Kupala Night
Kupala Night is one of the major folk holidays in some of the Slavic countries that coincides with the Christian feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist and the East Slavic feast of Saint John's Eve. In folk tradition, it was revered as the day of the summer solstice and was originally celebrated on the shortest night of the year, which is on 21-22 or 23-24 of June in Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and modern Ukraine. Following the Julian calendar, it is celebrated on the night between 6 and 7 July in Belarus, Russia, and parts of Ukraine. The name of the holiday is ultimately derived from the Proto-Slavic word *kǫpati, meaning "to bathe".
A number of activities and rituals are associated with Kupala Night, such as gathering herbs and flowers and decorating people, animals, and houses with them; entering water, bathing, or dousing with water and sending garlands on water; lighting fires, dancing, singing, and jumping over fire; and hunting witches and scaring them away. It was also believed that on this day the sun plays and other wonders of nature happen. The celebrations are held near the water, on the hills, surrounding that; chiefly, young men and women participate in these folkloric traditions. The rituals and symbolism of the holiday may point to its pre-Christian origins.
File:Ivankupala.jpg|thumb|Night on the eve of Ivan Kupala by Polish painter Henryk Siemiradzki, 1880s, Lviv National Art Gallery
Names
- Old East Slavic:,
- * Russian:,,,,
- ** dialectal: ; : "bonfire in the field";
- * Ukrainian:,,,,,,
- ** Polesia:,
- * Belarusian:,
- ** dialectal:
- Podlachia and Lublin: kupała, kąpała, kąpałeczka
- Podlachia, Lublin, Sieradz, Kalisz: kupalonecka, kopernacka, kopernocka, kupalnocka
In Old Czech, there is attested kupadlo "a multicolored thread with which gifts were tied, given on the occasion of Saint John's Eve; a gift given to boys by girls on the occasion of Saint John's Eve". In Slovakia, the folk kupadla "Saint John's Eve".
History and etymology
According to many researchers, Kupala Night is a Christianized Proto-Slavic or East Slavic celebration of the summer solstice. According to Nikolay Gal'kovskiy, "Kupala Night combined two elements: pagan and Christian." The viewpoint on the pre-Christian origin of the holiday is criticized by historian Vladimir Petrukhin and ethnographer Aleksandr Strakhov. Whereas, according to Andrzej Kempinski, "The apparent ambivalence seems to testify to the ancient origins of the holiday alleviating the contradictions of a dual society." According to Holobuts’ky and Karadobri, one of the arguments for the antiquity of the holiday is the production of fire by friction.The name appears as early as the Old East Slavic language stage. Izmail Sreznevsky, in his Materials for the Dictionary of the Old East Slavic Language, gives the entries: "Saint John's Eve", "baptist", "St. John's Day". Epigraph No. 78 in The Cathedral of Holy Wisdom in Veliky Novgorod, dated to the late 11th - early 12th century, contains an inscription. According to ethnographer Vera Sokolova, Kupala is a later name that appeared among Eastern Slavs when the holiday coincided with the day of John the Baptist.
According to Max Vasmer, the name Kupala/''Kupalo is a variant of the name Baptist and it calques the ancient Greek equivalent. Greek "baptist" derives from the verb "to immerse; to wash; to bathe; to baptize, consecrate, immerse in baptismal font", which in Old East Slavic was originally rendered by the word "to bathe", later displaced by "to baptise". The Proto-Slavic form of the verb is reconstructed as *kǫpati "to dip in water, to bathe".
According to Mel’nychuk, the word Kupalo itself may come from Proto-Slavic *kǫpadlo, which is composed of the discussed verb *kǫpati and the suffix *-dlo''. The name of the holiday is related to the fact that the first ceremonial bath was taken during Kupala Night, and the connection to John the Baptist is secondary.
Deity ''Kupala''
From the 17th century, sources suggest that the holiday is dedicated to the deity Kupala, whom the Slavs supposedly worshipped. However, modern researchers deny the existence of such a deity.Rituals and beliefs
On this day, June 24, it was customary to pray to John the Baptist for headaches and for children.Kupala Night is filled with rituals related to water, fire and herbs. Most Kupala rituals take place at night. Bathing before sunset was considered mandatory: in the north, Russians were more likely to bathe in banyas, and in the south in rivers and lakes. Closer to sunset, on high ground or near rivers, bonfires were lit. Sometimes, fires were lit in the traditional way – by friction wood against wood. In some places in Belarus and Volyn Polissia, this archaic way of lighting a fire for the holiday survived until early 20th century.
According to Vera Sokolova, among the Eastern Slavs, the holiday has been preserved in its most "archaic" form by the Belarusians. In the center of the Kupala bonfire, Belarusians would place a pole on top of which a wheel was attached. Sometimes a horse's skull, called, was placed on top of the wheel and thrown into the fire, where it would burn, after which the youth would play, sing and dance around the fire. In Belarus, old, unwanted items were collected from backyards throughout the village and taken to a place chosen for the celebration, where they were then burned. Ukrainians also preserved the main archaic elements, but changed their symbolic meanings in the 19th century. Russians either forgot the main elements of the Kupala ceremony or transferred them to other holidays.
The celebration of Kupala Night is mentioned in the Hustyn Chronicle :
This Kupala... is commemorated on the eve of the Nativity of John the Baptist... in the following manner: In the evening, ordinary children of both sexes gather and make wreaths of poisonous herbs or roots, and those covered with their clothes set fire, and then they put a green branch, and holding their hands they dance around the fire, singing their songs... Then they leap over the fire...
On Kupala Night, "bride and groom" were chosen and wedding ceremonies were conducted: they jumped over the fire holding hands, exchanged wreaths, looked for the fern flower and bathed in the morning dew. On this day, "village roads were plowed so that 'matchmakers would come sooner', or a furrow was plowed to a boy's house so that he would get engaged faster."
In some parts of Ukrainian and Belarusian tradition, it was only after Kupala that vesnianky were no longer sung. Eastern and Western Slavs were forbidden to eat cherries before that day. Eastern Slavs believed that women should not eat berries before St. John's Day, or their young children would die.
The custom of public condemnation and ridicule on Kupala Night is well known. Criticism and condemnation are usually directed at residents of one's own or a neighboring village who have violated social and moral norms over the past year. This social condemnation can be heard in Ukrainian and Belarusian songs, which contain themes of quarrels between girls and boys or residents of neighboring villages. Condemnation and ridicule are expressed in public and serve as a regulator of social relations.
According to Hutsuls beliefs, after Kupala come the "", when thunders and lightnings are common. These are days when thunderous spirits walk around, sending lightning bolts to the earth. "And then between the dark sky and the tops of the mountains, fire trees grow, connecting heaven and earth. And so it will be until the Elijah's day, the old Thunderous feast" after which, they say, "thunder will stop pounding."
Alexander Veselovsky, points out the similarity between the Slavic customs of Kupala Night and the Greek customs of Elijah's day,.
Ritual dishes
The consecration of the first fruits ripening at this time may have coincided with the Kupala Night holiday.In some Russian villages, "votive porridge" was brewed: on St. Juliana's day, girls would gather to talk and, while singing, pound barley in a mortar. On the morning of St. Agrippina's day, barley was used to cook votive porridge. During the day, this porridge was given to the poor, and in the evening, sprinkled with butter, it was eaten by everyone.
Among Belarusians, delicacies brought from home were eaten both in separate groups and at potluck and consisted of vareniki, cheese, tvarog, flour porridge, sweet dough with ground hemp seeds, onion, garlic, bread acid, and eggs in lard. In Belarus in the 19th century, vodka was drunk during the holiday, and wine was drunk in Podlachia and the Carpathians. Songs have preserved mention of the ancient drinks of the night:
Will accept you, Kupal’nochka, as a guest,
With treating you with green vine,
With watering you with wheat beer,
With feeding you with quark.
Water
The obligatory custom on this day was mass bathing. It was believed that on this day all evil spirits would leave the rivers, so it was safe to swim until Elijah's day. In addition, the water of Kupala Night was endowed with revitalizing and magical properties.In places where people were not allowed to bathe in rivers, they bathed in "sacred springs". In the Russian North, on the day before of Kupala Night, on St. Agrippina's Day, baths were heated in which people were washed and steamed, while steaming the herbs collected on that day. Water drawn from springs on St. John's Day was said to have miraculous and magical powers.
On this holiday, according to a common sign, water can "make friends" with fire. The symbol of this union was a bonfire lit along the banks of rivers. Wreaths were often used for divination on Kupala Night: if they floated on the water, it meant good luck and long life or marriage.
A 16th-century Russian scribe attempted to explain the name and the healing power of St. John's Day by referring to the Old Testament legend of Tobias. As he writes, it was on this day that Tobias bathed in the Tigris, where, on the advice of the archangel Raphael, he discovered a fish whose entrails cured his father of blindness.