Prescriptions and Prohibitions in Calendar Narratives of the Hubcha Village (Khmelnytskyi Region)

Abstract

The article deals with normative texts that coordinate, regulate and govern human behavior both in everyday life and in certain sacred time intervals. They reflect the people’s worldview on casual relationships in the surrounding world and in human life. These are beliefs, signs, omens, superstitions, calendar and oneirologic narratives. All these texts contain recommendations and prohibitions on what should and should not be done at different time periods. The subject of the study are the calendar narratives from the Hubcha village (Khmelnytskyi Region) that contain original plots reflecting the system of prescriptions and prohibitions, as well as punishments for their violation. The material for the research are the prose narratives and small folklore forms representing the local tradition of one village and recorded by the authoress in the late 20th – early 21st century. By their content, they are clearly divided into two categories: 1) texts that regulate the tradition, such as a ban on certain types of food and leisure during fasting, or recommendations for performing certain types of work during the calendar year; and 2) texts that describe punishment for violating behavioural norms. The most common prohibitions recalled by the pillars of this village’s tradition include: sweeping out the garbage and whitewashing in the hut, especially the stove, on Christmas holidays; overhearing cattle’s chatter on New Year’s Eve; performing any kind of work on holidays, especially on Mavka’s Easter; and disrespecting any (even a minor) holiday, including Sunday. A violator of these prescriptions and prohibitions will face an inevitable punishment, such as illness, or even death. A number of abnormal natural phenomena (drought, torrential rain, crop failure, pests) are also explained by violations, during annual holidays, of certain prohibitions, such as blocking a fence on Radunytsia (Saint Thomas Week); or a woman was the first to enter the house on a big holiday, etc. All these instructions are often combined with initial and prognostic magic techniques. In some cases, the calendar narrative is contaminated with dream interpretation. These are mostly plots about almsgiving: the deceased in a dream reports receiving alms, he thanks or reproaches for improper alms, or asks for alms through a dream. Sometimes, people see in their dreams the afterlife of their relatives, who were generous or greedy. These texts are rooted in the Christian worldview and are narrated mainly during the Great Lent. Another series of contaminations of the calendar narrative with dream interpretation is attached to the Feast of the Jesus Transfiguration. These are plots common throughout the Slavonic world that dead children are not given apples in the other world if their mothers ate them before the Apple Feast of the Saviour. All the regulations available in the texts may be divided into three groups: a system of prescriptions, a system of prohibitions, and a system of punishments. All these texts had a pedagogical function, transmitting behavioural stereotypes and fixing certain customs that became an everyday norm.