HARBINGERS OF A WEDDING IN THE ENGLISH, RUSSIAN AND MARI SUPERSTITIONS

Abstract

The paper analyzes the English, Russian and Mari Superstitions connected with the foretelling about wedding. A wedding is a social affair touching the interests of different groups. It changes the compositions of the families. Parents of a newly married couple get new status. The social status of a newly married couple raises and changes a lot both inside and outside the family. The newly married get a number of new duties and responsibilities. Superstitions are prognostic paroemiae in the form of sentences. They cover all spheres of human life, including wedding. The wedding process could be divided into several periods of time: the period before engagement, the preparation for wedding, the day of wedding, and the after-wedding period. The paper considers the first time period before engagement. All superstitions of the English, Russian and Mari languages were divided into three big groups containing semantic fields. The group ‘Signs for Lovers’ includes two semantic fields: ‘Good Signs’ and ‘Bad Signs’. These signs foretell the lovebirds their future together. The group ‘Foretelling about the Wedding’ consists of two semantic fields as well: ‘There Will Be Wedding’ and ‘There Will Be No Wedding’. The superstitions of these fields predict the possibility or impossibility of a wedding on the basis of different factors. The group ‘Instructions to Attract Wedding’ gives instructions to unmarried girls and to the brides who can help their friends to get married. All semantic fields contain several lexical semantic groups. Superstitions containing the Harbingers of a Wedding may play different functions. Among the superstitions under analysis there are prognostic, preventive and advising superstitions.