Part 48 (2/2)

commences one of these old songs, for many a year, no doubt, solemnly sung by the young people who used in olden times to escort from homestead to homestead a sledge in which sat a girl dressed in white, who represented the benignant G.o.ddess. Nowadays these songs have in many places fallen into disuse, or are kept up only by the children who go from house to house, to congratulate the inhabitants on the arrival of Christmas, and to wish them a prosperous New Year. In every home, says one of these archaic poems, are three inner chambers. In one is the bright moon, in another the red sun, in a third many stars.

The bright moon--that is the master of the house; the red sun--that is the housewife; the many stars--they are the little children.

The Russian Church sternly sets its face against the old customs with which the Christmas season was a.s.sociated, denouncing the ”fiendish songs,” and ”devilish games,” the ”graceless talk,” the ”nocturnal gambols,” and the various kinds of divination in which the faithful persisted in indulging. But, although repressed, they were not to be destroyed, and at various seasons of the year, but especially those of the summer and winter solstice, the ”orthodox,” in spite of their pastors, made merry with old heathenish sports, and, after listening to Christian psalms in church, went home and sang songs framed by their ancestors in honour of heathen divinities. Thus century after century went by, and the fortunes of Russia underwent great changes.

But still in the villages were the old customs kept up, and when Christmas Day came round it was greeted by survivals of the ceremonies with which the ancient Slavs hailed the returning sun G.o.d, who caused the days to lengthen, and filled the minds of men with hopes of a new year rich in fruits and grain. One of the customs to which the Church most strongly objected was that of mumming. As in other lands, so in Russia it was customary for mummers to go about at Christmastide, visiting various homes in which the festivities of the season were being kept up, and there dancing, and performing all kinds of antics.

Prominent parts were always played by human representatives of a goat and a bear. Some of the party would be disguised as ”Lazaruses,” that is, as the blind beggars who bear that name, and whose plaintive strains have resounded all over Russia from the earliest times to the present day. The rest disguised themselves as they best could, a certain number of them being generally supposed to play the part of thieves desirous to break in and steal. When, after a time, they were admitted into the room where the Christmas guests were a.s.sembled, the goat and the bear would dance a merry round together, the Lazaruses would sing their ”dumps so dull and heavy,” and the rest of the performers would exert themselves to produce exhilaration. Even among the upper cla.s.ses it was long the custom at this time of year for the young people to dress up and visit their neighbours in disguise. Thus in Count Tolstoy's ”Peace and War,” a novel which aims at giving a true account of the Russia of the early part of the present century, there is a charming description of a visit of this kind paid by the younger members of one family to another. On a bright frosty night the sledges are suddenly ordered, and the young people dress up, and away they drive across the crackling snow to a country house six miles off, all the actors creating a great sensation, but especially the fair maiden Sonya, who proves irresistible when clad in her cousin's hussar uniform and adorned with an elegant moustache. Such mummers as these would lay aside their disguises with a light conscience, but the peasant was apt to feel a depressing qualm when the sports were over; and it is said that, even at the present day, there are rustics who do not venture to go to church, after having taken part in a mumming, until they have washed off their guilt by immersing themselves in the benumbing waters of an ice-hole.

Next to the mumming, what the Church most objected to was the divination always practised at Christmas festivals. With one of its forms a number of songs have been a.s.sociated, termed _podblyudnuiya_, as connected with a _blyudo_, a dish or bowl. Into some vessel of this kind the young people drop tokens. A cloth is then thrown over it, and the various objects are drawn out, one after another, to the sound of songs, from the tenor of which the owners deduce omens relative to their future happiness. As bread and salt are also thrown into the bowl, the ceremony may be supposed to have originally partaken of the nature of a sacrifice. After these songs are over ought to come the game known as the ”burial of the gold.” The last ring remaining in the prophetic bowl is taken out by one of the girls, who keeps it concealed in her hand. The others sit in a circle, resting their hands on their knees. She walks slowly round, while the first four lines are sung in chorus of the song beginning, ”See here, gold I bury, I bury.”

Then she slips the ring into one of their hands, from which it is rapidly pa.s.sed on to another, the song being continued the while. When it comes to an end the ”gold burier” must try to guess in whose hand the ring is concealed. This game is a poetical form of our ”hunt the slipper.” Like many other Slavonic customs it is by some archaeologists traced home to Greece. By certain mythologists the ”gold” is supposed to be an emblem of the sun, long hidden by envious wintry clouds, but at this time of year beginning to prolong the hours of daylight. To the sun really refer, in all probability, the bonfires with which Christmastide, as well as the New Year and Midsummer is greeted in Russia. In the Ukraine the sweepings from a cottage are carefully preserved from Christmas Day to New Year's Day, and are then burnt in a garden at sunrise. Among some of the Slavs, such as the Servians, Croatians, and Dalmatians, a _badnyak_, or piece of wood answering to the northern Yule-log, is solemnly burnt on Christmas Eve. But the significance originally attached to these practices has long been forgotten. Thus the grave attempts of olden times to search the secrets of futurity have degenerated into the sportive guesses of young people, who half believe that they may learn from omens at Christmas time what manner of marriages are in store for them.

Divinings of this kind are known to all lands, and bear a strong family likeness; but it is, of course, only in a cold country that a spinster can find an opportunity of sitting beside a hole cut in the surface of a frozen river, listening to prophetic sounds proceeding from beneath the ice, and possibly seeing the image of the husband who she is to marry within the year trembling in the freezing water.

Throughout the whole period of the _Svyatki_, the idea of marriage probably keeps possession of the minds of many Russian maidens, and on the eve of the Epiphany, the feast with which those Christmas holidays come to an end, it is still said to be the custom for the village girls to go out into the open air and to beseech the ”stars, stars, dear little stars,” to be so benignant as to

”Send forth through the christened world Arrangers of weddings.”

W. R. S. Ralston, in _Notes and Queries_, Dec. 21, 1878.

CHRISTMAS-KEEPING IN AFRICA.

”A certain young man about town” (says _Chambers's Journal_, December 25, 1869), ”once forsook the sweet shady side of Pall Mall for the sake of smoking his cigar in savage Africa; but when Christmas came, he was seized with a desire to spend it in Christian company, and this is how he did spend it: 'We English once possessed the Senegal; and there, every Christmas Eve, the Feast of Lanterns used to be held. The native women picked up the words and airs of the carols; the custom had descended to the Gambia, and even to the Casemanche, where it is still preserved. A few minutes after I had ridden up, sounds of music were heard, and a crowd of blacks came to the door, carrying the model of a s.h.i.+p made of paper, and illuminated within; and hollowed pumpkins also lighted up for the occasion. Then they sang some of our dear old Christmas carols, and among others, one which I had heard years ago on Christmas Eve at Oxford:

Nowel, Nowel, the angels did say, To certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay-- In fields as they lay keeping their sheep, One cold winter's night, which was so deep.

Nowel, Nowel, Nowel, Nowel, Born is the King of Israel.

You can imagine with what feelings I listened to those simple words, sung by negresses who knew not a phrase of English besides. You can imagine what recollections they called up, as I sat under an African sky, the palm-trees rustling above my head, and the crocodiles moaning in the river beyond. I thought of the snow lying thick upon the ground; of the keen, clear, frosty air. I thought of the ruddy fire which would be blazing in a room I knew; and of those young faces which would be beaming still more brightly by its side; I thought of--oh, of a hundred things, which I can laugh at now, because I am in England, but which, in Africa, made me more wretched than I can well express.'

”Next day, sadness and sentiment gave way, for a while at least, to more prosaical feelings. When Mr. Reade sat down to his Christmas dinner, he must have wished, with Macbeth, 'May good digestion wait on appet.i.te,' as he contemplated the fare awaiting discussion, and to which a boar's head grinned a welcome. Snails from France, oysters torn from trees, gazelle cutlets, stewed iguana, smoked elephant, fried locusts, manati-b.r.e.a.s.t.s, hippopotamus steaks, boiled alligator, roasted crocodile eggs, monkeys on toast, land crabs and Africa soles, carp, and mullet--detestable in themselves, but triumphant proof of the skill of the cook--furnished forth the festival-table, in company with potatoes, plantains, pine-apples, oranges, papaws, bananas, and various fruits rejoicing in extraordinary shapes, long native names, and very nasty flavours; and last, but not least, palm-cabbage stewed in white sauce, 'the ambrosia of the G.o.ds,' and a bottle of good Bordeaux at every's man's elbow. When evening came, Mr. Reade and a special friend sought the river: 'The rosy wine had rouged our yellow cheeks, and we lay back on the cus.h.i.+ons, and watched the setting sun with languid, half-closed eyes. Four men, who might have served as models to Appelles, bent slowly to their stroke, and murmured forth a sweet and plaintive song. Their oars, obedient to their voice, rippled the still water, and dropped from their blades pearls, which the sun made rubies with its rays. Two beautiful girls, who sat before us in the bow, raised their rounded arms and tinkled their bracelets in the air. Then, gliding into the water, they brought us flowers from beneath the dark bushes, and kissed the hands which took them, with wet and laughing lips. Like a dark curtain, the warm night fell upon us; strange cries roused from the forest; beasts of the waters plunged around us, and my honest friend's hand pressed mine. And Christmas Day was over. We might seek long for a stranger contrast to an Englishman's Christmas at home, although--to adapt some seasonable lines--

Where'er An English heart exists to do and dare, Where, amid Afric's sands, the lion roars, Where endless winter chains the silent sh.o.r.es, Where smiles the sea round coral islets bright, Where Brahma's temple's sleep in glowing light-- In every spot where England's sons may roam, Dear Christmas-tide still speaks to them of Home!”

[93] The discovery of the North-West Pa.s.sage for navigation from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, by the northern coasts of the American continent; first successfully traversed by Sir R. McClure in 1850-1.

[94] _Chambers's Journal_, December 25, 1869.

[95] Fosbroke's ”British Monachism.”

[96] ”Reminiscences of the Siege and Commune of Paris,” by Ex-Minister E. B. Washburne.

[97] ”Year Book.”

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIMEON RECEIVED THE CHILD JESUS INTO HIS ARMS, AND BLESSED G.o.d

_Luke_ 11 25-32]

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