Мать за тремя замками
A mother behind three locks

Summary/Abstract: One of the most poetic sections of Latvian and Eastern Slavonic songs is the cycle of songs containing orphan’s complaints to her descendent mother (rarely to father) for her hard life with a stepmother. In these songs – complaints of orthodox (Eastern Slavonic) and catholic (mostly Latvian) orphans from Latgale even the specific subject, which is connected with the wedding ceremony of blessing before leaving to the church. Just and only in Latgale (solitary Latvian variants recorded in Vidzeme, Kurzeme, Zemgale have been brought here by Latvians migrating from Latgale) an orphan’s song connected exactly with this rite of blessing the orphan is very popular. Such Latvian songs are notable by their distinct logic composition, amazing monotony of variants, different only in some insignificant details. Such monotony of Latvian songs appears also in songs’ beginnings and descendent mother’s replies containing the clarification of reasons due to which it is necessary to fulfill the orphan’s request. These replies usually come to “three locks” that have locked the descendent mother or father. These keys are – grass (the turf or in some cases green or white birches), yellow sand and a coffin board. In many songs the functions of each lock are listed as well as the attempts to remove those by orphan’s appeal to the wind, storm, rain, thunder and even to a “white bull-calf”, which calls upon to eat green grass, to disperse (spread) yellow sands, to break the coffin board. Such “locks” (just “locks”, not “barriers”) of Eastern Slavonic are popular only among Byelorussians of Latgale and adjoining regions of former Vitebsk province. The more to the South and the East of Byelorussia, the more and more seldom such “locks” may be met in songs. Although in Russian songs, the image of locks exists only in variants that were recorded in Latgale and in Lithuania. Such variants may be considered as borrowed from Byelorussian. In Russian songs the image of orthodox churches prevails as well as the appeals of clergymen to a church bell by striking which an orphan or her brother try to awake the descendent parents. At the same time the direct talk of an orphan with the God does not exist in Russian songs, but may be met mostly in Byelorussian and Latvian songs, in which not only the God, but also angels participate in orphan’s blessing. Along with songs containing the motive of three locks-barriers, both in Byelorussian and Latvian-Latgalian variants there exist such plots in which only the motive of the meeting of an orphan and the God, her appeal to the God and to nature’s forces with the appeal to dry the grass, to break a coffin board, to let her mother leave the heavens and the next world are still kept. In conclusion it should be mentioned that in the songs of all three nations there are also many other motives which open the relations between an orphan, her descendent parents and strange people, mostly an evil stepmother...

• Details
• Contents