To the shovel and to the oven! Slavic ceremony of baking babies

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Remember the evil Baba Yaga, who put Ivanushka on a shovel and sent him to the oven? In fact, this is an echo of the ancient rite of "baking a child", which, despite its antiquity, was very tenacious and in other places remained until the 20th century, or even longer …

In addition to the records of ethnographers and historians, there are literary references to this action, which was very common among our ancestors.

For example, Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin was subjected to it in childhood, according to V. Khodasevich, who left us with the biography of the classic. However, procedural details are not indicated there.

So, "baking a child" is an ancient rite. In some places, they resorted to it in the case of the birth of a premature, frail baby, in the presence of rickets ("dog old age"), atrophy and other ailments. In others, all newborns were sent to the oven. WHY? - That's what we'll talk about.

It was believed that if a child was born prematurely, if he is weak or sick, it means that he is not “ripe” in the mother's womb. And if so, then it is necessary to bring him to the "necessary condition" so that he not only survives, but also gains the necessary vitality. In the tradition of the ancient Slavs, baking was a kind of reflection of the universe as a triune world: heavenly, earthly and afterlife, as well as the place of communication with ancestors. Therefore, they turned to her help to save a sick child. At the same time, the birth of a child was likened to baking bread, and therefore in the classical version of “baking” the baby was pre-coated with rye (and only rye) dough, leaving only the mouth and nostrils free from it.

By the way, the dough, by the way, was also not simple, but on water brought at dawn from three wells, preferably by a healer. !) an oven in which there is no fire. In some places it was entrusted to the midwife, in others - to the mother herself, in others - to the oldest woman in the village.

The baking was never done alone and was always accompanied by special speeches. But if the midwife (with whom the assistant was in order to remove the child from the shovel), it was enough to mumble something like: "Stick, stick, dog old age", then in other cases it was assumed a mandatory dialogue between the participants in the process.

Its meaning was not only in the spoken words, allegories, but also supported the rhythm in which it was necessary to send and return the child from the oven so that he would not suffocate. For example, if according to the ritual it was supposed to act with a shovel of the mother, then the mother-in-law could stand at the door. Entering the house, she asked: "What are you doing?" The daughter-in-law answered: "I bake bread" - and with these words she moved the shovel into the oven. The mother-in-law said: "Well, bakes, bakes, but not quails" and went out the door, and the parent took a shovel out of the oven.

A similar dialogue could occur with a woman who, having walked around the hut three times in the direction of the sun, stood under the window and conducted the same conversation. By the way, sometimes the mother got up under the window, and the healer worked at the stove. There is a detailed description of the rite of "baking" a child from dryness, made by one of the pre-revolutionary everyday writers, which ends with the "sale" of the child, and the healer takes him for the night and then returns to the mother.

“At dead midnight, when the stove gets cold, one of the women stays with the child in the hut, and the healer goes out into the yard. The window in the hut should be open, and the room should be dark.- Who do you have, godfather, in the hut? asks the healer from the yard - I, godfather - (calls himself by name) - Nobody else? the first one continues to ask - Not one, gossip, oh, not one; and clung to me bitter bitter, nasty dry stuff - So you, godfather, throw her to me! advises the healer - I would be glad to quit but I can’t, I can hear it in public - But why? - If I throw out her filthy one, then the child-child will have to be thrown out: she sits with him - Yes, you, child, bake it in the oven, she will come out of it, the advice of the godfather is heard."

After that, the child is placed on a bread spade and placed in the oven. The witch doctor, who was in the yard, runs around the house and, looking through the window, asks: “- What are you, godfather, doing? - I bake dry soup <…> - And you, godfather, look, you wouldn't bake Vanka too - And what then? - replies the woman, - and I will not regret Vanka, if only to get rid of her, a bitch. “Bake her, and sell Vanka to me.” Then the healer passes three kopecks out the window, and the mother from the hut gives her a child with a shovel. This is repeated three times, the healer, having run around the hut and each time returning the child to the mother through the window, refers to the fact that he is “heavy”. “Nothing is healthy, you will bring it” - she replies and again hands over the child on the shovel. After that, the healer takes the child home, where he spends the night, and in the morning returns him to his mother.

This ancient rite was widespread among many peoples of Eastern Europe, both Slavic and non-Slavic, and was common among the peoples of the Volga region - Mordovians, Chuvash. Placing a child in the oven, as a means of traditional medicine, was widely used by many European peoples: Poles, Slovaks, Romanians, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Germans. Pre-revolutionary ethnographer and ethnographer V. K. Magnitskiy in his work "Materials for the explanation of the old Chuvash faith" writes: "This is how, for example, they cured children's thinness. The sick child was placed on a shovel covered with a layer of dough, and then covered with dough on top, leaving only an opening for the mouth. After that, the healer thrice the child into the stove over the burning coals three times. Then, according to the research of another ethnographer P. V. Denisov, the child "was thrown from the shovel through the clamp to the threshold, where the dog ate the dough that covered the child." During this whole procedure, I read a number of slanderous words.

There were many options for the baking rite. Sometimes the child was smeared with dough, a shovel was carried with it over embers or put in a cooled oven. But everyone had one thing in common: necessarily on a bread shovel and in the oven, as a symbol of fire. Perhaps, in this pagan procedure, one should see echoes of one of the most ancient rituals - purification by fire. In general, this one looks like a kind of hardening (hot-cold), which mobilizes the body to fight the disease. According to the testimony of old-timers, the method of "baking" was resorted to in very extreme cases, after which the baby had to either die or recover. It happened that the child died before they had time to untie him from the shovel. At the same time, the mother-in-law said to her daughter-in-law's crying: "Know, he cannot live, but if he had suffered, he would have become, you know how strong after that" …

It should be noted that the "baking" rite was revived in Soviet times. According to the recollections of a resident of the village of Olkhovka V. I. Valeev (born in 1928), and his younger brother Nikolai were also “baked”. It happened in the summer of 1942. His brother was not only thin, but also loud and capricious. There were no doctors in the village. A meeting of the grandmothers made a diagnosis: "There is dry land on it." Prescribed unanimously was the course of treatment: "To bake". According to Valeev, his mother put his brother (he was six months old) on a wide wooden shovel and several times “put” Nikolai in the oven. True, the oven has already cooled down thoroughly. And at this time the mother-in-law ran around the hut, looked into the windows, knocked on them and several times asked: "Baba, baba, what are you baking?" To which the daughter-in-law invariably answered: “I bake dry land.” According to Vladimir Ionovich, his brother was treated for thinness. Until now, Nikolai is well, he feels great, he is over 60 years old.

WHY REMEMBER THE OLD SEDUYA? Do you remember how in the fairy tale the swan geese stopped chasing the children only after they climbed into the stove? The stove can be conditional … After all, the process of baking itself was not only a medical procedure, but also, to no less extent, a symbolic one. Thus, placing a child in the stove, in addition to burning the disease, could symbolize at the same time:

- repeated "baking" of a child, likened to bread, in an oven, which is a common place for baking bread and at the same time symbolizes a woman's womb;

- a symbolic "bothering" of a child "not healed" in the mother's womb;

- the temporary return of the child to the mother's womb, symbolized by the oven, and his second birth;

- the temporary death of a child, his stay in another world, symbolized by the oven, and his return to this world … So, the storytellers turned the respectable healer Baba Yaga into a bloodthirsty villain who bakes children in the oven …