Every stranger who comes to a house where there is a newborn is treated with extraordinary friendliness, for fear of offending him (the example of the Polish Piast). Men are destined for military life, which is why gifts are given to boys - bows, arrows, braids (Ibn-Dast has a sword), and girls - spinning wheels; hence the old expressions: grandson “by the sword” (male line), granddaughter “by the spinning wheel” (female line). Sometimes seeds are placed next to the boy, flax on a string is placed next to the girl - the symbols are clear. All customs are aimed at preserving the life and health of the child: they pour water over him from a burning coal, etc.; When teething, they put a mouse head on the neck (the mouse is gifted with sharp and strong teeth). The belt generally plays an important role in ancient life: Brünnhilde is defeated only with liberation from the “belt,” and, according to the same view, a child after six weeks is girded to give him strength. The naming of the name took place some time after birth. Christianity introduced the list of sacred names; and in the pagan era all names had meaning; names were given based on appearance: Bel, Cheren, Rus; by character: Cheerful, Rude; time of birth: Wounded, Late; by appearance features: Head, Hump, Tongue; by father's occupation: Pan, Zhupan, Ratay, Prince; by representatives of the religious cult: God, Bozhko, Perun, Svyatovit, Karachun; by representatives of the animal kingdom: Wolf (Wuk), Tur, Horse, Dog, etc.; female: Cherry, Viburnum, etc. The rite of "taking off the hair" - tonsure - some writers attribute it to Christianity, but there is reason to attribute it to paganism. This rite was performed between the ages of 3 and 7. According to Mrs. Avdeeva, it has survived to this day in Siberia. The tonsure was accompanied by a feast; the boy was put on a horse, which reflected the recognition of the rights of a man after an indifferent, so to say, in a sexual sense of existence. In ancient times, a 7-year-old boy was already seen as a man: Svyatoslav “be velmi child” and began the battle... P. A. Lavrovsky sees tonsure as the first sacrifice to the deity; but here it’s just the idea of maturity: women wear long hair, it’s proper for a man to have short hair... The “tonsure” was associated with the giving of a name, the transfer of a boy from the female half of the house to the male half and the entry into the science of husbands, which in primitive times was based on songs, fairy tales, proverbs and riddles...
D. member M.F. Vl&dimirsky-Budanov made a remark about the historically known killing of girls among the Pomorians and (according to Rigelman) among the Don Cossacks.
The secretary of the Nestor Society, I.P. Khrushchov, announced the “Society of Lovers of Ancient Writing” being established in St. Petersburg, on the initiative of Prince P.P. Vyazemsky.
At the meeting on March 20, Dr. A.V. Romanovich-Slavatinsky made a report on Wallace Vpzsia’s book, and paid special attention to the author’s views on communal land ownership, on the failed Landlordship and on zemstvo institutions 1), and Dr. M. F. Vladimirsky-Budanov made a report on “Historical and legal materials published in Vitebsk, in 1871’-75, 6 volumes, and drew the public’s attention to the act of 1677, listed in the Polotsk magistrate books and testifying to the existence of ordeals at the end of the 17th century, namely in that the form in which it is known from the word of Serapion (XII century).
Here is this message: “Perhaps the most interesting fact of all contained in the six volumes of “historical and legal materials” is in the report of 1677 Aug. 13 (vol. VI, p. 247 i seq.). The Vozny (general) of the Polotsk voivodeship enters the following in the Polotsk magistrate books: he was on various business in the Disensky district and, at the end of them, arrived in the city of Disna. Here the local magistrate invited him to the Disensky monastery (convention), where the mayors and the city clerk approached the abbot with the following proposal: from clear evidence and human denunciations, suspicion falls (of witchcraft) on Kumtsevicheva, who now lives under the monastery, but has long been subject to the department of the town hall, in the opinion of the magistrate, it is possible, without prejudice to the rights of the monastery, to take her to the water or to the water; torture. The abbot noted to this that the monastery cannot sentence the death penalty or to torture, that cases of this kind are subject to the town hall, that he does not oppose taking the accused, like a Disensky bourgeois, to torture;
') Report by Prof. Romanovich-Slavatinsky is placed in the University News of 1877, Li 4.
THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF THE CHRNICALER NESTOR