In Russia in the old days there were such shocking customs, from which now it becomes uncomfortable. And for some, you can easily get a criminal sentence, writes UKROP with reference to ostrnum.com.
Here are seven of the strangest rites, especially for women and children.
Daughterhood
This neutral word was called the sexual relationship between the father-in-law and the daughter-in-law.
Not that it was approved, but it was considered a very small sin. Often fathers married their sons at the age of 12-13 to girls of 16-17 years old. In the meantime, the guys were catching up in the development of their young wives, dad worked out the conjugal service for them.
A completely win-win option was to send my son to work for six months or even better in the army for twenty years. Then the daughter-in-law, remaining in her husband's family, had practically no chance of refusing her father-in-law. If she resisted, she did the hardest and dirtiest work and put up with the constant nagging of the “starshak” (as the head of the family was called). Now law enforcement agencies would talk to the starshak, but then there was nowhere to complain.
dump sin
Now this can only be seen in special films, mostly German-made. And earlier they were engaged in this in Russian villages on Ivan Kupala.
This holiday combined pagan and Christian traditions. So, after dancing around the fire, the couples went to look for fern flowers in the forest. For you to understand, the fern does not bloom, it reproduces by spores. This is just an excuse for young people to go into the forest and indulge in carnal pleasures. Moreover, such connections did not oblige either boys or girls to anything.
Gasky
This custom, which can also be called a sin, is described by the Italian traveler Roccolini. All the youth of the village gathered in the big house.
They sang and danced by the light of the torch. And when the torch went out, they indulged in love joys blindly with those who were nearby. Then the torch was lit, and the fun with dancing continued again. And so on until dawn. That night, when Roccolini hit the Gasky, the torch went out and lit up five times. Whether the traveler himself participated in the Russian folk ritual, history is silent.
overbaking
This rite has nothing to do with sex, you can relax.
It was customary to “bake” a premature or weak baby in the oven. Not in barbecue, of course, but rather in bread. It was believed that if the baby was not “prepared” in the womb, then it was necessary to bake it yourself. Strength to gain, get stronger.
The baby was wrapped in a special rye dough cooked in water. They left only the nostrils to breathe. They tied them to a bread shovel and, while pronouncing secret words, sent them to the oven for a while. Of course, the oven was not hot, but warm. No one was going to serve the child to the table. In such a rite, they tried to burn diseases.
scare pregnant
Childbirth in Russia was treated with special trepidation. It was believed that this moment the child passes from the world of the dead to the world of the living. The process itself is already difficult for a woman, and the midwives tried to make it completely unbearable.
A specially trained grandmother was attached between the legs of the woman in labor and persuaded the pelvic bones to move apart. If this did not help, then they began to frighten the expectant mother, rattle pots, they could gasp near her from a gun. They also loved to induce vomiting in a woman in labor. It was believed that when she vomits, the child goes more willingly. For this, her own scythe was shoved into her mouth or her fingers were thrust.
Salting
This wild rite was used not only in some regions of Russia, but also in France, Armenia and other countries. It was believed that a newborn baby should be nourished by strength from salt.
It seemed to be an alternative to overcooking. The child was smeared with fine salt, including the ears and eyes. Probably to hear and see well after that. Then they wrapped it in rags and kept it that way for a couple of hours, ignoring the inhuman cries. Those who were richer literally buried the child in salt. Cases are described when, after such a wellness procedure, all skin peeled off the baby. But this is nothing, but then it will be healthy.
Rite of the Dead
This terrible rite is nothing more than a wedding.
Those dresses of the bride, which we now consider solemn, in Russia were called funeral. A white robe, a veil, which covered the face of a dead man so that he would not accidentally open his eyes and look at one of the living.
The whole ceremony of marriage was perceived as a new birth of a girl. And in order to be born, you must first die. A white cockle was put on the head of the young woman (a headdress like that of nuns).
They usually buried in it. From there comes the custom of mourning the bride, which is still practiced in some villages in the outback. But now they are crying that the girl is leaving the house, and earlier they were crying about her “death”. The rite of redemption also did not just arise. By this, the groom is trying to find the bride in the world of the dead and bring him out into the world. Bridesmaids in this case were perceived as guardians of the underworld.
This true story (according to an eyewitness) happened in the 76th year with a young girl.
Larisa (that was her name) was a very nice, kind, sympathetic little man. She was left an orphan very early; She lost her mother at the age of 6 and never saw her father. Mother said that dad lived very far away, in another country and could not come. He wants to earn a lot of money to buy her many, many gifts.
She even came up with a name for him.
After the sudden death of her mother, the girl was left in the care of her aunt and her husband.
After graduating from school, Larisa entered the medical school. school and left her native village for the city. Got a room in a hostel.
I studied well. She behaved quietly and modestly, which was different from the rest of all her girlfriends and how she attracted the attention of one beautiful, elegant brunette at the disco (dance).
We met, struck up a friendship, and then love ...
In short, it got to the point that he asked her to marry him, she promised to 'think about it'.
Happy, inspired, she came to her room, lay down on the bed without undressing and began to ‘think’.
It was in the evening. And suddenly she heard some rustle. I got up and saw how the door opens and a roommate comes in and hides her face. “Hello,” Larissa greeted. But there was no answer.
‘Gal, what are you…’ – I looked, but she wasn’t there, there was no one around… And suddenly some unfamiliar female voice breaks the silence: “Father-in-law, father-in-law, father-in-law…”
I turned around at the sound and at the window, incl. outside the window a luminous image of a mother ...
She woke up in the hospital.
She lay there for several days, she was discharged. M.Ch. immediately took her home.
The guy introduced her to his grandfather, a handsome, stately elderly man, with whom he lived on the same territory.
We sat down at the table and talked over a cup of tea. And then Larisa noticed that her grandfather was looking very intently and strangely ...
Suddenly, very quietly and ingratiatingly, he asked her mother's name.
Larisa told everything about herself.
The old man's face distorted, his voice trembled, he jumped up and began to nervously pace the room back and forth..
Suddenly he stopped abruptly and shouted: “Get out, get out ..” The dumbfounded girl with tears in her eyes ran out into the street, caught a taxi, arrived at the hostel, collected her things and arrived in the village.
I told my aunt about everything.
Here the aunt opened her eyes to everything. She told a terrible secret.
Grandfather was her own father.
Her mother married his son, who had a boy. Once, when her husband went on a business trip, her father-in-law seduced her and she succumbed to temptation.
The mother immediately became pregnant, but could not kill the unborn baby.
Such a diversity in the sexual life of men who are older in a large peasant family, where two or three, or even more "cells of society" existed under one roof and ran a joint household, oddly enough, in the villages themselves in the 18th - 19th centuries, it was not particularly condemned. Perhaps because so many villagers lived this way, unable to separate from the family of their father, father-in-law or father-in-law.
The reason for this incest
Mother-in-laws who cohabited with their daughters-in-law (daughters-in-law for mothers-in-law) were called daughters-in-law. Such fornication was possible mainly in families where the families of parents and sons were forced to coexist in one hut (hut). Sometimes even the presence of a legitimate husband was not an obstacle to encroachments on his wife by the father-in-law. But most often such adultery was committed during the absence of the spouse.
At first, daughtership was practiced in families where sons were shaved into recruits. Military service in pre-revolutionary Russia was very long - from 1793 to 1874, recruits served for 25 years. Then this period was reduced to 7 years, only by 1906 it dropped to 3 years.
Then the main reason for the absence of young husbands and, accordingly, the reason for the encroachment on the honor of their wives left at home was the outhouse trade. Guys and young men went to work in cities and other villages for a long time, and in the meantime, “seniors in the house” had fun with their spouses.
In the Chernozem region, and in other regions of Russia, in the 19th century, fathers often married their sons as teenagers to 16-17-year-old girls, often specifically with an eye to their further sexual diversity. After the wedding, the young man soon, at the insistence of the head of the family, went to the outhouse, visiting his wife only a couple of times a year.
The Russian Orthodox Church considered such cohabitation to be incest (incest). In particular, according to the definition of the Russian Orthodox Church, daughter-in-law was one of the reasons for the dissolution of a church marriage.
Gave a handkerchief and shut his mouth
The daughter-in-law (daughter-in-law), being, in fact, in the shelter in the house of her husband's parents, was sometimes the most powerless and unfortunate member of the family. Her mother-in-law hated her, and her father-in-law "used it at his own discretion." Both could rot the young woman with the hardest peasant labor, entrusting the most menial work around the house.
Salvation did not come from anywhere - if the wife told her husband about the encroachments of her father-in-law, the husband most often beat the woman with a mortal battle. Volost courts refrained from considering complaints about daughter-in-law. Temporary shelter in the house of their parents also did not solve the problem - anyway, the father and mother soon sent the unfortunate daughter back (“what will people say”).
Forcing sexual intimacy on the part of the father-in-law was a simple matter - the master of the situation with the help of persuasion, gifts and promises not to burden him with housework and in the field most often achieved his goal. Moreover, the young woman, as a rule, still had nowhere to go. An ordinary scarf could act as a gift (in the villages, all married women were required to wear such hats all season) or some kind of trinket.
Daughterhood is widely reflected in Russian literature and in domestic cinematography - N. S. Leskov, in particular, wrote about it in the story “The Life of a Woman”, M. A. Sholokhov mentioned it in the novel “Quiet Flows the Don”. Accordingly, the special relationship between the daughter-in-law and the father-in-law is also shown in the film adaptation of these works.
Separation saved the situation
“The housing problem ruined them,” M. A. Bulgakov said about Muscovites on another occasion. With regard to the phenomenon of dreaming, the problem also largely depended on the traditions of close cohabitation of the patriarchal family, when several generations huddled under one roof.
As soon as this way of coexistence in Russia began to collapse after the 19th century, and in the countryside parents and married children began to live separately, the phenomenon of cohabitation of fathers-in-law and daughters-in-law gradually lost its relevance.