Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/135

 Rh smell of garlic, onions, and rotten fish that soon filled the air, the excess to which the guests carried their libations, and the disgusting conduct in which most of them indulged, made them unendurable to foreigners. It was not an uncommon thing even for ladies, who took their meals apart from the men, to be carried home unconscious, and when: their hostess sent to inquire for them the next day, the correct answer, their tribute to the hospitable entertainment they had received, was, 'I was so merry yesterday that I do not know how I got home!'

Amongst devout folk, religious observances were strangely mingled with all this carousing. The clergy were invited and set in the place of honour; they paid their score in prayers and ceremonies of various kinds, blessed the food and drink, and burned incense in every room in the house. Sometimes, in imitation of the practice in the monasteries, a monstrance containing 'the host of the Blessed Virgin' was placed upon the table. The meal was stopped now and then, and psalms were sung. Beggars were fed in the antechamber, and some were even made to sit down among the other guests. The seclusion of the terem was broken, and the two sexes met. Players on instruments and jugglers fanned the general merriment, and filthy songs rang on the air.

Amongst the peasants, the feast took the name of 'private beer,' because it presupposed the permission, only occasionally granted, to brew strong drinks, beer, fermented liquors, or hydromel, all of which were monopolies. This authorization could be had for three days, or even for a week, at the great festivals, and when the period closed, the fiscal authorities sealed up the various drinks until the next feast-day came.

The brattchiny were also called ssypnyié (from ssypat, to pour together). In ancient days the shares were probably paid in wheat, poured on to the same heap. These collective banquets, which were presided over by an elected staroste, enjoyed a judicial autonomy, of which some remnants existed down to the seventeenth century. The quarrels between persons present at them were not amenable to the ordinary tribunals. The proverb, 'We will brew no beer with that man,' indicates the nature of these feasts, symbolic of an alliance, an action taken in common. At them peasants and nobles met in perfect equality. But disorderly scenes, scuffles, even murders, were of more frequent occurrence here than at private gatherings. Wherefore pious folk generally avoided them. The drinking was excessive. Vladimir had already written, Roussi vésselé piti: nié mojet bez tavo byti ('The joy of Russia is to drink: she could not do without it'). Joy, tenderness, sympathy, a whole gamut of feeling, found its expression in the bowl. A man got dead drunk to