Totem trees in legends and rituals of European peoples
1. "Construction sacrifice"
Among Western European peoples, legends and sagas about people who were immured alive in the foundations or walls of various buildings, especially medieval castles and city fortresses, are very widespread. These legendary legends are quite realistic, that is, they are not a simple fiction of poetic fantasy; these sagas once corresponded to historical reality. Their realism is evidenced by both archaeological excavations at the site of destroyed structures, and surviving rites, customs and beliefs that have survived to this day. In the ritual that accompanies the laying of a house or other building, very often an animal is buried in the ground, sometimes still alive, sometimes only some part of its body is buried. In beliefs, residents or builders of a newly rebuilt house will always be threatened by a near and certain death.
Here we have one of those cases when a cruel primitive custom turns out to be equally characteristic of both the culturally backward tribes of the whole world and highly cultured European peoples. The facts in this case are so indicative, convincing and numerous that there can be no talk of opposing "cultured" and "uncultured" peoples. And back in 1928, the German ethnographer R. Stübe wrote the following about this custom, qualifying it with the usual concept and the term "construction sacrifice" - Bauopfer, that is, a sacrifice during construction or a sacrifice of builders (the term "foundation sacrifice" is less common). “The construction sacrifice is a custom spread throughout the land and among peoples of all cultural levels. We find it in China, Japan, India, Siam, on about. Borneo, in Africa, among the Semites, in New Zealand, on about. Tahiti,in the Hawaiian and Fijian Islands and among the Chibchi of South America. It was widespread among all European peoples in the Middle Ages and lives under various forms even to this day - in separate rites”[Stübe 1927, S. 962].
The wide spread of such a cruel and inhuman custom among the Christian peoples of Europe gave rise to the former European theologians to explain it from Christian ideology. R. André in 1878 quoted the book of the theologian-ethnographer Sepp “Paganism” on this subject: “the eternal father made his own son the cornerstone of all creation in order to save the world from decay and through the death of an innocent to stop the furious onslaught of hellish forces”. Thus, theologians saw in the death of an innocent person when the building was founded an analogy to God's son, who served as the cornerstone of the entire universe. When Paul Sartori wrote in 1898 about the consecration of a new building by human sacrifice, he turns out to be very close to this theological explanation. "Founding of the city, building a house, a bridge,a dam and other large structure is consecrated through the death of a person, and for the most part the victim is somehow attached to the foundation of the building."
The purpose of this article is to find out the origin and the most ancient history of the European custom of walled up living people in the foundations of buildings. So far, ethnographers have explained this custom only at the stage of its existence in a feudal society. The walled-up person, by virtue of the generally accepted Western European explanation, serves as a sacrifice to the spirits of the earth, a rent for the territory taken from these spirits, and at the same time the soul of the walled-up person becomes the guardian spirit of the building. In our opinion, the custom in question is much older than stone vaults and the concept of land rent. We are convinced that this custom was originally associated with primitive wooden buildings, and not with stone ones. People then had a special, totemic relationship to trees: trees were considered totems and as totems they were inviolable. For violation of this inviolability by the builders of the building, the totem trees took revenge on people, depriving the life of the builder or the first inhabitant of the house. To prevent this unpleasant prospect, the builders in advance substituted a human sacrifice for avenging trees - a child, a prisoner, and then a slave, an animal, and with this they deceived the totem, which was satisfied with the life of a person or animal and stopped his revenge.
In almost every old collection of sagas and other folklore materials of different Western European peoples, you can find stories about immuring, about people buried alive. We will cite several such stories, more as an example. Already Jacob Grimm in his "German Mythology" 1835 collected a lot of facts about the past European nations, and Rich. André in 1878 added parallels from Africa, Asia and the islands of Oceania to the European sagas. F. Liebrecht and Ed. Taylor gave them an animistic explanation - as sacrifices to the spirits of the earth. The most frequent and common "victim" in Western Europe was children. “Throughout the Middle Ages and up to modern times,” wrote André, “the saga about innocent children walled up in the foundations of houses, about cement diluted in the blood of boys for construction, about the only sons of builders is widespread everywhere.which were walled up in the locks of the bridge vaults. These victims were intended primarily in order to ensure the strength and durability of the building: the fortresses through this sacrifice seemed to become impregnable, the walls, ready to collapse, continued to stand and hold, and the soul of the walled-up person was considered the faithful guardian of the building, saving him from death, from an earthquake, from a flood, from the onset of enemies."
In Bavaria, near the mountains. Ansbach, in the village of Festenberg, the ruins of an old castle that belonged to the noble Vestenberg family at the very beginning of the Middle Ages were preserved. In 1855, a local 80-year-old woman told the following about this knight's castle. When it was being built, they made a special seat in the wall, where they put the child and walled it up there. The child was crying, and to calm him down, they gave him a beautiful red apple. The mother sold this child for a lot of money. Having buried the child, the builder gave his mother a slap in the face, saying: "It would be better if you with this child of yours went to the courtyards to collect alms!" [Panzer 1855, S. 254, No. 457]. The same Fr. Panzer cites from the book of 1847 “Sagas and legends of the mountains. Magdeburg”the following legend. In Magdeburg, by order of King Otto, the fortress walls were built. The gates of the fortress collapsed three times during this construction, despite all efforts to make them as strong as possible. Then they turned to the astrologer with a request, and he replied: in order for the fortress gates to stand, it is necessary to walled up a boy in them, voluntarily given by his mother. One of the maids of honor of Otto's wife, Queen Edita, by the name of Margaret, at that time was guilty of something and had to leave the royal palace. At the same time, Margarita's fiance was killed in battle, and her treasures were stolen by thieves. In order not to remain a dowry, Margarita offered her little son for a large sum of money to be immured. When building a new fortress gate, they made a special niche so that the child sitting in it would not be crushed by stones and so that it could not suffocate without air. It was in this niche that Margarita's little son was planted;a loaf of bread was strengthened in front of his mouth. Having learned about all this, Margarita's new fiancé left her, and she had to leave for foreign lands. After 50 years, she returned as a decrepit old woman and began to ask for a Christian burial for her ruined son. The young mason climbed the high stairs to the top of the fortress, pushed aside several stones in the vault and saw a niche, and in the niche a human figure, which looked at the mason with sparkling eyes. It was as if a small gray-haired old man, whose long white tufted beard went down and deeply embedded in the stones. Over his head, between two stone slabs, there was a hole where birds had made a nest; they seemed to bring food to the walled up. Another ladder was added, and an architect respected by all citizens climbed up. Together they were able to extract a gray-haired man from a niche,and both then swore by oath that at the moment of extraction the figure uttered groans. But when they pulled her out into the light, they were surprised to see only the lifeless petrified corpse of Margarita's child.
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In Thuringia, there used to be the city of Liebenstein, the walls of which were considered impregnable, since a living girl was walled up during their construction. A touching saga conveys it this way. The little girl was bought for this purpose from a vagrant mother. The girl was given a loaf in her hands, and she thought that her mother was playing with her, joking. When the girl was immured, she first saw those around her and shouted "Mom, Mom, I can still see you!" Then she told the master: "Uncle, leave me at least a tiny hole so that I can look through it." The touched master refused to continue his terrible work, and it was completed by a young apprentice bricklayer. In the last minutes, the child was still shouting: "Mom, mom, I don't see you at all!" One version of the same saga adds: the restless shadow of the mother still wanders through the ruins of the city of Liebenstein and in the neighboring forest on the mountain. In another version of the saga,the girl, when they walled her up, screamed for help, resisted in every possible way, kicked her hands and feet, but nothing helped. For seven whole years thereafter, the screams of a walled-up child were heard at night, and jackdaws flew from all sides at his cry and screamed even more plaintive than the child. In these jackdaws, the surrounding population saw the souls of inhuman builders, who supposedly would have to fly around the castle as long as there was at least one stone on a stone.which supposedly will have to fly around the castle as long as there is at least one stone on a stone.which supposedly will have to fly around the castle as long as there is at least one stone on a stone.
A saga close to this was also told about the founding of the present Danish capital, the city of Copenhagen. It was necessary to make an embankment on the site of the future city, but, no matter how many times they began to make it, it sagged every time. Then they took a little girl, put her on a chair at the table, gave her toys and treats. While she was playing and eating, twelve craftsmen erected a stone vault over her, and the saga repeats the same dialogue between the mother and the little girl, who considered everything that was happening as a game and a joke. Having buried the girl, Danish builders, with music and gaiety, poured a new embankment, which remains indestructible for many centuries.
The Swedish saga reads. In the west of Gotland, in Kålland, a church was once built. Then it was still considered obligatory to brick up someone living in the foundation of the building. The builders saw two beggars, small children, walking along the road very conveniently. "Would you like to eat?" - the builders asked the beggars. They gladly agreed. The workers sat them down among the stones, gave them bread and butter from their reserves. While the children were eating, the masons brought a vault over them, and over
Church 1 was built with this vault.
In Saxony, near Reichenbach, a railway bridge was being built in the Goltsch valley and for a long time they could not build it, because they did not find solid ground: what they managed to do in a day was destroyed overnight. Finally, the builders walled up one child. When the rumor spread that they were looking for a living victim for the Golchsky Bridge, the appearance on the streets of one gymnastics teacher in white clothes and with a rope in his hand frightened the children so much that they all screamed home. And in the German city of Halle, when the Elizabethan Bridge was being built in 1841, the people believed that it was necessary to brick up the child. In Serbia, in Smederevo, in 1928, the public suspected the owners of one yellow car that they were gathering children to build a large bridge from Belgrade to Pancevo: a German company was building this bridge at that time. The belief in this custom is so tenacious!
Judging by local legends, in Georgia, in the Caucasus, there was once a custom - when laying a building, especially fortress walls or towers, to bury a person under the foundation in order to ensure the strength of the building. The legend of the Surami fortress was also conveyed by the folk song "Suramistsikhe". When the Suram fortress was being built, its walls collapsed several times. Then the king ordered to find a lonely man with his only son and to bury this son. They found a widow who had an only son, Zurab. The song contains a dialogue between a mother and her walled up son. First, the mother asks the Surami fortress "to save her son well." Then he asks his son several times: "for what place (is it)?" He answers first: ankle-deep, belly-deep, chest-deep, neck-deep. The tears of the crying Zurab, according to legend, seep through the stones and moisten the wall. A similar legend was told by the Georgians about the Signaghi fortress, where not Zurab's tears protrude from the wall, but blood - it is shown annually on Maundy Thursday, and before some superstitious Sighnaghi people came to the fortress wall to see how Zurab's blood flows. The same legends were dated to the Uplistsikhe fortress on the right bank of the river. Chickens and to some ancient fortresses of the former. Borchali and Tiflis districts [Chursin 1905, p. 8 et seq.]. Borchali and Tiflis districts [Chursin 1905, p. 8 et seq.]. Borchali and Tiflis districts [Chursin 1905, p. 8 et seq.].
Children, on the other hand, are a frequent construction victim in other countries of the world. In Senegambia, a boy and a girl were sometimes buried alive in front of the main gates of the city in order to make the city impregnable through this, and the tyrant-king Bambarra ordered to perform such a sacrifice on a large scale. A similar sacrifice was made when the city was founded in Upper Guinea and elsewhere.
Some old authors associated the Old Russian and Bulgarian name of the city Kremlin, that is, the inner fortress, with the word "detinets" with this custom of walled up children at the foundation of the fortress walls. But we do not have sufficient data for such an explanation, especially since, according to the legends of the Slavic peoples, not children, but young women were immured in new buildings. It is more correct to deduce the term "detinets" from the former Russian name of military men by the term "boyar children" [Preobrazhensky 1910-1914, p. 209]. Among the Slavic peoples, unlike other Europeans, the first person who passed by became the building victim for the most part. The sagas talk more about young wives. There are no reports of buying victims.
The Serbian saga of the mountains is widely known. Skutari (Skadr), recounted in detail in the Serbian folk song “Building Skadr”. For three years, three brothers Mrlyavchevich built - King Vukashin, voivode Uglesha and Goyko - the Skadr fortress on the river. Boyane. They built with three hundred craftsmen and could not even erect a foundation, because every time what the craftsmen managed to do in a day, the vila destroyed at night. Finally, the vila herself said from the mountain to Vukashin: "do not suffer, find brother Stoyan and sister Stoyanaya, lay them in the foundation of the tower, and then you will build a city." However, Vukashin could not find a brother and sister with these common Serbian names. Then the vila again proposed to lay the wife of one of the three brothers-builders in the foundation of the fortress tower. The wife of the younger brother Goiko suffered, who at first thought it a joke when the builders surrounded her with logs and stones and laughed. And when she realized the whole tragedy of her situation, when her pleas for salvation were rejected, she asked the architect to leave an opening for her breasts so that she could breastfeed her one-month-old son, as well as holes for her eyes so that she could see this son. Goikovitsa's request was fulfilled, and for a whole year she seemed to be breastfeeding her son Iovan. “As it was then,” the song ends, “it has remained so: and now food comes from her - both for the sake of a miracle, so for the sake of healing wives who have no milk in their breasts.” - Vuk Karadzic's note to this song-saga reads: “They say that even now from these gaps, where Gojkovica's white breasts are visible, some liquid flows near the wall, like lime, which women who suffer from a lack of breast milk take themselves and drink in water or chest pain. " Another note from Wook states that,according to Serbian popular belief, when building any large building, you must first brick up a person; Everyone avoids such places if there is an opportunity to go in a roundabout way, since they believe that only one shadow can be immured, after which the person himself will die [Karapip 1895, p. 109-117, No. 25].
In Bulgaria, as in Serbia, young women in general served as construction victims. The South Slavic sagas usually add that after being immured, women continued to breastfeed their babies for a long time, for which special holes were made in the wall; that the milk continued to flow from the wall afterwards. Bosnian women near the mountains. Teshania, in complete resemblance to the Bulgarians near the Kadiinov Bridge, take old cement from the places where women are immured and drink it in milk in order to have more breast milk to feed their children.
A similar Russian saga is timed to the city of Gorky (formerly Nizhny Novgorod) and transmitted in verse by AA Navrotsky in his 1896 book “Legends of the Past. Russian epics and legends in verse”(p. 35-50):“Koromyslov's tower”. The event allegedly happened when the wooden walls of the Gorky Kremlin were replaced with stone ones. In Navrotsky we read:
“Tomorrow you, masters, are not lazy, in the morning
Go to the Kremlin's work, And over there, at the corner where the road was, You start laying the tower."
“So and so … Only, prince, we have a custom, What orders to bury without mercy
Everyone who is the first to pass on the day of the start of work
Where the wall should be laid.
That custom is not nonsense, it has been going on for a long time, -
Novgorod itself is so strong, What is under one tower, behind the Sofia wall, One youngster was buried there.
Who is destined, he will pass anyway, Be it a beast, man or bird;
Otherwise, the wall will not be strong, And it won't do to build it."
“I know myself, I have not forgotten and did not ask you
I remind you of this today, And yesterday ordered Sergei Ordynts
That custom is still to be fulfilled.
Tomorrow he will do as the custom commands, And he will start working with the masters …"
In the Gorky Kremlin, Alena, the young wife of a local merchant Grigory Lopata, fell victim to a cruel custom. On the unfortunate day, she just slept in the morning, hurried to fetch water and returned with buckets of water on the yoke, not by a roundabout path, skirting the city wall, but by a shorter path - a path along the slope. To the side of the path, near the city wall, she saw a pit - "like a grave", and out of curiosity she approached this pit. The builders immediately surrounded her here, asking for a show to give them water. The young woman was tightly tied to the board and lowered into the dug hole. Together with her, the yoke and the buckets were buried: the custom demanded that everything that was with her be put with the sacrifice. The workers refused to bury the unfortunate woman, but the chief foreman did it himself, saying morally:
“Let her perish for the whole city alone, We will not forget her in our prayers;
Better to die alone, but behind a strong wall
We will be safe from enemies!"
An Italian legend speaks of a bridge over the river. Artoo, who collapsed all the time; finally, the wife of the builder was laid in it, and the bridge holds, only it trembles like a flower stalk - in accordance with the spell that the unfortunate victim uttered when dying [Taylor 1896, p. 94].
According to the Byzantine Chronicle of Malala, Alexander the Great sacrificed the maiden of Macedonia when he founded the city of Alexandria; August at the founding of Ankyra - the maiden Gregoria; Tiberius, during the construction of a large theater in Antioch, the maiden Antigone; Trajan, rebuilding the destroyed city of Antioch after the earthquake, sacrificed the beautiful Antiochian maiden Calliope. The ancient Christian nomokanon says: “When building houses, they tend to lay the human body as a foundation. Whoever puts a person in the foundation, the punishment is 12 years of church repentance and 300 bows. Put a boar, or a bull, or a goat in the foundation”[Sartori 1898, S. 8]. Thus, Christian ecclesiastical law did not reject the entire custom as a whole, but only demanded the replacement of human sacrifice by domestic animals.
The Polish saga about the fortress tower at the Stock Exchange says. Prince Radziwill could not finish the construction of the fortress, as everything was in his way. Then he announced that he would give a dowry to a girl who wants to get married at once. Such a girl was found, the marriage was complete. But immediately after the wedding of the newlyweds, Radziwill's warriors surrounded them from all sides and walled them both up in the wall. The priest then cursed the prince for this crime, and Radziwill was the last pan on the Stock Exchange.
The practice of bricking up a married couple has also been noted elsewhere in Europe. Finally, there are legends about immured men. About the ancient African city of Dahomey, whose name was translated: "belly Yes", the saga says: King Takudonu threw a living Yes into the pit and founded his palace on it, from which the whole country later received its name. In North America, the Hyde Indian tribe used to kill slaves to bury them under the corner posts of the new building. Compare the German legend of the walled-up castle builder. The knight von Uchtehagen built himself a castle in Nijenhagen. He took a promise from the builder - to build as soon as he can better, and if he does not fulfill this promise, then he will be immured alive. When the castle was ready, Uchtengagen asked the builder: can you do even better? He half-jokingly replied: "yes!"and he was immediately seized and walled up; the place where all this happened is shown now. Here is a new folklore motif, but the basis for it was, of course, the belief we are considering, especially since in the Middle Ages the immuring of living people also became one of the types of qualified execution.
Even legends sometimes speak of human blood in general, which irrigates the foundation of a new building. In Scotland, the prevailing belief was that the ancient inhabitants of this country - the Picts, to whom local legends attribute prehistoric buildings, irrigated the cornerstones for their buildings with human blood. The English legend of Vortigern said that he could not finish his tower “until the foundation stones were soaked in the blood of a child born to a mother without a father” [Taylor 1896, p. 95]. Compare the Papuans of New Guinea, who “not so long ago had a custom that required the sprinkling of the threshold of a new house with human blood” [Gurley 1935, p. 94]. Likewise, among the Tlingits of North America, when the leader builds a new home for himself, he first strangles one of his slaves and imbues the building site with his blood [Kgaise 1885, 8.162].
In Rome, during the excavations of the Capitol, a human head was found, although, according to legend, Numa tried to replace the human head with a head of garlic in this case. When Western European ancient buildings were destroyed, skeletons of people were often found within their walls - in coffins and without coffins.
Joseph Klapper rightly sees a clear experience of the considered custom of the construction human sacrifice in one child's play of the Silesian Germans. The game is named "go through", from the song:
“Go, go across the golden bridge;
The bridge has collapsed and we want to fix it.
Than? - Grass, stone, leg.
The first one goes, the second one goes, The third must be captured."
A similar game, Clapper continues, is common in Scandinavia. The Golden Bridge is mythical; it cannot be repaired by natural means. The repairmen resort to an incantatory construction sacrifice: they brick up a living creature. Grass does not help trouble; the stone does not hold; a human leg must be sacrificed. The third walker is walled up in the foundation.
The Poles in the Przhevorsk area, when laying the house, laid the owner of the construction site on the ground. Citing this custom, Bystron considers it "not very plausible" to see in it a "symbol of a bloody sacrifice." But we do not see any obstacles to such an interpretation, especially since the rolling in the field, with which Bystron compares this rite, has nothing in common with it in function and is similar only in one form.
As for the explanation of all the described custom in its entirety, the researchers have long and very consistently see it as a victim. Paul Sartori wrote in 1911; "In the old days, as well as in Germany, when building houses, people were buried in the ground or walled up in walls, and specifically children - either as a victim of reconciliation, or in order to get an active protector spirit for a new building." Earlier, a similar explanation was expressed by Ed. Taylor in 1871, Felix Liebrecht in 1879, Friedrich Panzer in 1855, etc. “Immured people are sacrificed so that the building becomes solid and unapproachable … In our folk sagas, for the most part, instead of the old god, the devil appears: he wants take part in all large structures, tries to conclude a contract, by virtue of which the soul of the first person should belong to him,who will be the first to ascend to a new church or to a new bridge, etc.; but for the most part it is not the man who gets to him, but the dog, the wolf or the rooster. If the construction was carried out without the participation of the devil, then he becomes angry and tries in every possible way to destroy the building, which, however, he also fails”[Rapger 1855, 8. 562]. “In ancient times, there was a widespread custom of burying people alive in order to thus receive protection from enemies or security from other harm. Cases or traces of this custom are repeated even up to our time. Especially it is found out in the fall or other destruction of various kinds of buildings, which they wanted to prevent using this method. " Ed. Taylor cites the Scottish Picts and some other facts, and continues: in less cultured countries, “this rite is held up to this day for an obvious religious purpose or forto appease the spirits of the earth with a sacrifice, or to turn the soul of the victim itself into a patronizing demon "[Tay-
lore 1896, p. 96].
This animistic premise of construction sacrifices is further elaborated by Friedrich Krauss. According to him, the South Slavic peasants used to believe that a place to build a house should be bought from a "land owner". Fr. Krauss cites a Serbian legend where different landowners demand different rent from a builder for a place to build a house: one demands “everything that is alive in the house”; the other is "a householder and a housewife"; the third - “chicken and chicken” (what had to be understood: mother and child); the fourth - "a head of garlic", but this head was to be understood as an all-food supply. And only the fifth and last said: "I do not demand anything, but I myself will still give one piece of all kinds of cattle every year."
We meet the same among ethnographers of modern times. accurate explanation of the construction sacrifice. Wilhelm Esse, the author of the newest work "Construction sacrifice and sacrifice to the dead" of 1930, writes: “The basis of the custom of construction sacrifice, which is widespread almost throughout the inhabited earth, is based on the belief that the construction of a house, temple, city, fortress, bridge, dam and etc., it requires sacrifice in order to ensure the strength of the building, in order to protect the house and its inhabitants from any misfortune and from the influence of evil spirits. The construction sacrifice is performed in different ways; the concepts underlying it are also different. In some cases, there is a sacrifice in a narrow or proper sense - to the spirits of the earth, serving as if for reconciliation with the spirits about the damage of the builders to the mother earth. In others, its purpose is to acquire a guardian spirit for construction. In third cases, it is an apotropic charm against hostile supermundane forces. Or, finally, it is a kind of sympathetic magic - through the offering of objects, whose power and beneficial effect is transferred to the house and to people. " The last two explanations do not mean a living victim, not people or animals, but skulls, bones, etc. Alb. Becker, author of The Ethnography of the Palatinate, wrote in 1925: “Good luck
new buildings are provided by the fundamental sacrifice, which was originally a living being - the very one from which the guardian spirit is created”[Becker 1925, p. 131]. Edm. Shneveis writes in 1935: “Any new building requires sacrifice. It is known (among Serbs and Croats) many folk sagas about immured people, and these sagas are timed to certain ancient places and fortresses."
If we restrict ourselves only to materials from the history of cultural European peoples, then we can agree with such an explanation of the construction sacrifice. All European facts refer to the period of developed feudalism, when sacrifices to demons were already understood in our modern age. sense - as a manifestation of religious reverence and pious zeal for the deity. All the above European cases of construction sacrifice refer to stone buildings, when people already mastered the art of making vaults out of stone. The notion of the emergence of an "active guardian spirit" of a building from a walled-up person is clearly associated with a primitive ideology, by virtue of which all those killed and generally those who died prematurely and violently continue their life behind the coffin at the place of their unfortunate death or grave [Zelenin 1916, p.11 -13]. In this case, the place of death and the grave of the walled up person coincides. But this agreement of the construction sacrifice with the beliefs of primitive peoples about the unclean "pledged" dead is limited only by this external feature. In all other relations between the primitive ideas about mortgages and between the above explanation of construction sacrifice, we observe a sharp discrepancy and a complete discrepancy.
The mortgaged dead always find themselves behind the coffin, embittered and harmful to people spirits [ibid, p. 18], while a good spirit protector of the building is obtained from a walled-up person. In addition, the pledged deceased retain their earthly disposition, habits and properties behind the coffin [ibid., P. 26]. For the most part, they walled up children and women, who, obviously, are powerless and beyond the grave to show their physical strength, because they do not and did not have it; thus, they are not able to protect their new home, which is the building. As pledged deceased children, according to the old popular beliefs, show only their importunity, hence the former Ukrainian proverb: "lize, yak potercha" [ibid, p. 37].
This discrepancy has already been noted by Julius Lippert, who describes the famous Siamese case of a construction sacrifice with interesting comments for us: “In Siam, a powerful feudal lord needed a guardian spirit for the newly built fortress gates. He then ordered the capture of three men, ordered them to faithfully carry their new position of guards, and ordered that they be walled up, beheaded, in the foundation of the fortress gate. Their souls, however, had to enter their new service without vengeance and without a thirst for vengeance, but cheerful and reconciled with their fate; for this, they were first treated to a sumptuous dinner, during which the ruler himself gave them his new assignments. In this Siamese case, one could still think, from the point of view of primitive ideology, that a loyal guardian of the building would emerge from a murdered person. But we sawthat in Europe and everywhere a completely different picture prevailed: a person was not killed at the moment when he was full and drunk, but walled up alive, that is, forced to die a painful death from hunger and, often, from lack of air. There could be no question of any reconciliation with the fate of the sufferer; the soul of a person walled up in this way could only be dissatisfied and vindictive, and in no case could it become a faithful guardian of feudal property.and a faithful guardian of feudal property could by no means come out of it.and a faithful guardian of feudal property could by no means come out of it.
In his other work, the same Yul. Lippert also made a new assumption that periodic sacrifices were promised to the Siamese keepers of the fortress gates for the future. "This" (allegedly. -D. 3.) is not subject to any doubt, since only in this can one find an explanation of the fact that the murdered person was not expected to revenge, but services. This (Siamese. -D. 3.) proletarian and a vagrant would have died somewhere under the fence, - continues Lippert, - The curse of poverty would not have been lifted from him even after death.”[Lippert 1902, p. 370]. But no one decisively speaks about such sacrifices to the walled up, and the very assumption about them Lippert's wordless hypothesis is interesting to us only as a consciousness of the dead end, where the usual explanation of construction sacrifice has led ethnographers, and as a confusion of eras that violates any methodology:Lippert speaks here about the "poverty of the proletarian" and at the same time about the primitive ideology of a tribal society, according to which the rootless were considered dangerous and evil persons even after their death.
Another discrepancy between the generally accepted explanation of the construction sacrifice with primitive ideology relates to the question of who exactly is being sacrificed here. This discrepancy was noted by the Polish ethnographer Bystron in 1917. According to him, “the construction sacrifice is not a victim in the proper sense of the word. The laying of a house is not a religious act, and there would be no sacrifice here, not to mention the fact that there is no one to offer it at all. In some places, at high levels of social and religious development, a construction sacrifice is considered a sacrifice to the spirits of a place or home, but this is undoubtedly a later, rather a learned interpretation."
All Serbian sagas are about building mountains. Skutari or Skadra, about mountains. Teshany in Bosnia, about the New City, about the Mostar bridge in Herzegovina, etc. - they say that the construction of a human sacrifice was demanded and the construction of cities was interfered with by the pitchfork, i.e. mountain or forest nymphs. Fr. Krauss, in accordance with the generally accepted theory, makes an amendment here too: “The sacrifice was brought, of course, not to the pitchfork, but to the demons of the given place, the given tract. Pitchfork, at first advisers and friends of the builders, only took on the role of local (local) spirits here”. From our point of view, this artificial Krauss correction is not needed at all. The Serbs have preserved an older version, even pre-feudal. If in the feudal era the spirit-master of the area demands from the builder a quitrent, a ransom for a place, then in an older era it was only necessary to satisfy the vengefulness of totems for violating their taboo,it was necessary to direct the revenge of the totem trees to a different address. The propitiation of the demons of the earth by the builders could appear only with stone buildings, when they dig a foundation pit in the ground. Lightweight wooden buildings do not require a foundation and a pit and have nothing to do with the demons of the earth. Private ownership of land, and especially land rent, is a relatively very late concept. Written monuments of ancient Babylon have come down to us, from which it is clear that in the ritual of consecrating a new house “for some reason, various complex ceremonies should have expelled the“god of bricks”from it” [Turaev 1935, vol. 1, p. 139]. "For some reason" belongs here to Prof. Turaev, who, obviously, did not understand the appearance of God here - namely bricks.that bricks as a material for building houses have replaced the old trees. The demons of trees are well known to us from all primitive religions, and their appearance in the rituals of consecrating a new house is completely legal and even necessary.
Our point of view: cruel human “sacrifices” at the founding of buildings served in the ideology of the early clan society as compensation for tree spirits for the trees cut down for construction. This felling of trees for the house, from the point of view of primitive totemic ideology, entailed the death of the tenants, who initially were always at the same time the builders of the house. The tenants began to deceive the demons-totems, slipping them instead of themselves children, prisoners, and then - slaves and animals.
Of extraordinary importance, the economic significance of trees was, one must think, a prerequisite for that totemic taboo on trees, the clear traces of which are known in the beliefs of various peoples and recorded by numerous ethnographers. It was mainly forbidden to cut down large trees. The establishment of this prohibition was also due to the fact that it was very difficult, almost impossible for primitive people, to cut down any large tree with the primitive tools that were at their disposal. In addition, there was no particular need to cut down growing trees, since it was always possible to use windbreak, ready-made trunks. That is to say, the taboo to cut trees formed after in totemism could first arise as a simple fixation of the order that existed before,when a person was still unable to cut down growing trees.
The growth of the tree and its rapid development in the spring, wilting in the fall and winter - these signs gave primitive people reason to consider the tree a living creature, feeling pain during cutting and injury. In the era known to us of the animistic worldview, many individual elements of which, of course, go back to earlier periods, a person is afraid to "offend" trees, since the tree is alive and feels pain. Remnants of this are strong and numerous. German lumberjacks in the Upper Palatinate, when they have to cut a healthy, beautiful tree in the forest, first ask him for forgiveness: they believe that trees are living things, that trees "talk to each other." Also in Franconia, trees in the forest are not immediately cut down, considering it much more sinful than cutting down a tree planted by a man. It was forbidden to put bones from falling on trees, considering it offensive to a tree. The Germans previously called the revered sacred trees only with the addition of the epithet "mistress", for example, "Mrs. Linden", "Mrs. Birch", etc. The Poles' belief says: if you chop a fir tree, it will cry. Among the Russians, the grass Lythrum salicaria received the name “plakun”, as it always cries, with which to compare the moaning grass “tynda” of the oirots: this last grass groans when the root is cut off from it [Verbitsky 1893, p. 88]. The heroes of the Russian fairy tale "The Hen and the Cockerel", when they need to take a little bast (bark) from a growing linden, are first sent to a cow for oil - to anoint a linden "sore spot" [Zelenin 1915, vol. 2, p. 892]. The Tunguses on the Yenisei also thought that the tree was in pain when it was cut down, and that the tree was crying from pain [Rychkov 1922, p. 80]."Madam linden", "madam birch", etc… Poles' belief says: if you chop a fir tree, it will cry. Among the Russians, the grass Lythrum salicaria received the name “plakun”, as it always cries, with which to compare the moaning grass “tynda” of the oirots: this last grass groans when the root is cut off from it [Verbitsky 1893, p. 88]. The heroes of the Russian fairy tale "The Hen and the Cockerel", when they need to take a little bast (bark) from a growing linden, are first sent to a cow for oil - to anoint a linden "sore spot" [Zelenin 1915, vol. 2, p. 892]. The Tunguses on the Yenisei also thought that the tree was in pain when it was cut down, and that the tree was crying from pain [Rychkov 1922, p. 80]."Madam linden", "madam birch", etc… Poles' belief says: if you chop a fir tree, it will cry. Among the Russians, the grass Lythrum salicaria received the name “plakun”, as it always cries, with which to compare the moaning grass “tynda” of the oirots: this last grass groans when the root is cut off from it [Verbitsky 1893, p. 88]. The heroes of the Russian fairy tale "The Hen and the Cockerel", when they need to take a little bast (bark) from a growing linden, are first sent to a cow for oil - to anoint a linden "sore spot" [Zelenin 1915, vol. 2, p. 892]. The Tunguses on the Yenisei also thought that the tree was in pain when it was cut down, and that the tree was crying from pain [Rychkov 1922, p. 80].with what to compare the groaning grass "tynda" of the oirots: this last grass groans when the root is cut off from it [Verbitsky 1893, p. 88]. The heroes of the Russian fairy tale "The Hen and the Cockerel", when they need to take a little bast (bark) from a growing linden, are first sent to a cow for oil - to anoint a linden "sore spot" [Zelenin 1915, vol. 2, p. 892]. The Tunguses on the Yenisei also thought that the tree was in pain when it was cut down, and that the tree was crying from pain [Rychkov 1922, p. 80].with what to compare the groaning grass "tynda" of the oirots: this last grass groans when the root is cut off from it [Verbitsky 1893, p. 88]. The heroes of the Russian fairy tale "The Hen and the Cockerel", when they need to take a little bast (bark) from a growing linden, are first sent to a cow for oil - to anoint a linden "sore spot" [Zelenin 1915, vol. 2, p. 892]. The Tunguses on the Yenisei also thought that the tree was in pain when it was cut down, and that the tree was crying from pain [Rychkov 1922, p. 80].and that the tree is crying from pain [Rychkov 1922, p. 80].and that the tree is crying from pain [Rychkov 1922, p. 80].
In the era of animism, such a view of trees as living beings was strengthened and strengthened, but it could have arisen earlier than animism; primitive people could hardly and knew how to sharply distinguish in this sense growing trees from moving animals; both were considered equally alive. The animistic worldview is characterized by the belief that trees and other plants are capable of moving from place to place, talking to each other and with people, turning into a person and back. With the expansion of these animistic beliefs, they were confined to a few specific days of the year, for example, to the holiday of Kupala. At the end of the XIX century. Many ethnographers noted among the East Slavic peasants the belief that on Kupala night trees move from one place to another and talk to each other. Armenian fairy tales tell of the times when trees could walk,talk, eat and drink. In the legends of various peoples, people turn into different trees - poplar, apple, mountain ash, maple, birch, aspen, etc.: when such a tree is cut down, blood oozes from it, a groan and a voice are heard [Chubinsky 1876, vol. 5, from. 704; N. Ya. 1889, p. 52].
Prohibitions-taboos to cut down large trees developed among people as they realized the enormous and most important economic value that trees had in the life of a primitive society. Initially, people mainly used windbreak tree trunks, especially since it is extremely difficult to cut down a large tree with the simplest stone tools. The point of wooden sticks-spears with the aim of sharpening them at the end, apparently, was the reason for the discovery of the most ancient method of making fire by friction, the so-called "fire plow", which was known as an experience in Europe to Swedes and Russians. And this discovery could happen only in cases when people sharpened a dry tree on a dry one, and not on a fresh one. Realizing the economic importance of trees, it was fixed as a ban, as a legal norm,the former forced de facto inviolability of large growing trees, when people could not and did not know how to cut them.
As the productive forces developed, the economic needs of people for fresh large tree trunks grew. The contradictions between these needs and between the prohibitions on trees have become, apparently, the main impetus and incentive that led to the further development of the cult of trees. The consolidation and formalization of bans on felling large trees is reasonably associated with the oldest phase of totemism, which consisted in the conclusion of an ideological "union" between a tribal group of people and a species of plants or animals. This phase of totemism has not survived to us in its original form. We see its vestiges in rituals in which the ritual resolution of the indicated prohibitions-taboos is the dominant moment. Characteristic of totemism, this ritual permission of prohibitions on totems is associated in European rites with a new,annually in the spring by the repeated conclusion of a totemic union of people with a certain type of tree (see Ch. 2). The Russians stopped breaking the birch taboos in the Nikolsk region in the spring, on Trinity [Potanin 1899, p. 192], when the rituals of permitting bans on felling trees took place.
2. Substitutes for human "sacrifice" in the construction of buildings
We have quoted above from the ancient Christian nomokanon, which recommended that Christians put not a human body in the foundation of houses, but a boar, or a bull, or a goat. Thus, animal sacrifice in the construction of buildings was clearly considered then a substitute for human sacrifice. Almost all ethnographers, including Ed, hold this point of view quite agreeably. Taylor, R. André, F. Liebrecht and others. R. André wrote in 1878: “Morals soften over time, but the conviction of the need for a victim during construction - to protect the building - remains, and then acts as a substitute for the walled up person animal". "Animal construction sacrifices are no doubt replacing previous human sacrifices." "To avoid death in a newly built house, they kill an animal and bury it in the foundation." “Next to human casualties, apparentlyas their substitutes, construction victims, consisting of chickens, dogs, cats, as well as horse skulls and various bones, have been encountered since ancient times. " Yul. Lippert expressed himself more cautiously in 1882: “In some cases (construction sacrifice) animals serve only as symbolic substitutes for man; in other, more numerous cases, they could have appeared initially. " And in fact only one Fr. Krauss disputes the generally accepted and correct view that walled up animals were substitutes for previous human victims. Fr. Krauss thought that animals are a more common victim, and humans are rare, only for very large structures - fortresses and bridges.“In some cases (construction sacrifice) animals serve only as symbolic substitutes for man; in other, more numerous cases, they could have appeared initially. " And in fact only one Fr. Krauss disputes the generally accepted and correct view that walled up animals were substitutes for previous human victims. Fr. Krauss thought that animals are a more common victim, and humans are rare, only for very large structures - fortresses and bridges.“In some cases (construction sacrifice) animals serve only as symbolic substitutes for man; in other, more numerous cases, they could have appeared initially. " And in fact only one Fr. Krauss disputes the generally accepted and correct view that walled up animals were substitutes for previous human victims. Fr. Krauss thought that animals are a more common victim, and humans are rare, only for very large structures - fortresses and bridges.and man is rare, only with very large structures - fortresses and bridges.and man is rare, only with very large structures - fortresses and bridges.
Among the Dayaks of Borneo, the sacrifice at the foundation of a large house was recorded in two different forms: in one case, a live slave girl was first lowered into a deep hole, and then a huge bar was thrown there, which fell into the hole and crushed the girl to death; it was a "sacrifice to the spirits." In another case, a live chicken was thrown into the pit, which was crushed in the same way by a high pole [Taylor 1896, p. 96]. And here you can see additional evidence that the animals in the construction sacrifice were indeed substitutes for people.
In the Leipzig Museum of Ethnology, a mummified cat was kept, which in 1874 was found in Aachen walled up in the tower of the city gate above the portal; This tower was built in 1637 … In 1877, in Berlin, they found, in the foundations of a building built in the 16th century. musical house, walled up skeleton of a hare and a hen's egg, which were transferred to the regional museum. With this last case, Rich. Andre correctly notes that the egg, as a living creature, served as a substitute for a living animal.
The Danes and Swedes had a long tradition of burying or bricking up a live animal under each church under construction. The Danes walled up a living lamb under the altar of the temple so that the temple would stand indestructible. In Sweden, on the island of Gotland and elsewhere, for the same purpose, they buried alive in the foundation of a church either a lamb (most often, probably under the influence of a symbolic Christian lamb), or a foal, bull, or pig. They believed that the spirit of this animal lives here; this spirit bore the names: "church ram", "church pig" or "church ghost" - Kyrkogrimmen 3). About the shadow-ghost of such a church horse, the Danes said that every night it went on three legs to the house where someone should die.
In addition to the named animals, sheep, goats, dogs and cats, cattle, hares, roosters, hens and other birds, frogs and snakes appeared as construction sacrifices.
In new Greece, a black rooster is killed on the cornerstone of a new building. When laying the house, the Poles killed the rooster and buried it at the corner of the house; in some places this rooster was necessarily black. Elsewhere, the Poles, before moving into a new house, killed a chicken and carried it around all the rooms of the house; if this is not done, then someone in the new home will soon die. In the Red Stav, in the destroyed wall of a not particularly old house, they found a skeleton of a chicken embedded in it above the doors. In the Kholmshchyna, the Poles killed a dog, a cat and a chicken when laying a house so that they would not kill a person during the construction; if the person was already killed during the construction, then the sacrifice was considered unnecessary.
E. Karanov wrote in 1884 that the Bulgarians had a custom to brick up a lamb or a rooster in a building under construction. In Bosnia, an animal was killed on the doorstep of a house and the house was smeared with its blood; up to this point did not enter the new house. Serbs in Slavonia sometimes buried a live rooster or a bat under the foundation of a house. A local peasant said on this occasion: "they do this so that the building does not collapse." When the monastery church in Serbia was destroyed in 1876, they found at the entrance, under the church threshold, in a special niche, a skeleton of a rooster and a whole egg that had lain here for at least 600 years: this church was built in the 12th century. the first Serbian king from the house of Nemanjic.
In the old days, the Karelians, when building a dwelling house, buried a live dog in the foundation [Linevsky. Manuscript].
The Sudeten Germans preserve the sagas of bricking up living peasants during the construction of castles to ensure the strength of the building; they are now burying an egg under the threshold of the door, and before that they buried small animals. Emil Lehmann compares with these construction sacrifices the sacrificial burying of an egg and money with a letter in the first furrow of the plow, but here only the form of the rite is general, the function is different, which is why the comparison should follow a different line.
The Germans in: as a construction sacrifice, they buried a horse's head in places under the floor. In the ruins of the mountains. Shenkon found a walled up horse skull. Seklers in Semigradiya are buried in the foundations of the skulls of horses and dogs, or the bones of a black rooster or chicken. Western Ukrainians buried a horse or cattle skull under the foundation or under the stove of a new house, "so that misfortunes and diseases would fall on this skull, and not on the inhabitants of the house." In other cases, this. at the same time apotropic significance is attributed to the skulls.
In Siam, among other things, stones served as a construction sacrifice, and historically these stones replaced living people, which we discussed above.
In Western Europe - in Silesia, Braunschweig, Czechoslovakia - the custom was widespread to bury vessels with different food in the foundations of houses. Archaeological finds indicate that these were pots, basins, bowls, dishes - of various shapes, with or without handles, sometimes glazed and with simple decorations, without any traces of their preliminary economic use. To install such vessels, sometimes even a deep shaft was made in the foundation of the house. In these vessels are found the bones of various domestic animals, among other things the left lower jaw and skulls, eggs and eggshells, etc. In the XIII century. Christian pastors have already fought against this custom, and in the surviving manuscript of the monk Rudolph (1235-1250) from the Rauden Monastery it is said that food was put into these vessels for Stetewaldiu, i.e. for the spirits of the owners of the place,the vessels were placed in different corners and behind the hearth during the construction of new houses and during the renovation of old houses. This custom is often combined with construction sacrifice. It would seem that here you can think of the usual symbolism: a pot-man. But recent research, especially by Wilhelm Esse in 1930, precludes this possibility. In any case, these pots have long received a completely different function. Esse connects them with the rituals of feeding the spirits of dead ancestors, which so often merge with house spirits. Such pots of food are found not only in foundations, but also in the yard, in the garden - in pits; in addition, several copies of such pots were found on one estate. In these signs, Esse rightly sees proof that this is not a construction sacrifice, which is not repeated, but is brought only once at the moment of the foundation of the building.
The large material collected from V. Esse on such finds gives us reason to explain them differently: these are the remains of ritual meals, which usually burrow into clean places - where people do not walk and where dogs and pigs cannot dig them. Among the Russians, for example, this custom of “burying” the remains of a sacred ritual meal was well preserved before in the rituals of the New Year's “Caesarean piglet,” in the ritual of the “three-chicken”, etc.; in all these cases, the magical significance was also attributed to burying the remnants of ritual food - to promote the fertility of certain domestic animals.
In the east of Europe, a chicken was formerly killed among different peoples at the founding of a house. The Saratov Mordovians retained the belief that a yurtava was born from the blood of this chicken, that is, a female house spirit, obviously dating back to the era of matriarchy. For this, releasing blood from a slaughtered black hen into a dimple in the courtyard, they said: "Let a new resident be born a new yurtava", etc., "from this blood a yurtava will be born." It is also important for us to note that the Mordovian yurtava bears names: "the god of the log house" or "the goddess of the cut off" (stump), "the severed stump" [Shakhmatov 1910, p. 94; Zelenin 1910, p. 309-310]. Russian peasants in the Oboyan region used to believe that “every house should be built on someone's head from those living in it, and therefore, in order to prevent misfortune, when moving into it, they cut off the head of a chicken on the threshold of the hut, which afterwards is not eaten … Others,to prevent an imaginary misfortune, when the houses were laid, a chicken head was buried at the main angle”[Mashkin 1862, p. 84]. The Belarusians in the area of Lepel and Borisov once, when laying a new house, cut off the head of a rooster, which they buried right there in the ground or simply laid it under a corner stone; the cock was eaten. Sometimes the same rite was performed when the oven was laid - so that "chickens would breed." AE Bogdanovich saw here “the remnants of the former victims of the housekeeper,” as well as the custom of plugging human hair, combed out or cut, and nails into the corners and crevices of the house.the cock was eaten. Sometimes the same rite was performed when the oven was laid - so that "chickens would breed." AE Bogdanovich saw here “the remnants of the former victims of the housekeeper,” as well as the custom of plugging human hair, combed out or cut, and nails into the corners and crevices of the house.the cock was eaten. Sometimes the same rite was performed when the oven was laid - so that "chickens would breed." AE Bogdanovich saw here “the remnants of the former victims of the housekeeper,” as well as the custom of plugging human hair, combed out or cut, and nails into the corners and crevices of the house.
The Perm Komi once brought a roasted rooster, home brew and beer to a new barn, filled for the first time with sheaves, invited neighbors and, sitting with them in a circle of firewood prepared for drying the barn, everyone ate the rooster, washed down with braga and beer. At the same time, the Komi thought: the rooster does not sleep at night and, after such a meal, will warn the owners of the impending danger - in the sense of a barn fire [Rogov 1858, p. 113-114]. According to I. N. Smirnov, once at the Cherdyn and Solikamsk Komi-Permians, when building a house, they usually promised to bury one carpenter. Subsequently. man is replaced here by a small animal - a pig, a gosling or a rooster [Smirnov 1891, p. 62].
Kazan Tatars before, when laying a water mill, sacrificed a water pig or a puppy, “and some even a child” [Magnitsky 1881, p. 56]. After the house was built, the Gilyaks first strangled the dog and smeared the navel with the idols of the male and female spirits Kok with blood from its heart, the habitat of which was considered to be the two upper pillars of the winter dwelling [Kreinovich 1930, p. 49]. In the past, the Yakuts, during the construction of the yurt, the main pillars serving as the basis of the yurt were coated with kumis and horse blood [Maak 1887, p. 111]. When they put a chuval (stove) in the new Yakut yurt, they said: “You can't let the chuch be put without blood,” and they killed small cattle, some of whose blood they poured into the fire, and then sprinkled the ceiling of the yurt with the same blood and chuvala around [Yastremsky 1897, from. 243].
Udmurts before, after the construction of a new house, were afraid that an evil spirit peri would settle in the house, which would be difficult to expel. Signs of the presence of a peri in the house were considered - a very strong crackling of logs in winter and bad dreams of the inhabitants of the house. In the underground of the new house, they sacrificed a black ram or some kind of poultry, except for a chicken and a rooster, to the “master of the house”; part of the sacrificial meat and soup was buried in the middle of the underground, saying: “Eat and drink, but don't touch us” [Gavrilov 1891, p. 138]. After the construction of the house, the nanais (golds) as soon as possible rushed to arrange a feast for the consecration of the house, that is, they hurried to install the guardian spirits in the new house. Otherwise, evil spirits seem to settle in the house [Sternberg 1933a, p. 476], that is, empty, without spirits, the new house cannot remain.
3. Beliefs about the imminent death of residents of a newly built house
The explanation generally accepted by Western European ethnographers of why the foundation of a building requires the sacrifice of a person or his substitute, we already know: this sacrifice ensures the strength of the building, among other things, the fact that the patron spirit of this building arises from it. Among the people, another explanation is more common, which, as we will see below, must be recognized as more ancient: the sacrifice during the laying of the house saves the tenants and builders of the future house from imminent death. So, for example, in the new Greece, a belief is noted: whoever passes by first after the builders of the building have laid the first stone will die in the coming year. To avoid this sad prospect, masons kill a lamb or black rooster on a foundation stone [Taylor 1896, p. 95].
In those cases when the immolation of a living person in the walls of a city fortress ensures the inaccessibility of these walls, we have a very close belief: the inaccessibility of the fortress leads precisely to the fact that its inhabitants are saved from death when fighting enemies.
The Germans in Oldenburg have noted a belief: from a newly built house - at the latest in the second year of construction, a dead person is taken out. Nearby are a number of limitations of this tragically hopeless rule, which usually occurs on the basis of the decomposition of ancient prejudices. Whoever builds a house in old age will soon die. On the Rhine, they said that after 50 years you should not start building a house - otherwise, according to the proverb: "when the cage is ready, the bird will fly away." The French also said the same: "when they make a cage, the bird will fly away", or: "if an old man is under construction, he will soon die."
The Germans also know such beliefs: if, when laying a house, someone goes around it, then many people will die in the new house. Whoever is the first to pass by the newly laid mortgage log (wooden foundation) will die within the next year. Whoever enters a new house first will die earlier than everyone else in this family, which is why a cat or dog, a rooster or a chicken, or some other animal is first allowed into a new house for housewarming and carried around all rooms. P. Sartori writes about the same: “A new building requires sacrifice, and it is considered very dangerous if the first living creature that stays or sleeps for a long time in a new house is a man. Therefore, first of all, a rooster or a hen, a dog or a cat is allowed into the new house - so that the forthcoming evil falls on them, and not on people."
And in Scotland, it was previously widely believed that the construction of a new house would lead to the quick death of the owner. In some villages, a quick death was predicted only in those cases when the house was erected in a new place.
The Russians also had a former belief that every new building is being built "on someone's head", that is, someone in it must soon die and thereby "renew" the house. In connection with this belief, the Russians before, when they first entered a new house on the threshold of the hut, cut off the head of a chicken and did not eat the meat of this chicken. In b. In the Vladimir and other northern provinces, a rooster or a cat, especially a black one, was first allowed to spend the night in a new hut, and only then the owners themselves moved into residence. Some old people, however, deliberately entered the new hut first, wanting to show that they were ready to die. The Ukrainians in the Poltava region were previously afraid to be present at the laying of a new building, as they believed that a carpenter could lay a building “on the head” of a person present, and that the latter would soon die. The restrictive belief among Russians in Altai said: if a log "with a stepson," that is, with a knot that begins deep in the trunk of the tree and is separated from the trunk by a crack, fell into the walls of a house, then "the owner of the house will soon die" [Potanin 1864, p. … 138]. This belief has retained the ancient trait that the nearest cause of death for the residents of the house is the tree, which serves as a material for construction. In general, the Russians used to live with anxiety, as PS Efimenko wrote in 1877 about the inhabitants of b. Arkhangelsk province, for a housewarming party, "until someone dies or an animal falls" [Efimenko 1877, p. 192]. In b. In the Vladimir province, they said the same thing, that the newly rebuilt house was "washed by a wedding or a dead man," and the latter was considered more normal than the first. Everyone who is the first to enter a new home will “die before a year” [Zavoiko 1914, p. 178]."If, when moving to a newly built house, the guests themselves do not remove rubbish, wood chips, etc. from the house, one of the tenants in the family must certainly die" [Mezhov 1864, p. 59, No. 209] 12. Here again the restriction of the old belief, obviously on the basis of its decay.
Polish belief says that whoever falls asleep first on the first night spent in a new home will die. This belief, in contrast to Bystron, we refer to here: people's thoughts go for a long time in the same direction - in the same direction in which they began to go in primitive times.
In connection with the belief that in a newly built house, one of the tenants must die, the custom arose not to bring the building, in detail, to the complete end. Therefore, for example, in Galicia, in the Brest district, the peasants are in no hurry to finish a new house, where they will find death for themselves; the same is in the vicinity of Kielec. In Poland, the builders of churches were terribly afraid to complete the construction of the church and left an unfinished place somewhere. There was a belief: whoever completes the construction of a church will not live even one year. The same unfinished temples on this basis were observed by Fr. Krauss and in Serbia. The Belarusians of the Volko-Vyssky district left at least one wall or an unfinished roof in the new house. Golenbyovsky noted at one time in Russia the custom - for a whole year not to make a roof over the entrance,so that "all sorts of troubles flew into this hole." In the Zvyagelsk district, the Ukrainians forbade whitewashing the ceiling in the new hut for a whole year; in extreme cases, they left an unbleached place above the icons. In Novaya Ushitsa, only on the seventh day after the end of construction, they began to smear clay on the back wall of the house, and then not with white clay, but black or yellow.
And vice versa - "while the house is being built, the owner will not die." This last belief was noted among the Ottoman Turks in Constantinople [Gordlevsky 1915, p. 4].
The Poles also know the beliefs that the first creature that enters a newly rebuilt house must get sick and die. Why do they first throw a cat, dog or chicken into a new house without crossing its threshold? The same belief is known among the Serbs in Slavonia. Fr. Krauss correctly connected this belief with the idea of the need for a special construction sacrifice [Kgaizz 1887, 5. 21].
According to Bulgarian legends, builders often walled up only one shadow of a person, which is why many avoid walking near new buildings. Whose shadow is thus walled up, he must soon die. And if someone dies soon after the laying of a new house, the Bulgarians usually say that his shadow was walled up. A version of this Bulgarian belief reads as follows: on the Danube, while laying the house, malicious masons measured the shadow of a person passing by with a cord and laid the cord in the foundation. Forty days after this, the unfortunate man, whose shadow was measured and walled up, turned into an evil spirit talasam and disturbed the peaceful inhabitants of the village at night, until the crowing of roosters.
Hell. Fischer correctly combines the Polish custom of the so-called zatyos with the custom of immuring people. Carpenters sometimes make a wedge through which they can cause a quick death of every person living in a given house. That is why Polish peasants, at a time when carpenters can do zatyos, take care of carpenters in every possible way and arrange a special treat for them, which is also often called "zatyos". There is a widespread belief among Poles that a new house should be built "on someone's head" - if not a human, then on the head of a dog or a chicken. The Polish carpenter "tweaks" the health or illness of the residents of the future house, after which the fate of the residents depends on this situation. One carpenter, when laying the foundation for a new church, negotiated with the priest about "zatyos", assuring that otherwise, without special treats, his zatyos could harm. After the carpenter was well treated, he gave proof of the strength of his zatyos: he cut the corner of the house on a flying crow, and she immediately fell dead. In Poland, there were supposedly places and houses where parents could not bring up children or even did not have them at all; This was explained by such a "run-down" of evil builders, which can manifest its disastrous consequences for many years in a row or even forever.
Previously, very close beliefs existed among Belarusians and Ukrainians. Grodno Belarusians used to believe that when cutting the first logs of a future house, a builder-carpenter would invoke someone - either from among the family members of the owner of the house, or a separate domestic animal, or a whole breed of domestic animals, for example, horses, cows, etc. Householders asked builders to conjure cockroaches and mice. The sworn creature must certainly die soon. The moment of the spell was associated with the blow of an ax on a tree at the junction of the logs, when the name of the spellcaster was pronounced at the same time. As if small animals were attracted by an invisible force at that moment to the place of felling, fell under the blows of an ax, and the spell over them was thus performed immediately [Shane 1902, p. 333]. “How many crowns (rows of logs), so many (let) there be dead people!"- allegedly malicious Belarusian carpenters said in b. Vitebsk province, striking the first log with a butt, and this spell came true [Nikiforovsky 1897, p. 136, No. 1013]. If the owner does not please the master, does not treat or donate him, the master will lay the house on the owner's head or even on several heads. It is said that once the carpenter put an ox on the owner's head in this way, but he accidentally entered the blockhouse, and the beam, which was supposed to kill the owner, killed the ox. In Slonim uyezd, not only a carpenter, but everyone could pledge for something evil, and the owner suffered from everything.then the master will lay the house on the owner's head or even on several heads. It is said that once the carpenter put an ox on the owner's head in this way, but he accidentally entered the blockhouse, and the beam, which was supposed to kill the owner, killed the ox. In Slonim uyezd, not only a carpenter, but everyone could pledge for something evil, and the owner suffered from everything.then the master will lay the house on the owner's head or even on several heads. It is said that once the carpenter put an ox on the owner's head in this way, but he accidentally entered the blockhouse, and the beam, which was supposed to kill the owner, killed the ox. In Slonim uyezd, not only a carpenter, but everyone could pledge for something evil, and the owner suffered from everything.
Ukrainians once believed that a house could be mortgaged for illness, death, frailty of children, loss of livestock, and reproduction of worms. They were usually laid on someone's head, otherwise the priest would not hallow the buildings. Usually the carpenter was asked not to put on the head of the owner and his family. Conscientious craftsmen laid a dog or a cat on the head, but they had to lay on someone else, otherwise they themselves would die. Raigorodskaya sugar factory was built on a chicken head, as a result of which the factory is going well, and chickens in Raygorodok are dying. At the first blow of an ax, Ukrainian builders of a new building in Western Ukraine conjured certain animals, for example, dogs, cats, etc., so that the upcoming troubles would fall on them, and not on the people living in this house.
For the same purpose, the Ukrainians were the first to let the black rooster into the new house. The Ukrainians of Podolia used to do this: first they left a black rooster and a hen to spend the night in a new hut, and the next night - a black cat and a cat; and only when these animals remained alive did people migrate. It happened as if the animals left in this way disappeared into unknown places - “there is no trace” [Dyminsky 1864, p. 8]. For Russians, we have an old testimony of the same: "(the owner of the house - D. 3.) goes to the new home with a black cat and a black hen (rooster - D. 3.)" [Buslaev 1850, p. 41; Buslaev quotes the collection of the Rumyantsev Museum].
Bystron compares the described custom of “zatyosa” with the agricultural rite of “zaloma”. You can deprive someone of happiness or health by tying heads in his field. Likewise, you can take someone's life by making a zip on the beam of the future home. And zatyos and hall - these are the means of primitive magic to harm the enemy. However, according to Bystron, the attitude of the zatyos to the laying of houses is not clear. It is possible that initially they are not at all connected with each other. Bystron's hypothesis, on which he does not particularly insist, but considers it plausible, is as follows: a primitive building for some reason requires the life of a builder, and the builder was at first the owner of the house himself. Later, when the carpenter builds a house not for himself, but for someone else, a stranger connects his life with the new house, who can put another person in his place. To this we must add, notes Bystron,that village carpenters, like millers, beekeepers, etc., have secrets that make them dangerous in the eyes of the uninitiated. Zatyos belongs to such traditional ways - to demand money and treats from the owners. This last explanation is completely new.
According to the previous beliefs of the Komi-Zyryan, as V. V. Kandinsky reports, “any resettlement from an old house to a new one is never in vain: it requires sacrifice. The Zyryans rejoice if the brownie in this case "falls on" the cattle, because often during the resettlement people die too.) and remain uninhabited”[Kandinsky 1889, p. 109]: the builders were afraid to move to them so as not to die.
The idea of human death was so strongly associated with the construction of a new building that it was reflected in the interpretation of dreams. The Buryats and the Ufa Tatars have an almost identical interpretation of dreams: building a new building in a dream portends death; to see a new house built in a dream - to the death of one of the family members [Khangalov 1903, p. 238; Matveev 1899, p. 270]. Below we will see that the same dream interpretation is associated with the felling of a tree. Compare the Udmurt omen: if during the wedding the groom or the bride has a log house ready for construction, then the young woman will soon die upon getting married. Likewise, the Udmurts, in the first year after the wedding, had forbidden to make any restructuring in the husband's house, to fold stoves, to bury the pillars - on pain of death of the same unfortunate young man [Gavrilov 1891, p. 149].
D. K. Zelenin