RUSSIAN WEDDING
Wedding ceremony at Kokshenga village (Tarnoga district, Vologda region)
Summary
Folk wedding rites in Russia vary greatly from one region to another. The present book describes an ancient local tradition typical for Vologda region. Here, the wedding ceremony, which usually lasted for several days, was accompa¬nied with a series of traditional prickets, or lamentations (a sort of recitative singing).
Ritual (magic) action appears as a mode of exerting a coercitive influence upon Nature and Man. This'aspect of rites reflects the prehistoric «magic» mode of thinking our ancestors had.
There is, however, another aspect of the rites due to which some of them have survived through millenaries almost unaltered. Ritual action, originally due to its magic nature, and later by tradition, was not subjected to any voluntary changes. It was to be performed «as a customs. In other words, it expressed, preserved and continued collective (tribal, kin or national) tradition. In this respect, the rites represented and represent a powerful means of patriotic education and spiritual unification of a people (the rite is single and obligatory to everybody, so it unites all the living members of the people), as well as a link with the ancestors (the rite is performed in the same manner as the forefathers used to do, so it unites the people not only geographically, but historically too, and forms a spiritual link plunging into the hoary antiquity).
Due to the fact that ritual actions unite a people into an ethnic and cultural entity, preserve a stereotype ethnic beha¬viour, national and cultural features, they have survived through centuries and have become an essential element of a people's life. This obliges us to thoroughly study our folk rites, which discover spiritual life of a nation in its historical evolu¬tion. This is particularly true for the mass, frequently repeated ceremonies which accompany the most important events of a human life. Among them ( calendar and family rites, according to the existing terminology), the wedding ceremony undoubtedly carries the most powerful ideological and esthetic charge.
Moreover, Russian folk wedding ceremony is extremely diversified and appears in different local versions, which reflect the ethnic evolution and settling of Eastern Slavs not only during the last three or four centuries, but also in feudal period and, probably, in pre-feudal (pre-christian) period too. On the other hand, a folk wedding ceremony is not an arbitrary set of songs, prickets (lamentations) and ritual actions, but a coherent, historically shaped entity. A wedding ceremony is a single whole, and thus must be studied as such.
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The studies of the folk song culture in Kokshenga river basin were initiated by the expeditions of the Leningrad Conservatoire students sent to the region of Vologda.
The studies have covered a vast area in the eastern part of the region to discover the main features of different local traditions; thousands of records have been made, and finally, the areas where the folk tradition has achieved a co¬herent organic form have been determined. The most talented and competent folk singers, as well as local folk ensembles (very important in wedding folklore) have been revealed.
In February-May 1975 an expedition was organised which included D. M. Balashov, Yu. I. Marchenko, N. I. Kalmykova and I. A. Seriy. (The latter two participated in the expeditions of the Leningrad Conservatoire students.) Our group followed a well-known route and visited well-known places; its task was actually not to collect data, but to analyse from the scientific point of view and record step-by-step everything that is connected with the wedding ceremony, for, naturally, not all the records collected previously by the students were of sufficient quality to be used in the work, while other ones were to be verified and systematized.
Later on, when the book was in the process of preparation, A. M. Mekhnetsov joined the group.
We are grateful to all our benevolent assistants, connoisseurs of the wedding chin (ceremony), from whom we have got knowledge of the wedding rite, for their friendly help and boundless patience they showed each time we literally tor¬tured them going into numerous details of the wedding cere¬mony (so, all in all, we have recorded the whole ceremony about fifty times!). Without their help this work would have never been accomplished.
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Our studies have covered in a consecutive manner the upper and middle reaches of Kokshenga river. Thus, Kokshenga river basin represents the centre of the folk tradition described in the present book.
This area shows a profound unity of tradition both in the wedding rite and in the tunes of tne wedding prickets (lamentations). Identical themes and images are used all over the region. Sometimes, a detail (pricket, or a minute feature) is transferred from one position to another (usually in terms of the order of the wedding-day), but differences go no farther. From village to village one can hear and see different sequences of refrains and gorodki or kruzhki [local names for singing and dancing in a ring partially included into the wedding chin (ceremony)].
Some changes may be explained by natural oblivion. However, while we made inquiries, we found out that these details existed previously in other places. Besides, two versions of the rite are known all over the region: full and short («for two tables» and «for one table»). Everywhere, we recorded the full version. The short version is actually a dissected form of the full one where a number of important details are omitted in order to save the time.
The book presents a full description of the wedding tradi¬tion together with an abstract on the history of the region, a description of the peculiarities in the mode of life, costumes, houses, etc. (in connection with the wedding ceremony). It shows all local (from village to village) differences reflecting the evolutive features of the wedding rite, as well as its most significant, stable elements. The book includes versions of the wedding pricket (lamentation) (recorded for the first time) as well as those of the songs which accompany different acts of the ceremony. Music and gramophone records of the songs and prickets are enclosed.
The principle of the most complete presentation of the material is thoroughly followed in the book. The wedding cere¬mony is shown not in fragments, but as a whole from the beginning to the end together with variants which characterize the evolutiveness of the tradition.
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