-то надо там умеючи,
Носить злата там, не снашивать,
Терпеть горя, не рассказывать,
Ты сестрицюшка родимая.
—Уж ты братец, ты родимый мой,
Понося злато сносится,
Потерпя горюшкo расстроится. [153]
Hot, hot the candle burns,
Hotter than the bright wax.
Our sensible bride is crying tears,
Our intelligent bride is grieving bitterly
Over her willful freedom and will,
Over her maidenly beauty.
Do not cry, our sensible one,
Do not cry, our intelligent one,
We are not giving you away into captivity,
We are giving you away in marriage.
The brother was persuading his sister:
—My dear sister,
You have to go there forever,
You have to know how to live there,
There you have to wear gold and never wear it out,
You have to tolerate grief and never tell it.
—O my brother, my dear one,
When you wear it gold becomes worn out,
When you tolerate it, grief becomes unbearable (?)
§108. In some songs the bride asks her brother to take her volya with him when he goes dancing, or to keep it safe so she can look at it when she comes to visit. [154] In another prichet from the same region, the bride asks her brother to buy her freedom for another year, saying that she longs to stay a maiden and live with her parents:
Оставь хоть ещё на круглый один годышек,
Не пожалей-ка казны да все бессчётной,
И держи-ко ты белую лебёдушку
Что во красных во девицах.
Жалко от тоски бажоной вольной волюшки,
Хочется пожить у желанных у родителей
На своей на родинке. [155]
Listen to me, my beloved brother,
Leave me for at least one full year,
Do not spare countless wealth,
And keep your white swan
Among the pretty maidens.
I long so much for my beloved willful freedom,
I want to live with my beloved parents,
In my native land.
§109. Once the braid was undone and the bride’s hair let loose she could perform a prichet taking leave of her freedom, which is imagined as a gray duck being shot by a hunter, the groom, just as in the bath-lament above. The notion of the groom as hunter is traditional and widespread in wedding laments, and, of couse, find parallels in other cultures. The following lament was performed by the bride on the porch of her house:
Моя волюшка с головки укатилася.
Ты лети, лети моя бажона вольна волюшка,
За горушки высокие,
За моря да за широкие,
За озерушки глубокие.
Ты не стой, моя бажона вольна волюшка,
Ты у рек за перевозами,
Не садись-ка ты, бажона вольна волюшка,
Да на водушку сероплавной серой утушкой.
Этот-то остудник млад отецкий сын,
Он охотник ведь охотится,
Не подстрелил бы тебя наместо
Сероплавной серой уточки. [156]
It was not a silver chain that came undone,
It was my freedom-will that rolled off my head.
Fly away, fly away my beloved willful freedom-will,
Beyond the tall mountains,
Beyond the wide seas,
Beyond the deep lakes.
Do not stand, my dear willful freedom-will,
By the rivers where the crossings are,
Do not land, my dear willful freedom-will
On the water as a gray swimming duck,
That hateful one, the young father’s son,
He is a hunter and hunts,
See that he does not shoot you instead of
The gray swimming duck.
§110. While the bride awaits the arrival of the groom’s party at her house she again performs laments, often in a lament-dialogue with her friends and with her mother. In these last laments before the bride’s presentation before the tables, her hair continues to be a focal point. In the following example the bride thinks ahead to the moment when her hair will have to be dressed like that of married women. She pictures the groom as a “robber” who “robs” her and “her head” and undoes her braid. In reality the braid was never undone by the groom himself, but rather by the bride’s friends or by a female attendant from the groom’s side. Often, such attendants would not actually undo the braid, but only do the bride’s hair up in the style of a married woman after the church. In the laments, however, both the attendant and even the groom himself are imagined as violent destroyers of the bride’s hair arrangement.
Вы подружки мои, кутушки,
Ой, вы возьмите охраните меня.
Вы идите охраните меня,
Ой, вот как едет разоритель мой.
Вот как едет разоритель мой,
Ой, разорит мою головушку,
Разорит мою головушку,
Ой, расплетет он русыю косыньку,
Расплетет он русыю косыньку,
Ой, и разделит на шесть прядочок.
Он разделит на шесть прядочек,
Ой, заплетет он во две косыньки. [157]
Oi, my friends, my companions,
My friends, my companions,
Oi, take me and guard me,
Come and guard me.
Oi, here he comes, my despoiler.
Here he comes, my despoiler.
Oi, he will despoil my poor head,
He will despoil my poor head,
Oi, he will undo my blond braid,
He will undo my blond braid.
Oi, he will divided it into six locks,
He will divide it into six locks,
Oi, he will make two braids out of it.
§111. “Do not give me away” is perhaps the dominant theme in the laments peformed while waiting for the groom’s party, and, apart from bewailing her braid and her maidenly life, the bride performed other types of laments, often addressed to her father, mother, and brother(s). The following song, which reenacts a dialogue between a daughter and her father, exists in many variants, often with the mother rather than the father as the bride’s addressee:
Колокольчики звенят, да колокольчики звенят.
—Мила моя дочь, да мила моя дочь, да
Не убойся—не отдам, да не убойся—не отдам.
—Тятенька родимый, тятенька родимый,
Женихи-то у ворот, да женихи-то у ворот
—Мила моя дочь, да мила моя дочь, да
Не убойся—не отдам, да не убойся—не отдам.
—Тятенька родимый, тятенька родимый,
Жених за скобу берет, да жених за скобу берет.
—Мила моя дочь, да мила моя дочь, да
Не убойся—не отдам, да не убойся—не отдам.
—Тятенька родимый, тятенька родимый,
Жених в комнату вошёл, да жених в комнату вошёл.
—Мила моя дочь, да мила моя дочь, да
Не убойся—не отдам, да не убойся—не отдам.
—Тятенька родимый, тятенька родимый,
Жених ручку подает, да жених ручку подает.
—Мила моя дочь, да мила моя дочь, да
Теперь воля не моя, да воля Сашина. [158]
—Dear daddy, dear daddy,
The bells are ringing, the bells are ringing!
—My dear daughter, my dear daughter,
Don’t fear—I will not give you away, don’t fear—I will not give you away.
—Dear daddy, dear daddy,
But the groom’s party is at the gates, the groom’s party is at the gates!
—My dear daughter, my dear daughter,
Don’t fear—I will not give you away, don’t fear—I will not give you away.
—Dear daddy, dear daddy,
The groom puts his hand on the door handle, the groom puts his hand on the door handle!
—My dear daughter, my dear daughter,
Don’t fear—I will not give you away, don’t fear—I will not give you away.
—Dear daddy, dear daddy,
The groom has walked into the room, the groom has walked into the room!
—My dear daughter, my dear daughter,
Don’t fear—I will not give you away, don’t fear—I will not give you away.
—Dear daddy, dear daddy,
The groom gives me his hand, the groom gives me his hand!
—My dear daughter, my dear daughter,
Now it’s not longer my will, now it is Sasha’s [the groom’s] will.
§112. After the crowning in church the bride’s hair would be done in the style of a married woman for the first time, sometimes even in the church itself, in a side-building. This was known as okruchivanie (‘binding’) and usually performed by svakhi, female attendants. Sometimes the two svakhi—the bride’s and the groom’s—together divide the bride’s hair in two, braid it and then wind the braid around her head, to be hidden (depending on the region) under various types of headdress appropriate for married women. In a prichet the groom’s officiate (svakha) is often pictured as unmercifully ripping and tearing the bride’s hair. The following song from Siberia describes this moment:
Во саду цвести.
Недолго нашей Катеньке в девушках сидеть,
В девушках сидеть.
Недолго Ивановне русу косу плесть,
Русу косу плесть.
Во субботу вечером мать косу плела,
Мать косу плела.
Плела ее косаньку, слезами улила,
Слезами (й)улила.
Поутру ранёшенько подружки плели,
Подружки плели.
Плели ее косаньку, шёлком увили,
Шёлком увили.
Приехали свашеньки немилосливы,
Немилосливы.
Стали её косаньку всю рвать порывать,
Всю рвать порывать.
Стали её русую на две разделять,
На две разделять.
Разделили косаньку на две стороны,
На две стороны.
Положили русую поверх головы,
Поверх головы. [159]
The flower does not have long to bloom in the garden,
to bloom in the garden.
Our Katen’ka does not have long to be among maidens,
to be among maidens.
Ivanovna does not have long to braid her blond braid,
Braid her blong braid.
On Saturday night her mother made the braid,
her mother made the braid.
She made the braid and drenched it with tears,
and drenched it with tears.
Early in the morning the friends made the braid,
The friends made the braid,
They made the braid, they wove silk into it,
they wove silk into it,
The cruel svakhi [officiants on the groom’s side] arrived,
the cruel ones,
They began to tear her braid and rip it,
tear and rip it,
They began to divide the braid in two,
divide it in two.
The parted the braid onto two sides,
onto two sides,
They put the blond braid
On top of her [the bride’s] head.
§113. Similar is the following song, from a different region, sung by the bride’s friends as her hair is being arranged in the fashion of married women:
Рано по заре.
Восплачь, восплачь, Машенька,
По русой косе.
Вечор твою косыньку
Девушки плели.
Приехали свахоньки
Немилостивы,
Стали твою косыньку
На две расплетать,
На две на шесть плеточек
По всей голове.
Будут твои косыньки век вековать
Тебе в красных девицах
Больше не бывать:
Отымет муж волюшку
Обяжет буйную головушку. [160]
The pipe began to play
Early at dawn.
Weep, weep, Mashen’ka,
Over your blond braid.
Yesterday the maidens
Braided your braid.
The cruel match-makers
Arrived,
They begain to divde your braid
Into two parts,
Into two, into six locks
All over your head.
There [on top of your head] will your braid spend the rest of time,
You will not be a pretty maiden
Ever again.
Your husband will take away your freedom-will,
He will bind your luxuriant head.
§114. From church, the procession moves (often with the bride “covered” as before) to the groom’s house, where the mood is decidedly different from what it has been at the bride’s. No laments are performed here, and it is telling that in Zaonezhye the feast at the groom’s is called khvalenie, ‘praise’. [161] Indeed, from the very beginning the songs performed at the groom’s house are decidedly different from the bride’s songs and paint a different picture of the wedding. In these songs, the groom is, of course, handsome and strong and there is no talk of compulsion. Rather, the groom sets out to look for a bride and finds her, her beauty is praised as is his, the groom is gentle and persuasive, he impressively rides up to the bride’s house or orchard on a horse, and the bride is always willing, freely chosing the groom or waiting for him. In contrast to the bride’s songs, which stress her lack of freedom, the groom’s song ascribes to the bride both desire to marry and love for the groom. They also ascribe to the groom himself agency in chosing his bride, the best maiden among many:
Часты звёздушки,
Перебрал, перебрал,
Часты звёздочки!
Выбрал себе, выбрал себе
Да заряночку!
Маленьку, маленьку,
Да ясненьку!
Перебор, перебор,
Часты звёздочки,
Перебрал, перебрал,
Красных девушек!
Выбрал себе, выбрал себе
Да Галину душу!
Ростом она, ростом она
Тонка-высока!
Лицом она, лицом она,
Бела-румяна! [162]
Looking through, looking through
The countless stars,
He chose among, he chose among,
The countless stars!
He chose for himself, he chose for himself
The dawn star!
A little one, a little one,
But a bright one!
Looking through, looking through
The countless stars,
He chose among, he chose among
The beautiful maidens!
He chose for himself, he chose for himself
Galina, our darling!
In stature she is, in stature she is
Slender and tall!
In complexion she is, in complexion she is
White and rosy-cheeked!
§115. Interestingly, the hair seems to play an important part in the groom’s songs as well, though nothing is done to the groom’s hair in the ritual. There is no doubt, however, about how the hair of the groom is imagined: he has golden curls falling to his shoulders. In one of the praise-songs for the groom from the region of Archangelsk, the curls are described as follows:
В три ряды его кудри да завиваютсе. [163]
On his head the golden locks curl,
In three rows his locks curl.
Не свётел ли месяц-батюшко всосеял молодца?
Не заря ли тебя да спородила, молодцa?
Не звёзды ли часты-мелки да осияли молодца?
Whose is he, whose is he, this vigorous youth?
Was it the bright father-moon that begat such a youth?
Was it dawn that gave birth to you, o youth?
Was it the countless stars that shed light on such a youth?
The groom (within the song) responds by naming his parents and saying that it was his sister who “twirled” his curls. The scenario is traditional. In multiple examples of this type the groom’s curls elicit questions and admiration, and it is usually the groom’s sister who curls his hair, although in some cases it may also be the bride.
Ох да лёли лёли, на ком ру… ох русые?
Да на Ванюшке кудри по плечам да лежат,
Ох дa лёли лёли по плечам лежат,
По плечам лежат, словно жар ох, жар горят,
Ох да лёли лёли, слвно жа … ох жар горят,
Словно жар горят, разгораются,
Ох да лёли лёли разгораются. [164]
Who has curls, oh, who has blond curls?
Oh, lyoli lyoli, who has blond curls?
Vanyushka’s curls go down to his shoulders.
Oh, lyoli lyoli, go down to his shoulders.
They fall to his shoulders, they burn like fire,
Oh, lyoli lyoli, they burn like fire.
They burn like fire, they blaze even brighter,
Oh, lyoli lyoli, they blaze even brighter.
§118. In another type of song, which describes the young man about to find a bride for himself, the future groom’s mother is depicted giving instructions to her son as she combs his “yellow curls:”
Хорошо жёлты кудри зачесала. [165]
His mother made him ready,
Combed well his yellow curls.
§119. The groom’s hair, just like the bride’s, can be strikingly compared to flowers. Needless to say, in contrast to the bride’s, these flowers never wilt. The following example belongs to the concluding part of the wedding, the feast at the groom’s house:
Не кудряво деревцо зарасветывало:
Расцвели кудри молодечкие,
Молодецкие кудри Трофимовы,
И что света Трофима Петровича.
На всякой кудринке по цветочку цветет,
По цветочку цветет по лазурьевому,
На всякой кудринке по жемчужинке. [166]
It was not a bird-cherry tree that grew,
It was not a curly tree that blossomed:
It was youthful curls that blossomed,
The youthful curls of Trofim,
Our light, Trofim Petrovich.
On every curl there is a flower blooming,
On each one a blue flower blooming,
On every curlicue there is a pearl.
§120. In one song the curls metonymically stand in for the groom, while the braid stands in for the bride. The song was preformed in Zaonezhye before the departure for the church but after the bride’s hair was done up in the fashion of a married woman and ceremonially handed over to the groom. The groom would put his hand on the bride’s hair (or a shawl concealing it), turn the bride around three times, and then kiss her as the maidens sang:
за стол пошли
Русую косаньку вслед повели,
ой, вслед повели.
Жёлтые кудри —там Ваня господин,
ой, Ваня господин,
Русая косанька—Маня душа,
ой, Маня душа. [167]
Yellow curls went to the table,
went to the table
They led the blond braid after them,
oi, after them.
The yellow curls—are master Vanya,
oi, master Vanya.
The blond braid—our dear Manya,
oi, our dear Manya.
§121. In the Russian north, the joyful wedding feast was the occasion for performing many kinds of praise-songs characterized by a shared refrain, which in its simplest form is Виноградиё красно-зелёное моё “My read-green grape-vine.” The question of the origins of this refrain is a complicated one, but it is both typical and telling in its reference to a southern, exotic, and luxurious plant. From the very beginning, “grape trees,” raisins, and roses are mentioned in the groom’s songs, but not in those of the bride. At the conclusion of the wedding the unripe apples, trampled flowers, and broken branches of the brides’ laments are replaced in songs by flourishing grapes and ripe berries, as in the following example:
Виноград в саду цветет,
А ягода, а ягода созревает,
А ягода, а ягода созревает.
Виноград-то—Иван сударь,
Виноград-то—Иван сударь,
А ягода, а ягода—свет Прасковья его,
А ягода, а ягода—свет Прасковья его. [168]
A grapevine blooms in the orchard
A grapevine blooms in the orchard
And a berry, a berry ripens
And a berry, a berry ripens.
The grapevine is master Ivan
The grapevine is master Ivan,
And the berry, and the berry — his Praskovia,
And the berry, and the berry—his Praskovia.
§122 . Red roses also become prominent in the praises for the newlyweds, and phrases such as Роза, роза, роза—алые цветы (“rose, rose, rose—red flowers”) or роза моя, виноград зелёный (“my rose, my green grape-vine”) or сладко яблочко наливчасто (“sweet appple full of juice) appear as refrains or beginning verses. [169] The concluding feast is also the occasion for praise-songs containing jocular blame of the participants (especially of the officiants) and for bawdy and rude sexual songs, usually sung as the newlyweds were led to their room.
Part Two: Ancient Greece
Lardinois has argued that this fragment along with 16 and 96, all songs addressed to absent maidens, “in fact represent laments that Sappho herself or young friends of the bride performed at weddings.” [179] Elements of wedding lament have been observed in Catullus 62, which appears to be based at least in part on Sappho, and in any case is a stylization of a wedding song. [180] From Catullus also comes what might be the most direct reference to the ancient wedding laments, in another poem with Greek antecedents, a homage to Callimachus:
frustrantur falsis gaudia lacrimulis,
ubertim thalami quas iuxta limina fundunt?
is the joy of parents frustrated by the false tears
which they shed in profusion at the threshold of the bedchambers?
§128. Elements of wedding lament have been detected in the final chorus of Aeschylus’ Suppliants, where a female chorus sings in an agonistic dialogue with a male one, as the two choruses also do in Catullus 62. Seaford has argued that in both cases a genre of wedding song is evoked, and that traces of such wedding songs are also to be seen in Sappho 27, in a fragment of the Danaid trilogy where both boys and girls sing on the morning after the wedding night (fr. 43 Radt) and also in the Hesiodic Shield 276–284, where choruses of both boys and girls sing in a wedding procession. [181]
§130. The applicability of the Russian comparative evidence stretches, of course, beyond direct equations as Russian wedding songs find their echoes in Ancient Greece not only in the laments of the brides but in multiple genres, both verbal and visual. The comparison becomes more meaningful if it focuses not only on single elements, however tantalizingly similar those may sometimes be, but also on the contexts of such similarities, the sequences and structures of which they are part. It makes sense, therefore, to follow the bride’s progression through the steps of the wedding, the progression that begins, both in Russia and also in Ancient Greece, in a group of girls.
§134. Strikingly, there is nothing in this description that would have to be changed for it to apply to the maidens of the Russian wedding songs, with the exception of bathing in spring, for which neither Siberia nor the shores of the White Sea provide a suitable climate. Here again, the marriageable maiden does not appear alone, but always in a group of age-mates who are playing, dancing, singing, gathering flowers, sewing and embroidering. They perform the same function as in Theocritus’ Epithalamium for Helen in singing at the wedding when one of them is married, and it is always the prima inter pares who is the bride: each maiden in her turn will play this role, be praised in wedding songs as the “leader of the pack,” the most “beautiful, noble and virtuous of them all.” Each maiden married in certain villages of the Vologda region will hear her age-mates singing at her wedding that they have lost the “leader of the herd,” each one will ask her friends to sing cheerful songs to a musical accompaniment claiming that she can no longer join them, even though she used to be the first to start and the last to leave off. Russian wedding songs exhibit the same tension as the scenes on Greek vases: the leader is one of the group, and yet she is distinct, all branches of the tree are beautiful, but the topmost is the bride. At Odyssey 6.108 a careful balance is struck when Nausikaa is said to be conspicuous among her friends, and yet they all are beautiful: ῥεῖά τ’ ἀριγνώτη πέλεται, καλαὶ δέ τε πᾶσαι. Perhaps this assurance of every maiden’s beauty has to do with the fact that every one of these maidens will have to play the role of the leader in her turn. Even the comparison with the stars, so prominent in Greek poetry, can be paralleled in Russian songs, though here it is less central. It is present nevertheless in a very widespread praise song where the groom is depicted as looking at all the stars and choosing the brightest one, sometimes described as the “dawn-star.” [192]
πόθωι δάμεισα παῖδος βραδίναν δι’ Ἀφροδίταν
Sweet mother, I cannot weave at the loom any longer
Overcome by desire for a boy (?) through slender Aphrodite. [197]
§138. The third notion included by Ferrari in her list, namely the “chastity and wisdom made visible by the enveloping mantle and modest gaze,” is also well represented in the dromena and legomena of the Russian village wedding. In the Vologda region, the wedding proper begins when the bride is covered, and from that point on she remains veiled. Veiled she is taken to church, and veiled again from the church to the house of the groom. Ferrari remarks that on Greek vases the veiled figure often shows signs of being restricted by the veil, for example, when she has to thrust her hand out awkwardly to pick up an object. [198] In a similar way, the Vologda brides in their laments cannot walk as fast or as far as before and cannot see “half the white light.” These Vologda brides are separated from their age-mates in the same way as the brides on the Amasis Painter’s miniature lekythoi: the other maidens sings and dance, their heads decorated but not veiled, while the bride alone sits, covered and veiled with a shawl.
ignotus pecori, nullo convulsus aratro,
quem mulcent aurae, firmat sol, educat imber.
multi illum pueri, multae optavere puellae:
idem cum tenui carptus defloruit ungui,
nulli illum pueri, nullae optavere puellae:
sic virgo, dum intacta manet, dum cara suis est;
cum castum amisit polluto corpore florem,
nec pueris iucunda manet, nec cara puellis.
unknown to cattle, uprooted by no plough,
a flower that the breezes caress, the sun strengthens, the rain rears.
Many youths, many maidens desire it—
That same flower once it withers, plucked by a delicate nail,
No youths, no maidens desire:
Just so a maiden, as long as she is untouched, is dear to her friends;
Once she loses the pure flower, her body defiled,
She does not remain pleasing to youths, nor dear to maidens.
§142. The poetics of this stanza are strikingly reminiscent of a bride from Vologda, who recollects her father’s promise to put her in a garden, protect her and call her a “flower.” [209] In examining the narcissistic position voiced by the girls of the Catullus poem, Stehle points out their refusal to enter into the life of society and their refusal to acknowledge, for example, that each girl comes from a union of a man and a woman. Instead, “a flower is cherished in the garden because its fragile delicate beauty is its own justification,” it “gives nothing except for the sheer fact of its existence in return for the protection of its defenselessness.” [210] The Vologda bride, who recalls her father’s delight in her very existence, longs for just such a lot. In her lament, the father’s failure to retain the same attitude forever, his change from a protector to a seller of his daughter’s beauty is seen as a cruel betrayal.
πόσσι καταστείβοισι, χάμαι δέ τε πόρφυρον ἄνθος
As the hyacinth in the mountains shepherd-men
Trample with their feet, and the purple flower is on the ground.
This image in turn finds striking parallels in Russian wedding laments, where the bride’s krasota, hidden under a blue flower, is trampled or cut by uncaring farmers.
Да мужики деревенские,
Да подкосили девью красоту,
Да подкосили и подрезали. [211]
But then some hay-cutters were passing by,
Peasants from a village,
They mowed the maidenly krasota,
They mowed it and they cut it.
§144. Sappho’s ποίμενες ἄνδρες underscores the male subjects of the hyacinth’s violation, and the second line of the fragment draws out the contrast between the magnitude of the destruction they have wrought and their lack of concern for it: not only do they damage the flower, they trample it with their feet. The preciousness of the flower is in contrast to its degraded position, χάμαι “on the ground.” The shepherds are busy with their work and have their own concerns (connected, of course, with productive and generative tasks) and the hyacinth is nothing to them. The emotional workings of the Russian laments are very similar: the farmers, whose maleness is again emphasized, do not even notice what destruction they have wrought as they, just like Sappho’s shepherds, go about their business of agricultural production.
non aequumst pugnare, pater cui tradidit ipse
ipse pater cum matre, quibus parere necessest.
It is not reasonable to struggle against the man to whom your father himself has handed you over,
your father himself, together with your mother, whom you must obey.
§147. The same dynamics are repeatedly at play during the week of the Russian wedding: the bride resists and then symbolically submits, and then again voices her resistance in a different form, only to submit yet again. Like the absent bride of Catullus 62, she is the addressee of much persuasion by both male and female voices, all leading to the same conclusion: maidenhood is no longer hers, and she must submit. [214] Stehle concludes her discussion of Sappho 105c by pointing out that the context of the fragment is entirely unknown and suggesting that it would be out of place in a wedding hymn. [215] In contrast, Wilamowitz, Mangelsdorff, and Page see a wedding hymn as a likely context, and Bowra imagines that the fragments might come (on the analogy with Catullus 62) from a girls’ chorus performed before the bridal chamber. [216] The comparison with the Russian wedding laments problematizes both suggestions and opens further possibilities. Russian parallels to the hyacinth fragment are indeed wedding songs, but they are not wedding hymns. Songs of this type would not be performed before the bridal chamber. In a sense, their performative context both fits and does not fit Stehle Stigers’ suggestion that the hyacinth fragment, rather than being part of a wedding hymn “has strayed rather from a different context, that of the thiasos, Sappho’s religious association.” [217] The Russian “cut flower” laments do indeed occur in the context of what might be called a thiasos, a group of intimate age-mates performing songs of their age and place, with the important modification that the thiasos is in fact part of the wedding: the contexts of the wedding and of the thiasos overlap. Whether this could be so in Ancient Greece we cannot tell, but the possibility is worth considering.
… A girl too tender plucking flowers …
Stehle Stigers points out that ἄγαν in this fragment underscores the tension between the innocence and youth of the girl and her seductive eroticized activity, picking flowers. There is little on the surface that would lead one to see this fragment as wedding poetry. The extreme youth of the bride is a topos, however, in Russian wedding laments. In these laments the bride is described as too fragile, too thin, too foolish, too childish, in short too young to be married. [218] In one such lament, the age-mates of the bride are small children who play with dolls, the suggestion being that the bride herself is only a child and yet she is forced to face the “storm cloud” of marriage. [219] The same bride, however, will be described in the course of the same wedding as a “red rose” and “ripe berry,” the songs of the final feast denying the earlier songs of the maidens, the two visions of the bride in agonistic tension resolved (if it is resolved) not in song but only in the action of the wedding ritual.
ἄκρον ἐπ’ ἀκροτάτωι, λελάθοντο δὲ μαλοδρόπηες,
οὐ μὰν ἐκλελάθοντ’, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐδύναντ’ ἐπίκεσθαι
As a sweet apple reddens on the topmost branch,
At the top of the topmost branch, and the apple-pickers have overlooked it
—No, they did not overlook it, but they could not reach it.
In contrast to the trampled hyacinth, the red apple is intact and ripe: it has waited on its topmost branch for a worthy picker. The fragment, which comes from a wedding song, brings to mind the depiction of the bride in Russian songs both as a ripe berry and also as the topmost branch of the tree. What the Russian evidence adds is the notion that the hyacinth and the apple do not have to represent two different maidens, or come from widely disparate contexts. In the earlier stages of the wedding, the songs are about the bride’s greenness, childishness, and pure beauty, which is about to be destroyed. In fact, in one of the laments the brides’ mother compares her specifically to an apple tree that does not have apples: although the mother tended the tree carefully, she will not pluck its fruit:
Я сахарного яблочка не кушивала [220]
I did not see flowers on the apple tree,
I did not tаste its sugar-sweet apples.
Once the bride takes her seat next to the groom at the festive table, and especially during the concluding feast at the groom’s house, she is transformed in a combination of elements uncannily reminiscent of Sappho from a blue flower to a red fruit.
Do I still chase after maidenhood?
Even more striking is the dialogue between the bride (νύμφη) and her maidenhood in Sappho 114 Voigt:
(παρθενία)· οὐκέτι ἤξω πρὸς σέ, οὐκέτι ἤξω.
(Maiden): Maidenhood, maidenhood, where do you go, forsaking me?
(Maidenhood): I will come to you no more, I will come no more.
The sentiment finds its precise equivalents in the Russian songs, but equally noteworthy is the dialogic form. In the same way the krasota, the preeminent symbol of maidenhood, is personified and given voice in the Russian wedding, being acted out by one of the maidens, who says that the bride will never be a maiden again and bids her a sad farewell. [221] Thus the parthenia in Sappho, once it is separated from the bride, acquires its own voice and says to its former owner exactly what the krasota says to Russian girl, “I am never coming back to you.”
†φέρεις ὄιν, φέρεις αἶγα, φέρεις ἄπυ† μάτερι παῖδα.
Hesperus, bringing all that the shining dawn scattered,
You bring a sheep, you bring a goat you bring a child back to (?) its mother.
The interpretation of this fragment is complicated by a textual problem, but Petropoulos compares it to a lament of a bride recorded in Cappadocia at the turn of the last century:
the birds have gone to their pasturage and desolate persons have gone to the West,
and so also do I, in my desolation, go towards the Bridge of Adana. [222]
§152. On the basis of this comparison, Petropoulos hypothesizes that Sappho 104a might also be a lament or “complaint” sung by the bride or others on her behalf and that its theme is the inevitability of the bride’s separation from her family: the sheep, the goat, and the child all return to their home in the natural course of events, and just as inevitably the bride has to depart from her natal home. [223] The mention of animals and a child in the same line is hardly coincidental, for this combination occurs again and again in connection with brides. In Theocritus’ Epithalamium to Helen, as in the Russian songs, the members of the chorus picture themselves continuing their maidenly pursuits: just as before they will go to the meadows to gather flowers and make wreathes, but Helen will no longer go with them. A less familiar image follows: the girls long for Helen the way suckling lambs long for their mother:
ἑρψεῦμες στεφάνως δρεψεύμεναι ἁδὺ πνέοντας,
πολλὰ τεοῦς, Ἑλένα, μεμναμέναι ὡς γαλαθηναί
ἄρνες γειναμένας ὄιος μαστὸν ποθέοισαι.
To pluck sweetly smelling wreathes,
Thinking of you often, Helen, just like suckling
Lambs longing for the udder of the sheep that gave them birth.
ἐλεινὸν ἀμμένει τέλος·
κἀπὸ ματρὸς ἄφαρ βέβαχ’,
ὥστε πόρτις ἐρήμα.
Is pitiful as it awaits the outcome,
She has wondered far from her mother,
Like a lonely heifer.
§155. The examples can be multiplied, from Aeschylus’ Danaids comparing themselves to mooing heifers pursued by wolves (351–352) to Iphigeneia being sacrificed as a heifer rather than married as she should have been, being a maiden brought up “at her mother’s side” (Euripides Iphigeneia in Aulis 1080–1089). There are no references to brides as heifers in the Russian songs, but the theme of the bride’s mother resonates with the Greek sources and even on the surface the resemblances are notable. In some Russian laments, for example, the krasota is depicted as an abandoned child, crying and begging to be picked up while the brides are said to “howl” (выть), a verb most often used of animals. [225]
In Russian songs the maiden’s life with her mother is often described by the word nega, which could be translated as “luxuriance” and refers to the experience of being pampered and tenderly cared for. The same notion is present in Greece, and this brings me to several examples which are perhaps most reminiscent of the Russian wedding laments, namely the occasions in tragedy where women express their negative (or at least complicated) views on marriage. These instances are, of course, far from being unmediated expressions of women’s voices and come from a genre that was performed neither by, nor for, women. Nevertheless, the echoes are present and support the notion that these monologues might draw on actual wedding laments. [230]
χώροισιν αὑτοῦ, καί νιν οὐ θάλπος θεοῦ,
οὐδ’ ὄμβρος, οὐδὲ πνευμάτων οὐδὲν κλονεῖ,
ἀλλ’ ἡδοναῖς ἄμοχθον ἐξαίρει βίον
ἐς τοῦθ’ ἕως τις ἀντὶ παρθένου γυνὴ
κληθῇ λάβῃ τ’ ἐν νυκτὶ φροντίδων μέρος
ἤτοι πρὸς ἀνδρὸς ἢ τέκνων φοβουμένη·
In its own places, and neither the heat of the god [i.e. sun]
Nor the rain, nor any of the winds assail it.
Instead, it takes up a toil-free life amidst pleasures
Until such time as she is she is called a wife instead of maiden
And picks up in one night her share of cares,
Fearing either for her husband or for her children.
Deaneira never explicitly identifies the maiden with a flower or a tree in a protected garden, but her words seem to presuppose such images, since the “young life” is sheltered precisely from the dangers that threaten young saplings and tender flowers— the sun, rain, and wind. The carefree life of the maiden ends suddenly when in becoming a woman she acquires her share of cares in a single night. Similar sentiments are expressed in Russian laments and with similar diction. The brides refer to their new state as being beset with cares, [231] and, just like Deaneira, they emphasize the abruptness of the change: in Fedosova’s lament the bride acquires “cares” “in one minute” (в минуту обзаботили, 295), a more extreme parallel to Deaneira’s “one night.” [232]
ἔβλεψα ταύτῃ τὴν γυναικείαν φύσιν,
ὡς οὐδέν ἐσμεν. αἳ νέαι μὲν ἐν πατρὸς
ἥδιστον, οἶμαι, ζῶμεν ἀνθρώπων βίον·
τερπνῶς γὰρ ἀεὶ παῖδας ἁνοία τρέφει.
ὅταν δ’ ἐς ἥβην ἐξικώμεθ’ ἔμφρονες,
ὠθούμεθ’ ἔξω καὶ διεμπολώμεθα
θεῶν πατρῴων τῶν τε φυσάντων ἄπο,
αἱ μὲν ξένους πρὸς ἄνδρας, αἱ δὲ βαρβάρους,
αἱ δ’ εἰς ἀγηθῆ δώμαθ’, αἱ δ’ ἐπίρροθα.
Now I am nothing (being) apart. But frequently
I have seen the nature of women in this way,
How we are nothing. As young ones in our father’s house,
We live, I think, the sweetest life of all men.
For always folly delightfully sustains children.
But when we reach the prime of youth and become sensible,
We are pushed out and sold,
Away from our ancestral gods and our parents,
Some to strangers, some to barbarians,
Some into joyless houses, some into abusive ones.
It is not clear who the speaker of these words is. The mention of being married to a barbarian no doubt applies specifically to Procne, but it also applies to all brides in softer form. While they are young, girls have “the sweetest life among men,” a picture very similar to the life of freedom and tender care (nega) that maidens enjoy in Russian wedding songs. Once they grow up, a sudden change ensues: the girls are “pushed out” and “sold.” Both the sentiments and the wording of this statement finds close parallels in Russian laments, where the brides beg their parents not to sell them and ask why they are being banished from their paternal homes. [233] The elaboration in line 8 of the Sophocles fragment underscores precisely the division that is so central to the Russian laments: the bride’s own parents, who have so far protected her, now betray her; the bride’s own house can no longer shelter her. Although this does not, of course, correspond to the reality of everyday life, in songs Russian brides seems to be very much like Procne: their future husbands are “strangers” and “foreigners” whose land is ugly and infertile, and whose family is more monstrous than human. [234]
τη σάλιζα, τὴν πότιζα, τὴν εἶχα γιά δική μου.
Μά ’ρθε ξένος κι ἀπόξενος, ἧρθε καὶ μοῖ τὴν πῆρε.
—Κρύψε με, μάνα, κρύψε με, νὰ μὴ μέ πάρη ὁ ξένος.
—Τί νὰ σὲ κρύψω, μάτια μου, ποὺ σὺ τοῦ ξένου εἶσαι·
τοῦ ξένου φόρια φόρεσε, τοῦ ξένου δαχτυλίδια,
γιατὶ τοὺ ξένου εἶσαι καὶ σύ, κι ὁ ξένος θὰ σὲ πάρη.
I had a pure white cotton plant growing in my courtyard;
I weeded it, I watered it, and it was all my own.
But a stranger, yes a stranger came and took it from me.
—Hide me, mother, hide me, so that stranger cannot take me.
—How can I hide you, dear one, now you belong to him:
wear the stranger’s clothes, wear the stranger’s rings,
for you belong to him, and he will take you. [238]
Just as the Greek mother in this lament has carefully tended a beautiful cotton plant but lost it to a stranger, so the mother in a Russian lament cited above has tended an apple tree, but does not get to taste its fruit. Just as in Russian laments the groom and his family are constantly called “the strangers” and ” the foreigners,” so here the groom is emphatically a stranger, ξένος. And just as the mother in this Greek lament denies protection to her daughter because this daughter now belongs to the stranger, so the father in a Russian lament repeatedly urges his daughter not to be afraid and promises to save her, until the inevitable reversal of the last stanza, when he says that now she is under his control no longer and belongs to the groom. [239]
Ferrari’s explanation of the metaphor implicit in engue is much more precise than a derivation from guion “the hand” and it finds a parallel in the Russian custom of “covering” and hiding the bride after the betrothal. In Siberia, a betrothed maiden retreated to a pantry-like space known as the kut’—essentially a vault. There is little doubt that in Russian villages this covering and hiding reflected the fact that the bride was no longer one of the maidens who are conspicuous in their beauty, visible to all and available for young males and their parents to look at. She has been claimed and, to use Ferrari’s term, “taken out of circulation,” set aside for one man alone.
§169. In another fragment, Pherecydes says that Khthonie acquired the name ‘earth’ when Zas gave her the earth as a gift of honor. [258] Ferrari follows Shibli in arguing that it is the gift of the embroidered mantle, the wedding present of Zas, that makes Khthonie into Ge. Khthonie, whose names signifies being underground, emerges into the light and become the Earth herself, and it is this emerging, Ferrari argues, that is enacted in the engue followed by anakalupteria. The bride is first hidden as if in an underground vault and then emerges, resplendent in her mantle, to become a wife, a transformation that is expressed through the metaphor of arable land in the famous marriage formula quoted by Menander: “I give you this woman for the sowing of legitimate children.” [259] Based on this evidence, Ferrari suggests an interpretation of the anakalupteria: “The uncovering that gives the day its name refers primarily … to the emergence of the bride into sight from the figurative seclusion of the engue.” [260] Ferrari’s interpretation is supported by the emphasis on sight in the descriptions of anakalupteria and by synonyms of the term itself. In Harpocration the bride is revealed “so as to be seen” (ὥστε ὁραθῆναι), and the occasion is further defined as follows: ταῦτα δ’ εἰσὶ τὰ παρ’ ἡμῖν θεώρετρα “This is known among us as theoretra (‘the viewing’). Hesychius adds that the gifts given at the anakalupteria were also known as ὀπτήρια, “presents upon seeing.” It is not clear whether the bride, like Chthonie, received her mantle on this occasion, nor is it clear what she wore, but Ferrari envisages the following:
§170. Needless to say, a comparison with the Russian evidence cannot resolve questions about the exact actions of the anakalupteria. But the distance of time and space and especially the great dissimilarity in costume that separates the villagers of the Russian north from the Athenians of the archaic and classical (or, for that matter, any) period make the correspondences that are indeed there all the more impressive. It is therefore with great caution that I would like to approach this evidence, realizing the risk of being carried away by the parallels.
§174. At the conclusion of the ceremony, the bride in the Vologda region would be covered, right over her beautiful silk shawl, with another, larger and less ornate, shawl, and at the same moment she could resume her laments. There is no reason to think that something like this happened at the Greek. The Russian evidence may, however, alter the parameters of what is “thinkable” on such an occasion. The fact that a Greek bride is heavily veiled during the procession and shields her face in the “bridal gesture” is closely paralleled in the Vologda region, but the same kind of veiling is not a part of the “leading out before the tables.” Veils are also not mentioned in connection with the anakalupteria. The one aspect, therefore, of Ferrari’s reconstruction that is clearly at odds with the Russian evidence is her partial concession to the notion of unveiling at the anakalupteria, when she envisions the bride as “poised in the bridal gesture,” her face exposed to the groom and partially shielded from others by the veil. This image might belong in the procession or at the banquet and yet not belong at the anakalupteria. The Russian evidence suggests that the two occasions should not be collapsed into one as a matter of fact and also that unveiling need not be irreversible, but can be followed by yet another veiling.
†παρθένος εὐδοκίμων γάμων
παρὰ πόδ’ εἱλίσσουσα φίλας
ματέρος ἡλίκων θιάσους
ἐς ἁμίλλας χαρίτων
ἁβροπλούτοιο χαίτας εἰς ἔριν
ὀρνυμένα πολυποίκιλα φάρεα
καὶ πλοκάμους περιβαλλομένα
γένυσιν ἐσκίαζον†
Where I was as a maiden, dancing with the bands of my age-mates
By my dear mother.
I entered the contest of charms,
The strife of luxuriant hair,
I shaded my cheek with
Ornate veil and locks of hair.
Practically everything in this chorus would have been recognizable to the maidens in remote villages of Russia at the turn of the twentieth century: the choral dances and songs at weddings, the proximity of the mother to the maiden, the rivalry of luxurious hair, its coverings that are ornate and thus attract attention without concealing the hair (both the locks and the veil shade the maiden’s cheek). The adjective ἁβροπλούτος used here of the hair overlaps with buinyi in conveying exuberant abundance.
τᾶς ἐμᾶς ἀνεψιᾶς
Ἁγησιχόρας ἐπανθεῖ
χρυσὸς [ὡ]ς ἀκήρατος.
But the hair
Of my cousin
Hagesichora blossoms
like unmixed gold.
§182. Luxuriant hair seems to be an almost proverbial attribute of maidens as opposed to married women. According to a folk-etymology in Aeschylus fr. 313, the Kouretes received this name because their hair was “luxuriant” or even “wanton” like that of a “delicate maiden:” χλιδῶν τε πλόκαμος ὥστε παρθένοις ἁβραῖς. The ambiguity implicit in χλιδῶν parallels the ambiguity of buinyi. Both adjectives describe beautiful hair but also imply willfulness and challenge, with the noun χλιδή meaning something close to ‘insolence’ and ‘arrogance’ in Attic tragedy, [269] just as buinyi can mean ‘proud’ when used of spirit, ‘self-confident’ and ‘willful’ when used of a people, and even ‘brave’ when used of a military leader. [270]
περιμένει με κόμας ἐμᾶς
δεῦσαι παρθένιον χλιδὰν
Φοιβείαισι λατρείαις.
Still waits for me to
drench the maidenly luxury of my hair
In service to Phoebus.
§184. Luxuriant hair serves as a marker of maidens on Geometric vases, where hair, once it begins to be depicted, appears on female figures much earlier than on male ones. [271] In her study of age and gender construction in Geometric art, Langdon points out that most women depicted on vases of this period are either mourners or dancers, and the dancers are maidens, whom their long hair identifies as “unmarried, lovely, and on display.” Long hair, Langdon observes, would have had a specific meaning for the viewers of the vases, “evoking fertility and sexuality at the brief period of female life when its display was socially acceptable.” [272] As in poetry, the unbound or decorated locks of the maidens signify loveliness and sexuality that is both innocent and as yet untamed.
πᾶς τις παρελθὼν ὄμματος θελκτήριον
τόξευμ’ ἔπεμψεν, ἱμέρου νικώμενος.
Shoots an arrow of the eye’s enchantment
At the beautiful luxuriance of maidens.
§186. The beauty of the maiden is “insolent” in its tender ripeness and purity, and it is also conspicuous. As in the Russian songs, the passerby appears and is overcome by desire. The theme of the passerby in the Russian wedding songs requires further research, but typically horsemen ride by to look at the maiden’s orchard or her bower, and often the groom is pictured as just such a passerby. Danaus’ task is difficult indeed, and he vividly describes the beasts and birds flocking to the ripe fruit. The maidenly beauty shines from afar, and in Russian songs it is said to be visible to all “from a hundred miles away.” [273] Not so the beauty of the married woman, which remains within the house and is seen by no one.
παρθενικαὶ θάλλοντα κόμαις ὑάκινθον ἔχοισαι
πρόσθε νεογράπτω θαλάμω χορὸν ἐστάσαντο,
δώδεκα ταὶ πρᾶται πόλιος, μέγα χρῆμα Λακαινᾶν,
ἁνίκα Τυνδαρίδα κατεκλᾴξατο τὰν ἀγαπατάν
μναστεύσας Ἑλέναν ὁ νεώτερος Ἀτρέος υἱῶν.
Maidens with blossoming hyacinth in their hair
Set up their chorus in front of the newly painted bower,
Twelve of them, the first in the city, a big crowd of Laconian maidens,
Because the younger son of Atreus wooed and secluded in his chamber
the lovely daughter of Tyndareus, Helen.
§188. The associations attaching to the hyacinth in Greek poetry are so rich that I can do no more than simply mention some of them here. The connections with maidenhood and marriage are unmistakable and have been much discussed. Herotime in Anacreon 346 PMG plays in a meadow of hyacinth, a setting that represents, as Rosenmeyer has argued, “both virginity and its imminent loss.” [274] Stehle Stigers discusses the hyacinth as a symbol of “erotic virginity,” while Prauscello detects the same symbolism in two Odyssean scenes involving the hyacinth and in Theocritus’ Idyll 11, where Polyphemus falls in love with Galathea as she picks hyacinth in the mountains in the company of her mother. [275] The two scenes of the Odyssey that have to do with the hyacinth also have to do with hair, though it is Odysseus’ hair rather than that of any maiden that is compared to the flower. On both occasions Odysseus is rejuvenated and beatified by Athena, first for Nausikaa and then for Penelope in a transformation that is both erotically charged and reminiscent of the wedding ritual:
μείζονά τ’ εἰσιδέειν καὶ πάσσονα, κὰδ δὲ κάρητος
οὔλας ἧκε κόμας, ὑακινθίνῳ ἄνθει ὁμοίας.
taller to look at and larger, and from his head
she let down locks like hyacinth.
§189. As Irwin has shown, the point of the hyacinth comparison in this passages is not the color of Odysseus’s hair, as has often been supposed, but rather its curls, which are like the curls of the hyacinth petals, and which signal a youthful plenitude of sexual energy. [276] In this regard Odysseus is reminiscent of the groom in the Russian praise songs, who also has curls falling down to his shoulders, sending the same signal as Odysseus’ hyacinth hair. In some of the Russian songs, the groom’s curls are compared to flowers. [277]
§192. Pausanias also reports that Theseus arrived in Athens with braided hair and that this hairstyle made him resemble not just a maiden but one on the verge of marriage:
§193. A maidenly braided hairstyle is mentioned by Pausanias yet again in his description of Polygnotos’ Sack of Troy in the Knidian Lesche. Two married daughters of Priam, Andromache and Medesicaste, he notes, were depicted by Polygnotos with their hair covered, but Polyxena had her hair braided “as is customary for maidens” (κατὰ τὰ εἰθισμένα παρθένοις ἀναπέπλεκται τὰς ἐν τῇ κεφαλῇ τρίχας, 10.15.10).
χαίτας, εὐώδη σμηχομένα κρόταφον·
ἤδη γάρ οἱ ἐπῆλθε γάμου τέλος· αἱ δ’ ἐπὶ κόρσῃ
μίτραι παρθενίας αἰτέομεν χάριτας.
Ἄρτεμι, σῇ δ’ ἰότητι γάμος θ’ ἅμα καὶ γένος εἴη
τῇ Λυκομηδείδου παιδὶ φιλαστραγάλῃ.
brushing it from her sweet-smelling brow.
For already her marriage has been accomplished. And I,
the headband on her head, require the grace of maidenhood.
Artemis, may the marriage and childbirth happen by your will
For Lycomedes’ child fond of knuckle-bones.
§195. In Homer, the kredemnon is most closely associated with the two paradigmatic wives, Andromache and Penelope. Maidens also wear it, but, unlike Penelope, who always holds the veil in front of her face (e.g. Odyssey 1.334), and Andromache, whose headdress falls off only as she faints (Iliad 22.468–474), Nausikaa and her friends cast off their veils to play with a ball (Odyssey 6.100). In Homer and Hesiod, married women are veiled, although they are also described as καλλιπλόκαμος or ἐυπλόκαμος. Even Hera braids her hair (Iliad 14.176) and wears a kredemnon (Iliad 14.184) as she prepares to seduces Zeus, even if in this scene, as Langdon observes, the veil is “more a weapon than a shield.” [282] Levine notes that “men with visible hair and married women with invisible hair form the normative landscape of the ancient Mediterranean.” [283] If so, the parallel with Russian customs might be closer than appears from the vases.
§197. Some experts have argued that the hairstyle originates with the brides and that Vestals wore it as a sign of their unique status between virgin and matron, [284] others that the brides came to wear the ancient hairstyle of the Vestals. [285] There is little certainty on this matter, as with everything else concerning Festus’s testimony. The statues of Vestals which show them with the woolen bands (infulae) bound round their head, an adornment not attested for brides. [286] Some of the sculptural Vestals, however, wear infulae bound around their head six times, a style that might imitate the seni crines of the brides, as suggested by Jordan, [287] and there is a possible depiction of this hairstyle on a bride rather than a Vestal, on a sarcophagus in St. Petersburg. [288] On the basis of both visual and literary evidence, La Follette reconstructs seni crines as follows: “a style in which the hair is parted into six tresses, or braids, probably three on either side of the central part, with the tresses of braids then twisted or braided and wound around then head in a turban-like arrangement.” [289] With the exception of the secondary braiding or already made braids (which is nowhere attested) La Follette’s description corresponds to what was done in Russian villages: the hair was divided into six tresses, three on either side of the part, then braided (usually into two braids) and wound around the head. The resulting hairstyle would then be held in place and simultaneously concealed by a shawl or a headdress. The meaning of the six locks is as obscure in Russia as it is in ancient Rome, but at least the hairstyle itself is not in doubt, and the fact the reference to “six locks” in particular recurs in songs is noteworthy in itself.
δώσω· κόραι γὰρ ἄζυγες γάμων πάρος
κόμας κεροῦνταί σοι, δι’ αἰῶνος μακροῦ
πένθη μέγιστα δακρύων καρπουμένωι·
ἀεὶ δὲ μουσοποιὸς ἐς σὲ παρθένων
ἔσται μέριμνα, κοὐκ ἀνώνυμος πεσὼν
ἔρως ὁ Φαίδρας ἐς σὲ σιγηθήσεται.
For unwed maidens before their marriages
will cut their hair for you, and through the lengthy ages
you will harvest the great sorrows of their tears.
And forever the song-making care of maidens
Will be for you, and Phaedra’s love for you
will not fall nameless into silence.
§200. In Delos, as Herodotus reports, both maidens and youths dedicated locks of their hair on the tomb of the Hyperborean maidens, and the maidens did so specifically before marriage. The maidens dedicated their hair wound around a spindle, a signal perhaps that their maidenly wool-working has come to an end:
§201. Callimachus refers to these dedications in the Hymn to Delos, although the details are different. Here the males make their dedication to unnamed male heroes rather than the Hyperborean maidens and they dedicate their first “harvest” of facial hair. The maidens dedicate locks of hair, and again it is specified that they do this at the approach of marriage. In a way reminiscent of the wedding songs, the wedding hymenaeus is described here as both tuneful and terrifying to the girls:
ἤθεα κουράων μορμύσσεται, ἥλικα χαίτην
παρθενικαῖς, παῖδες δὲ θέρος τὸ πρῶτον ἰούλων
ἄρσενες ἠιθέοισιν ἀπαρχόμενοι φορέουσιν.
fills with fear the abodes of the maidens,
the girls bring their coeval hair to the maidens, while the boys
bring the first crop of down on their cheeks to the youths as an offering.
It is hard to tell how widespread such customs were, but Pausanias mentions that the maidens of Megara dedicated their hair to Iphinoe in the same manner as the maidens of Delos did to the Hyperborean maidens, while Pollux and Hesychius describe the hair dedications in general terms, without a reference to particular locations, suggesting that they were common in many places. [292]
ἅλλοντ’ ἂν λειμῶνα κορεσσάμεναι φρένα φορβῇ,
ὣς αἱ ἐπισχόμεναι ἑανῶν πτύχας ἱμεροέντων
ἤϊξαν κοίλην κατ’ ἀμαξιτόν, ἀμφὶ δὲ χαῖται
ὤμοις ἀΐσσοντο κροκηΐῳ ἄνθει ὁμοῖαι.
Bound through the meadow, their hearts sated with grass,
So they, lifting up the folds of their lovely robes,
Rushed along the hollowed-out wagon road and their hair
Bounced about their shoulders, looking like the crocus flower.
§204. The four maidens, described earlier (108) as κουρήϊον ἄνθος ἔχουσαι, “in the bloom of maidenhood,” are compared to heifers frolicking in the springtime, bringing to mind the theme of bride as a lost heifer. These heifers are not yet lost, but still safe and innocent as they run home to their mother, another sharp contrast to the wedding laments, and, of course, to Persephone, who is indeed gone and alone, separated from inconsolable Demeter. The meadow where the heifers play is the very space from which Persephone was abducted, the verdant and erotically charged locus of potentialities, the place where maidens engage in the double-entendre that is their “play.” As the daughters of Keleos run, their unbound hair bounces freely on their shoulders and is compared to the crocus flower. In its freedom and its likeness to a flower the hair of the Keleos’ daughters evokes associations that are very similar to the ones attaching to maidenly krasota in Russian songs: the playful freedom of the maidens, their conspicuous beauty as yet not hidden from view, and the fact that all of this will be as short-lived as a crocus or hyacinth, that they will soon be taken from the meadow, just as Persephone has been, their hair bound or covered and their beauty hidden within the house. The distance between the laments performed by the Russian brides at their own weddings as late as the 1930s and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter is immense. All the more remarkable, therefore, are the echoes in ritual and in song, in action and in word, echoes that reveal the strength, the systemic and diachronic persistence, of wedding poetics.