Old maids
Including, parents sensed they unbecoming to help you get married off their youngest child before the fresh new eldest and you can, given that oldest wanted a groom and you may planning people and you may gatherings, the latest youngest wasn’t permitted to and, therefore, stayed “for the maidenhood”. Obviously, there are including girls just who merely cannot discover a few it liked. Peasant people handled them therefore harshly that it’s unpleasantly surprising now.
People who was left once the girls was named a choice out-of insulting nicknames: vekovukha (‘century-dated one’), odnokosok (‘one-braided girl’, because solitary girls dressed in one braid even yet in adulthood), ‘gray-haired’, perespelok (‘the new extremely ripe one’). Including an effective girl can also be pulled within community by the their mothers with the an excellent sledge, shouting: “Nadolba, nadolba! (A keyword meaning roughly “thicker due to the fact a stone”) Who would like an excellent nadolba?” If a family group decided, they could currently “strike a great deal” while having hitched the very next day.
To keep a good vekovukha is actually considered in the village a beneficial disgrace – it actually was considered that for example a female hadn’t know her fertility prospective. Even lameness, lop-sidedness or becoming hunchbacked just weren’t considered a hurdle in order to marriage.
If an effective girl failed to e over 25 years old, children perform avoid inviting her on the gatherings and you can she would become taboo to put on girls’ clothing. Now, their attire must be of dark tone, like those regarding widows and dated female. The fresh vekovukhas constantly resided ilies in the a different sort of strengthening, in which they leftover her very own household.
Widows and you will vekovukhas, even after the some disadvantaged standing, had been regarded as on the community due to the fact bearers off actual and you may religious love. As a result, they met many important ceremonial functions – mainly linked to the fresh new change to the other business. As icons from emptiness and you may low-parity, widows and centenarians did not attend wedding events, births, christenings – even so they participated in the latest rites and you will washing of your own inactive, watched across the body up until the funeral service, generally maintained and you may leftover the brand new funeral service life style.
Another significant “work” try the fresh “plowing” of one’s arable property by vekovukhas and you will widows, that has bestГ¤lla Venezuelanska brud online been extensive a number of provinces, that have expectant mothers (exactly who represented virility) utilized towards the plow. So it crucial ritual were to performed simply symbolically by the “barren” women in the new dark from nights, making sure that, on the other hand, the fresh new residential property will be rich when day emerged.
Of several vekovukhas and you may widows, just after spending years inside position, first started practicing visitors medication and you will witchcraft within their old-age. But, there are including feamales in this new Russian countryside, whom felt like that they perform alive by yourself from the comfort of their more youthful ages.
Nuns
The latest girls which failed to follow the family relations highway out of lifetime, but chose the roadway regarding servitude so you’re able to Goodness, was indeed called chernichkas. The expression chernichka try good feminitive sort of the definition of chernets (‘one for the black robes’) – good monk just who belonged to the “black” (celibate) clergy. To become a chernichka, a good girl had to declare their own like to following achieving the ages of wedding – that is where the brand new girl manage start to feel desired to gatherings and you can parties because of the village youth. This might happen from the girl’s form of individual piety – or on account of a guarantee produced by her mothers.
Upon saying their unique attention, the fresh girl was required to share all of the their own colorful maidenly clothes and you will wear black dresses, eg a good vekovukha or an excellent widow. The braid has also been symbolically slashed when you are uttering the text: “As my personal hair doesn’t go back together, I won’t go back to my personal maidenhood.”
