Folksongs.
Pagan Russia was rich in ceremonies in honour of the various divinities representing the powers of nature. Christianity has not entirely obliterated the memory of these ancient rites: they are preserved in the ceremonial songs that are recited, now of course without a knowledge of their meaning, upon all church holidays, to which the old festivities have been adapted. Thus, the feast of the winter solstice now coincides with Christmas, while the old holiday of the summer solstice has been transferred to St. John’s Day, on June 24th.
The kolyádas are sung at Christmas, and seem to have been originally in honour of the sun. The name appears to be related to the Latin “calenda,” but it is generally supposed that this is only accidental, and that Kolyáda was one of the appellations of the sun. Young boys and girls march through the village or town and exact contributions of eatables by reciting the kolyádas. In other places they sing, instead, songs to a mythical being, Ovsén, on the eve of the New Year. This Ovsén is some other representation of the sun.
During the Christmas festivity fortunes are told over a bowl of water which is placed on the table, while in it are put rings, earrings, salt, bread, pieces of coal. During the fortune-telling they sing the bowl-songs, after each of which a ring, or the like, is removed. After the fortune-telling follow the games and the songs connected with these.
Spring songs are recited in the week after Easter. Soon after, and lasting until the end of June, the round dance, the khorovód, is danced upon some eminence, and the khorovód songs, referring to love and marriage, are sung. There are still other reminiscences of heathen festivals, of which the most important is that to Kupála, on the night from the 23rd to the 24th of June, when the peasants jump over fires and bathe in the river.
The wedding-songs, of which there is a large number in the long ceremony of the wedding (cf. Kotoshíkhin’s account of the seventeenth century wedding, p. 143 et seq.) contain reminiscences of the ancient custom of the stealing of the bride, and, later, of the purchase of the bride. Most of the love songs that are not part of the khorovód are detached songs of the wedding ceremonial.
The beggar-songs are more properly apocryphal songs of book origin, handed down from great antiquity, but not preceding the introduction of Christianity. There are also lamentations, charms, and other similar incantations, in which both pagan and Christian ideas are mingled.
An account of the folksong will be found in Talvi’s Historical View of the Languages and Literatures of the Slavic Nations, New York, 1850; W. R. S. Ralston’s The Songs of the Russian People, London, 1872; Russian Folk-Songs as Sung by the People, and Peasant Wedding Ceremonies, translated by E. Lineff, with preface by H. E. Krehbiel, Chicago, 1893. Also in the following periodical articles: The Popular Songs of Russia, in Hogg’s Instructor, 1855, and the same article, in Eclectic Magazine, vol. xxxvi; Russian Songs and Folktales, in Quarterly Review, 1874 (vol. cxxxvi). A number of popular songs have been translated by Sir John Bowring in his Specimens of the Russian Poets, both parts.
KOLYÁDKA
Beyond the river, the swift river,