Vechornytsi is a well-known Ukrainian tradition that is often associated with fortune-telling. But did everyone tell fortunes at every Vechornytsia? And why did our ancestors gather them in the first place?
Vechornytsi are known all over Ukraine. Their organization, purpose, and content varied from region to region, so their names were different as well. For the most part, it was a tradition of unmarried girls and unmarried boys, but there were exceptions, which we will mention later.
Otaman, Otamansha and “street”.
All over Ukraine, boys and girls gathered in communities, groups (today we call them companies). In the girls' community there was a “main girl” (in some regions she was called “atamansha”), in the boys' community “the main boy” or “ataman” - they were the ones who united everyone around them, organized meetings, had the last word or accepted newcomers to the group. From early spring until the end of fieldwork in early fall, evening meetings of young people were called “street” or “corner.” Groups gathered almost every day near a river, pond, pasture, or just in some corner of the village. They sang, joked, got to know each other, and took a break from their hard daily work. There were always several such “streets” because it was believed that siblings could not live in the same community.
Usually, girls organized the “street” and the boys came to join them.
Vechornytsi and skladchyna.
When the main agricultural work in the field was finished and the cold weather came, the girls would gather in their homes for pevchornytsi, also known as pisidky, parties, dostvitky, besidky. In each region, such gatherings began at different times-sometime in August or September after the First or Second Virgin, sometimes in October after the Intercession, or even in November after St. Michael.
Mostly on weekdays, the girls would come together to husk corn, embroider towels, spin, sew, sing songs, and leave around ten in the evening, sometimes at midnight. Today, we can thank the evening parties for the emergence of such forms of folk art as tall tales-a special type of humorous stories, riddles, sayings and proverbs, and legends. Folk songs, music, and dances were also largely formed at vespers.
Like the “kutok”, the evening parties were organized by girls. For this purpose, they rented a house from a widow, an unmarried older woman, or a married childless couple. The payment could be money, but more often it was flour, bread, oil, and other products, a piece of cloth, thread, ribbons, etc. On weekends and holidays, the girls would bring or cook dinner together and wait for “their” guys. That is, those who were from their “corner”. It happened that boys from neighboring streets, farms, and villages came to the party. In this case, they had to be let in by “their” boys, who were responsible for keeping order at the joint meeting.
In the central and eastern parts of Ukraine, as well as in the north and south, vespers were gatherings of young people where they could meet, frolic, and feel free from the supervision of older relatives. Often, the evening parties ended with the third cocks, and were called “dawns.” Sometimes young people stayed overnight in the house where the party was held, but this was rather an exception to the rule. In Galicia, Lemkivshchyna, Zakarpattia, and Bukovyna, the evening parties ended long before midnight, and there was no tradition of cooking dinners (except for the first and last meetings of the season). In some places, in addition to young people, older villagers were present, which naturally influenced the mood of the entertainment. In the Hutsul region, young people got married early, at the age of 14, so parties were organized for young women and married couples, which also changed the nature of such “gatherings.”
In addition to the “street” and partying, there was another form of gathering for young people called the “‘skladchyna’. It gathered only four times a year-before Pylypivka (the beginning of the Christmas fast on November 14), on the third day of the Christmas holidays, before Lent, and before Easter. It was something similar to a party, but it was organized not only by the girls, but by everyone. The girls' task was to cook dinner, and the boys would save up money, buy vodka, sweets for the girls, and hire musicians. They would invite “strange” boys from neighboring “corners,” farms, and villages to the party. These guys also contributed money. But “strange” girls were never invited to the dowry.
St. Catherine's Day is a holiday of a girl's destiny.
Our ancestors believed in good and evil spirits, in the forces of nature, in fate and various mystical phenomena. With the adoption of Christianity, these primordial beliefs have changed somewhat, acquired different colors, but they also remained a solid foundation of our identity. There were days during the year when you could predict the fate of yourself, your family, and your household. The period of winter ritual holidays with long, dark nights was especially powerful and fateful. The period when the old sun died and the new one was born. At this time, the hosts were closely watching the signs - who would be the first to enter the house on Christmas Eve, what the weather would be like (frost for a good harvest, thaw for a bad year), how the fire burns in the oven, how the bread dough would rise. Everyone wanted to look into the future and understand what awaited them. At this time, girls used to tell fortunes, whether to expect matchmakers in the coming year, whether a man would be wealthy, young, or old. Each corner of Ukraine had its own ways of calling fate (we will look at some of them below), but one thing was common: girls would tell fortunes, and boys would interfere with them in every way possible, and then they would have fun together at parties.
At dawn on the day of the Great Martyr Catherine (nowadays it is November 24), a girl would go to the garden, cut a branch of cherry, apple, lilac, or bird cherry and bring it to the house. After putting it in water, she would wait until Malanka (December 31) to see if the branch would bloom. If the flower bloomed, the girl's fate would be happy and she would get a matchmaker. If the branch dried up, it was not a good sign. In the evening of the same day, the girls would get together and prepare a joint dinner for their fate - borsch and porridge. At midnight, before the first rooster crowed, they would wrap the pots in a new towel and go outside. Then, one by one, each woman would climb the gate, holding a towel with borsch and porridge, and invite fate to dinner three times. If the rooster sang at that moment, fate would answer and be kind to the girl, bringing her a husband. If the rooster was silent, it was not yet time to get married. And the worst sign was to see a star falling from the sky.
Although Catherine's Day is a holiday of a girl's fate, in Polissia, Kyiv, and Poltava, boys fasted all day so that fate would give them a good wife.
St. Andrew's Night is a time when miracles happen.
The night before St. Andrew's Day (November 30) was considered the most magical for a girl's destiny. The tradition of baking balabushki or dumplings was quite widespread. In the morning, the girls would get together, lock the dog in the barn, and start making balabushky. They would go to the well, collect water, and carry it into the house with their mouths. The main thing was to carry the water without spilling a single drop. That's why the boys would wait for the girls at the wells, make them laugh or scare them so that they would spill the water and repeat the process all over again. Sometimes the girls would pay off the boys by giving them a bunch of dumplings, pies, or vodka so that they would not interfere. They would knead the dough with that water and then bake balabushky or cook dumplings. Each woman marked her own with a thread, a grain, or a piece of paper. In the evening on the eve of St. Andrew's Night, all the balabushki were laid out on the floor, on a towel, and a hungry dog, which had been locked in the barn in the morning, was allowed into the house. Whose balabushka the dog eats first, the first to marry. If it bites it and finishes it later, it can marry twice. If the dog takes the balabushki somewhere and hides them, the girl's destiny is far from her native village. If the balabushok remains, the girl will be a virgin for another year.
Another way to find out if you will be matched is to sow hemp. On the evening before St. Andrew's Day, a girl would leave the house holding a hemp seed in her hand. Then she would sing a ritual song about how she wanted to get married and sow hemp in front of her. She would gather a handful of snow and bring it to the house. When the snow melted, she would count the grains, and if they were even, she would be married. To find out from which side to wait for matchmakers, one had to leave the house at midnight and listen to where a dog barking could be heard.
To find out the name of their future husband, girls would go out in the evening and ask the first man they met. And to see the appearance of her beloved, a girl would put a kryshka (a thin belt) or her comb under her pillow before going to bed and say that she was inviting him into her dream.
To find out who would be in charge of the family, they caught a chicken and a rooster, tied their tails and covered them with a blanket or a cap. When the birds calmed down (after experiencing such stress), the blanket was removed and they watched to see who would pull whom in their direction. If it was a hen, the woman would be the boss of the house, and if it was a rooster, the man would be the boss.
Jolly Kalita.
St. Andrew's Night is the only night of the year when boys can fool around and be forgiven for everything. So while the girls are telling fortunes, the boys go around the village and get naughty. They can take “revenge” on a father who didn't let his daughter go for a walk - they will take down the gate and throw it into the river, dismantle the barn, throw the cart on the roof. And if the girls didn't invite them to a joint party that night, they could do something to them.
When the boys had had their fun and the girls had told their fortunes, everyone would gather together in the big house to celebrate St. Andrew. During the day, the girls would prepare lean dishes, and the boys would bring vodka and sweets. The main dish and entertainment was kalyta. It was a festive sweet dish made of white flour and honey, shaped like a loaf with a hole in the middle. In the Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions it was called kalyta or kaleta, in the South - korzh, kalach or malai, in Podillia - bala. It was important that every girl took part in its preparation. The dough was kneaded in absolute silence, without singing or joking, and each girl took turns kneading it. The kalyta was decorated with dried cherries, raisins, sugar, poppy seeds, and nuts.
The kalyta was hung by a ribbon or rope from a pole in the middle of the house. The other end of the ribbon hung down so that it could be pulled and the kalyta would fly up. The host of the evening, Mr. Kaletynskyi, held this rope with one hand and a stick with kvach dipped in soot in the other. Then all the boys had to take turns saddling a poker, a poker or just a stick and ride it to the kalyta. The players were called Mr. Kotsiubynskyi. The first test was for Mr. Kaletynskyi to make a joke, and Mr. Kotsiubynskyi had to not laugh. If he loses, he gets soot on his face and goes to the side. If he survives, he has a second test: he has to jump to the soot and bite it. But then Mr. Kaletynskyi pulls the rope and the bug flies up to the ceiling. If Mr. Kotsiubynskyi doesn't bite the kalyta, he gets a sooty kvach in the face and the turn passes to the next player. With the handsome Mr. Kaletynskyi, the kalyta remained intact, and all the boy players had black faces. After the game, the kalyta was taken down and the audience was treated to a delicious Christmas cake, a symbol of health, prosperity, and love.
The girls also told fortunes on Christmas Eve, and the last fortune-telling in winter was on the evening before Epiphany (January 6). After dinner, they would collect spoons from the table, go out into the yard, and bang them on the fence or threshold. Wherever the dog barked at that knock, there were matchmakers to be expected. Or they would take their father's shoe, go outside, and throw it over their heads behind their backs. And then they would look in which direction the shoe pointed.
Times change, but miracles remain.
Girls are always true to themselves and their desire to find out their fate, even in the modern pragmatic world. Nowadays, it is not necessary to rent a house for parties - dinner can be ordered with delivery, and then everything is as before - from Catherine to Epiphany, every night is magical.
To find out the name of the groom, you need to write different names on pieces of paper (it is better if the girls write names to each other). Put these pieces of paper under the pillow, and in the morning, as soon as you wake up, take out one piece of paper with the name of your beloved. Rings are used to find out about the wealth of a future husband. A gold, silver, and metal (jewelry) ring is placed in a plate with buckwheat, rice, or other cereal. Then the girl takes out one ring to find out whether the man will be wealthy or not.
Those who dream of marriage use a thread and fire. Several girls gather, cut threads of equal length and set them on fire at the same time. The one that burns faster than the others will be the first to get married. If the fire goes out and the thread remains almost intact, it is not yet time for marriage.
Today, boys also tell fortunes with girls. They gather in a group, each writing their wish for the coming year on a small piece of paper. Next, you need to fill a plate or bowl with water, spread the pieces of paper with wishes around its perimeter. Put a small candle in half a walnut shell, light it and let this “ship” float in the middle of the plate. Whichever wish it sails to will come true. Each participant launches the “boat” once.
Wishes are also told with molten wax. First, you need to write several wishes on pieces of paper, roll them up and put them in a plate. Light a candle and drip wax on the pieces of paper. Whichever piece of paper gets the first drop will make your wish come true.
You can find out what kind of year it will be by taking threads of different colors: white (a calm year), red (a year full of passion), black (a year with obstacles), green (a year dedicated to health). Put them under your pillow on the eve of the holiday, and in the morning, without looking, pull out one thread. In the company of friends, these threads can be pulled blind.
Interesting customs and traditions existed among our ancestors, filling them with a cheerful disposition, faith in miracles and a bright future. Not everything always came true, but faith in fate remained the anchor that still helps us, their descendants. Tell fortunes, keep traditions alive, and let fate be favorable to you.
Prepared by Olena Koval
Sources used
Oleksa Voropay “Customs of our people”, volume 1, Munich 1958, 308 p.
https://ethnography.org.ua/content/shcho-take-vechornyci
https://uamodna.com/articles/andrieva-nich-tradyciyi-vorozhinnya-ta-vechornyci/
https://www.bbc.com/ukrainian/blog-history-55271317
Photo/drawing references: all images from Pinterest and open Internet sources
