Paganism of Lithuanians and Prussians: ritual laughter
Analysis of instances of ritual humor in written sources from the 16th to 17th century and echoes of the joke in calendars, family traditions and folklore in the 19th and 20th centuries. Jokes and fun in the religion and mythology of the ancient Balts.
| Рубрика | Религия и мифология |
| Вид | статья |
| Язык | английский |
| Дата добавления | 09.06.2022 |
| Размер файла | 61,5 K |
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Zenonas SlaviOnas has already pointed to this unique custom of entertaining the bride or making her laugh [36, p. 584]. The bride's laughter is a precondition for the continuation of the rituals and a sign the family will bear offspring.
The custom of making the bride laugh survived in some places into the 20th century. For instance, around Kupiskis whoever made the bride laugh was afforded great respect and the bride even presented a gift to him:
On the first morning the daughter-in-law is seated at the table and she must be sad. The sad daughter-in-law has to be made happy somehow. Everyone would like to make the new bride laugh, but it's not that easy. Everyone does their best with whatever they can come up with. They say something funny; they demonstrate some funny items; they sing silly songs and so on. The great father-in-law even had a special pipe to make her laugh. When the bride broke out in laughter, everyone began applauding with their hands and to shout for joy. Great honor was afforded to the person who made the bride laugh, and sometimes he received gifts from the bride as well [8, p. 269].
And there were many more jokes, games and all sorts of tricks and fun in Lithuanian family and calendrical holidays [2, pp. 41-41, pp. 205-206, p. 225; 12, pp. 20-21; 19, p. 60; 42, pp. 20-21; 44, pp. 371-373), entertaining evenings among young people and furthermore the jokes and pranks of shepherding livestock in the summer [39] there is an abundance of comic folklore, and so on, and so on [35, pp. 437-444]. The point of all these customs, actions, texts and behavior was one and the same: to elicit laughter.
Conclusions
We can state that ritual laughter has neither a beginning nor an end. It is a closed circle, accompanying the individual's life from birth to death and rebirth; from laughter in this life to fun in the next. A Tyrolean proverb illustrates this last idea well: "The gates of heaven open only for those who know how to smile" [11, p. 191].
Information in the written sources from the 16th and 17th centuries (even if it is fragmentary) shows Lithuanians and Prussians knew of ritual laughter which is a component part of rituals for making sacrifices to the ancient gods. The aim of ritual laughter was to succeed in making the gods happy (especially gods protecting agriculture and its different branches).
From the examples presented, although there might not be many of them, we can nonetheless determine that the ritual laughter of the Lithuanians and the Prussians was divided into two categories: a) the happy god (with the request and wish the god would be happy) and b) the ritual laughter and fun of participants in rituals.
After Christianity came to dominate in the late 17th century, ritual humor became an important part of calendrical, family and other customs, recorded in folklore and echoed in everyday speech and phraseology.
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