« 2019. #3 (147)

The Ethnology Notebooks. 2019, № 3 (147), 591—607

UDK 392.33(477.41/.42)

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/nz2019.03.591

THE MECHANISMS OF СREATING NEW FAMILY TIES (based on the data from Right-Bank Polissia)

KONDRATIUK Olena

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5996-1768

Сandidate of History (Ph. D),

Head of Department of Ethnology

State Scientific Center of Cultural Heritage Protection from Technogenic Catastrophes

21, Vyshgorodskaya st., 04114, Kyiv, Ukraine

Contacts: е-mail: lenvin2007@gmail.com

Abstract. Among Ukrainian rituals of family cycle wedding is significant one. Modern socio-humanitarism gives preference to studying certain circumstances in bordered areas. Therefore, the wedding theme that concerns the mechanisms and principles of creating new family ties in Right-Bank of Polissya is very relevant today. The author’s goal is to analyze the main stages and mechanisms of creation of new kinship ties and to define a role and significance of verbal formulas, item markers and home locuses during this process. The object of the research is a ritual of family cycle, as a component of the folk culture of polischuks. The subject is kinship ties. The methodological basis of this work is objectivity and historicism principles. The methods for comparative and structural-functional analysis were used to process field and archival, ethnographic, folklore and ethno-linguistic material. The source base of the research consists of the author’s field materials and recordings of other scientists of the State Scientific Center of Cultural Heritage Protection from Technogenic Catastrophes in comprehensive historical-ethnographic expeditions on the territory of Polissіa. The basis of the work is the author’s field materials.

The process of creating new kin relations took place stage-by-stage through all wedding ceremony. At first, we fix the presence of two kins presented in several oppositions: own – alien, old — new. The process of establishing new kin relations is presented not only by in-law terms but also by the vocabulary of wedding ceremony, for instance, wood, drunk down, wedded. Exactly they marked brightly the transition of a bridegroom and a bride from the group of unmarried youngsters to the full-righted members of the community. Foremost, fixing of the accepted decision of becoming a kin took place at verbal level, using towards the new relatives, such terms like svat, svakha, diver (brother-in-law), zovytsia (sister-in-law), daugh­ter, son, father, mother. And yet, through implementation of concrete ritual actions in certain locus of the house: a stove, a pokut’ (icon corner) and a threshold.

On each of the stages of a wedding (betrothing, asking in marriage, buying the bride back, connection of candles, distributing round a loaf of bread, meeting of daughter-in-law by mother-in-law, tying up a khustka, equipping a new habitation by a young hostess) there were ritual actions that had for an object to fasten a newly created relation between two families. And the main, after the wedding ceremony was completed, the girl must not only organically come into «alien» locus of her husband, but also find understanding with him and his family.

Keyword: in-laws, wedding, kin relations, kinship terms, Right-bank of Polissia.

Received 11.04.2019

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