Summer days are behind us, yellow leaves on the trees are becoming more and more. “The sky was already breathing in autumn,” wrote the classic. At this time, we again plunge into the familiar world of warm blankets, hot tea and rain drumming on the glass. And what was September like for our ancestors?
September is the most fertile month in the life of the Russian village. The field work is completed, the harvest is harvested, the supplies for the winter are ready. It only remained to chop the cabbage, but they coped with this quickly: they arranged joint skits. What to do? Rest, dance, gather for gatherings and arrange your personal life.
Among our ancestors, the first month of autumn was called heather – after the name of the heather, which blooms very beautifully during this period. But among the people, September was called a howler: a cold wind roars with rain, and the cattle driven by it roars. The very name “September” came from Byzantium – in Latin septem means “seven”.
Now September is the ninth month of the year, although it was not always so. Before the reform carried out by Julius Caesar, the year both in Rome and in Russia began in March, and September was the seventh month. There was also a time when the beginning of the year was celebrated in September in Russia – from the 1700th century to XNUMX.
“Spin everyone!”
Indian summer in the villages began on September 1 or 8 and lasted eight days. Remember the August saying: “Who has work, and our women have a holiday in August”? So, in September, the women continued to have fun – and this time for real, because the field work was over!
In the archives of the Ipatiev Monastery it is written as follows: “Indian summer is celebrated by women in September at the end of summer work. They collect food from all over the village, brew beer, have fun and arrange a walk. In Indian summer, a man in a woman is not free, she wants – she obeys, she wants – she refuses.
It is interesting that among some Slavic peoples, for example, among the Czechs, Indian summer is called cobweb
“The Summer of the Flying Web” is the name given to the Indian summer in German. It would seem, what does the web have to do with it? She, like yarn, is “woven” by a spider. Women began to weave just in September – work from the field was transferred to the house.
There is a certain amount of romance in this connection with the cobweb: a light transparent cobweb flies through the autumn fields, shimmering with silver – like gray strands in the hair of women meeting the autumn of their age. No wonder the words “summer” and “fly” are similar in sound.
In the mythology of the Western Slavs there is a character – Spinner. During the full moon, she sits on the moon and spins the spinning wheel. Sometimes the Mother of God plays this role, sometimes the spider. With the onset of autumn, the Heavenly Spinner throws the yarn to the ground (those very cobwebs) and this reminds of the imminent cold snap – the time when it comes time to sit down at the spinning wheel.
Autumn New Year
The first day of the New Year, which began on September 1, was called Semyonov Day – after St. Simeon the Stylite. As today, the main celebration took place in Moscow. This holiday was also a family holiday (people gathered in the house of an older family member), but they celebrated it “with silence and modesty” – without fireworks, Christmas trees and garlands. All these attributes appeared with the advent of Peter I.
The ethnographer-folklorist Ivan Petrovich Sakharov describes the autumn-New Year rituals as follows: “From the gatherings, they went to the church of Simeon the Stylite for matins. At midnight, the messenger cannon would strike in the Kremlin, the bell on Ivan the Great would chime, and the city gates would open wide. So the new year was announced in Russia. With the dawn of the day, Muscovites hurried to the Kremlin, where the Patriarch and the Tsar celebrated the New Year in the Assumption Cathedral.
The sovereign also went out to the people to greet him, and in response the people shouted: “Hello, be healthy for many years, the hope of the sovereign.” On the day of the new year, alms from the royal treasury were distributed to the poor so that they would pray for the health of the ruler.
The last time the New Year was celebrated in this way was September 1, 1699. Tsar Peter respected the three-hundred-year-old customs of his ancestors, and four months later, on January 1, he informed the people about the advent of the year 1700.
Lady of the Flies
In September, the wedding season also began – with its gatherings, round dances, festivities and brides’ bridesmaids. “Do you want to find a groom? Have a fly funeral!” we might have said to an unmarried girl two hundred years ago. The famous Russian traveler, ethnographer and connoisseur of folk life Sergei Vasilievich Maksimov described this “amusing” rite as follows:
“Funerals are arranged by girls, for which they cut small coffins from turnips, rutabagas or carrots. A handful of caught flies are planted in these coffins, they are closed, and with playful solemnity (and sometimes with cries and lamentations), they are taken out of the hut to be buried in the earth.
At the same time, during the removal, someone should drive the flies out of the hut with a “handkerchief” or a towel and say: “A fly on a fly, fly to bury the flies” or “Flies, you flies, mosquito friends, it’s time to die. You eat a fly, and the last one you eat.”
There is a version that pants were used instead of rukoternikov – supposedly this tool was more effective, since the fly, driven out by the pants, forever loses the desire to return to the hut.
However, not only flies were buried – cockroaches, spiders, bedbugs, lice and some birds were used
Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics and Folklore of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Svetlana Mikhailovna Tolstaya writes: “The funeral of animals is a magical ritual that reproduces the funeral rite. It has a protective or “distillate”, less often – a producing character. Children, burying flies and fleas, lamented: “They won’t kick, they won’t look at us, they won’t sit on the winter, they won’t disturb us.”
The meaning of this ceremony was not only to expel the flies, but also to draw the attention of the guys to this action. The girls did not sit and wait for the princes, looking out the window, but launched a whole campaign for their marriage. We prepared for it in advance and dressed up as beautifully as possible. And it worked. The guys came to look at the fly’s funeral, and at the same time look after their bride.
Today, despite the fact that we do not dance and do not gather for skits, September still feels like a month of rest. Maybe just because the kids go to school?