sed to have originally partaken of the
nature of a sacrifice. After these songs are over ought to come the
game known as the "burial of the gold." The last ring remaining in the
prophetic bowl is taken out by one of the girls, who keeps it
concealed in her hand. The others sit in a circle, resting their hands
on their knees. She walks slowly round, while the first four lines are
sung in chorus of the song beginning, "See here, gold I bury, I bury."
Then she slips the ring into one of their hands, from which it is
rapidly passed on to another, the song being continued the while. When
it comes to an end the "gold burier" must try to guess in whose hand
the ring is concealed. This game is a poetical form of our "hunt the
slipper." Like many other Slavonic customs it is by some archaeologists
traced home to Greece. By certain mythologists the "gold" is supposed
to be an emblem of the sun, long hidden by envious wintry clouds, but
at this time of year beginning to prolong the hours of daylight. To
the sun really refer, in all probability, the bonfires with which
Christmastide, as well as the New Year and Midsummer is greeted in
Russia. In the Ukraine the sweepings from a cottage are carefully
preserved from Christmas Day to New Year's Day, and are then burnt in
a garden at sunrise. Among some of the Slavs, such as the Servians,
Croatians, and Dalmatians, a _badnyak_, or piece of wood answering to
the northern Yule-log, is solemnly burnt on Christmas Eve. But the
significance originally attached to these practices has long been
forgotten. Thus the grave attempts of olden times to search the
secrets of futurity have degenerated into the sportive guesses of
young people, who half believe that they may learn from omens at
Christmas time what manner of marriages are in store for them.
Divinings of this kind are known to all lands, and bear a strong
family likeness; but it is, of course, only in a cold country that a
spinster can find an opportunity of sitting beside a hole cut in the
surface of a frozen river, listening to prophetic sounds proceeding
from beneath the ice, and possibly seeing the image of the husband who
she is to marry within the year trembling in the freezing water.
Throughout the whole period of the _Svyatki_, the idea of marriage
probably keeps possession of the minds of many Russian maidens, and on
the eve of the Epiphany, the feast with which those Christmas holidays
come to an end, it is still said to be the