Свадебные сады: генезис и символика

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Vestuvių "sodai"; Simbolika; Papročiai; Tautosaka; Wedding "gardens"; Symbolics; Custom; Folklore.

ENDescriptions of a well-known wedding tradition in northern, eastern and south-eastern parts of Lithuania – to create a straw garden and a ritual of buying it by a matchmaker on the wedding day – reach us only from the end of the 19th century. In Lithuanian ethnological literature, the question of the wedding garden genesis basically is not analyzed, and what concerns its symbolism, there are quite different and even conflicting opinions. In this article, basing himself on the ethnographic and folkloric sources of Lithuanians and neighbouring peoples (Latvian, Russian, Belarusian, Polish, Ukrainian, Finnish, and Swedish), as well as a variety of ancient sources the author tries to reveal the beginnings of a wedding garden, and follow the changes of its form and symbolic meanings from antiquity to these days. In the 19th–20th centuries the wedding garden in different places of Lithuania was also known as liktorius, voras, pajonkas, žarondėliai, reketukas, rekėžis, krijelis, širšuonas, dangus, rojus, karulis. The Latvians called it puzurs, the Poles – rozga weselna, wiecha, wienec; the Czechs – strom, stromek; the Bulgarians – iloja; the Slovenes – kroval; the Ukrainians – jelce, gilce, vilce, rizka; the Belarusians – jelce, sady, elka; the Russians – elka, sady, kurnik, devja krasota.In the 20th century, wedding gardens were made only of straw, but according to the data of the ethnographic descriptions of the 19th century in Northern, eastern and Southern Lithuania the wedding garden was made mostly of a fir tree top, decorated with colorful pieces of paper, apples, nuts, berries, and (sometimes) burning candles. In a similar way, in the 19th century the wedding sign was popular in the Slavic lands. For example, in Poland the wedding garden (rózga weswlna) then was a branch (top) of the pine, pear, fir, oak or silver fir decorated with apples. A wedding garden’s analogue in some Russian regions was a devja krasota. Previously it was a fir or birch, decorated with colorful papers, ribbons and attached to the corner of the house, the ridge or the gate pole, then it was a decoration of bands or headgear. These examples allow making an assumption that the wedding garden was connected with the tree cult, an anthropomorphic conception of trees in the old emotional attitude – identification of a man and tree. Similar paradigms we find in ancient culture – cults of Cybele, Attis, Demeter and Persephone. [From the publication]