Carols

Correspondence to East Slavic carols is found in the folklore of all other Slavic and many other European nations. Romanians, called colinda , cf. are especially close in plot and form to Slavic carols. the Czech and Slovak names of the songs are koleda , Polish - kolęda , Slovenian kolednica , coleda , Serbian - koleda , kolenda , Albanian - kolĕndŭ . It is believed that the listed song names date back to the name of the Roman new moon - Kalendae . The name of the New Year for many nations was transferred to the Christmas holiday (Bulgarian - colada, carol, kolenda , French - tsalenda , chalendes , charandes , Provencal - calendas ) or on the eve of this holiday (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian - carol ). A detailed comparison of the New Year and Christmas holidays of the European nations with the ancient Greco-Roman holidays reveals not only the similarity of names, but also the coincidence of certain moments of rites, amusements, etc. ^[3] .

Vivid expressions of the so-called producing primitive agrarian magic , though often not already recognized by the modern peasantry, are numerous ceremonies that should depict satiety and contentment to cause a crop, offspring, a happy marriage and wealth.

The Christian church fought very hard against similar remnants of paganism both by direct prohibitions and by competition, that is, by organizing its celebrations and ceremonies or by investing Christian meaning in the interpretation of traditional folk rites. In the 6th century, under the emperor Justinian , the celebration of the January calendars was moved by the church to the entire holy cycle from Christmas December 25 to Epiphany January 6 . This circumstance should have greatly contributed to the mixing of rites of different cycles, as well as the accompanying rites of songs. From the New Year's Eve, New Year's ceremonies , fortune-telling and songs that cause the harvest began to be more and more transferred to both the Christmas Eve and the Epiphany evening . Hence the lack of a strict division of Christmas carols and New Year's bounties in Ukraine, which initially differed in both content and form (typical sizes of Ukrainian carols are a 10-complex verse divided by two five-syllable hemistichs, and “generosity” is an 8-complex verse with four-syllable hemistich). The indicated phenomena in the field of the history of the mixing of cults and rituals affected in their entirety the history of the development of ritual carol songs and related bounties.

Church-Christian moments in content and existence naturally initially should have prevailed in Christmas songs, not New Year's ones. Christian carols to a large extent fed on church sources, approaching in chants (e.g. in Romania and Ukraine) to church psalms, singing by church fraternities resembling medieval Christmas organizations ( calendae, calandsgilden, fratres calendarum ).

A thorough analysis of the images of Ukrainian (the most diverse and numerous) carols was made by Alexander Afanasevich Potebnya . Relations with the Balkan carols (Romanian, Greek, Serbian) were established by Alexander Nikolaevich Veselovsky .

Too many carols and bounties, in full accordance with the original agrarian and magical meaning of the New Year and holy rites, have the purpose of evoking the idea of ​​harvest, wealth, offspring and marriage with the help of verbal images. The poetic word, as in many other cases in folklore, performs the same magical function as the rite accompanied by it (see " Conspiracies ", " Fortune-telling "). Due to the centuries-old age of carols and lavishes in the agricultural peasant environment, most of the images are associated with the economic concerns of the peasantry, taken from the household goods and the nature of the village. However, in accordance with the magical function of the song, its performers strive to create images that idealize the real everyday life of the peasant. Trying, for example, to express a desire for wealth or a spell in a song, peasant singers, naturally, are not content with the description of their usual rural life, but paint pictures of the luxurious life of higher social groups: princes, boyars, merchants. At the same time, we must assume that here we are dealing not only with the poetic idealization of peasant life by peasant poets, but also with the traditional reproduction of songs or individual images created in the poetic works of the ruling classes themselves, similar to how we also meet in peasant wedding ceremonies and with poetic creative idealization and with borrowings, for example. from boyar life and boyar poetry. Many carols undoubtedly preserve the images and paintings of the princely retinue and boyar-feudal system. Finally, the primitive agrarian-magical, historical and real-life elements are intertwined with the features of church song and legendary creativity in its folk processing. Here we find the motives of biblical and apocryphal tales (pictures of the Nativity of Christ, the worship of the Magi, the wanderings of Christ, elements of apocryphal tales of the Cross tree and its healing properties, apocryphal tale of the curse of the aspen and the thorn by Christ and the Virgin, etc.). In many carols, Christian legends and myths are clearly adapted to the needs of agrarian magic. In one, common in many versions of carols, it is said, “How the Cute Lord himself drives the wolves, the Blessed Virgin wears little tights, and St. Petro walks behind the plow. This carol, just as it is often observed in conspiracies , introduces into the epic part the images of gods and saints in order to give even greater magical power to the poetic formula. In other cases, it is possible, with a comparative analysis of the options, to clearly reveal the gradualness of church-Christian strata on the primary traditional poetic images. In many carols, it is said that the host is visited by holy guests, on which the further happiness and well-being of a person depends; in other versions, “guests” are deprived of Christian clothes: these are the sun, the month and the rain, which bring joy to both nature and people. The sun, the month and the rain often come into dispute with each other, which of them is higher (more important) than the others; and the dispute is settled in favor of the rain, the most welcome guest for the farmer:

Sonechko says: “No yak over me:
Like I will light mountains, valleys,
Churches, churches and all thrones. "
The little one is clear: “There is no yak over me:
As I bark the dark night
Guests will rejoice in dorozi,
Guests in dorozi, volojki in stozi. ”
Droben rainjayko: “No yak over me:
Yak, I’ll go three times to the spring,
Three times during the month of May
Life, wheat will rejoice,
Life, wheat, and all the shades. ”

The development of the epic part in carols facilitated the easy penetration of motifs from other varied folk genres into them: epic songs, in particular epics, fairy tales, spiritual poems, conspiracies, riddles, lyrical, wedding and other ritual songs. This creates the special significance of carol material for ethnographic research.

Carols, carols!
Serve the cake
Damn yes cake
In the back window .

Along with pagan and Christian motives, household motives play an important role in carols, which are inextricably linked with the main purpose of carols - Ukrainian. "Dim star" , - directly expressed in the songs themselves, in the afterwords or generations. Russian carols are completely alien to the love element found in Romanian Christmas songs. Having the task of glorifying the person to whom they are singing, expressing to him the wishes of all blessings, Russian carols are distinguished by seriousness and sincereness. The content of these wishes varies, depending on the gender, age and condition of the members of the host family, who are contacted by the carollers: the owner is promised family happiness and prosperity, the girls are given a happy marriage, the boyfriend is to be married. This is desirable, the carol in the epic treatment seems to be fulfilled: the owner lives in contentment and is happy with his family, well done - in love, etc. Carols, glorifying the ideal of battle, promising the glory of military exploits, are probably among the most ancient. Many carols preserved the features of the ancient squad and princely age. P.V. Vladimirov points out many features common to the carols and epics (for example, tunes and conclusions). The later era of the struggle with the Poles was reflected in carols. There is also a book source (for example, “The Key of Understanding”, of John of Golyatovsky ) ^[4] .

• Grapes - a Christmas song in the Russian North
• Ovsen is a holy song of the central and southern regions of Russia
• Schedrovka - New Year's carols performed in Ukraine, Belarus and the southern regions of Russia
• Colinda - an analogue of carols in Romania and Moldova
• Kalanda - an analogue of carols in Greece
• Christmas carol
• Caroling
• Carols
• Christmas time
• Noel (genre)

• Veselovsky A. N. Investigations in the field of Russian spiritual verse, vol. VII; Romanian, Slavic and Greek carols - St. Petersburg, 1883
• Carol Songs / L. N. Vinogradova // Slavic Antiquities : Ethnolinguistic Dictionary: in 5 volumes / under the general. ed. N. I. Tolstoy ; Institute of Slavic Studies RAS . - M .: Int. Relations , 1999. - T. 2: D (Give) - K (Crumbs). - S. 576-579. - ISBN 5-7133-0982-7 .
• Carols / E. M. Frayonova, T. V. Zueva // Kireev - Congo. - M .: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 2009. - P. 588. - ( Great Russian Encyclopedia : [in 35 vols.] / Ch. Ed. Yu. S. Osipov ; 2004—2017, vol. 14). - ISBN 978-5-85270-345-3 .
• Kolyada // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Coleda // Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language : in 4 volumes / auth. V.I. Dahl . - 2nd ed. - SPb. : Printing house of M.O. Wolf , 1880-1882.
• Corinthian A.A. Nativity of Christ // People's Russia: The year of legends, beliefs, customs and proverbs of the Russian people . - M .: Edition of the bookseller M.V. Klyukin, 1901. - S. 533-545.
• Kolyadka // Musical Encyclopedic Dictionary / Ch. ed. G. Keldysh . - M .: Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1990.
• Plisetskiy M. M. Heroic-epic style in East Slavic carols. // Rites and ritual folklore / Institute of Ethnography named after N. N. Miklouho-Maclay of the USSR Academy of Sciences ; open ed. V.K.Sokolova . - M .: Nauka , 1982. - S. 179-212
• Sokolov, Yu. M. Kolyadki // Literary Encyclopedia 1929-1939 / Ch. Editor A.V. Lunacharsky. - M .: publishing house of the Communist Academy , 1931. - T. 5 Kaani - Küchelbecker .
• Sumtsov N.F. Scientific Study of Carols and Schedrivka - K .: Type. A. Davidenko, 1886
• Yakimenko N. D. Genesis of the carol genre and its interaction with other folk genres (based on the material of Ukrainian musical folklore) , abstract - 1984

• Carols - great songs (from the collection of Tatyana Kalmykova) (lib.rmvoz.ru)
• Christmas Carols (Carols), Orthodox Music Archive
• Ukrainian folk carols (notes, words) (in Ukrainian)
• Lay the carols. Christmas carols at Svyatovechir (Ukrainian)