The man's corner in the house. The layout of the Russian hut

The secrets of the Russian hut and its mysteries, little wisdom and traditions, the basic rules in the construction of the Russian hut, signs, facts and the history of the "hut on chicken legs" - everything is very brief.

It is a generally accepted fact that the most environmentally friendly and suitable for human habitation houses can only be built from wood. Wood is the most ancient building material, presented to us by the most perfect laboratory on Earth - Nature.

In the premises of a wooden structure, the humidity of the air is always optimal for human life. The unique structure of the wood mass, consisting of capillaries, absorbs excess moisture from the air, and when it is excessively dry, it releases it into the room.

Log cabins have natural energy, create a special microclimate in the hut, and provide natural ventilation. Wooden walls exude homeliness and peace; they protect from heat in summer and from frost in winter. Wood retains heat very well. Even in the bitter cold, the walls of a wooden log house are warm inside.

Anyone who has ever been in a real Russian hut will never forget her bewitching benevolent spirit: subtle notes of wood resin, the aroma of freshly baked bread from a Russian oven, the spice of medicinal herbs. Due to its properties, wood neutralizes heavy odors by ozonizing the air.

And it is not without reason that interest in wooden construction arises again and grows with incredible speed, gaining more and more popularity.

So, little wisdom, secrets and secrets of the Russian hut!

The name of the Russian house "hut" comes from the old Russian "istba", which means "house, bath" or "source" from "The Tale of Bygone Years ...". The Old Russian name of a wooden dwelling is rooted in the Proto-Slavic "jüstba" and is considered borrowed from the German "stuba". In ancient German, "stuba" meant "a warm room, a bathhouse."

When building a new hut, our ancestors followed the rules developed over the centuries, because the construction of a new house is a significant event in the life of a peasant family and all traditions were observed to the smallest detail. One of the main precepts of the ancestors was the choice of a place for the future hut. A new hut should not be built on the site where there was once a cemetery, road or bathhouse. But at the same time, it was desirable that the place for the new house was already inhabited, where people lived in complete prosperity, bright and in a dry place.

The main tool in the construction of all Russian wooden structures was an ax. From here they say not to build, but to cut down a house. The saw began to be used at the end of the 18th century, and in some places from the middle of the 19th century.

Initially (until the 10th century), the hut was a log building, partially (up to a third) going into the ground. That is, a recess was dug out and over it was completed in 3-4 rows of thick logs. Thus, the hut itself was a semi-dugout.

There was no door originally, it was replaced by a small inlet, about 0.9 meters by 1 meter, covered by a pair of log halves tied together and a canopy.

The main requirement for building material was customary - a log house was cut either from pine, spruce or larch. The trunk of coniferous trees was tall, slender, well axed and at the same time was durable, the walls of pine, spruce or larch kept the heat in the house well in winter and did not heat up in the summer, in the heat, keeping a pleasant coolness. At the same time, the choice of a tree in the forest was regulated by several rules. For example, it was forbidden to cut down diseased, old and withered trees, which were considered dead and could, according to legend, bring illness to the house. It was forbidden to cut down the trees that grew on the road and along the roads. Such trees were considered "violent" and in a log house such logs, according to legend, can fall out of the walls and crush the owners of the house.

The construction of the house was accompanied by a number of customs. During the laying of the first crown of a log house (mortgage), a coin or a paper bill was placed under each corner, another piece of wool from a sheep or a small skein of woolen yarn was placed in another piece of wool from a sheep or a small skein of woolen yarn, grain was poured into the third, and incense was placed under the fourth. Thus, at the very beginning of the construction of the hut, our ancestors performed such rituals for the future dwelling, which marked its wealth, family warmth, well-fed life and holiness in later life.

In the setting of the hut there is not a single superfluous random object, each thing has its strictly defined purpose and a place illuminated by tradition, which is a characteristic feature of the people's home.

The doors in the hut were made as low as possible, and the windows were placed higher. So less heat left the hut.

The Russian hut was either a “four-wall” (simple cage) or a “five-wall” (a cage partitioned off inside by a wall - “overcut”). During the construction of the hut, utility rooms were added to the main volume of the cage (“porch”, “canopy”, “yard”, “bridge” between the hut and the yard, etc.). In the Russian lands, not spoiled by heat, they tried to bring the whole complex of buildings together, to press them against each other.

There were three types of organization of the complex of buildings that made up the courtyard. A single large two-story house for several related families under one roof was called a "purse". If the utility rooms were attached to the side and the whole house took on the form of the letter “G”, then it was called the “verb”. If the outbuildings were adjusted from the end of the main frame and the whole complex was pulled into a line, then they said that this was a “beam”.

The porch of the hut was usually followed by "canopy" (canopy - shade, shaded place). They were arranged so that the door did not open directly onto the street, and heat did not come out of the hut in winter. The front part of the building, together with the porch and the hallway, was called in ancient times the "sprout".

If the hut was two-story, then the second floor was called the "tale" in the outbuildings and the "room" in the living quarters. The rooms above the second floor, where the girl's room was usually located, were called "terem".

The house was rarely built by each for himself. Usually the whole world was invited to the construction (“obschestvo”). The forest was harvested in winter, while there was no sap flow in the trees, and they began to build in early spring. After the laying of the first crown of the log house, the first treat was arranged for the “helpers” (“salary treat”). Such treats are an echo of ancient ritual feasts, which often took place with sacrifices.

After the "salary treats" they began to arrange a log house. At the beginning of summer, after laying the ceiling mats, a new ritual treat for the helpers followed. Then proceeded to the device of the roof. Having reached the top, laying the skate, they arranged a new, “skate” treat. And after the completion of construction at the very beginning of autumn - a feast.

Demyanov's ear. Artist Andrey Popov

The cat should be the first to enter the new home. In the North of Russia, the cult of the cat is still preserved. In most northern houses, in the thick doors in the hallway, there is a hole for the cat at the bottom.

In the depths of the hut there was a hearth made of stones. There was no smoke outlet; in order to save heat, the smoke was kept in the room, and the excess went out through the inlet. Chicken huts probably contributed to the short life expectancy in the old days (about 30 years for men): the products of burning wood are cancer-causing substances.

The floors in the huts were earthen. Only with the spread of saws and sawmills in Russia in cities and in the houses of landowners did wooden floors begin to appear. Initially, the floors were laid out from boards made of logs split in half, or from massive thick floorboards. However, flooring from boards began to spread massively only in the 18th century, since sawmilling was not developed. It was only through the efforts of Peter I that saws and sawmills began to spread in Russia with the publication of the Peter the Great decree “On accustoming woodcutters to sawing firewood” in 1748. Until the twentieth century, the floors in the peasant's hut were earthen, that is, the leveled earth was simply trampled down. Sometimes the top layer was smeared with clay mixed with manure, which prevented the formation of cracks.

Logs for Russian huts were prepared from November-December, cutting tree trunks in a circle and letting them dry on the vine (upright) over the winter. Trees were cut down and logs were taken out even in the snow before the spring thaw. When cutting the cage of the hut, the logs were laid with the northern, denser side outward, so that the wood cracked less and better tolerated the effects of the atmosphere. Coins, wool and incense were placed in the corners of the house along the building in order for its inhabitants to live healthy in abundance and warmth.

Until the 9th century, there were no windows at all in Russian huts.

Until the 20th century, windows in Russian huts did not open. They ventilated the hut through the door and the chimney (a wooden ventilation pipe on the roof). The shutters protected the huts from bad weather and dashing people. A shuttered window during the day could serve as a "mirror".

In the old days, shutters were single-leaf. There were no double frames in the old days either. In winter, for warmth, the windows were closed from the outside with straw mats or simply covered with heaps of straw.

Numerous patterns of the Russian hut served (and serve) not so much as decoration, but as protection of the house from evil forces. The symbolism of sacred images came from pagan times: solar circles, thunder signs (arrows), fertility signs (a field with dots), horse heads, horseshoes, abysses of heaven (various wavy lines), weaves and knots.

The hut was installed directly on the ground or on poles. Oak logs, large stones or stumps were brought under the corners, on which the log house stood. In summer, the wind blew under the hut, drying the boards of the so-called “black” floor from below. By winter, the house was sprinkled with earth or a mound was made of turf. In the spring, a blockage or embankment was dug up in some places to create ventilation.

The "red" corner in the Russian hut was arranged in the far corner of the hut, on the east side diagonally from the stove. The icons were placed in the deity in the "red" or "holy" corner of the room in such a way that the person entering the house could immediately see them. It was considered an important element in protecting the house from "evil forces". Icons had to stand, not hang, as they were revered as “alive”.

The emergence of the image of the “Hut on chicken legs” is historically associated with wooden log cabins, which in ancient Russia were placed on stumps with chopped roots to protect the tree from decay. In the dictionary of V. I. Dahl it is said that “kur” is the rafters on peasant huts. In swampy places, the huts were built precisely on such rafters. In Moscow, one of the old wooden churches was called "Nikola on chicken legs", because it stood on stumps due to the swampiness of the area.

A hut on chicken legs - in fact, they are CHICKEN, from the word chicken hut. Huts were called huts that were heated “in black”, that is, they did not have a chimney. A stove without a chimney was used, called a “chicken stove” or “black stove”. The smoke came out through the doors and during the burning hung under the ceiling in a thick layer, which is why the upper parts of the logs in the hut were covered with soot.

In ancient times, there was a funeral rite, which included smoking the legs of a “hut” without windows and doors, in which a corpse was placed.

The hut on chicken legs in folk fantasy was modeled on the image of a Slavic graveyard, a small house of the dead. The house was placed on pillars. In fairy tales, they are presented as chicken legs is also not accidental. The chicken is a sacred animal, an indispensable attribute of many magical rites. In the house of the dead, the Slavs put the ashes of the deceased. The coffin itself, a domina or graveyard-cemetery of such houses was presented as a window, a hole into the world of the dead, a means of passage to the underworld. That is why our fairy-tale hero constantly comes to the hut on chicken legs - to get into a different dimension of time and the reality of no longer living people, but wizards. There is no other way to get there.

Chicken legs are just a "translation error".

“Chicken (chicken) legs” the Slavs called stumps, on which the hut was placed, that is, Baba Yaga’s house initially stood only on smoked stumps. From the point of view of supporters of the Slavic (classical) origin of Baba Yaga, an important aspect of this image is that she belongs to two worlds at once - the world of the dead and the world of the living.

Chicken huts existed in Russian villages until the 19th century, they even met at the beginning of the 20th century.

Only in the 18th century and only in St. Petersburg did Tsar Peter I forbid building houses with black-fired heating. In other settlements, they continued to be built until the 19th century.

The part of the hut from the mouth to the opposite wall, the space in which all the women's work related to cooking was performed, was called the stove corner. Here, near the window, against the mouth of the furnace, in each house there were hand millstones, so the corner is also called a millstone. In the oven corner there was a ship bench or a counter with shelves inside, which was used as a kitchen table. On the walls were observers - shelves for tableware, cabinets. Above, at the level of the benches, there was a stove beam, on which kitchen utensils were placed and various household items were stacked.

The stove corner was considered a dirty place, unlike the rest of the clean space of the hut. Therefore, the peasants have always sought to separate it from the rest of the room with a curtain of colorful chintz, colored homespun or wooden bulkhead. The stove corner, closed with a wooden partition, formed a small room, which had the name "closet" or "prilub". It was an exclusively female space in the hut: here women cooked food, rested after work. During the holidays, when many guests came to the house, a second table was placed by the stove for women, where they feasted separately from the men who sat at the table in the red corner. Men, even of their own families, could not enter the women's quarters without special need. The appearance of an outsider there was generally considered unacceptable.

The traditional fixed furnishings of the dwelling were kept for the longest time near the stove in the women's corner. The red corner, like the stove, was an important landmark of the interior space of the hut. In most of European Russia, in the Urals, in Siberia, the red corner was the space between the side and front walls in the depths of the hut, limited by the corner, which is located diagonally from the stove. In the southern Russian regions of European Russia, the red corner is the space enclosed between the wall with the door to the canopy and the side wall. The stove was located in the back of the hut, diagonally from the red corner. In a traditional dwelling almost throughout Russia, with the exception of the southern Russian provinces, the red corner is well lit, since both of its constituent walls had windows. The main decoration of the red corner is a goddess with icons and a lamp, so it is also called "holy".

As a rule, everywhere in Russia in the red corner, in addition to the goddess, there is a table, only in a number of places in the Pskov and Velikolukskaya provinces. it is placed in the wall between the windows - against the corner of the stove. In the red corner, near the table, two benches meet, and above, above the shrine, there are two shelves of a bench; hence the Western-South Russian name of the corner "day" (the place where the elements of the decoration of the dwelling meet, connect). All significant events of family life were noted in the red corner. Here, both everyday meals and festive feasts were held at the table, the action of many calendar rituals took place. In the wedding ceremony, the matchmaking of the bride, her ransom from her girlfriends and brother took place in the red corner; from the red corner of her father's house she was taken to the church for the wedding, brought to the groom's house and also led to the red corner.

During the harvest, the first and last were installed in the red corner. The preservation of the first and last ears of the harvest, endowed, according to folk legends, with magical powers, promised well-being to the family, home, and entire economy. In the red corner, daily prayers were performed, from which any important business began. It is the most honored place in the house. According to traditional etiquette, a person who came to the hut could go there only at the special invitation of the owners. They tried to keep the red corner clean and smartly decorated. The very name "red" means "beautiful", "good", "light". It was cleaned with embroidered towels, popular prints, postcards. The most beautiful household utensils were placed on the shelves near the red corner, the most valuable papers and objects were stored. It was a common custom among Russians when laying a house to put money under the lower crown in all corners, and a larger coin was placed under the red corner.

Some authors associate the religious understanding of the red corner exclusively with Christianity. According to them, the only sacred center of the house in pagan times was the oven. God's corner and oven are even interpreted by them as Christian and pagan centers. These scholars see in their mutual arrangement a kind of illustration of Russian dual faith; they simply replaced the older pagan ones in God's corner, and at first they undoubtedly coexisted with them there. As for the stove ... let's think seriously, could a "kind" and "honest "The Empress Pech, in the presence of which they did not dare to say a swear word, under which, according to the concepts of the ancients, the soul of the hut lived - Brownie, could she personify "darkness"? No way. With much greater probability, it should be assumed that the stove was placed in the northern corner as an insurmountable barrier to the forces of death and evil, seeking to break into housing. A relatively small space of the hut, about 20-25 sq.m, was organized in such a way that it with more or less convenience there was a fairly large family of seven or eight people. This was achieved due to the fact that each family member knew his place in the common space.

Men usually worked, rested during the day on the men's half of the hut, which included a front corner with icons and a bench near the entrance. Women and children were in the women's quarters near the stove during the day. Places for night sleep have also been allocated. Old people slept on the floor near the door, the stove or on the stove, on the golbets, children and unmarried youth - under the boards or on the boards. In warm weather, adult married couples spent the night in cages, passages, in cold weather - on a bench under the deck or on a platform near the stove. Each family member knew his place at the table. The owner of the house sat under the images during a family meal. His eldest son was located on the right hand of his father, the second son - on the left, the third - next to his older brother. Children under marriageable age were seated on a bench running from the front corner along the facade. Women ate while sitting on side benches or stools. Violating the once established order in the house was not supposed to be unless absolutely necessary. The person who violated them could be severely punished. On weekdays, the hut looked rather modest. There was nothing superfluous in it: the table stood without a tablecloth, the walls were without decorations. Everyday utensils were placed in the oven corner and on the shelves.

On a holiday, the hut was transformed: the table was moved to the middle, covered with a tablecloth, festive utensils, which had previously been stored in crates, were put on the shelves. The interior of the chamber differed from the interior of the inner space of the hut by the presence of a Dutch woman instead of a Russian stove, or by the absence of a stove at all. The rest of the mansion attire, with the exception of the blankets and the platform for sleeping, repeated the motionless attire of the hut. The peculiarity of the upper room was that it was always ready to receive guests. Benches were made under the windows of the hut, which did not belong to the furniture, but formed part of the extension of the building and were fixedly attached to the walls: the board was cut into the wall of the hut at one end, and supports were made on the other: legs, grandmothers, podlavniki. In old huts, benches were decorated with "edge" - a board nailed to the edge of the bench, hanging from it like a frill. Such shops were called "pubescent" or "with a canopy", "with a valance".

In a traditional Russian dwelling, benches ran along the walls in a circle, starting from the entrance, and served for sitting, sleeping, and storing various household items. Each shop in the hut had its own name, associated either with the landmarks of the internal space, or with the ideas that have developed in traditional culture about the confinement of the activities of a man or woman to a specific place in the house (men's, women's shops). Various items were stored under the benches, which, if necessary, were easy to get - axes, tools, shoes, etc. In traditional rituals and in the sphere of traditional norms of behavior, the shop acts as a place where not everyone is allowed to sit. So entering the house, especially strangers, it was customary to stand at the threshold until the owners invited them to come and sit down. The same applies to matchmakers: they went to the table and sat on the bench only by invitation.

In funeral rituals, the deceased was placed on a bench, but not on any, but on one located along the floorboards. A long bench is a bench that differed from others in its length. Depending on the local tradition of distributing objects in the space of the house, a long shop could have a different place in the hut. In the North Russian and Central Russian provinces, in the Volga region, it stretched from the conic to the red corner, along the side wall of the house. In the southern Great Russian provinces, it went from the red corner along the wall of the facade. From the point of view of the spatial division of the house, a long shop, like a stove corner, was traditionally considered a women's place, where at the appropriate time they were engaged in certain women's work, such as spinning, knitting, embroidery, sewing.

On a long bench, always located along the floorboards, they laid the dead. Therefore, in some provinces of Russia, matchmakers never sat on this bench. Otherwise, their business could go wrong.

Short Shop - A shop that runs along the front wall of a house facing the street. During a family meal, men sat on it. The shop, located near the stove, was called Kutnaya. Buckets of water, pots, cast irons were placed on it, freshly baked bread was laid.

The threshold bench ran along the wall where the door was located. It was used by women instead of a kitchen table and differed from other shops in the house by the absence of an edge along the edge.

Judgment bench - a bench that goes from the stove along the wall or door partition to the front wall of the house. The surface level of this shop is higher than other shops in the house. The shop in front has folding or sliding doors or is closed by a curtain. Inside it are shelves for dishes, buckets, cast iron, pots. The men's shop was called Konik. She was short and wide. In most of the territory of Russia, it had the form of a box with a hinged flat lid or a box with sliding doors. The Konik got its name, probably, thanks to the horse's head carved from wood, which adorned its side. Konik was located in the residential part of the peasant house, near the door. It was considered a "men's" shop, as it was the workplace of men. Here they were engaged in small crafts: weaving bast shoes, baskets, repairing harness, knitting fishing nets, etc.

Under the conic were the tools necessary for these works. A place on a bench was considered more prestigious than on a bench; the guest could judge the attitude of the hosts towards him, depending on where he was seated - on a bench or on a bench. A necessary element of the decoration of the dwelling was a table serving for a daily and festive meal. The table was one of the most ancient types of mobile furniture, although the earliest tables were adobe and motionless. Such a table with adobe benches near it was found in the Pronsk dwellings of the 11th-13th centuries (Ryazan province) and in the Kiev dugout of the 12th century. Four legs of a table from a dugout are racks dug into the ground.

In a traditional Russian dwelling, a movable table always had a permanent place; it stood in the most honorable place - in the red corner, in which the icons were located. In northern Russian houses, the table was always located along the floorboards, that is, with the narrower side to the front wall of the hut. In some places, for example, in the Upper Volga region, the table was set only for the duration of the meal, after eating it was placed sideways on the counter under the images. This was done in order to have more space in the hut. In the forest belt of Russia, carpentry tables had a peculiar shape: a massive underframe, that is, a frame connecting the legs of the table, was climbed with boards, the legs were made short and thick, a large tabletop was always made removable and protruded beyond the underframe in order to make it more comfortable to sit. In the underframe, a cabinet with double doors was made for tableware, bread needed for the day.

In traditional culture, in ritual practice, in the sphere of norms of behavior, etc., great importance was attached to the table. This is evidenced by its clear spatial fixation in the red corner. Any advancement from there can only be associated with a ritual or crisis situation. The exclusive role of the table was expressed in almost all rituals, one of the elements of which was a meal. With particular brightness, it manifested itself in the wedding ceremony, in which almost every stage ended with a feast. The table was conceptualized in the popular mind as "God's palm", giving daily bread, therefore, knocking on the table at which they eat was considered a sin. In the usual, non-table time, only bread, usually wrapped in a tablecloth, and a salt shaker with salt could be on the table.

In the sphere of traditional norms of behavior, the table has always been a place where people united: a person who was invited to dine at the master's table was perceived as "one of his own."

The table was covered with a tablecloth. In a peasant hut, tablecloths were made from homespun cloth, both of simple linen weave, and made using the technique of warp and multi-shaft weaving. Tablecloths used daily were sewn from two patchwork panels, usually with a cellular pattern (the most diverse colors) or simply coarse canvas. Such a tablecloth was used to set the table during dinner, and after eating, they either removed it or covered the bread left on the table with it. Festive tablecloths were distinguished by the best quality of the linen, such additional details as a lace seam between two panels, tassels, lace or fringe around the perimeter, as well as a pattern on the fabric.

Do not give a hand through the threshold, close the windows at night, do not knock on the table - “God's palm table”, do not spit into the fire (oven) - these and many other rules set the behavior in the house. - a microcosm in the macrocosm, one's own, opposing someone else's.

xdir.ru
A person equips a dwelling, likening it to the world order, therefore every corner, every detail is filled with meaning, demonstrates the relationship of a person with the world around him.

1. Doors

So we entered, crossed the threshold, what could be easier!
But for the peasant, the door is not just an entrance and exit from the house, it is a way to overcome the border between the inner and outer worlds. Here lies a threat, danger, because it is through the door that both an evil person and evil spirits can enter the house. “Small, pot-bellied, protects the whole house” - the castle was supposed to protect from the ill-wisher. However, in addition to shutters, bolts, locks, a system of symbolic methods has been developed to protect the home from "evil spirits": crosses, nettles, fragments of a scythe, a knife or a Thursday candle stuck in the cracks of a threshold or jamb. You can’t just enter the house and you can’t get out of it: approaching the door was accompanied by a short prayer (“Without God - not to the threshold”), there was a custom of sitting down before a long journey, the traveler was forbidden to talk over the threshold and look around the corners, and the guest had to meet beyond the threshold and let yourself go ahead.

2. Furnace

What do we see in front of us at the entrance to the hut? The oven, which simultaneously served as a source of heat, and a place for cooking, and a place to sleep, was used in the treatment of a wide variety of diseases. In some areas, people washed and steamed in the oven. The stove sometimes personified the entire dwelling, its presence or absence determined the nature of the building (a house without a stove is non-residential). The folk etymology of the word "hut" from "istopka" from "drown, heat" is indicative. - cooking - was comprehended not only as economic, but also as sacred: raw, undeveloped, impure turned into boiled, mastered, clean.

3. Red corner

In a Russian hut, a red corner was always located diagonally from the stove - a sacred place in the house, which is emphasized by its name: red - beautiful, solemn, festive. All life was focused on the red (senior, honorary, divine) corner. Here they ate, prayed, blessed, it was to the red corner that the headboards of the beds were turned. Most of the rites associated with births, weddings, and funerals were performed here.

4. Table

An integral part of the red corner is the table. A table laden with dishes is a symbol of abundance, prosperity, fullness, stability. Both everyday and festive life of a person is concentrated here, a guest is seated here, bread and holy water are put here. The table is likened to a shrine, an altar, which leaves an imprint on the behavior of a person at the table and in general in the red corner ("Bread on the table, so the table is the throne, and not a piece of bread - so is the table board"). In various rituals, special importance was attached to the movement of the table: during difficult childbirth, the table was pushed to the middle of the hut, in the event of a fire, a table covered with a tablecloth was taken out of the neighboring hut and went around the burning buildings with it.

5. Benches

Along the table, along the walls - pay attention! - shops. For men, there are long "men's" benches, for women and children, front ones, located under the window. Benches connected the "centers" (stove corner, red corner) and the "periphery" of the house. In one ritual or another, they personified the way, the road. When the girl, previously considered a child and wearing one undershirt, turned 12 years old, her parents forced her to walk up and down the bench, after which, having crossed herself, the girl had to jump off the bench into a new sundress, sewn especially for such an occasion. From that moment on, the girlish age began, and the girl was allowed to go to round dances and be considered a bride. And here is the so-called "beggar" shop, located at the door. It got this name because a beggar and anyone else who entered the hut without the permission of the owners could sit on it.

6. Matiza

If we stand in the middle of the hut and look up, we will see a bar that serves as the basis for the ceiling - a mother. It was believed that the uterus is a support for the top of the dwelling, so the process of laying the mat is one of the key moments in building a house, accompanied by the shedding of grains and hops, prayer, and treats for carpenters. Matice was credited with the role of a symbolic border between the inside of the hut and the outside, associated with the entrance and exit. The guest, entering the house, sat down on a bench and could not go behind the mat without the invitation of the owners, setting off, he should hold on to the mat so that the road was happy, and in order to protect the hut from bedbugs, cockroaches and fleas, they tucked under the mat what was found from the harrow tooth.

7. Windows

Let's look out the window and see what's going on outside the house. However, windows, like the eyes of a house (a window is an eye), allow not only those who are inside the hut to observe, but also those who are outside, hence the threat of permeability. The use of the window as an unregulated entrance and exit was undesirable: if a bird flies through the window, there will be trouble. Through the window they carried dead unbaptized children, adult dead who had a fever. Only the penetration of sunlight through the windows was desirable and played up in various proverbs and riddles (“The red girl looks out the window”, “The lady is in the yard, and the sleeves are in the hut”). Hence the solar symbolism, which we see in the ornaments of the platbands that adorned the windows and at the same time protected from the unkind, unclean.

Source

Today I came across an interesting Wikipedia article on VKontakte about a woman's place in a hut, it was the name of this post, enclosed in quotation marks, that appeared at the beginning of the repost. What is described in the article impresses me in the sense that in our house the kitchen is also like a woman's kut and the husband does not touch the orders established on it. As one of our friends says, everyone should mind their own business, but life and cuisine are still a woman's destiny. And it is very interesting to read about all sorts of customs and sayings about this place and the holiday of the same name. And even if something written below is fictional, but how interesting it all is ...

"Baby kut (baby corner, stove corner) - the space of the hut (hut) between the mouth of the Russian stove and the opposite wall, where women's work took place.

In the woman's corner there were hand millstones, a ship's shop with utensils, and overseers. It was separated from the rest of the hut by a bed, under which a curtain was hung. Men even of their own families tried not to go into the corner of the stove, and the appearance of an outsider here was unacceptable and was regarded as an insult. "(Wikipedia)

And here's another from Wikipedia: "By Tatyana's Day, the girls made small panicles from rags and feathers. It was believed that if such a panicle was quietly placed in a woman's kut in the house of the desired guy, then the guy would definitely marry her, and their life together would be long and happy The mothers were well aware of these tricks and carefully chose the bride who could "hide" the broom.

During the courtship, the bride was behind a curtained curtain, from here she came out smartly dressed during the bride, here she was waiting for the groom to go to church; the exit of the bride from the oven kut to the red corner was considered as a farewell to her stepfather's house.

And it says that:
"Baby kut is a woman's corner, a place near the Russian stove, where there were sauerkraut and kvass, pots and cast iron, that is, household utensils that were good for the housework, the economy put on good feet. Every utensil has its place in the woman's corner. Ladles, with which they scooped water, poured cereals and flour from the chest, bowls and troughs braided with birch bark, a pail covered with washed linen for filtering milk, a barrel and tubs for water. , cooked, dressed the cattle, it was said: "They carried ladles - they do not doze, the kvass is not empty, the stove is not carbon monoxide." Bolshukha, having heated the stove, enveloped her. She knew how not to miss the heat, heat the hut, the child in the hut is not let loose."

If everything is clear about the kut itself, then the mention of "Bolshakha" is intriguing, it will be necessary to read about it, and indeed about the way of life, all this is interesting.

From the same source and also from this one, I learned that "Babi Kut" is also a holiday, now called "Tatiana's Day". Whether this is true or not, I have not figured it out yet, but the information itself is curious:

“Babi Kut is one of the Russian folk names for the holiday known to us as Tatyana’s Day. And the phrase “Babi Kut” itself means a Babi corner, as in the villages they called the place by the stove where various household utensils were stored, and where the hostess usually spent a lot of time. In ancient times, in the villages, it was customary to bake loaves in the form of the sun by this day, as if inviting the luminary to return to people as soon as possible. Such loaves were eaten by the whole family so that everyone got a piece of solar power. In general, a loaf for a Russian peasant is not just ritual bread with decorations fashioned from dough, but a symbol of the life-giving power of the sun, as well as the personification of fertility and prosperity.The eldest woman in the family baked a loaf on Tatyana's Day, and various ceremonies and rituals were associated with baking, since, according to popular belief, in the preparation of loaf people God helps."
While looking for a picture of a loaf, I stumbled upon this:

"And the girls that day, early in the morning, went to the river, where they knocked out the rugs. The girls dressed up and waited for the village boys by the river, who were supposed to help carry the clean rugs home."

)) My grandmother and I in my childhood knocked out rugs on the river in winter, it was a lot of fun, and even my grandmother is a singer. She not only knew a lot of folk songs, but also all sorts of chants, ditties, blades of grass)) It’s a pity that her memory is failing her now ...
P.S.: All pictures were found in Yandex, I chose those that are most suitable for the meaning of the text. I will be grateful for any comments, otherwise I will suddenly hurt someone with my ignorance on this topic.

The interior of Russian huts is mostly very similar and includes a number of elements that can be found in any home. If we talk about the device of the hut, then it consists of:

• 1-2 living quarters
• upper room
• lumber room
• terrace

The first thing a guest came across when entering the house was the canopy. This is a kind of zone between the heated room and the street. All the cold lingered in the hallway and did not enter the main room. The canopy was used by the Slavs for economic purposes. In this room they kept a yoke and other things. Located in the hallway lumber room. This is a room that was separated from the hallway by a partition. It housed a chest with flour, eggs and other products..

The heated room and the vestibule were separated by a door and a high threshold. Such a threshold was made so that it was more difficult for cold air to penetrate into a warm room. In addition, there was a tradition the guest, entering the room, had to bow, greet the hosts and the brownie. The high threshold just "forced" the guests to bow, entering the main part of the house. Since the entrance without bowing ensured hitting the head on the jamb. With the advent of Christianity in Russia, the bow to the brownie and the owners was supplemented by the overshadowing of oneself with the sign of the cross and the bow to the icons in the red corner.

Stepping over the threshold, the guest entered the main room of the hut. The first thing that caught my eye was the stove. It was located immediately to the left or right of the door. The Russian stove is the main element of the hut. The absence of a furnace indicates that the building is non-residential. And the Russian hut got its name precisely because of the stove, which allows you to heat the room. Another important feature of this device is cooking food. Until now, there is no more useful way to cook food than in the oven. Currently, there are various double boilers that allow you to save a maximum of useful elements in food. But all this is not comparable to cooked food from the oven. There are many beliefs associated with the oven. For example, it was believed that it was a favorite vacation spot for brownies. Or, when a child lost a milk tooth, he was taught to throw the tooth under the stove and say:

"Mouse, mouse, you have a burdock tooth, and you give me a bone tooth"

It was also believed that garbage from the house should be burned in a furnace so that the energy does not go outside, but remains inside the room.

Red corner in a Russian hut

The red corner is an integral part of the interior decoration of the Russian hut. It was located diagonally from the stove (most often this place fell on the eastern part of the house - a note to those who do not know where to set the red corner in a modern home). It was a sacred place where there were towels, icons, faces of ancestors and divine books. A necessary part of the red corner was the table. It was in this corner that our ancestors ate food. The table was considered a kind of altar, on which there was always bread:

"Bread on the table, so the table is the throne, but not a piece of bread - so is the table board"

Therefore, even today, tradition does not allow sitting on the table. And leaving knives and spoons is considered a bad omen. Until today, another belief associated with the table has survived: young people were forbidden to sit on the corner of the table in order to avoid the fate of celibacy.

Shop with a chest in the hut

Everyday household items in a Russian hut played their role. A hiding place or chest for clothes was an important element of the house. Skrynya was inherited from mother to daughter. It included the dowry of the girl, which she received after marriage. This element of the interior of the Russian hut was located most often next to the stove.

Benches were also an important element of the interior of the Russian hut. Conventionally, they were divided into several types:

• long - differs from the rest in length. It was considered a women's place where they did embroidery, knitting, etc.
• short - during the meal, men sat on it.
• kutnaya - was installed near the furnace. Buckets of water, shelves for dishes, pots were placed on it.
• threshold - went along the wall where the door is located. Used as a kitchen table.
• judgment - a shop higher than others. Designed to store shelves with dishes and pots.
• Konik - a square-shaped men's shop with a carved horse's head on the side. It was located next to the door. On it, men were engaged in small crafts, so tools were stored under the bench.
• "beggar" was also located at the door. Any guest who entered the hut without the permission of the owners could sit on it. This is due to the fact that the guest cannot enter the hut further than the mother (a log that serves as the basis for the ceiling). Visually, the matrix looks like a protruding log across the main stacked boards on the ceiling.

The upper room is another living space in the hut. Wealthy peasants had it, because not everyone could afford such a room. The chamber was most often arranged on the second floor.Hence its name gornitsa - "mountain". In it was another oven called dutch. This is a round stove. In many village houses they are still standing, being an ornament. Although even today you can find huts that are heated by these old appliances.

Enough has already been said about the stove. But it is impossible not to mention the tools that were used in working with Russian stoves. Poker is the most famous item. It is an iron rod with a bent end. A poker was used to stir and rake coals. Pomelo was used to clean the stove from coals..

With the help of a fork, it was possible to drag or move pots and cast iron. It was a metal arc that made it possible to grab the pot and carry it from place to place. The grip made it possible to put the cast iron in the oven without fear of getting burned..

Another item used in working with the stove is bread shovel. With it, the bread is placed in the oven and pulled out after cooking. And here is the word chaplya"Not many people know. This tool is called a frying pan in another way. It was used to grab a frying pan.

The cradle in Russia had various forms. There were hollowed out, and wicker, and hanging, and "roly-poly" ones. Their names were surprisingly varied: cradle, unsteady, coliche, rocking chairs, lullaby. But a number of traditions are associated with the cradle, which remained unchanged. For example, it was considered necessary to place the cradle in the place where the baby could watch the dawn. Rocking an empty cradle was considered bad luck. We believe in these and many other beliefs to this day. After all, all the traditions of the ancestors were based on their personal experience, which the new generation adopted from their ancestors.