Hair symbolism in the Russian wedding folklore of Udmurtia
Tolkacheva Svetlana Viktorovna
Udmurt Institute of History, Language and Literature of the Udmurt Federal Research Center of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Submitted: 23.08.2023
Abstract. The aim of the research is to conduct a culturological and mythopoetic comparative description of the meanings of the symbol “hair” using the material of a traditional Russian wedding taking place on the territory of Udmurtia. The scientific novelty lies in the holistic study and systematization of the different meanings of the symbols marking the bride’s hair – in identifying poetic motifs and plots of wedding song folklore, in analyzing the context of the event code of the ceremony – within the framework of the Russian dialect tradition of one region. It is the first time that new wedding episodes described by informants, original songs, including unique ones for this territory, are introduced into scientific use. The paper analyzes the texts in which the parameters of the time code are involved, gives examples with a poetic description of the “instantaneous” combination of the past and the future in the bride’s life. It is the first time that facts rare for this tradition from Old Believer villages are indicated, i.e. the gifting of a scarf by the mother-in-law as a symbol of the bride’s acceptance into a new family and the redoing of the bride’s hair into three braids. As a result, it has been proved that in the wedding ritual, the attitude to hair is iconic. In the popular view, it is associated with the cyclicity of natural time and the time of human life, with the influence of the elements on the time and space of the ritual “transition” of the bride, with the understanding of its value as a part of the external appearance of the bride and as the embodiment of the moral foundations of society itself. Human somatics is projected onto plants and birds; it correlates with mythological images focused on similarity with graphic forms (circle, pipe).
Key words and phrases: символика волос, свадьба, русский фольклор Удмуртии, соматизм, hair symbolism, wedding, Russian folklore of Udmurtia, somatism
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