Than in Russia the braids were covered. On the importance of a woman's headdress

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

The headdress in Russia was an integral part of the female wardrobe. Hair was necessarily braided, and the head was covered depending on social status. The headdress could say a lot about its owner - her marital status, status in society, territorial affiliation.

Girlish decorations

A maiden's plait could be performed by a metal hoop attached to the back of the head, with temporal rings and various forehead adornments.

But a hoop covered with fabric, decorated with embroidery, plates, beads, pearls and stones was called a crown.

As a rule, crowns were worn on holidays and at weddings.

The hoop and the crown are transformations of the well-known wreath - the oldest girlish adornment in Russia.

Women's headdress in Russia was organically associated with the hairstyle and complemented it.

Also, a girl could decorate her hair with a bandage - a strip of silk, brocade, velvet or woolen fabric covering her forehead or crown. The band was tied under the braid, and wide embroidered ribbons descended on the girl's back.

The headdress was completed with embroidery, pearls, flowers. Headbands were worn mainly by peasant women, more often they were worn on holidays, and sometimes at a wedding - instead of a crown.

Decorations of the Married

After marriage, women completely covered their hair, and the more multi-layered the headdress was, the more prosperous its owner was considered.

One of these hats was kika (kichka)- high feminine decoration, consisting of a back piece - a cloth covering the shoulders;

povoinika - fabric wrapped around the head;

forehead - frontal part and head - pearl mesh or fringe.

The kitschki were different in shape, they resembled horns, hooves and even a shovel. Ladies wore horned pussies, the front of which was filled with ornament, and the headdress was trimmed with gold.

Horns in Russia were considered a talisman for the mother and, according to legend, protected the child from dark forces and the evil eye. The height of such horns sometimes reached 20 cm, so it was customary to walk in a horned kitsch with his head thrown back.

Flaunting - walking with your head held high

Interestingly, the name of this garment can be found in architectural dictionaries, it denotes an elevation on the front of the ship. Subsequently, the kichka was replaced by simpler hats - magpie and new.

Magpie was considered one of the richest headdresses and consisted of a large number of parts, from 8 to 14.

The basis for the attire was the kichka, the back of the head and the magpie itself, which was a raised crown.

A magpie was called fathom if it was trimmed with precious stones and winged, if ribbons with strings were sewn to it from the sides.

Artificial flowers, beads and jewelry served as adornments for such decoration.

What is the essence behind the kokoshnik shape

Have you ever wondered why some of the hats, for example, kokoshniks, have such a rather unusual shape? After all, if we consider the kokoshnik from a pragmatic point of view, then with its help it is impossible to protect oneself from the Sun, rain or snow, which means that a completely different meaning was originally invested in it. Then which one?

At present, thanks to the creation of special technical devices, it has become possible to obtain an image of the human biological field, which is a combination of radiation from the human body in a very wide spectrum of frequencies. In fact, a person continuously dwells in a special energy cocoon, which most people normally do not perceive with their eyesight. Comparing the images of the human biological field obtained with the help of these technical devices with the form of a kokoshnik, it is easy to notice an absolutely obvious similarity between them. Therefore, it is logical to assume that the kokoshnik is a material aspect of the luminosity of the human biological body, locally identified in the head region.

It can be assumed that in ancient times, when a person had the ability to see the subtle planes of the existence of matter, there was no need for such headdresses, since a girl or woman was naturally perceived to be radiant, but since the time when people for the most part have lost the ability to see the biological field surrounding a person, arose it was required in the creation of certain elements of clothing, with the help of which it would be possible to form and transmit to a blind person information about the inner state of a woman, her integrity and perfection. Therefore, the kokoshnik not only repeats the shape of the biological field of a healthy woman, but also thanks to its color (white with shades of blue, blue, purple, etc.), as well as various decorations and trim elements, contributes to the non-verbal transmission of information about the degree of her spiritual perfection.

In this regard, you can also pay attention to how kings and kings were previously called - the crowned person. It was so called because the crown (or crown) also symbolizes a person's aura or halo. Traditionally, a crown or crown was made of gold or other precious metals and decorated with precious stones, which on the material plane should have symbolized the development of the corresponding energy center in a given person (crown chakra).

Commentary by Alexander Doroshkevich

The meaning of hats for our Ancestors

Not so long ago, literally 50-200 years ago, people's buildings and clothes had a completely different look and were much richer and more elegant than at the present time. Nowadays, a person is surrounded by multi-storey buildings, boxes made of glass and concrete with low ceilings and small rooms, and the clothes are unisex, monotonous and also multi-storey.

Let's look at the clothes of the past 18-19 centuries, at the hats. It is known that men evaluate women by looking at them from top to bottom, while women examine a man from bottom to top. Nowadays, hats are not in vogue, in cold weather we wear hats and fur hats to protect us from the cold. And earlier there were hats that were very interesting and obligatory to wear.

First, they performed a protective function, not only against cold, but also against energy pollution.

Like clothes, the headdress of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers (as well as the great-great-great-and further, further, into the depths of the centuries), served, among other things, for social communication. Every inhabitant of a city, village or community was guided in women's and men's clothing, in the symbolism of embroidery and in the general arrangement of clothing items, much better than we, modern people, are guided by the models of mobile phones. By clothing and headdress (and especially a woman's headdress), everyone passing by, even not personally acquainted with this woman, understood who was in front of him, what social status this woman possessed and what her marital status was.

A young girl, ready for marriage, wore a special girlish dress, which showed others in all its glory her hair - the original symbol of female power in Russia. Most often, he imagined a red ribbon tied over the head and converging under the scythe into a kind of bow. Married girls had the right to braid their hair (most often one, married women braided two) and wear their hair open for all to see. And when the girl got married, a special ceremony took place - farewell to the scythe. This does not mean at all that the hair of the young wife was cut off at the root. It's just that from that day, after parting with the scythe, after marriage, the hair of a married woman forever went under the headscarf, becoming invisible to others. In general, only women who had not lost their virginity could put the braid on display, lower it down the back. There were, however, special cases, especially solemn ones, when a woman could let her hair down over her shoulders - the funeral of her parents (let me remind you that death was not considered such a grief before), weddings, especially large Slavic holidays. In the event of a woman having illegitimate children, or loss of innocence, she lost the opportunity to wear a braid on her back or show the crown of her head. If a woman was seen in a dissolute lifestyle, the congregation could cut her bangs to mark the woman's “occupation”.

Hiding your hair from prying eyes, being married, was considered so necessary and important that even the father-in-law could not see them from now on (peeping at the son's wife in the process of changing her headscarves from day to night could end in a big family scandal). Only other women, in the bathhouse, could see all the female power, which now, after marriage, belonged to the only man. Married women have already braided two braids, laying them over their heads in various ways, which they carefully hid under a scarf. And if a woman, wife, mistress, did not hide her hair well, then the "esoteric" owner of the house, the brownie, could begin to take revenge on her for this, arranging some special nasty things. After all, by showing her hair, a woman seemed to be taking away her energy support and nourishment from her husband, sharing her feminine power, which should rightfully belong to only one man. "Flash hair" was not only a shame, but also energetically unpleasant action that could lead to various troubles in the personal and "economic" life of a family and a woman. They believed that a woman (not a girl of marriageable age) with an open head has access to evil spirits. In Slavic mythology, mermaids and witches, representatives of evil spirits, walked with loose hair.

Genuine Russian hats

Oddly enough, but the names of the most popular headdresses in modern Russia are borrowed from foreign languages - as, of course, the hats themselves. Back in the Middle Ages, the "hat" was borrowed from French, the "hat" appeared to us from the German language at the same time as Peter the Great returned from his famous European voyage, and the "cap", of course, is nothing more than the Russified English cap or German Kappi (in turn, borrowed from Latin). As for the truly Russian hats, of them, perhaps, the general public knows for certain only the kokoshnik - in its many varieties, but above all the one that Snegurochka and Vasilisa the Beautiful wear, without removing, coupled with the inevitable fair-haired braid to the waist. And the older generations will probably only imagine the Orenburg headscarf, which actually spread in the European part of Russia only in the 19th century.

Meanwhile, in pre-revolutionary Russia, there were no less than fifty types of traditional headdress - first of all, of course, for women, and the variety of bizarre styles, shapes, materials and decorations makes up one of the most interesting pages in the history of Russian costume and Russian fashion in its authenticity. popular understanding. Unfortunately, this page has not yet been written: a separate monograph exploring the history and geography of the Russian headdress does not yet exist, despite the fact that many eminent Russian ethnographers have been studying it as an integral part of the costume.

Variety of women's hats

Since ancient times, girls have had a headdress with a metal hoop. Temple rings and metal forehead jewelry were attached to it. Each Slavic tribe had their own, special ones: bracelet-like in Krivichi, seven-bladed in Vyatichi, spiral-shaped in northerners, etc. Sometimes, by the types of temporal rings, archaeologists even determine the boundaries of the settlement of certain tribes. Such rings were attached at the temple to a metal hoop or even woven into the hair, put on a ring on the ear, etc. Of the festive attire even then there existed for girls a kind of kokoshnik, a bandage ("human") and a crown, and from jewelry - temporal rings, headdress, pendants, plaques, buckles.

The female headdress of a married woman assumed a complete "covering" of the head. In the X-XI centuries, this is a semblance of a head towel, which was wrapped around the head, the so-called new. A little later, such a canvas will be richly decorated and will become a trim. In the XII-XV centuries, women from wealthy and noble estates use a whole combination of several headdresses: warrior, ubrus and on top - a kichka or a round hat with fur around the edges (especially in winter). The front part of the kiki later becomes removable and is called the ochelya (although, according to some historians, the ochelya could have existed earlier and be worn right on the new one). The headdress is especially richly decorated with pearls, beads, etc. For women, jewelry was no longer attached to the hair (as was the case with girls), but directly to the headdress. At first, these are various temporal decorations, and by the XIV-XV centuries robes are becoming the most common.

Women less wealthy and noble in the XI-XII centuries and later often wore magpies and less expensive garments, without a richly decorated kitsch. As for headscarves, they began to use it as an independent female headdress somewhere in the 17th century. Then he begins to displace the headwear and headgear, becoming the main piece of clothing.

Mokosh's symbolism

From the symbolism of the World Duck Mokos, sitting on the top of the withers of Veles-Vaal, got its name and the folk headdress of Russian women - kokoshnik. In pre-Petrine Russia, the kokoshnik existed in the boyar environment and below, and with the arrival of Peter I, it remained only in the merchant and peasant environment, and so it survived until the 19th century.

The name "kokoshnik" comes from the ancient Slavic "kokosh", meaning a chicken or a rooster. Kokoshnik was made on a solid base, decorated with brocade, lace, beads, beads, pearls on top, and precious stones for the richest. Kokoshnik (kokuy, kokoshko) is performed in the form of a fan or a rounded shield around the head; it is a light fan made of thick paper, sewn to a cap or hairpin; it consists of a trimmed head and a bottom, or a head and a hair, with a descent behind the tape. Kokoshnik is not only a woman's headdress, but also a decoration on the facades of buildings in the Russian style.

The shape of the kokoshnik resembles a crown in the front, and a duck on the side. Numerous Russian words of the same root lead us to the latter meaning: coca, coco - an egg, cocac - pie with porridge and eggs, cococh - a hen hen, cocoon - the first regular feathers of a goose wing, for writing, cocotok - a knuckle of a finger, coc - knob, upper tip, head, carved decoration on the ridge of the hut, copper heads on sleighs, carriage goats, etc.

The figure below shows the development of the image and symbolism of the Russian kokoshnik. First, we find a deep religious mythology, hidden in the image of a duck-Mokosh, located on the head of Veles. In the image of Veles, the duck directly sits on his head. Next, we see an Egyptian goddess wearing a headdress made of two birds. One of them spread over the head, starting to form the back canopy of the kokoshnik - an elegant magpie (note that the bird's name has been preserved). Another bird in the nest continues to sit on its head. In the image of King Khafre, the first bird has already turned into just a canopy-magpie, and the upper one has crawled closer to the nape of the king. On the Russian kokoshniks (4 and 5), the headdress has almost completely lost its birdlike features, but the symbolism itself remains. The shape of the nest, which is formed by the head-cap, has also remained. The silhouette of the duck resembles the very front of the kokoshnik. In fragment 4, we also see that the upper part of the kokoshnik resembles a bird with its wings spread downward - on its head. The kokoshniks end in the back - the magpie.

Another Russian national headdress - kichka - also drew its symbolism from the stellar Slavic religious cult of the Makos duck (constellation Pleiades), located on the head (nape) of Veles (constellation Taurus).

In particular, the word "scarf" comes from the Russian "field", which is the original fiefdom of Mokosh. The etymology of the word "kerchief" directly comes from the name of Makoshi. Academician B. A. Rybakov derived the name of this goddess from the Russian mokos, where the first syllable means "Mother", and the second means "fate, fate, destiny." Since Makosh contains both Dolya and Nedolya, the kerchief - the diagonal part of the whole shawl-field (cloth, towel) - correlates with the Share and fertility. That in V. Dahl's dictionary is etymologically confirmed, for example, mowing chickens. foal [40]. The Russian word kosous refers to a duck with an oblique wing - carpentry, a shelf rolled out in single file, cornice.

Coca - this is how they call an incomplete ear in Tver, a spindle with cocked yarn, and a bobbin is a chiseled stick for winding threads and weaving belts and laces. This again brings us to the symbolism of Makosha, the attributes of which are the spindle, threads and the weaving process.

In addition to the thread of life associated with a duck and its laid egg, Makosh also spins the thread of death. The last meaning is also fixed in words with the root kok: kokat, koknut what - to beat or break, slap, hit, kokosh someone - lower. tamb. beat, pound with fists, kokshila - a fighter, bully, kokoshat someone, kokshil - beat; kill to death, take life, cocoon - cool down and harden, harden, freeze, freeze, cocoon sib. or kok-kokven - cold, from which everything stiffens, stiffens, numb.

By the way, here we come to the etymological concept of the meaning of the word bone - the root ko- + suffix. –Is = "Makosh / fate / basis is."

Let's summarize:

Thus, we came to the conclusion that the headdress in Russia, as well as in other territories of the spread of Slavism (Europe, pre-Semitic Greece, Sumer and Egypt):

1) was a Slavic religious cult object;

2) reflected the cosmic symbolism of the Slavic religion, namely, the location of the constellation Pleiades-Makoshi-ducks (patronizing Russia, in particular, Moscow), on the withers of Taurus-Veles-bull;

3) symbolized the fertility phase of Slavic women;

4) if the dress contained elements similar to horns, then they symbolized Veles;

5) the rest of the headdress symbolized the Makosh duck and its nest.

In most cases, this designation of hats remains to this day.

Reconstruction of ancient women's headdresses

Headdress of a Meryanka, a resident of the Alabuga settlement of the 7th century. n. e.

Vladimirsky kokoshnik of the beginning of the 20th century.

Headdress of a Meryanka, a resident of the Alabuga settlement of the 7th century. n. e.

Kostroma women's festive dress - "tilt". (Galich Mersky)

Mari women's headdress "shura"

Udmurt women's headdress "aishon"

Erzyan women's headdress "pango"

Women's hats in the paintings of artists

K. E. Makovsky

M. Shanko. Girl from the Volga, 2006

A. I. Korzukhin. Hawthorn, 1882

M. Nesterov. The girl in the kokoshnik. Portrait of M. Nesterova 1885

K. E. Makovsky. Noblewoman at the window with a spinning wheel

K. E. Makovsky. Portrait of Z. N. Yusupova in Russian costume 1900s

A. M. Levchenkov. Hawthorn