Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 7 1889.djvu/130

122 Only married men with their wives and children up to seven years old took part in this festival, which was termed Bulaman molyan, or the midwife's festival, and was held in the evening. The children on this occasion were called "the grand-children," both of Bulaman Patyai (Ange Patyai's cognomen for the nonce), and of the midwives that assisted at their births. Each of them brought the midwife a pie of millet groats, a honey-cake, and a loaf of sifted flour bread. The father brought a pail of puré, and now-a-days brings concealed in the breast of his coat a flask of the brandy so hateful to Ange Patyai. But he drinks it secretly lest the goddess see it and be angry. The mother brings a pie of groats an ell long, and two cakes of the same length, while the children bring a shoulder of boiled pork and veal. She ties her present and that of such children as are too small to carry their own gifts into a piece of white cloth, and then sews on two long straps. Baring her shoulders she puts the burden round her neck and attaches it crosswise with the straps. After putting on her fur coat she marches off followed by the children. On reaching the gateway she takes a small child by the hand, and in the district of the Nizhegorod, among the Russianised Teryukhans, sings:

When this song of greeting is concluded the family gets under cover; the mother throws off her fur coat, and turning round enters the room backwards. The midwife approaches her saying:

"We supplicate for mercy on thy house and thy possessions."

With one hand she lays hold of the bundle, and with the other