Lina Laurinavičiūtė-Petrošienė SHROVETIDE IN LITHUANIA Carnival Character Songs in a Sociocultural Context Monograph KLAIPėdA UNIVERSITY Lina Laurinavičiūtė-Petrošienė SHROVETIDE IN LITHUANIA Carnival Character Songs in a Sociocultural Context Monograph Klaipėda 2019 Leidinio bibliografinė informacija pateikiama Lietuvos nacionalinės Martyno Mažvydo bibliotekos Nacionalinės bibliografijos duomenų banke (NBDB) Recommended for publishing by: The Editorial Board of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Klaipėda University (Minutes No. 1, 19 December 2018) The Department of Baltic Linguistics of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Klaipėda University (Minutes No. 4, 14 November 2018) Reviewers: Dr. Marina M. Valentsova The Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow Dr. Mariyanka Borisova Zhekova Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia The translation and publishing of the monograph was funded by the Lithuanian Council of Culture (Contract No. SIETN-82(6.21)/2018) For the design of the book, photos of masks made by A. Mončys and A. Viluckis as well as a drawing from the Diena newspaper (1930) were used © Lina Laurinavičiūtė-Petrošienė, 2019 © Klaipėdos universitetas, 2019 ISBN 978-609-481-039-8 Carnival Character Songs in a Sociocultural Context 5 Content INTRODUCTION / 7 On Some Aspects of the Shrovetide Origin and Development / 14 The Ratio of the Ritual and Entertainment Functions of the Shrovetide Customs / 24 SONGS OF THE SHROVETIDE CHARACTERS (‘BEGGARS’, ‘JEWS’, AND ‘GYPSIES’) / 35 Noise and Music in the Shrovetide Carnival / 36 The Issue of the Genre / 38 The Christmas – Shrovetide Season Entertainments / 42 The Features of Melodics / 45 Anthropomorphic Characters of the Shrovetide Carnival (‘Beggars’, ‘Jews’, and ‘Gypsies’): the Relationship of the Songs and the Ethnosocial Reality / 52 Begging, the ‘Žemaitijan Beggar’, and the Shrovetide ‘Beggars’ / 53 The Content and Music of the Shrovide ‘Beggar’ Songs/Hymns / 58 The Jews in Lithuania and the Shrovetide ‘Jews’ / 86 The Content and Music of the Shrovetide ‘Jew’ Songs / 88 The Romani and the Shrovetide ‘Gypsies’ / 99 The Content and Music of the Shrovetide ‘Gypsy’ Songs / 101 Lašininis [Porky, Fatso] and Kanapinis [Hempen Man, Hemper] / 104 LATVIAN SONGS OF THE AUTUMN AND WINTER CALENDRICAL FESTIVALS / 111 An Overview of the Customs Associated with the Carnival Characters of Calendrical Festivals / 116 An Overview of the Carnival Character Songs During the Autumn-Winter Calendrical Festivals / 123 Shrovetide (Metenis, Vastlāvis) and Tenis’ Day (Teņa diena) Songs / 127 The Costumed A‘ wakener’ (Bubuļi, Budēļi, Buduļi) Songs / 133 The Costumed ‘Stilt Walker’ (Ķekatas, Ķekatnieki) Songs / 140 The Costumed ‘Gypsy’ Songs / 144 The Christmas Songs / 151 The Carnival Songs of Autumn Festivals / 158 6 SHROVETIDE IN LITHUANIA SHROVETIDE IN THE WRITTEN SOURCES OF THE 15TH THROUGH THE 18TH CENTURY / 167 Theatrical Events and Shrovetide in the Noblemen’s Palaces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania / 169 Shrovetide Performances of the Jesuit School Theatres and Paratheatrical Events / 173 Music in Theatrical and Paratheatrical Events: Contacts of Ecclesiastical and Folk Music / 181 URBAN SHROVETIDE IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY: REFLECTIONS ON CELEBRATION IN THE LITHUANIAN PRESS / 185 The First Publications on Shrovetide in Lithuanian Periodicals / 190 An Overview of Ethnographic Contributions / 193 Forms, Organisers, and Aspirations of the Urban Shrovetide Celebration / 203 The Shrovetide Events’ Programmes / 211 Meals and Drinks of the Urban Shrovetide / 222 Echoes of the Wedding Season in the Urban Shrovetide Celebration / 226 The Press on the Carnivals Around the World / 227 THE SHROVETIDE, OR THE USHERING-OUT OF WINTER, FESTIVAL IN THE SOVIET ERA / 239 Name Change from the Shrovetide to the Ushering-out of Winter Festival Dissemination and Limitations / 249 Levelling or Transformation of Traditions? / 256 Changes in the Structure and Characters of the Shrovetide Festival / 261 Music in the Soviet-Era Shrovetide / 269 Festival Organisation Problems, Recommendations, and Criticism / 287 Border Markers of the Soviet Era / 290 SUMMARY / 293 Literature / 297 Sources / 307 Index of Personal Names / 320 Index of Place Names / 326 Carnival Character Songs in a Sociocultural Context 7 INTRODUCTION The book Shrovetide in Lithuania focuses on the description and analysis of the genre of calendrical Shrovetide songs or, more specifi- cally, the songs of the costumed Shrovetide characters (‘beggars’, ‘Jews’, and ‘Gypsies’) considered as the calendrical folklore of Žemaitija, the ethnographic region of Northwestern Lithuania.1 The characteristics of the melodics of the songs, the content of their lyrics, and the pre- requisites for the formation and evolution of the genre predetermined by the historical, social, Shrovetide customs and other contexts are dis- cussed. Given the fact that the songs are believed to be rather late, the study concentrates on the so far little investigated Shrovetide celebra- tion customs of Lithuanian nobility in the 15th through the 18th cen- tury and the urban communities in the 20th century with the aim of revealing their impact on the rural Shrovetide celebration and simul- taneously on the songs in question. The study shows their links with the Lithuanian nobility and the urban environments which fostered European traditions as well as the interrelationship between the folk and ecclesiastical festivals. Carnival in Europe and other Christian countries around the world, as evidenced by abundant written sources and its extensive cel- ebration to date, is one, if not the only one, calendrical festival of an agrarian nature whose vitality is predetermined by the ability of the festival concepts to adapt to the modernisation of the community life- style in different historical epochs, and the diversity of the forms of its celebration, by local features. The rural celebration of Shrovetide in Lithuania in the 19th to the 21st century was described in literary works of Lithuanian classic authors and in ethnographic studies and investigated by ethnologists, 1 In literature, the Latin form Samogitia is sometimes used to name Žemaitija. 8 SHROVETIDE IN LITHUANIA primarily by Pranė Dundulienė, Stasys Skrodenis, Arūnas Vaicekaus- kas, and Žilvytis Bernardas Šaknys, in the 20th century. The ethno- graphic material, accumulated in museums and archives, has lately been published increasingly intensively. The musical expression of the Shrovetide tradition, consisting of combinations of folk songs, instru- mental, or mixed – song and verbal – folklore, has been so far scarcely analysed from the scientific viewpoint. The totality of the published Lithuanian calendrical folk songs clearly demonstrates that the great- est attention of researchers and the compilers of publications has been devoted to the calendrical, including Shrovetide, songs of the eth- nographic regions of Southern and Eastern Lithuania, i.e. Dzūkija and Aukštaitija (LLD 2007; AKPT 2000; SJPT 2003; VRLP 2007; LPBS 2009). In those regions, the Shrovetide celebration traditions slightly differ from those of Žemaitija, the northwestern ethnographic region of Lithuania. The musical Žemaitijan Shrovetide folklore, i.e. the songs performed by the costumed procession characters, such as ‘beggars’, ‘Jews’, and ‘Gypsies’, or the songs about them performed by other characters, is playful and original, however, for different reasons, not investigated comprehensively and for a long period of time pub- lished just in a fragmentary way (Kriščiūnienė 1992; ČČ 1998; KD 1998; MR 2008; LPBS 2009). In 2010, the first collection of authentic folklore songs per- formed in Žemaitija during Shrovetide, Žemaičių kalendorinė tauto- saka: Užgavėnių dainos [Žemaitijan Calendrical Folklore: Shrovetide Songs] (ŽKT 2010), was published, while in 2011, the Folk Music Band Sutaras released a CD Ubagų karalystės monai [The Wonders of the Beggars’ Kingdom] on the basis of archival materials (Sutaras 2011). Those were the first attempts to identify the problematic as- pects of the genre of folk songs and, in a way, to rehabilitate folklore that for a long time had been considered as a marginal phenomenon. The preparation of the songs for publishing revealed some never be- fore examined aspects of the Shrovetide Festival and encouraged its deeper studies. The monograph Žanro virsmas: Žemaitijos Užgavėnių dainos [Transformation of the Genre: Samogitian Shrovetide Songs], Carnival Character Songs in a Sociocultural Context 9 published in Lithuanian in 2015 (Laurinavičiūtė-Petrošienė 2015), slightly revised and supplemented, became the basis of the present book in English. As mentioned above, the study aims to reveal the traits of that to a certain extent marginal genre of folk songs (the Shrovetide costumed character songs), the prerequisites for their formation, and the devel- opment. At first glance, the research object seems to be distant from the major cultural research issues; however, its content, transforma- tion, and the trends and stages of the development are closely related to the political, social, and cultural events that have been taking place both in Western Europe and Lithuania. The broad contextualisation of the research object as a cultural phenomenon takes it beyond the boundaries of the traditional and narrowish field of the rural culture alone, characteristic of the ethnological and folklore research,