SOCIAL LIFE IN RUSSIA.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2710, 23 November 1889, Page 6 (Supplement)

SOCIAL LIFE IN RUSSIA.

Tiii; Russian* gpiiprallv marry quite young in the upper cla.-ses, uud "amongst country people even at an earlier age ; mid to the honour of this society, be it said, love marriages are the rule, and marriages for money are very rare excepfiou". Dowry-hunting and marriages of interest have not yet made their appearauce in Russian manners. Girls of high social position readily marry young officers of the Guard, who furnish the largest contingent of dancers to the balls of St. Petersburg. During the carnival fetes the two armies, the army in petticoats and the army that wears epaulettes, learn to know each other thoroughly. Friendships spring up, the young man pays court, and one day. without having consulted anybody, two fiances come to ask of the parents a blessing, which is never refused. The Church does not marry during Lent, so they have to wait tili Easter week. Fashion demands for the celebration of the ceremony the chapel of some private house, if the couple have not sufficienty lofty relations to secure the chapel of the palace. A family that respects itself ought to have at its wedding as honorary father and honorary mother, if not the Emperor and the Empress, at least a Grand-Duke and a Grand-Duchess. The honorary father gives the holy image, which some little child related to the families carries in front of the fiances. They enter the church, followed by all their friends in gala uniform. The ceremony begins; it is very long and complicated with many symbolic rites ; a small table—a sort of movable altar—is placed in the middle of the oratory : the couple are separated from it by a band of rose-coloured satin; when the priest calls they must advance, and the first who sets foot on the band, whether husband or wife will be the one who will impose his or her will in the household. This is an article of faith for all the matrons, who watch them at that moment. On the table is placed the liturgical formulary, the candles which they must hold, the cross which they will kiss, the rings which they will exchange, the cud of wine in which they will moisten their lips, aud which is called in the Slavonic ritual 'the cup of bitterness.' Pages relieve each other to carry with outstretched arms two heavy crowns, which must be held above the heads of the financee while the ceremony continues. At the decisive moment, when the priest is pronouncing the words that bind them together, the couple walk three times around the altar, followed by the crownbearers ; until the third time is completed there is time to turn back ; after that the die is cast, the couple are united for life. Thereupon the singers strike up in their most strident voices the joyous hymn, "Lei Isaiah Rejoice." The bride and groom then go and prostrate themselves before the Virgin of the Iconostase, and kiss her filigree robe, after which they pass into tho neighbouring salon, where they gaily clink glasses of champagne, whilo the invited guests receive boxes of sweetmeats marked with the monogram of the young couple. In the villages the marriage ceremony is celebrated in a simpler and more expeditious manner, especially when the mujiks have only a few roubles to give to tho priest. A simple gesture, a few words, and a few minutes suffice to bow beneath the yoke her who is about to begiu her hard apprenticeship of wife and mother in the humble peasant's home. In the evening the young people assemble in a barn or some shed, the fiddler scrapes his bow over an instrument which he has made with his own hands, girls and buys join hands and dance around. In the middle of the circle a young man dances a kazatchok, or Cossack dance ; be bows his legs, rises with a bound, strikes the ground loudly -with his boot heel, and then suddenly springs forward to the girl of his choice and kisses her, whereupon she steps into the circle, and mimics with her whole body a dance similar to that of the almehs of the East. And now from the nuptial dance let us pass to death. Amongst this fatalist people death does not awaken lugubrious ideas. The departed soul has a right during a few days still to ths society of his friends. At Petersburg it is usual to have printed in the newsoapers in a special column the decease of one's relatives, and the hour of the panichidas—the funeral prayers which are recited twice from this world with all the honours due to his tchine. Let us return to the village now as wo did after th? wedding. This time again it is simple. Marsh fever has carried off the peasant; the body is placed on the table from which the dinner has just been removed ; it is washed and dressed ; the carpenter nails together four planks, not very good ones ; the pope is sent for, and arrives with his old silver cross, and bargains for the price; if the family has means, hired weepers howl all along the road to the church ; the cortege comes out again after a summary benediction. The last funeral that we saw was one September evening, at the hour when the flocks

of the commune were returning from the pasturage. The oxen and horses caused a cloud c.f duet to rise every day over the body of the deceased during the time itremained exposed in the salon, with the face uncovered, between candles and flowers. On the day of the funeral the cortege proceeds towards the Laure of St Alexander Nevsky or tbo Convent of the Virgins. Families of position have their burial places in one of the two cloisters. At a funeral, as at a marriage, a member of the Imperial family is de rigeur. Each one tries to catch his eye while the soncrs of splendid sadness rise around the catafalque, smothered in a mass of green shrubs. No emblems of mourning sadden the wails of the church. After the absolution the parents come and kiss for the last time the hand of the deceased; the followers disperse, impregnated with the special odour of death in Russia—an odour composed of incense and burning wax —and compliment each other on the fact of a man of so distinguished a rank having departed over the high road all gilded with the oblique rays of the setting sun. The corpse departed among those familiar animals as if it were returning to the fields ; the cloud of dust formed a radiant nimbus around it; the air was calm, the j peaeefulness of the evening indescribable;

the verses of the psalmist carried to a great distance in the limpid atmosphere; it seemed as if they must have been audible to the very extremities of the steppe. The group of peasants ascended the hill, and left their burden in one of those cemeteries so badly kept by Little Russia, without fences, without flowers, and indicated only by a few broken crosses which lie on the leprous grass. The ceremonv was finished so quickly that it was still daylight when the followers met in the isba for the funeral re-

past around the barley cako and the raisins,—Harper's Magazine.