II. ECO-HISTORICAL CONTEXTS

A. Ecological Umwelt

Two sides of Daugava River never part (Rainis)

The music languages of a culture have social, religious, political, historical, technological, cognitive, and geographic aspects. As J. von Uexkull (1909) and after him others pointed out, each social group has its own social Umwelt, life-world, or cognitive space map even if it shares the same ecological Umwelt.

The only truly observable environment is the one a group perceives and uses, and, in particular, the set of resources and constraints that it recognizes as such in speech and practice...(and identified by) technological analysis. (Sigaut, 444)

However, the cultural geographer includes the landscape worked on by humans, and like pre-industrial people, sees a human as part of his environment. He acknowledges that human beings have long-term geographical references, such as assembly and sacred places. Latvians have traditionally seen themselves as part of their ecosystem, and in the past in pre-industrial times they viewed themselves as reacting to the environment. The econational organization VAF was influential in the political activities of the Singing Revolution period and continues to have broad support. Issues surrounding current forest cutting and small-scale farming are central in collision of ecology and economy concerns. Econationalism, as a complex relation of plant and animal extending to human cultures, is not inherently a denial of change, but rather a rejection of change that seeks to jettison the cultural foundations for adaptation and change that enabled the society to survive through successively changing historical conditions. Cultures are an adaptation to their environment. While not determined by it, the environment does act as a network of shaping forces and constraints. Constraints are not even inherently conservative. Constraints often encourage creativity. The possibilities thrown up by the environment are not endless, but in the Baltic they have been sufficient for people to survive there for thousands of years, generations connected to each other through the web of environment and culture. Within a larger post Communist Eastern Europe frame, everything may be radically changing within two decades of a worst of the East and West onslaught.

Many reflexive dainas associate human life not only with nature (daba) but also with modes and means of subsistence and production with the attendant implications of distribution of resources and access to them and the division of labor with resulting social implications, summed up as darbs (work). Noting the sacred aspect, life can be described with the title of a classic work by Anna Brigadere, Dievs, daba, darbs (God, Nature, Work). Art, including music, expresses this association, and the daina world is a concretization of the view.

What is specific and what is generalized varies according to the view depending on grain and focus. The song traditionally sung at national and regional Song Festivals, sometimes as a spontaneous audience “alternative hymn,” emphasizes the commonaltity which people from the different Latvian social Umwelts share:

Daugav’ abas malas mūžam nesadalas:

I Kurzeme, I Vidzeme, I Latgale mūsu.

Laime, par mums lemi! Dod mums mūsu

zemi!

Viena mēle, viena dvēsle, Viena zeme mūsu.

Two sides of the Daugava, never divide:

Kurzeme, Vidzeme, Latgale ours.

Laime, decree over us! Give us our land!

One tongue, one soul, one land ours.

(lyrics - Jānis Rainis, music - Jānis Norvelis)

The point is not to define with attributes what this land, tongue, and soul is. The point is to affirm unity as a construction of belief and will. In the case of a small country such as Latvia the discourses of unity and coherence instead of being oppressive discourses of cultural hegemony and standardization to a common norm have been a means of opposing external hegemony that is more oppressive. Unity has enabled the construction of an alternative subjectivity from the fragmentation imposed on the culture by patronizing or hostile marginalizing stereotypes.

Geographically, as well as culturally the Daugava River – Mother Daugava, the largest in Latvia, naturally divides Latvia into east (Vidzeme and Latgale provinces) and west (Kurzeme, Zemgale). The east - west division reflects basic differences in culture and history. Latvia also divides into nine to thirteen ethnographic regions as to music, costume, language, and various traditions. (See discussion in Ancītis, 1997:6–8, who prefers the poetic pār deviņi novadiņi nine regions.) Broadly these divisions follow the territories of the five original peoples or tribes in the territory of modern Latvia. Four of the peoples were dominantly Indo-European kurši, zemgaļi, sēļi, and latgaļi and the fifth, the līvi, were Finno-Ugric. The dominant linguistic position is that the kurši were descendants of West Baltic peoples with a West Baltic language most closely related to the prūši (Old Prussians) exterminated or assimilated by Germans. All other surviving Baltic peoples, including the Latvians and Lithuanians are descendants of Eastern Balts. Other Baltic peoples lost their identity and were absorbed by neighboring peoples. There are dainas about going to war or to get a bride in wealthy prūši-land, also mythically associated with the setting of the sun, and historically with the land of amber.

Preceding romantic nationalism regional peoples developed extended social networks beyond those of kinship by creating marriage, work, commercial, and other resource-sharing alliances among neighbors. Similarity in language would have facilitated easy sharing of symbolic commonalities and a preference for alliances. Remarkably, as the daina phrase “to sing Estonian style” indicates, people found a way to communicate even under the extremes of two different language families when living as neighbors.

The Daugava formed part of an ancient trading route, the Amber Route, which was part of a system that connected the Baltic to the Black Sea through a series of river passages from pre-Roman times. Later the Vikings traversed this route carrying amber to markets in the Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula and India. Latvians have an Indo-European pioneering farmer legacy with much lore about clearing the forests to create farms. Coastal people were Finno-Ugric (Liv) fishermen. The historical homeland of the Liv people is along the coast in the north. In pre-conquest history prior to 1200 CE Vidzeme had a mixed population of peoples related to the Estonians as well as Eastern Balts. Influence and contact with Estonians was highly competitive in this province. Western and southern Latvian peoples interacted with the Lithuanians to the south. After the defeat of the Zemgalian people, by the invading Knights of the Cross in the 13^th century, sources speak of many Zemgalians fleeing to settle among the Zemaitians in Lithuania. There were Baltic-speaking peoples to the east of Latgale with settlements stretching almost to present day Moscow, which were assimilated into expanding Russia. Today the heaviest Russian-speaking population is in some regions of Latgale, especially in the border. The term “Latvian” derives from the Latgalian tribe, which was historically most numerous.

Latvia has been classified in terms of Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, and an in-between “shatter zone”. Not wholly East and not wholly West from the viewpoint of Western civilization, it is seen as a hinterland or outlying region and simultaneously as a crossroads.

Paradoxically, though a land of crossroads, it has also been a land of preserves in terms of long-standing, stabilized ecology and conservative language and traditions. Tourists today seek out rare ecological flora and fauna, long gone in Western Europe and even Scandinavia. There is still discussion in terms of “people and the land” (zeme un tauta). The Baltic was the holdout of the last pagans of Europe and some of its traditions has more of the pre-Christian than the Christian. History classes include discussions on subject peoples, serfs, and national awakening. The social reality that has emerged from these pre-Christain roots is grounded in values and worldviews that are relatively egalitarian and nonhierarchical and potentially tolerant.

Latvian traditional culture is strongly associated with nature. Animism slides into nature worship. Trees were thought to have souls. The dead were buried in the forest and their spirits were believed to enter trees as well as other forms of life. Trees and groves known to have been sacred are recognized today. In Old Prussia Christian missionaries were tolerated until they attempted to destroy the sacred groves. One of the most powerful anthologies of poetry, Dzīvs Priedes Čiekurs (A Living Pine Cone) associates Latvian identity and ecology.

Catholic Latgale is thought of in terms of its lakes, the Catholic church at Aglona to which annual pilgrimages are made, amber color pottery with elaborate figurines, greater material poverty, and a larger Russian population. Zemgale, the area of last pagan military resistance, has rich soil for prosperous farms, skirts of complex ornamental weaving, and traditional blue-glazed pottery. Vidzeme is known for the winding Gauja River valley with sandstone caves, the influence of Moravian Brethren on its culture, and the colorful historical Tālava region, which in early times was an area of conflict between Estonian and Latvian tribespeople. Kurzeme has forests with elk and boar, Liv fishing villages, and was home to both seafaring Latvian “Vikings” and the Viking colony at Grobiņa. Regions have not been evenly collected for folklore. Thus the Lieljumprava region on the Kurzeme side of the Daugava was an area, according to Pumpurs’s childhood memories “wild with forest, swamp, the old (pagan) religion and a source of stories about witches and magicians,” while the adjoining region across the river was the source of more folk songs than any other and was also rich in tales and legends. (Rudzītis: 42) The Bearslayer tales that formed the core of Purmpur’s literary epic came from these two regions, though tales about the offspring of a bear and human can be found throughout Latvia, and of course, throughout northern Eurasia. (Ibid: 46, 62)

Latvia is located in northeastern Europe on the Baltic Sea, a part of the Great European lowland Plain. Its area is about 64,589 sq. km, its elevation 89 m above sea level, its climate maritime tending to continental, modified by the Gulf Stream, and moist. With a nature zone between the vegetation of Northern and Central Europe, there is considerable diversity of flora and fauna, especially birds with 300+ species, some rare such as the black stork. The result of uncultivated glacial moraines, southern and northern flora can be found close together. The forests and are rich with mushrooms and berries, an important element of the food supply. Of about 7850 plant species, 30 are protected. Almost half of the territory is naturally bog and forest, and it has many lakes, rivers, and the remains of manor lands. It is as yet a place for nature lovers to visit for what has vanished from most of Europe, though since independence and the entrance of neo-liberal free market economy, the forests are being cleared being a prime source of export income. Linguistically, it is also a rich source of information, along with Lithuanian. (cf Goba, 1997: 108-134)

Latvia’s neighbors are Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south, the three being called the Baltic States. In the east Belarus and Russia. Across the Baltic Sea are Sweden and Finland. The Republic of Latvia was founded on November 18, 1918, occupied by the Soviet Union (1940-1941, 1945-1991) and Nazi Germany (1941-1945). On August 21, 1991 Latvia declared the restoration of its independence, shortly thereafter recognized by Russia, the US and other countries. Western countries never recognized Latvia’s annexation by the Soviet Union.

Rhythms of Nature, Humans and the Cosmos

That is the section heading, “Cilvēka, dabas un Visuma ritmi” in Ansis Ataols Bērziņš web site (funded by Soros, LIIS, and Latnet) on Latvian folklore with emphasis on music and music ensembles. Pīgozne in a paper delivered at a 3 x 3 intensive summer culture workshop held in Garezers, Michigan (August 2000) notes that Latvians still invoke Nature in their everyday thinking: “In our language we use such concepts as Nature has given, Nature has endowed, talent given by Nature, the gift of Nature.” (Daba devusi, Daba apveltījusi, Dabas dots talants, Dabas veltes.) In the west everything usually is given by God.” Bērziņš (ansis@folklora.lv), a musician, mathematician, and programmer notes the emotional as well as rational meaning to humans of the movements of the heavenly bodies, the yearly cycle, and the change of day and night:

Humans are strongly associated to these natural rhythms. Humans are a part of nature, have developed as a part of it, and can only feel satisfied when they follow it. Everything you do – sleeping and being awake, walking, blinking – it is all in accord with nature. If a person tries to be independent of them, he becomes worn down and unhappy. For instance, if a person sleeps during the day and not at night, he feels worse. Or if he takes one step longer with one foot than the other, he will become tired more quickly than if he went normally.

Bērziņš goes on to acknowledge that what is considered rhythmical, however, is highly individualized or learned in culture, “Nevertheless, we ourselves are the primary determiners of rhythm, and what we feel or do not feel as rhythmical, is simultaneously emotional and rational.”

As one reviews the many Latvian writings on the connection between ecology and traditional culture, one is struck how similar are general aspects of worldview among other integrated cultures. Thus a description of Australian aboriginal culture song cycle related to its ecology could be rewritten for the Latvian daina corpus that also reflects the different regions and also is permeated with a sense of magic connection:

The song cycle, or singing up the country, reflects the stars, winds, smells, temperatures, and visual land forms by which travelers navigate. The country will reveal itself only if the song cycle is performed correctly and the dance rhythms emit and evoke the right vibrations. Song and dance are not separate art forms. They are the means by which humans interact with and attune to the resonances of Earth, the heavens, and all plants, animals, and land forms. It is only through the constant maintenance of these unseen networks of Earth magnetism, cosmic winds, energies, and the communication waves of universal existence that the health and well-being of the tribes in their lands can be guaranteed. (Bell: 30)

In the daina world disharmony and disruptive change are on the balance viewed negatively as threatening to social survival, while the normative and ordered is stressed as positive. The Latvian word for "evil" ļauns (Karulis I: 552) specifically refers to social disruption by excessive selfish individualism, rather than abstract ethical or moral transgression. Co-operative personal bonds are the glue of the society, and discord is a potentially deadly threat.

Rituals, stylistic repetition, parallelism and geometric generation are all processes that emphasize rule-governed, regular, orderly progression and transformation in a life threatened by disorder, particularly when catastrophe threatens or strikes. The myths explain that the struggle is for constructive order against destructive chaos. The tendency to find regularity pleasing is biological and necessary for the learning of a young human child. Repetition, replication, and redundancy are principles that operate in nonlinear dynamic self-organizing systems, including biological and cultural systems. Regularity, order, and homeostasis are involved in the health of biological organisms. Regular cradling movements or heartbeats comforts newborn mammals.

Tradition can be seen in one view as a human construction against the greater reality of entropic change. Tradition gives a sense of security in deep and in superficial levels. As Heraclitus said, all IS change, so the struggle is more to organize and create than to change. Tradition enables or makes creation possible by providing both ground and construction elements to manipulate. This is consistent with learning theory that considers repetition as a way of learning and constraints as necessary for creativity.

Mazulāns in his book on geometric patterns derived from the plaiting and weaving process, starting with black and white strips weaving baskets and bast-shoes, shows how the medium conserves and constrains the basic patterns found in Latvian art. The geometrics of textiles are the dominant medium and are projected on other mediums, which are not constrained by the weaving process itself. This creates a mathematical order of endlessly derivable patterns and forms. Mazulāns demonstrates the mathematical relationship of patterns in one media to another by showing how complex lozenges, spirals, and meanders etched on a metal bracelet can be constructed by putting together basic weaving squares (Mazulāns: 104-111). This mathematically related mental world of geometrics is related to a sense of dynamic harmony. Mazulāns uses the daina term saskan (to be in harmony) and considers certain forms to be inherent in nature and discovered by human technology. In his study he shows how the techniques of plaiting, tying, and weaving form a historically timeless basis for the basic geometric ornaments that are found from the earliest times of human technology and are an eternally recurrent discovery of the laws of nature on which the order of the universe is based and reflected in the ”the simplest, oldest lines and forms created by human hands…found on the walls of caves, cliffs, and on objects used in the distant past.” (Mazulāņs: 193).

From rhythmical order a plait is created...We can see from the earliest times the mental ability and development to plait together living fibers, discovering the principle that plaiting together dark and light fibers one creates diagonal lines, which further lead to other ornaments with a sense and power of life and magic.” (Mazulāns: 196)

He likens chaos and death to a lack of rhythm and order, and considers the aesthetic enjoyment of pattern to be not only universal, but also specifically constrainable to basic everyday technology. As have a number of other Latvians, he feels he can rediscover much of the “spirit of Latvian tradition” (to appropriate the title of Glassie’s study The Spirit of Folk Art) by isolating a few basic widespread and deeply embedded elements. Contemplating the laws that interrelate them, he arrives at a sense of Latvian ecology and related pre-industrial work, and social processes. Contemplative logic is seen as an entry into the spirit of the daina world, especially when a number of people come to similar conclusions.

That the basic patterns of culture are recurrently and redundantly expressed seems to also be the conclusion of traditional dance specialist H. Sūna:

What is characteristic of all expressive layers in Latvian social cheoreography is the geometric solution...in the dance floor choreographic logic is consistent with social thought: a dialogue of partners. In terms of compositional solution social choreography also continues to preserve and utilize the most elementary type of behavior – the monologue (with everyone having equal rights to dance freely over the entire dance space), thus endlessly creating choreographically plastic individual expression multiformed multivariants. A mass dance psychology of long standing rules. To that everyone submits, from beginner to professionally sophisticated dancer. (Sūna, 1988: 133-4)

Ecological grounding

A fundamental touchstone of socio-cultural stability and continuity, as observed in the dainas, is the ecological environment. Ecology under pre-industrial conditions is seen as a relative constant greater than the human islands where the members come, grow, and go in observable time of birth and death. Baltic populations have had thousands of years to adapt to their ecology.

In each forest and homestead

Its own mirror -

One river, a hundred-eyed seeer of all,

In which all is written.

(Nora Kalna, Dzīvs Priedes Ciekurs, p. 111)

In this part of the world with high forest regeneration and low carrying capacity, and land marginal for primitive farming, emerged a labor-intensive mixed economy (fishing, gathering berries and mushrooms and wild plants, hunting small game in the adjacent woods, beekeeping, in addition to herding and land cultivation) with low population density and a homestead settlement pattern (with only a few towns) was the way of life until the 19th century for almost all of the eponymous people. Scattered homesteads or hamlets most strongly contrast the Balts from the Slavs, the latter living together in larger households (zadrugas) and villages. (cf Dini: 216) Only the ten percent or so of the ruling Baltic German landowner class, who lived off native labor, were not directly dependent on ecology. For the 90% of the population, the native one, low levels of hierarchy and other social organization, and relative egalitarianism, even among the sexes, were consistent with pretty much the same ecological constraints as in the 13th century. People continued to live scattered in small agricultural groups.

Therefore, even though the historical data is incomplete, various aspects of pre-industrial life can be reconstructed as variables and constants are identified and interrelated within a system. This life was and to some degree continued to be an example of the “materially simple, spiritually complex” (Glassie, 1989: 252) type of society with a social order that is basic and therefore primal, a description that also fits the constructed daina world.

When the Teutonic Knights came into the region in the 13th century, the Baltic tribes were in differing stages of feudalism. Only the Lithuanian king Mindaugas created a true kingdom, and in accepting Christianity won its protection. Although historical and political conditions changed dramatically from the 13th century on and the formerly free farmer was gradually turned into a near-slave serf, the basic ecology of the region, notwithstanding some unusual climate fluctuations, remained relatively stable for successive generations. Dorothea and Norman Whitten's From Myth to Creation (1988) document "the structure and dynamics of rain‑forest life through myth, legend, song, and graphic arts" (p. 6) finding "imagery derived from a thorough ecological knowledge " (p. 26) which results in an organization of powers into spheres of water, forest, and domestic garden. These broadly agree with the work of Ivar Paulson's The Old Estonian Folk Religion (1971) both in specifics of the division of spheres of culture and nature and in the general sense that experiences in different forms of expression are in some kind of resonance in a culture that is well integrated with its ecology. As stated before, one of the deep structure aspects of dainas is likening the human world to the world of nature in the forest and/or sea. This is another parallelism to Kaluli perspectives with "essential unity of natural history and symbolism" whereby "human relationships are reflected in the ecology and natural order of the forest" (Feld, p. 45).

It is this syntactic (and sometimes semantic) relationship of nature and culture that is found in societies with low levels of social stratification that has meaning for the person immersed in daina culture. This, rather than superficial semantic similarities or romanticism, is more likely what attracts many Latvians to such cultures attuned to their ecology such as the native American.

Dzīvs Priedes Ciekurs is one of the most powerful poetry collections from the Soviet occupation period is an anthology with almost all the contemporary poets of Latvia. Its subject is trees and trees that are poisoned from industrial chemicals or cut for lumber to be sold. But the anthology is really about Latvia and Latvians. The socioecological base of Latvian traditional culture was subject to Soviet "bulldozing" policies as people were deported and the country forcibly collectivized and the economy industrialized. A culture that survives for thousands of years does so because it has made sound ecological adaptation and has come up with solid solutions for its survival. The Soviet methods were inappropriate to the ecology and exploited the people. Under occupation addressing the ecological issues was metaphorical for addressing issues of Latvian survival. Nothing was felt to be a greater source of beauty and meaning than what can be enjoyed of the forest, lake, or seashore. These are the centers of concrete and real meaning, of rest and refreshment, and the source of the dainas.

All the gods deceive us and leave us

In the dust of earth, in the smoke of earth,

Booming rolls away the thunderwagon,

Dear Mara turns her cheek away from us.

Only Forest Mother as before

Takes us into her green home.

With resin smell she treats us

Strawberry flowers she spreads a sheet.

(Ārija Elksne, Dzīvs Priedes Čiekurs, p. 65)

Unfortunately following the few years of independence, the forests in Latvia are now being cut to generate short-term profits for the few who do not share in the ecological view. The largely unspoiled seashore with flora and fauna no longer found elsewhere in Europe, ironically preserved because it was militarily restricted during the Soviet period, is also in danger now from aggressive and largely unrestricted market forces.

Co-evolution

In contrast to older sociobiology wherein environment shaped the organism, co-evolution relates the living organism and supra-organisms like society to their environment in a cybernetic feedback relationship, each affecting the other. (cf Durham) In changing their ecological environments, in the long term humans alter their own selection pressures for survival and therefore their genetic information. In the intermediate term, over the course of decades and centuries, changes to the ecology affect economic, social and political processes and relationships. There are examples such as Central America where slash and burn agriculture transformed formerly rich, sheltering forest lands to barren hills unable to sustain the complex ecological systems necessary for relatively dense human habitation. In the Baltic region co-evolution evolved gradually permitting eco-cultural niches of considerable stability to form. The dainas evoke a spirit of co-evolution. A daina observes the field is beautiful untouched by man, but claims it more beautiful when ploughed. Humans are said to ornament or enhance nature without harming it. Their ordering of nature is seen as positive. Equally, dainas speak of nature as the source and shaper of a human and the sky god rides down from the mountain gently, without disturbing a blade of grass.

Singing link of culture and nature

Singing is seen as a part of the ecology and is explicitly equated to the process of living. The deepest roots of song are sourced in nature; dainas inform that the cradle of a great singer was hung next to the forest so she could learn from the nightingale, and ultimately from the goddess Laima. Singing is a fundamental way to bridge nature and culture. Nature is the ground of culture, though most dainas are not about nature in itself, but about humans and human society. Everything in life is accompanied by song. It is also opposed to weeping and sorrow. This attitude is not naïve or romantic, but comes from a life of hardship and limitations, and is a concrete and effective way of dealing with adversity.

Bēda, mana liela bēda, Es par bēdu nebēdāju.

Liku bēdu zem akmeņa, Pāri gāju dziedādama.

Sorrow, my great sorrow, I didn’t sorrow overlong.

I placed sorrow under a rock, went over it singing.

When the daina tradition was still entirely living among the people, each Latvian grew in it naturally and learned it together with everyday speech. But that ethnographic environment, in which the daina tradition develops, has long since disappeared. The daina world that has been rewritten down on paper is a created virtual reality that reflects an earlier physical and social reality, not that of today. (Vīķe - Freibergs, 1997:13)

The females of the society are seen as the special guardians of the knowledge that relates nature and culture in terms of color symbolism to fire, sun, blood, and life:

Šorīt agri Saule lēca Sarkanēja kociņēje.

Jaunas meitas gudras bija, To kociņu paglabāja;

Jauni puiši veci tapa, To kociņu meklēdami. (Tdz 54 989)

This morning Sun rose in the red tree.

The young girls are wise; they are safe-keeping the tree;

The young boys became old looking for that tree.

In other songs the tree is identified as the cosmic tree with silver leaves, gold branches, and copper roots.

B. Social organization

In terms of evolutionary typology, the kind that is used to characterize societies on social evolution related to technology, social structure, and integration (summaries in Childe 1951, Sahlins 1972, Glassman 1986), the daina world, even as collected in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, is little concerned with the level of state organization and power. What is most relevant in the daina world is a level of organization that would have been to some degree understandable to their ancestors, living in a somewhat ranked society characteristic of early feudalism on homesteads or in hamlets. This is not that different structurally from a still earlier loose clan family system, which is still rather strongly egalitarian on the everyday level where the salient decisions about what is relevant on the farm are made by family members. Some of the characteristics of a pioneering society characteristic of simple cultivators were perpetuated for a long time in Latvia because of the low carrying capacity of the land, relatively sparse population, and high degree of forest regeneration. The characteristic settlement pattern of the Latgalians was that of farmsteads or hamlets of 3 - 7 farmsteads, with settlements more thickly concentrated in villages and around hill-forts or castles along the borders with other peoples from whom one might expect war raids. (Arheoloģija un etnografija, V, p. 6.) According to the 1959 dissertation of A. Krastiņa, Zemnieku dzīvojamās ēkas, cited by H. Strods (“Vidzemes etnogrāfijas avotu un pētījumu apskats,” Arheoloģija un Etnogrāfija, V, p. 21): “ The oldest type of farmer dwelling is the nams, whose earliest appearance is associated with the entry of Balts (into the Baltic), but the persistence of the threshing barn as dwelling (in Vidzeme) with Finno-Ugric traditions, German aggression, and the difficult material conditions of the Latvian peasant.”

The primary social organization continued to consist of interdependent kin and neighbors. Thus, Merkel: “Latvians lived in the forest, separately, in huts, but Estonians in fortified villages; this difference persists even today.” (Merkel: 31) Until the last century relevant Latvian folk society approximated the das Volk – small, illiterate, regional, relatively homogenous, relatively isolated, traditional, and group-oriented within regions each having its distinct dialect, traditional dress, songs, and other long-term shared traditions and group identity. Learning is essentially informal rather than institutional, face-to-face, and associated with a concrete context and applications to work in fields, forests, or fishing.. Most of the population was agrarian, with a smaller number of fishermen with Rīga and a few other cities as areas of urban contrast. Gypsies and Jewish peddlers dominated among people regularly making their travels through the homesteads. Consistent with performance studies, my focus is on relationships in praxis, in the differential as well as the shared, in conflict and negotiation and diversity that may be hidden to the outsider as seeming homogeneity, screening dysfunctionality as well as functionality.

The concept of reciprocity, as classically worked out by Mauss (1925) in his study of gift exchange, influenced by Malinowski, and subsequently generalized by Polanyi (1944), Levi-Strauss (1949), Sahlins (1972) and others was of considerable relevance to the everyday life of Latvians even in the l9th century. While redistribution by a central figure of authority on the state level certainly existed, it was controlled by powers seen as outsiders, namely the society of German manor barons on the local level and whatever state power applied to the region on the highest level. Traditions relating to exchange do not seem to refer to the latter. Even today many Latvians on the everyday level think in terms of sharing reciprocity and trust among familiars versus distrust of strangers, rather than in terms of limited exchange of market economy and mercantile economy, though there are rapid changes as Western market-oriented values flood in. Exchange is socially constituted with implied social relations. Social relations are not, however, reducible to ecological or economic factors.

The clan (dzimta) men were known as bāliņi, the clan women as māsiņas. Outsiders who could potentially become in-laws in an exogamous arrangement were known as tautieši. The two biggest divisions between potentially friendly neighbors, was that of radi (kin) and tautas (potential in-laws). The focus of concern is on the family level, dually organized as to labor by gender: managed, headed, and personified by the persons of saimnieks, pats (male head of household) and saimniece, pate/i (female head of household). The people who live in the homestead are known as a saime, which includes fieldworkers (meitas (lit. girls), puiši (lit. boys) of both sexes who are not necessarily related. Where this arrangement is called “patriarchal”, it is taken as a given, rather than substantiated, nor have I seen compelling evidence in dainas that the saimniece is hierarchically subordinated on the household level. Such duality, however, is not necessarily recognized outside the homestead structure or by the manor system dominated by the German landlord, which would be expected to impose the etic patriarchal construct of a state society, rather than acknowledging differences that might be in emic terms as consistent with the level of social structure and organization most relevant to the farmstead. Further, the representative of the household to the outside world would more likely be a male, conforming to cross-cultural expectations.

Kinship was bilateral shifting according to needs. Dainas clearly identify three kinds of brothers (trejādi bāleliņi) who owe protection – father’s brothers, mother’s brothers, and īstie or one’s own “real” brothers. Unlike the Russian pattern of a zadruga, Latvians seem to have preferred independent farmsteads than large villages. Dainas speak of tensions within a large household and instability when several brothers attempt to live together with their wives (ietaļas):

Apgāzās vācelīte, Iztecēja kamoliņi;

Sabārās ietaļiņas, Izšķīrās bāleliņi. (LD 23679)

The yarn-ball container turned over, the yarn balls rolled out.

The sisters-in-law feuded, the brothers divided (took up separate residence).

The level of household integration, based largely on kinship and neighbor relations, such as cooperative work or bees (talka) was also sufficiently flexible to respond to circumstances and opportunities. Thus female inheritance was preferably in movable goods, consistent with preferred patrilocal marriage, but an optional iegātnis system existed to keep the land within the family if there were only daughters with female inheritance of land. The significant interactions and interrelations depicted are of intimate character within small social groups based on kinship relations and neighbors. A practical subsistence existence, the economic underpinning of egalitarian social structure, was ensured into modern times by surplus being collected by the foreign landlords. The concept of tribute (mesli) to a conqueror evolves into taxes and corvee; in the dainas, the mistreated serf sometimes refers to himself with the old word for “slave” or “war captive” – vargs/ vergs. It is as if a family-level society, which earlier had developed as an adaptation to fluctuating resources in terms of subsistence farming, were artificially conserved because it was not allowed to develop into structurally more complex forms. The growth of Riga into a cosmopolitan trading center as well as the hope of Latvians who escaped there to become “free” is a separate consideration, not taken up here. The significant daina-numbers about the semi-mythical city indicate that the peasants did see this as a practical alternative.

To what degree is a warrior society reflected in the daina world, one of an emerging or developed Dumezilian warrior class as opposed to farmer-raiders and farmer-defenders? The Finnish peoples do not have war or warrior songs as such, though their heroes battle mostly supernatural opponents, and the Proto-Balts who came into the Baltic area were not organized on that level either. One would not expect a heroic epic tradition as reflecting a developed military aristocracy to have been able to develop until a few centuries before the German conquest at a period when clans had evolved to chiefdoms and petty kingdoms. No epic tradition has been found in the Baltic.

The question to what degree daina society was egalitarian as opposed to hierarchical and to what degree male gender ideology would be contested or seen as complementary is a complex problem. Certainly status and role of women in society can strongly diverge from metaphorical use of the feminine in that culture as mythical or spiritual powers of engenderment, transformation, initiation, or activation. However, in traditional Latvian society dual construction of gender seems to have some correspondence to real-life society with strong egalitarian features. Feminist scholars, such as Rayna Rapp point out that as states emerge, and in particular when colonization is involved, the record of what was earlier gender complementarily and parallelism is often distorted to fit a hierarchical patriarchal model: “leadership and authority are assigned to activities which are male, while female tasks and roles are devalued, or obliterated.” (Rapp: 313). Certainly indigenous Baltic laws of inheritance were less patriarchal than those imposed by manor culture. The labor of women and men was interdependent, and women participated in the different types of agricultural work. The relatively higher position of Baltic women has been emphasized by a number of Lithuanian scholars: “The enslavement of women, typical of Proto-Slavic tribes, constituted the essential difference between Balts and Slavs...The Proto-Slavic custom of having several wives contradicted the Baltic system.” (Vycinas, 95 citing Jurate Statkute de Rozales, “I pasaulio scena izengia slavai,” Dirva (Cleveland, Ohio), 29 September 1983) Curiously there are even some dainas that reverse what would be the expected wish of a young woman in a husband, if young then handsome, if old then rich:

Kumeļ, manu kumeliņu, Ved man skaistu līgaviņu.

Ja ved jaunu, tad ved skaistu, Ja ved vecu, tad bagātu. (43987)

Horse, my horse, bring me a pretty wife.

If you bring me a new one, then a pretty one. If an old one, then a rich one.

Marrying a woman for property is consistent with early medieval custom in other European countries. Grave markers showing marriages of landowning females to younger husbands by even 7-10 years attest that this was the case in at least Zemgale of the 18th and 19th c. (Elizabete Rūtens, personal communication, referring to study by Ina Lastoveca, Līvberga pagasta vēsture, 2000.) In a completely patriarchal society, women would not own land, so that only a girl could have the problem of choosing between a young handsome or rich older husband. Additionally the iegātnis system where a daughter inherited land if she had no brothers and took a husband, who was holding power only, but never had right to the land, was another optional marriage contract.

A daughter received inheritance in movable form and this inheritance was retained by her to give to her daughters rather than passing to the her husband’s ownership:

Nāc, Laimiņ, dalībās, Māt ar meitu dalījās:

Šķir aitiņas, šķir telītes, Šķir baltās vilnānītes.(LD 16 412, 1)

Come, Laima, to the dividing; mother and daughter were dividing:

They divided the sheep, divided the calves, divided the white wool shawls.

Consensual divorce does appear to be mentioned: “let us part, tautieti, fortune is not with us living together” (šķiramiesi mēs tautieti, mums nav laimes dzīvojot). Historical sources denounce spouses leaving each other, and it may have been a social problem. When it does occur it is seen as destiny in the dainas. The name tautietis, elsewhere tautu dēls (meita), instead of “husband” or “wife,” emphasizes belonging to another clan or family and only gradual assimilation into the household.

The emphasis on mūžiņš (lifetime) in marriage appears superfluous, unless there were alternatives. Possibly clasping hands as a betrothal pledge may have old roots in the case of hand-festing surviving in Celtic customs as contractual marriage for a limited time. The many songs speaking of “marriage for life” (mūžiņam) might otherwise be superfluous and may suggest that other models could have been known: “Sasēda liepiņa Ar ozoliņu; Mūžam sasēda, Ne vienu dienu.” (Linden sat with oak, sat for life, not one day.”)

The labor of women was not only essential, but also recognized, which required some travel. A female going out to seek work and being hired as “girl” (meita) is common in Latvian folklore. Such female labor is noted by Warren Roberts in his analysis of AA-Th 480 and related tales (p.130). Females as well as males may travel to Otherworlds to become servants of one deity, such as Saule, and are accordingly rewarded with magical gifts. In the cycle of orphan songs, the orphan-girl becomes something of a “heroine” in that she solves puzzles, overcomes difficulties, and sometimes travels. However, she does not engage in actual combat, though she may confront dangerous beings and situations.

In a series of interviews with regional singing group leaders Pēteris Jaunzems elicits the humor, good-natured optimism, and strength of these singing women who seem to have undergone considerable trials while growing up. Thus Līne Šlampe earned extra money as a child by taking on bets with her boss. In one instance, she had to climb a high evergreen to the top and remain there without holding on. Another trial is of being able to “hold liquor”:

I remember one Midsummer. That was when I was still herding and I had a strange boss (saimnieks) – paid well but made me do all kinds of nonsense. Apparently, in a happy mood he wanted to see how a child behaves when drunk. He offered two lati if I could drink twelve glasses of beer. It was real country beer, but two lati seemed like a lot of money – the day’s pay for a male hired hand. After each of three glasses I was allowed to eat something. I drank nine fairly easily, then the tenth and eleventh. But the last one was very difficult. I hadn’t gotten to half and I could feel that the beer would not stay in. I didn’t dare throw up; then I wouldn’t get paid. The boss left someone to watch me, but could I, a child, keep the attention of a young man on Midsummer eve? He forgot his “duty,” and I didn’t waste time getting rid of the “extra liquid”. The boss waited a long time for me to get dizzy, but nothing happened.

Līna also learned to gather rare roots, and later to catch snakes for the apothecary. She therefore had money to get extra things at the market. She is characterized as a drošs un ellīgs skuķēns (a devil of a girl), like her younger sister, of three sisters. Still older she and another female friend pulled some more dangerous escapades, such as a trick on the border guards while herding cows. They walked into the sea through an inflowing creek and then made tracks on the sand as if having come out of the sea. They got caught and had to confess to the prank. In the Soviet period the seashore was guarded to keep people from escaping in boats across the Baltic Sea to Sweden.

In another interview Zenta Bērtiņa tells about how concerned at first was the assigned bus driver who was to drive elderly women and children singers around for a week-long grueling concert tour. His apprehension was changed and he discovered these elderly and young female musicians were able to come up with a song for every interesting feature they came across. Zenta answered the bus driver’s question as to the source of the songs: “From our ancestors. That is the Otaņi heritage. In one practice we were learning a new song and Alvīne said she recognized the melody. That is how her grandmother had sung it...the song chest is full and impossible to plumb.”

Some of the kinship and marriage customs described in the dainas are clearly archaic. A significant number of dainas negatively mention endogamy (“brother”-“sister” marriage, but perhaps cousin) as a means of preserving kin and land (lai radiņi biezumā – so the kin may thicken) in the context of a girl choosing to become a duck (drowning) rather than to have her mother be her mother-in law, but there doesn’t seem to be evidence for its practice. Other customs, which were practiced to recent times, suggest fluid or flexible social arrangements, including alternative marriage forms such as inheritance of land by women, the husband not inheriting the land (iegātnis system). If mythology is considered, the unusual practice of polyandry (dawn or sun maiden with sky brothers) comes up, but there is also no evidence of its practice. While often such occurrences in myth are dismissed out of hand as having no social basis, the Baltic materials have yet to be examined in terms of socio-diversity of marriage arrangements, adaptive as in the case of archaic Tibet. While there is no indication of the archaic rare but documented Siberian cases of girls raised as boys and taking on the role of men, the Baltic even has good examples of the song about the girl who went to war and who therefore as payment gains property rights to the land. The song may simply justify default male inheritance of land, though, of course, a priori assumptions can’t be made, and in any case, the need for an explanatory myth may suggest the practice is not totally taken for granted in a culture where males and females are both valued in terms of their work contribution.

A particularly interesting form of constructed Baltic kinship, was associated with bee-keeping. Since a swarm might go into someone else’s property that was originally in the forest commons, the old and new swarm keepers became “bee-brothers” bičoļi, friends who would share the honey. Algirdas Greimas notes that bičiulis and bitinkas (beekeeper) is a synonym even in modern language for “friend,” which implies equality as opposed to the terms for “herder” (Lith. bandžius, bandžiulis, bandininkas, Latv. bandenieks) that implies a proto-feudal or vassal hierarchical relationship between herder and master. (p. 165-6) The friendship based on bees unites men living in different farmsteads with mutual obligations. Greimas notes that traditional rivalry between villages was expressed by calendric “battles” between the men’s societies representing them. (p. 166) He also distinguishes two types of relational obligations, egalitarina friendship known as bee-kinship (bičiulyste) and hierarchical ones based on land (bandžiulyste). Perhaps the alternative form of matrilocal marriage, the Baltic iegātnis (Latv.) system, which does not give land rights to the husband, but retains it with the daughter of the land, may be seen in terms of contract based on bees rather than land. The husband may be considered to bring bees, which he had inherited from his natal home, with him. (Greimas, p. 162)

The fluidity with which “daughter,” “sister,” “mother,” and “wife” replace themselves in tales and myths (as the female relatives of Velns when overcome by the hero try to take revenge) suggest that there is a strong identification of them in a semantic field of “our women” from the viewpoint of a male. In the daina-songs, the roles of the different types of women are more clearly differentiated, as sister (māsa) and sister-in-law (mārša) or orphan (bārene) from a daughter protected by family (īstā meita) from the viewpoint of a female, as well as the mother-daughter (māte – meita) association.

Hierarchies described in the dainas include “elder”, as in “velnu vecākais, vecais velns, velnu tēvs, velnu māte in addition to ķēniņš (king) and valdnieks (ruler). The terms “father” and “mother” when applied to the master and mistress of a farmstead, or to the officiants of a celebration are, of course, not geneological terms, but honorifics or terms of authority. The celebrants are called “children”. Farmhands of both sexes were mostly young and single, but they could also form a family subsystem within the larger saime farm household, usually not all family.

Certain gender models came late to the Baltic, those mediated by societies in a more advanced feudal state, with a corresponding lowering of female status. Those included Zoroastrianism and Christian models. Within manorial society, all native people were leveled into the peasant layer. Consistent with findings in other societies (Ward, p. 63), as compensation for the loss of carefree girlhood and lesser responsibilities, positive roles opened up for married women as healers, midwives, ritual leaders, and possessors of supernatural or extraordinary powers. Female nonChristian names were often those of birds. (See Šnē: 33-36 for linguistic principles involved in female bird names.)

Consistent with subsistence economy and relative egalitarianism all sharing peasant or bottom stratification layer, traditional concepts of reciprocity (Mauss 1925) prevailed, including that of gifts, labor, and even of marriage partners (in contrast to the concept of a commodity purchased with no further obligations). Such proverbs as “Dots devējam atdodas” (What is given returns) and “Vēl man labu, es tev arī” (Wish me well, and I will the same) are still commonly cited.

Estate feudalism created a leveling effect on the Latvian people together with a natural breeding ground for sympathy for the underdog. Interrelated psychologically are very different genres: orphan songs, folktales about the herder child who outwits devils and giants, anecdotes about the uselessness, helplessness, greediness, and capriciousness of the manor lord or clergyman. All of these have precedents in another era, now serving other functions, which also coexist. The songs sung by women who were leaving their natal families to live as “orphans” among foreign people become generalized to all Latvians who are oppressed and brutalized by foreign masters. Tales about beating giants or outwitting devils increasingly came to be reinterpreted with the lowly herder-child as the hero instead of a demigod hero.

Perhaps the most positive, though still ambiguous, outsider is the Gypsy, a free trickster spirit, speaking up to the master when the peasant dares not, and embodying a sense of irony.(Arājs, 1971, p. 9). Mummers dresses up as Gypsies and in some regions are even called Gypsies (čigāni). The image has persisted to recent times. Gypsy children drawn by Kovaļevska were as familiar to Latvian children in the 20th century as Hummel or Peanuts figures to German or American children.

C. History Context:

For Latvians, their history is their story.

(Linette A. Kalsnes, Norwegian reporter after fieldwork in Garezers, Michigan, a Latvian language and culture intensive center)^¹

The history of Latvia is not a laughing matter:

'Til recently we lived in trees and mushrooms we did gather.^²

Latvian humorist Valdis Artavs.

The Herder type association of folk song with identity for Latvians is even more, associating cultural and personal identity with all of history. When it comes to joking about history sensitive nerves may be affronted in a “cult of seriousness.” (Cohn: 187) The Artavs humor about Latvians living in trees is part of self-deprecating ironical contemporary humor. An urban legend, (Vasiļevskis, personal communication) rumors of a German or Scandinavian historical source, usually an encyclopedia, that characterizes Latvians as a “small, thieving nation living by the Baltic Sea.”

A particularly heavy hand of history has rocked the Latvian cradle. The recurring metaphor is of trying to survive while being ground between two millstones, most broadly between German (West) hegemony and the Russian (East) hegemony, largely unnoticed by the rest of the world. The Baltic countries have looked to the West since conquest of indigenous peoples of what is now Estonia and Latvia in the 13^th century by the Teutonic Knights after about a hundred year struggle, Lithuania had a somewhat different history in the Middle Ages, having become an empire in its union with Poland until the Russian empire took the whole region in the 18^th century. Latvian mentality, if there should be an attempt to understand it, has to consider its intensive dialogue with history, still a popular pastime. Baltic German aristocrat scholar, Anatol Lieven, a descendant of Liv chieftains who threw in their lot with the conquering Teutonic knights, speaking of the Latvian position as in-between the romantic, dramatic Lithuanian and stoic, no-nonsense Estonian:

Latvians find it difficult to define themselves except by contrast with their neighbors...The Latvians are regarded by the other Balts, and were regarded by the Baltic Germans, as an unreliable people, with a rare capacity to believe two contradictory things at the same time. (Lieven: 35)

One can select at random examples of how the crisis of identity and “double bind dilemma” of Latvian history is expressed, perhaps poetry being obvious. Thus, Vizma Belševica in her epic “Henry the Latvian’s commentary on the margins of the Livonian Chronicles” recalling the actual Chronicles that were possibly written by a Latvian converted to Christianity from the viewpoint of the Teutonic Order ironizes:

O, traitor nation,

Is it worth dying, laying down ones head for you?

O nation of dogs,

In a bowl of blood the master dips a stone from the road in place of bread.

Devour your own blood and the stone with it.

And wag your tail – you have deserved it!

But weep – tears will turn to iron when the time comes

And evil will be smitten with an iron rain.^³

The obsession continues even as Latvian society continues in its insecurity with its powerful neighbor Russia and the pressures of having to assimilate the overwhelmingly large Russian population that appeared as a direct result of Soviet conquest and colonization, or with the less obvious consumer culture of the West. Thus, even today there is a felt necessity to assert identity, rather than accepting it as a given, even as rapid accommodations to new and international forces are being made, sometimes sounding as if it could have been written 150 years ago in the Awakening period, which resulted in the formation of Latvian identity. Almost at random from one 1999 calendar:

We must learn about Latvian prehistory so we can understand that our ancestors had their songs and stories, their signs, symbols and beliefs, their castle forts and sacred places, their leaders and intelligentsia – the burtnieki sages...how important the Daugava waterway was to Europe. (Ancītis: 1995)

When Foucault suggests that our age is suffering the effects of rejecting the traditions of classical rationalism, he is being somewhat ethnocentric in his overstatement. Much of the world has not shared the intellectual history of Western Europe, modern America, and their intellectual colonies even if they have come to be dominated on different and varying levels by that ethos. Not all of Europe has shared equally in the so-called Judeo-Christian/West European ethos that is centered in Germany, France, England, and Italy and on to North America. On the other hand, they are not really a part of the Other Europe in which Russia is dominant. They are equally marginal to even this paler second half of the European division, that of Eastern Europe. That is, of course saying more about the view from the outside, not to say that the Baltic does not have a significant intellectual internationally shared intelligentsia since its entry into literacy. One may, for instance, survey the Latvian literature of irony and existentialism of the 20’s and 30’s, such as that of Kārlis Zariņš. (Bondare: 1-7).

The Baltic, variously divided into eastern or northern Europe by Cartesian-minded mapmakers shares rather little with the Byzantine or Russian Orthodox traditions. On the large historical scale it was connected to the West by its German conquerors and the Hanseatic League. It is northern through a generalized emic sense of geographical identity in itself only weakly or potentially political. It is not unproblematically northern; strong qualifications need to be made when speaking of it as a beneficiary of Western culture. The eponymous populations of the Baltic were mostly illiterate until the last half of the 19th century, and in Estonia and Latvia held to a rigid undeutsche social caste from which entry to the "cultured" - i.e. German level was virtually impossible. The ruling German class, of course, shared in Western culture and ideology. This ideology legitimized their privileges, but conversely also legitimized the oppression of the indigenous populations. That Western culture, which the eponymous peasant received, passed through at least two big filters: that of the German oppressors - often received with hostility - and that of their own indigenous traditions.

The forcible inclusion of the Baltic into Russian and Communist hegemony, and the difficulties with absorbing a large post-occupation Slavic population, has resulted in attempts to dissociate from the Slavic and a renewed look to the West. Ironically, attempts of Latvian philologists to disassociate from the Slavic have resulted in the discovery by Russian philologists that the whole group of Slavic languages may have differentiated from a pre-Baltic source. (cf Baltic etymology summary in Karulis, II: 583-665)

The obsession with history has had its rewards in terms of valuable information. The artificial isolation of Latvian people in islands concentrated around estates with minimal contact with the outside had a strong conserving effect, so that a wide variety of regional and subregional dialects and cultures were available to historically oriented folklorists. Grass roots and ground-up characterized the Awakening period when folklore foundational to subsequent national identity was collected. Since the world was and is generally unaware of the area, the Baltic has had to rely on perseverance, originality, and grass-roots demonstrations of popular support or opinion to attract international attention. This macro-level of activity and organization appears to be consistent with and grows out of similar micro-cell activity, such as the composition of the self-contained daina-units.

Hopkins in his study of Norwegian aural traditions argues for the co-existence of preservation and innovation because hardingfele players take pride in sharing and preserving a code outsiders don’t know and make effort to preserve:

The hardingfele spelemann is able to change code according to audience, social setting, or situation; he is able to persuade, preserve, and to innovate. Strong feelings of social identity, as well as great respect for the achievements of certain individuals, has resulted in great preservative powers – both as to styles and to particular pieces...This evidence of the individual musician’s control over his resources implies, for the sphere of musical performance, the same kind of ‘aural thinking’ that we have found to be an integral part of even the initial perception of a musical structure...It may further be seen in emic genre differentiation; for genres seem to be classified, not only in accordance with obvious similarities of sound patterns, but also with reference to a cluster of associative features known only to those within the tradition. (236)

Since there are a number of accessible books on Latvian history, it is sufficient for the purpose of this research to summarize with a few high points. Eurocentrism has not particularly benefited the Baltic lands in terms of scholarly attention, which has marginalized or placed them in-between. Though leaving feudalism and gaining widespread literacy only in the 19^th century, they have not been seen as sufficiently “other,” to be included as the focus of Western anthropology that has concentrated on more exotic, nonEuropean peoples. If not entirely a terra incognita in the English-speaking world, their relevance to the actual history of Europe has been underrated, except by obscure specialists. Some of the areas of interest in historical studies include: 1. Baltic location at the source of a commodity much desired in the ancient world, amber (the “Golden Age” of Balts in the first millenium, then known as “Aestians.”). 2. The observations of early humanists, and particularly the young Herder, in the Baltic contributing to the zeitgeist of the Romantic period. 3. The importance of Baltic studies and languages in the understanding of the earliest phases of Indo-European cultures (as well as Finno-Ugric) and languages. 4. The role of Latvian insurgents and Red riflemen in the revolutions that came to topple the Czarist Russian Empire, 1890, 1905, and 1917 resulting in independence, but also a huge loss of population, repeated in WWII. 5. The Baltic role in the fall of the Soviet Empire. A few historic highlights offer some context:

The eponymous native ethnic population of Latvia is considered the direct descendant of the peoples who historically lived in the region. The first peoples entered the area after the glaciers made it habitable, first reindeer hunters, then around 7000B.C. the Kunda culture and following that the Narva. Around 2500 B.C. Baltic tribes from the south with cord ceramics met Finnish peoples coming from the east with comb and pit ceramics, and fused with and Indo-Europeanized Mesolithic populations that had lived there since the recession of the Ice age. In the area of present day Latvia the Baltic and Finnish populations to some degree maintained their identity historically forming four Balt and two coastal Liv regions. The numerically smaller Finno-Ugric Livs maintained fishing villages until World War II.

Herodotus, in 500-424 B.C. speaking of Aestians, considers the southern borders to be around the Danube and Dniester Rivers and includes the interesting detail that these people turned into werewolves annually. Thorough research has been done to show the upper Dniester area to be a center of Baltic hydronymic place. (Cf Dini: 33-48) The Volga is likely such a Baltic word, meaning “Long River” (modern Ilga).

The earliest roots of the Balts (see in particular Gimbutas) are associated with a fusion of matricentric Old European first farmers with nomadic Indo-Europeans. The latter had a patriarchal society and religious worldview, while the Old Europeans had a female-centered mythology supported by a sister-brother stewardship, a weak hierarchy, and no developed military aristocracy. It is from this mixed culture “second Indo-European” homeland, presumably north of the Caspian Sea, that the ancestors of the Balts moved to their eventual home by the Baltic. Baltic culture and belief systems, while cited for its archaic Indo-European roots in language and mythology, have also retained much of the female-centeredness in a syncretism where the sky god ascended as supreme deity relatively late, possibly largely under Christian influence. Laima (Fortune) retains much of her independence and sovereignty even in the songs collected in the l9th and 20^th centuries, and the Sun goddess (possibly with her daughter the Dawn goddess in at least some traditions) was elevated to importance she seems to have had only among some Indo-European peoples. (See McGrath, The Sun Goddess. Myth, Legend and History for compilation of many sources). The Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus about 100 BC wrote of Aestians farmers living on the coasts of the amber sea, rescuing shipwrecked sailors, worshipping a Great Mother Goddess, and carrying a boar image to battle.

Common Baltic, originally the northernmost Indo-European group, flanked by Germanic and Celtic peoples to the west and Slavic peoples to the south, spread over a large territory from what is now central Russia to the Vistula River in what is now Poland in probably three waves and in two directions, dividing into two language subgroups, the West Balts and the East Balts. (cf Loze, 1995: 66) They were immediately to the south of the Finno-Ugric peoples who stretched from the Urals to the Baltic. In the earliest period when the people who became Balts were still living north of the Caspian Sea, contact with Illyrian (pre-Albanian) peoples is indicated by commonalities in language. (cf Dini: 29-33) Baltic Bronze Age (1250 BC) western Balts were mentioned in Mediterranean sources (including Ptolemey, Cassiodorus, and Jordan) as glaesum (amber) gathering Aestians with whom trade relations were established. (Vytautas Maziulis and Letas Palmaitis are the specialists on early Balts.) The Knights of the Teutonic Order conquered the Old Prussians in the 13^th century and their language became extinct in the 17^th century. The Galindians and Jotvingians were mentioned in East Slavic chronicles until the 14th century.

In the territory of Latvia on the northeast and northwest coasts were fishing folk, Finno-Ugric Livians. Balt cultivators (Indo-Europeanized and Indo-European) peoples - northeast Kuronians, southeast Zemgalians and Selians, west Latgalians inhabited the rest of the country. The East Balts had come under pressure from Slavs and the Kuronians from the Scandinavians in the 10^th century. The Brothers of the Sword, founded in 1202 by Bishop Albert of Buxhoevden to fight and Christianize Baltic pagans, conquered the inhabitants of Latvia progressively over the next century. The first to be subdued were the coastal Finno-Ugric Livs and the peoples of eastern Latvia.

The last significant military resistance by a Latvian people was in 1290 by the Zemgalians, many emigrating to Lithuania after the defeat. They had held off the Order at Durbe in 1260, the year Kuronians ceased resistance. The high point of resistance was the defeat in 1236 of the Brothers of the Sword by Lithuanians and Zemgalians at Saule (Siauliai), which destroyed the Order. There are attempts today to make it a national Baltic holiday. However, the defeated Order, bolstered by endless supplies of Crusader volunteers from the West against pagans, reorganized as a branch of the Order of Teutonic Knights, the Livonian Order. Another famous Zemgalian victory was at Durbe in 1260. Christianity had come to the Baltic, though it became fully effective only with the Protestant reformation in the 16^th century.

Nevertheless, history is more complex than the “700 years of slavery” national legend. Prior to the Enlightenment the native population, according to German Kulturtrager views, was seen as conquered barbarians that needed to be Christianized and made useful as the lower, laboring class. Vernacular culture was described in terms of traveler’s tales or by religious reports to the authorities in terms of the scandalous and sinful. Conquest of Latvian peoples paradoxically united and created them as an ethnic and national unit where previously there were tribal band groups in the Baltic that alternatively raided and formed alliances. G. Merkel largely created the national legend of a united Latvian people (Zemītis, 1995: 27).

The 13^th – 16^th c. is often seen as the classic period of Latvian daina culture and many daina concepts are understandable in the socio-cultural context of this period. Aspects of chronology have been addressed by the different generations of scholars of the past century, pushing daina structure and language back much earlier. (cf. Ozols: 224-226) Baltic Germans have left two important sources on Latvian historical culture in Latin: The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia (1225-26) and The Livonian Chronicle of Russow (1584).

The 16^th century is seen as the final century in which the pagan world-view was largely independent of the Christian. It is also the last century about which primary information is archaeological, as thereafter there is written information generated in large volume. Thereafter, indigenous beliefs are notably syncretized or undergrounded, resulting from aggressive hostility of the Protestant clergy and the availability of Christianity in the vernacular. The Catholic areas of Latvia were more favorable for syncretism. The 16th and 17th centuries decimated the region with wars, revolts, plague, and famine resulting in the establishment of Baltic German segneurial estate powers with power to sell indigenous serfs as slaves. Ivan the Terrible invaded in the Livonian Wars (1558-83) resulting in Polish and Swedish claims to Livonia, the Swedish-Polish War, the Great Famine, plague, and The Great Northern War. The 15^th and 16^th centuries have left numerous Jesuit annual reports as to their activities, notably J. Stribinius about the Rēzekne and Ludza (eastern Latvia) regions in 1606, and Paul Einhorn”s “Wiederlegung der Abgoterey… in 1627 and “Historia Lettica…” for western Latvia in 1649. Thus pastoral accounts of vernacular belief include Einhorn’s 1627 list of numerous nature “mothers.” With the exception of a few humanists, notably the geographer Sebastian Munster (Cosmographei oder Beschreibung aller Lander...Basel, 1550) most Baltic Germans felt the indigenous peoples, their culture, or their language to be beneath their area of interest. Munster’s description contrasting the miserable conditions of the Vidzeme peasant, living in threshing barns with their beasts in contrast to the luxurious life of the estate-owning Germans, makes him the first critic of serfdom. In 1638 the first Latvian dictionary was compiled by humanist Georgius Mancelius (1593-1654), known for sermons (published from 1654 on) with a wealth of historical information. Christophorus Fureccerus was another humanist who learned the vernacular. Ernst Gluck translated the Bible into the vernacular in 1685-89.

P. Einhorn’s Historia Lettica (1649) is a detailed description of the harsh conditions of the indigenous peasantry, written as an apologist warning to other peoples how severely God punishes a nation for paganism. Einhorn despises Latvian folklore and traditions, and despises the Latvian people, attributing to them the worst character defects and lack of morality. What is positive in Latvian social and cultural life is explained in terms of superior German cultural trickle-down effect. The Vidzeme estate lords used the term Leibeigene, hominiis proprii, or unsere Servi – personal slaves, rather than glebae adscripti – manor serfs at every opportunity to strenthen their legal claims. (Latvieši (Merkel): 183, footnote)

The Western view exaggerates the time period of Russian hegemony in the Baltic. The area that is now Latvia has had a very complex regional history with the provinces coming under the formal influence of Russia being: Vidzeme (1721), Latgale (1772), and Kurzeme (1795). The 18^th century was characterized by peasant uprisings, brutally repressed by stationing large garrisons of the Russian Czar army to maintain the power of German landowners.

The Enlightenment of the 18^th century led to the Awakening (Atmoda) or romantic nationalism going through the 19^th century. The Pietism of the Moravian Brethren made considerable Christian impact in Vidzeme. It also brought literacy to the common people, and discouraged alcoholism, which had increasingly become a problem. The Enlightenment may be characterized by contrasting (Vecais) Stenders Sr. (1714 – 1796) with G. H. Merkel (1769-1850). A significant manuscript collection, including six volumes of memories, notes, and correspondence, including with J. G. Herder, is archived at the Rīga Collection of Rare Books and Manuscripts <http://www.acadlib.lv/e/fondi>. Pastor Stender is known to modern Latvian schoolchildren as the person who denounced dainas as “fool songs” (blēņu dziesmas) or bērnu dziesmas (songs of children) and folk culture as hopelessly backward. To remedy the situation he composed sentimental ziņģes for the uneducated local yokels, “our dear Latvian people;” they have found little favor with modern critics. He was somewhat successful because it coincided with the rising consciousness of the peasantry for increased social rights, which they accepted as being associated with becoming educated and “cultured” according to Western (German) ideals. In spite of his dismissal of Latvian traditional culture, Stenders could be said to be the first “Latvian” patriot in that he had it written on his gravestone “Latvis,” identification perhaps equivalent to someone who could pass for white identifying himself as “Negro” in American history. (See Ancītis, 1997: 91-97)

Revolutionary Romanticist Garlieb H. Merkel (1769-1850) took the opposite, noble savage view with his inflammatory writings about Baltic pagans Christianized with fire and sword. In 1796 Garlieb Merkel wrote the famous book Die Letten, vorzûglich in Liefland, am Ende des philosophischen Jahrhundreds. Leipzig 1796. It was reprinted in 1953 and again recently. He expressed the ideas of Herder (1744-1803) and other less famous Germans who had lived in the Baltic. Herder was a teacher in the Rīga Domskola 1764-1769 who was moved by a Latvian Midsummer celebration on the banks of Jugla Lake (1765) in which he had participated. Merkel in his Die Letten recounts how the very word “German” had become an invective, recounting that a Vidzeme farm woman who had been knocked down by her cow, swore, “You, she-German!” and children were cowered by the words, “The Germans are coming!” (Merkel: 38). The publication, as had J. Hupel and J. Eizen before him, describe practices equivalent to slavery such as selling of recruits to the Russian army, control of reproductive rights, and measures that encouraged alcoholism among the people. Sensational abuse, such as by the family Klodt von Jurgensburg, who burned, beat, and tortured a ten-year old girl Trīne to death over the course of several days for her lack of spinning skill, were documented as that case went public. Merkel argues that peasants should have rights, and are not by nature lazy, sullen, and dishonest, citing a Latvian as having explained his attitude with the words, “Is it right to muzzle the ox who is threshing when he is dying of hunger?” (Merkel: 49)

Herder’s idea of das Volk as a historically and geographically united entity with a common language and cultural heritage is reflected in a Latvian unofficial hymn “Laima decree over us, protect out land, one land, one tongue, one spirit ours.”

Herder’s Volkslieder was a model which demonstrated that folk poetry made these peoples equal to others in the world, and showed how songs could be used to advance national liberation.” (Smidchens, x)

For Latvians there was not so much a need for meaning as an active construction of the present from what was available from the past as counterculture to the Baltic German economic and political hegemony. The second half of the 19^th century, known as the Awakening, was the period of final national consolidation of regional cultures, a process that had begun by German apartheid-like policies that ideologically underwrote a type of manifest destiny of German and Christian mission in the Baltic, refined but not discarded by the Enlightenment. According to this view, cultural and spiritual enlightenment came from the West and justified German vested privilege. The first German learned organization to study Latvian folk traditions, known as the Friends of Latvians Society (1824) did not disseminate to Latvians, but was primarily an organization of German clergy who were interested in traditions in order to better counter and eliminate them. However, this opened the way to developments the Germans were unable to contain: an increasing demand for intellectual, social, economic, and eventually political rights. Ironically, in East Prussia, where apartheid was not instigated, the Baltic population lost its identity and was totally assimilated by the 18^th century.

The New Latvians, in their attempt to prove Latvian equality with other peoples...came historically, naturally, and logically to folklore. They used folklore in their struggle against Baltic German kultūrtrēģerisma theories, a criticism of feudal ideology, a sense of national identity, a development of language for the purpose of the development of written literature. (Rudzītis, in Andrejs Pumpurs, Lācplēsis: 16)

Until the Awakening in the mid 19^th century high culture was German and low culture was peasant Latvian. The ruling Baltic German estate gentry and clergy controlled and monopolized the key resources, including education and literature, and used the church as a source of ideology. In their introduction to their Latviešu mūzikas vēsture (History of Latvian Music), J. Vītoliņš and L. Krasinska state:

In the feudal period there was a coexistence of two cultures, of which one was the ruling feudal class - German conquerors, but the other that of the Latvian people, primarily peasant musical culture. At the disposal of the first were all the channels of development - the church, the city, the salons of the estate gentry and burghers and later of the nobility, concert halls, theaters, but they only served the interests of narrow ruling classes…Latvian musical culture - that of the people - evolved among the masses as oral tradition under harsh and exploitative conditions, without any professional possibilities. (p. 3)

It was possible for Latvian professional music to develop only in the second half of the 19^th century after the development of Latvian singing, educational, and folklore societies. Its development may be characterized as an increasingly self-conscious use of its musical folklore. In that process, however, the old style drone and other polyphonic recitative song tradition gave way before the 19^th century choir tradition, and was not unaffected by Western/German popular and sentimental broadsides. It is remarkable that the indigenous musical folklore survived at all, since it was under continuous attack by the German clergy as pagan and/or seditious and deliberate campaigns were undertaken to replace the offending dainas with church chorals. Syncretism of Christianity with the indigenous native religions was not as successful, especially in Protestant Latvia, as in Lithuania. “These (choral church) songs were forced upon and unremittingly cultivated in churches and schools for over three hundred years as the feudal church’s weapon to maintain influence over the Latvian people. Nevertheless, the boundaries of church songs and those of the people themselves remained differentiated in the consciousness of the Latvian people.” (LMV, p. 97) “Only in the province of Latgale, which remained Catholic, did there eventually begin to be a parallel development of the so-called Catholic folksongs, the result of a merger of Catholic Church hymns with old pagan folksongs.” (Bērzkalns, LCP: 536)

The regional singing festivals that characterize all of the Baltic, came about as a result of historical development starting with the first rural indigenous societies following the example of Baltic German Liedertafel singing societies and leading to the first song festival in Riga in 1836.

The Awakening brought a romantic view of nature, mythical construction and idealization of Ancient Latvia, the selection and the construction of national symbols. The national epic Lāčplēsis by Pumpurs (1888) created several mythical figures taken up by Rainis and now fully internalized into Latvian artistic culture: the hero Bearslayer, Laimdota – Latvia for whom he fights, the international spirit of science and art - Spīdala/ Spīdola, the faithful friend Koknesis, and the traitor Kangars.

Among the historical spiritual trends of the European Continent, the National Awakening adopted interest in ancient history, as displayed by the pseudo-classical school and the rationalism of the Age of Enlightenment, as well as the freedom ideals of the revolutionary romanticism of the Sturm und Drang period. With it Latvians became aware that they belonged to Western culture and accordingly shaped their literary orientation… The Awakening poets) strove to reestablish the (broken) continuity of popular poetry, and therefore they imitated the rhythm of the folksongs (Rudzītis, LCP, p. 507)

Latvian spirit and culture was also developed in the realistic tradition by the brothers Kaudzîtis (Reinis 1839-1920 and Matîss 1848-1926) with the novel Mērnieku laiki (Surveyor Times, 1879). (For entry into Latvian literature, see: Zeiferts, Teodors, Latviešu rakstniecības vēsture, I-III. 3^rd ed. 1957-1960 and Johansons, Andrejs, Latviešu literatūra, I - IV, 1953-1954 and Andrups, J and Kalve, V., Latvian Literature, 1954.)

The phenomenon has a broader regional Baltic content. The first academic center from which the New Latvians came was at Tartu, Estonia and 1856 is traditionally marked as the beginning of the New Latvian or Awakening Movement. The year Krišjānis Valdemārs places on the door of his dormitory his business card “Latvian” (a disputed concept), the first Latvian student group was formed in Tartu, and the first Latvian newspaper Mājas viesis came out in Rīga. However, it is in the second Latvian cultural center in St. Petersburg that the literary society Burtnieks published four satirical works with the name Dunduri (Gadfly) in the title. The center is relocated again to Moscow where the academic tradition of evening activities, known as vakarēšana, a concept derived from social and work evening gatherings on the farms is begun by Krišjānis Barons. Jānis Cimze (1814-1881) encouraged folk song melody collection, which he arranged for choral singing after the German style and models. Jurjānu Andrejs was the first ethnomusicologist, writing down almost 700 melodies from Vidzeme and Kurzeme. He was also given the materials of Vīgneru Ernests, notably apdziedāšanās songs from Kurzeme recorded in 1870 for the purpose of introducing this genre to the repertoire of the Third Song Festival in 1888, and again for the following two. (Jurjānu Andrejs: 33,35.) Jurjānu Andrejs provided material for staged enactments of weddings and other celebrations, including Midsummer and polyphonic vocal drone songs. (Ibid: 34-35) Singers made efforts to wear what was considered “authentic” regional costume, preferably handmade by the singer or her family, or at the very least enlisting a specialist in regional costume.

During this period there was a transformation of basic themes and structures from a pre-industrial agricultural to a national matrix done at a largely grass roots popular level under the leadership of the first significant generation of Latvian academically trained intellectuals.

There is considerable literature on Independence and of the Soviet occupation that resulted from the Hitler-Stalin pact, so it will not be covered here.

The “Second Awakening” refers to a period starting in the 1960’s of renewed national consciousness. “As a broadly based phenomenon which successfully evaded government control, the folklore movement provided a model for mass activism in the Baltic after 1985.” (Šmidchens: x) In the 80s young people formed folklore ensembles and sought out folk performers as a form of cultural protest, as described in the home page of one of the ensembles in Latvia, Iļģi:

There was an attempt to go even beyond the choral compositions of the previous century to the daina tradition as it was practiced at the same time and before it. This led to the “Third Awakening” or the Singing Revolution that can be characterized and symbolized by the Baltic Way (Path, Road from Baltijas ceļš, an event organized on Aug. 23, 1989 by Popular Front movements on the 50^th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop [Nazi-Soviet] Pact. On that day, filmed by news media from around the world, about two million Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians joined hands in a 600 km human chain from Talinn to Riga and to Vilnius. Considering the total population of the Baltic states is just under 6 ½ million, this non-violent protest required remarkably active organization and cooperation. The Independence Movement, starting in 1989, followed by the declaration of independence by Lithuania in 1990, and the recognition of independence of the Baltic states in Sept., 1991 was also more generally characterized by non-violent demonstration - singing, and barricades - even when confronting tanks and casualties, and is therefore known as the Singing Revolution.

The Millennial Crisis

At the end of the Millennium pessimism has replaced enthusiasm as economic hardships take their toll, carpetbaggers and opportunists have looted the country, and corruption is seen as a major problem. While trying to clear up the consequences of fifty years of Soviet occupation, Latvians are also facing the consumer-driven, celebrity-centered culture of the West associated with shock introduction of the market economy. There are also international pressures to quickly integrate the large numbers of Russians, who entered the country after Soviet take-over, and who do not wish to learn Latvian or necessarily feel loyalty to the new state. There is concern of a Fifth Column making efforts to return Latvia to Russian control. Acceptance by the West has been an all-out effort at all costs, specifically efforts to be included in the EU and NATO. Within a few years of the nationalistic Third Awakening, the significant majority of the population is making pragmatic efforts to absorb the Russian and other non-ethnic Latvian population. New, sometimes radically forward looking attitudes are being tested out in a field of contention as of writing on questions of culture, language, folklore, and society. While folklore was considered the source of national identity and therefore important scholarship immediately after reestablishing independence, the scarcity of resources have resulted in great hardships and constraints for education generally, including higher education. A resulting brain drain has resulted, and a focus away from both the hard sciences, for which Latvia was known previously, and culture scholarship to concentrate what few resources are available on economic and political problems.

There are significant differences between the overall characteristic of the Awakening period, what is depicted in the daina world, and what is happening today. Pēteris Mežulis ^⁴ feels that there has been a significant change since the Awakening, which had been characterized by the emergence of a significantly large, “self-sacrificing” or group-oriented, middle level intelligentsia who were capable of mediating between international high academics and the common people. He feels the wars and deportations have had so marked a negative impact, that Latvian society has become much more dysfunctional with the equivalent middle intelligentsia being individually rather than group oriented. This cuts off the common people, who are the bread and the soil from positive aspects of the international scene.

In the last decades, national identity has been opened up to vigorous debate again, reacting to negative views of nationalism and with it national identity with a clash of identity defined in terms of ethnicity as opposed to state political identity. Even the core assumption, which arose in the 19^th century of language as the primary identifier of the concept “Latvian” has been challenged by the view that language is only a form of communication that should be free of the identity function. Since many ethnic Latvians, in spite of using hip anglicisms and old-fashioned Sovietisms, continue to prioritize language, there are also discussions about conscious intervention and conservation, citing the prototypical example of Iceland. Such of the younger, as music ensemble leader Ansis Bērziņš, also exemplifies value of customs, knowledge of history, and other traditions. At time of this writing they were fighting the upstream battle:

Latvian culture baggage (ironic) continues to be lost and replaced by other – shapeless, Euroamerican mass culture...particularly among the youth. There is less interest in the areas of language, tradition, and history...but it is better to be a LatvoEuropean than a LatvoSoviet, so that all our attempts to shake loose of Russia’s embrace will not have been in vain. (Vents, Sveiks listserve, Jan. 9, 2001)

In my view, terms of rhetoric and assigning value to concepts, I don't see that "unity" or "group identity” is any less negative or more political than such terms as “alienation.” All concepts can be deconstructed and all are politicized; ambiguity is within the dialogic field of oscillation. The right to struggle for existence and a commitment to those with whom one identifies is as biologically self-evident an imperative as anything else.

1 Kalsnes, Linette A., "Latvian Culture Celebrated this Weekend." Kalamazoo Gazette, Aug. 22, 1999: C4.

2 Quoted in Žagariņs, Juris, “Latvian History on the Web,” <zagarins@stcciphub.stcc.mass.edu>, LatBits #27/Nov-99 <latbits@deksoft.com.au>

3² O, nodevēju tauta, Vai ir vērts par tevi mirt, par tevi galvu nolikt? O, suņu tauta, Asins bļodā mērc tev saimnieks maizes vietā ceļa oli: Rij savas asinis un akmeni rij līdz, Un asti luncini - tu pelnījusi esi! Bet raudi - asaras par dzelzi kļūs, kad pienāks laiks Un piemeklēts taps ļaunums no dzelžu lietus.

Belševica, Vizma, “Indriķa Latvieša piezīmes uz Livonijas hronikas malām,” Gadu gredzeni.

4 Personal communication, 1999 - 2000

↑ Contents

III. CALENDAR AND LIFE CYCLES

A. Midsummer as the Great Calendar Holiday

The great festival times were also times for people to assemble. Assembly places were Elka kalni (Idol hills) and sacred groves, that is, in wild nature; assembly during the most inopportune wintertime was left out. (Adamovičs: 99)

Jāņja diena svēta diena aiz visām dieniņām.

Jāņja dienu Dieva dēls(i) Saules meitu sveicināja.

Jāņu māte rudzus brida, Brūnu kleitu pacēlusi;

Kur norāva vienu vārpu, Divas auga tai vietā.

Midsummer day is sacred day above all days.

On Midsummer day the Sky son(s) greeted the Sun daughter

Midsummer mother was wading the rye, with lifted skirts;

When one ear was torn off, two grew in its place.

The greatest holiday in the Latvian calendar is Jāņi or Līgo svētki, Midsummer (in Latvian always in the plural), now an official national holiday, with more recorded songs than any other festival (over 35,000). The Summer Solstice has also been most resistant to political as well as religious pressure to change its basic patterns. As practiced in recent times the festival seems a simplified, secularized versions that leaves in question specific practices, which are known to have been elaborated as part of a different pre-industrial way of life. They have come to be less sacred celebrations and something closer to modern international celebrations, perhaps ranging from picnics to concert performances to raves, depending on the celebrants. As the calendar celebration evoking maximum emotion, it is even more obvious that it has meant different things to different people in different times and places while at the same time being magic Midsummmer to all, and a unity or at least assembly of contradictions. It is a day when witches and dangerous others are about in full power, but joy and life triumph.

In addition to descriptions collected by ethnographers, there are endless descriptions in literature starting with German observations and going on through Latvian initiation into writing to modern times. Velta Rūķe Draviņa has collected some of them in her book Jāņi latviešu literatūrā (Midsummer in Latvian Literature). For many Latvians it is the most deeply Latvian celebration where even today a human being feels connected to plants, animals, other humans, and the sun herself. Even today it is seen as the most distinctly non-Christian holiday. In the past Midsummer concentrated a number of very important functions. These include calendar adjustments, the possible initiation or at least the special activity of magic users and the gathering of healing herbs, the transfer of vitalizing forces from the wild or Otherworld to the domestic sphere, and erotic activity that seems to have roots in archaic betrothal practices and marks a cosmic wedding as the high point of the year just as the human wedding is considered to be the high point between birth and death on the human level.

Scholars differ if the name of the Midsummer god used today, Jānis, straightforwardly derives from the Christian St. John or is related to Indo-European deities (such as Indian Devajana, Etruscan Jaanus), or if one similar sounding word was associated with another from a different tradition. The linguists Karulis and E. Lauberte connect the word Yanis with the Indo-European deity of light, passageways, roads, and gates to which Christianity attached the similar sounding St. John. According to the dainas, the Midsummer god rides all year and arrives only on Midsummer. He doesn’t seem to have any characteristics of a Christian saint. Scholars, like K. Straubergs, consider Jānis to be a vegetation and fertility god, while others such as J. Klētnieks considers him to represent the star Sirius that used to shine most brightly at Midsummer. H. Biezais points out that the central deity honored is the Sun goddess and considers modern focus on Jānis more so than his bride or wife, to be a displacement. The bridegroom of the sun differs from song to song and region to region, but he is always known as the sky son, dominantly today as Jānis, but also from alternative versions the Thunder god Pērkons, or the sky god Dievs. All of these sky gods are associated with the oak tree and bringing down power and fertility from heaven to earth. Even today, Midsummer is celebrated as an exceptional day with strong erotic aspects, and recognized as central in mythology involving a cosmic wedding cycle, perhaps earlier a betrothal and sexual initiation, but later a wedding closer to more recent practice. I. Leinasare argues that around the 5^th – 9^th centuries Midsummer was a girl’s set initiation into womanhood, followed by Laidene on July 2 when she acquired the status of wife. (p. 62-78) According to her, wedding practices as recognized in historical times and with a more patriarchal cast began in the 10^th century, which she seems to base on such data as Latgalian women’s burials being accompanied by a knife whose position on the left (unmarried) or right (married) indicated her status. Leinsare’s interpretation seems to resonate somewhat to the function of the spring betrothal singing contests in some Chinese provinces.

The oldest historical sources also seem to suggest Midsummer and Christmas as the two most prominent times of a gathering of different peoples for celebration. The oldest division of the year is in halves, summer and winter. Spring is seen as a transition time, the period of sowing as opposed to reaping. The question if and when it was possible to predict the solstice is yet to be determined along with the question of the role of time keeping, which still has to be evaluated. Contrary to previous assertions that the people who became Latvians did not have a specialist priest class, Arturs Goba published the private collection of Ojārs Ozoliņš compiled in the 20^th century that suggests there were time or calendar-keepers, burtnieki or zintnieki, in 13^th century north-eastern Latvia. Because adjustments between lunar and solar measurements were necessary, they were responsible for announcing the times of festival assembly. Certain celebrations and magic practices were tied into public meetings held on elevated ground. (Goba, 1990) Even if Easter may have at some time and in some regions been more important, there was one great winter and one great summer celebration in the Baltic. In at least recent centuries, Midsummer has displayed the whole complex of a mythological belief system characteristic of Indo-European peoples in the celebrating of the sun, the source of warmth and light visible in the sky, at her zenith and greatest strength.

Ever since Barons organized the dainas around the course or rhythm of human life (marked by celebrations godi) paralleled by the cycle of the year and symbolized by the path of the sun (marked by holidays svētki), there has been no serious disagreement in academic or popular discourse with this fundamental organizational concept of Latvian dainas, classical traditions, or cosmology. The year is most fundamentally divided into summer and winter, with spring adding a tripartite aspect. Fall, as a separate concept, is a latecomer, not particularly defined in the daina world and most confused as to which holidays are its primary markers.

Ziema nāca raudādama, Cimdu, zeķu prasīdama;

Vasariņa, laba māte, Tā maizītes devējiņa. (LTDz IV, 13441)

Winter came weeping, asking for mittens and socks.

Summer is a good mother; she is a giver of bread.

There have been a number of works systematizing the specifics of the Latvian traditional calendar (cf Brastiņš 1929, Grīns and Grīns 1983, Goba 1990, Olupe 1992, Šterna 1989), but their specifics would be outside my scope, particularly since there is still disagreement on some important points. But it may be summarized that Latvian peoples historically, like other Balts and their neighbors, used a luni-solar calendar based on the monthly movements of the moon and the yearly movements of the sun. The modern sense of mēness meaning “month” as well as “moon” seems to be recent, the etymology of “moon” being connected to “time-measure”. The focus seems to be on the equivalent to the weeks, which some see in the term savaite, a unit of five days with the last piektā noted and observed as a pause or rest, piektvakars. In this way of measuring time, there would be six units in each monthly measure. The yearly cycle is divided into almost equal eight parts (with nine five-day units each adjusted in the summer) as symbolized by the sun sign, which approximates what is known in the West as the rosette. It is among the most commonly used symbols in Latvian traditional textile and other art and has been used among the signs Latvian groups have used as “recognition signs”. In between the eight divisions were calendar festivals, four major and four secondary. According to Šterna, “The ancient Balts used (as a foundation, though there were other calendric cycles) the three-year cycle which consisted of two ‘short’ twelve-moth years and one ‘leap’ thirteen-month year.” (p. 274, 277). As the calendar introduced from the south by Christianity came into use, the old solstice and equinox holidays shifted and acquired names related to the Christian saints, some of which may have etymologically resembled the original names (Jāņi for Midsummer called St. John’s day but connectable to an Indo-European calendar and boundary deity, such as the Roman Yanus). Šterna equates the term laikgadi with the holidays that are associated with the lunar time-measurement (such as: Ash Day – a boisterous mumming day, Animal/ Insect Waking Day, Cabbage Day, Leaf Day, Hail Day, Thunder Day, Laidene, Fire Day, Day of Shades, Sheep Day, Horse Day, Pig Day, Cow Day). (Šterna: 275, 277)

G. Merkel in his Vidzemes senatne gives a lengthy description of Midsummer as one of saderības and sadraudzības (the meeting and engagement of marriageable people).

Ai, bagāta Jāņa diena, Atved man arājiņu;

Ja ved jaunu, tad ved skaistu, Ja ved vecu, tad bagātu. (33078)

Visu mūžu pieminēšu, Ko dabūju Jāņu nakti:

Es dabūju sirmu zirgu, Sirma zirga jājējiņu. (33126, 8)

Ozoliņa zaru laužu, Jāņa nakti līgodama;

Dievs dod man citu gadu Nolauzt pašu ozoliņu. (33127)

Oh, rich Yani-day, bring me a ploughman;

If you bring me a young one, then handsome; if an old one, then rich.

All life I will remember what I got on Midsummer night:

I got a gray horse, a gray horse rider.

I broke an oak branch ligo-singing Midsummer night;

God willing another year, I will break the oak tree itself.

Breaking the oak branch can be interpreted as a double entendre. One possible interpretation of the song, considering the context, is that on Midsummer there was a sexual initiation and betrothal promise with the expectation of a wedding following. It goes without saying that betrothal promises were taken most seriously as contracts and a man’s honor depended on him keeping his promises. There was strong social pressure and sanction to keep them. That there was a risk to contracts with people who didn’t share the same values, perhaps as customs changed and Christian values increasingly became dominant is illustrated by the dainas that warn a girl not to loose her wreath (girl’s honor):

Ne mūžā nedabūju, Kas pazuda Jāņa nakti:

Pazūd mans meitu gods, Pazūd zīļu vainadzinjš. (33123)

Jāņu nakti, meitiņ, sargi Savu puķu vainadziņu,

Nakts ir silta, galva karsta, Novīst puķu vainadzinš. (33096)

I never regained what was lost on Midsummer night:

I lost my girl honor; I lost my acorned wreath.

On Midsummer night, girl, save your wreath of flowers,

The night is warm, the head is hot, the flower wreath wilts.

Some songs say this is the day the Sky son proposes to the Sun daughter, and on this day she dances (rotā). However, the revelry is also general as the often-quoted infamous song is usually interpreted: “On Midsummer’s Day I did not know, who was wife and who was maid. All were wearing wreaths of oak.” The refrain līgo, characteristic of Midsummer songs, relates to the rhythmical swinging back and forth motion of the sun. It also represents the end of spring and the beginning of summer, with the cutting of hay. The celebration is also especially joyful because it comes just before intensive farm-work is about to begin. There is continuity in the period from Midsummer Jāņi (22 – 25 July) and going through to Pēteŗi (July 29). While the latter has the Christian name of St. Peter, it may originally be associated with Pērkons (Thunder), one of the alternate sky son bridegrooms of the Sun.

As all the festivals, Jāņi is ushered in by songs “First the herders, then the ploughmen, afterwards the young girls; finally the mother gathering Jāņi herbs.” At the end of the celebration Midsummer will also be ushered out by song, “We see off Midsummer day to the hills beyond. We will await another year for you to return.” The day before Jāņi is known as zāļu diena (grass or herb day). Everything is decorated with fresh boughs (birch boughs being more characteristic of Vasarsvētki at the end of the previous month, oak tending to replace at Midsummer). People gather Midsummer herbs and grasses, especially flowering ones (madder, sagebrush, clover, buldurjānis). The whole period of June is also known as the flower month. Oak leaf wreaths are preferred for men and flower and herb ones for women, especially young girls. Even the cows are given wreaths and wreaths may be placed in special places. The wreaths almost serve a similar function to that of masks; they primarily and the festival clothing secondarily, have the transformative power of attire to communicate a change in identity, that the celebrants have become “children” or identified with timeless mythical participants of this festival. Wreaths also contain the force and power of wild vegetation that can be transferred to domestic well-being and fertility:

Es savam Jāņa tēvam Likš' ozola vaiņadziņu,

Lai aug viņa kumeliņi Zemi resni kā ozoli. (32694)

Es savai Jāņa mātei Došu ziedu vaiņadziņu

Lai tai aug labas govis Ziedainām kājiņām. (32693)

I will give my Yani-father a green oak wreath,

So his colts grow low and fat like oak trees.

I will give my Yani-mother a flowered wreath

So cows will grow for her with flowered feet.

The mistress makes special Midsummer cheese in the shape of wheels and pīrāgi buns and other rolls, while the master of the household brews beer and slaughters a pig. Everything has to be put in order and cleaned – the tables and floors and windows, the paths have to be weeded. All animals have to be brought in from pasture as this night is especially charged also with the dangerous supernatural. Wreaths on their heads, the householders first sing songs about all things – fields, animals, and people about them, but particularly the master and mistress. This is called aplīgošana. The master offers beer and the mistress offers Midsummer cheese to the celebrants, called “children.” The celebrants go from farm to farm continuing the aplīgošana of everything and everyone, but in particular the master and mistress. If something is amiss, or the “children” are not properly made welcome, they retaliate with ridicule singing. Finally, everyone assembles, if possible, on the highest hill or knoll, or alternatively by a riverbank. Fires, either as wheels or as barrels filled with pitch and other flammable material are raised on poles so that they can be seen by those assembling at neighboring fires, as well as lit on the ground where they will last longer and pairs can jump over them for luck.

The holiday celebrates the efflorescence of nature and is also most obviously connected with the fertility of fields, animals, bees, and people. As in the rounds of the farms, the ceremonial “mother” or hostess (Jāņa māte) offers cheese and the Jāņa tēvs offers ceremonial beer. Additional to fire in the sky, water, particularly healing water and dew, is an important part of the holiday and it usually also rains around Midsummer. Apdziedāšanās takes place when the different processions from the surrounding farms all meet, usually dividing into two groups, male and female. Some responsorial exchange may also have taken place between the farm people and the visitors making rounds. There is also dancing, in the past chain dancing around the oak tree. During the night couples search for the blooming fern, which is reputed to bring knowledge, power, wealth, or happiness. It is a liminal night of revelry that neither Church nor Communist authorities were able to eliminate.

Midsummer is also the time witches and other supernatural beings against which precautions are taken (upturned scythes, sharp tools) are about.

Skrien ragana šķērsu gaisu, Manā sētā neieskriesi! Mana sēta dzelžiem kalta, Izkaptēm spāres celtas; Izkaptēm spāres celtas, Adatām jumti jumti, Izkaptēm nosagriezti, Adatām nosadurti.” (milk words)

Run, witch, across the sky. You won’t run into my yard. My yard is hammered with iron, the corners are built with scythes. The corners are built with scythes, the doors with needles. Cut with scythes, Pierced with needles. (Latviešu buramie vārdi I: 265)

Jāņu nakti negulēju, Sav’ telīti sargādama:
Jāņu nakti raganiņas Pulcēties pulcējās.

On Midsummer night I did not sleep, guarding my calf:

On Midsummer night the witches were assembling.

Livestock were in special danger from witches and skauģi (envious ones): “ I fixed a scythe in the cattle-yard. So the witch might get cut down in her fast flight.” Yānis rides his horse around the fields not only to bless them, but also to dispel hostile forces: “Sit rupučus, min ragaiņus, Tīri manu laidariņu.” [Beat toads, trample magicians; clean out my pasture.] (Jāņa vakars:10) In older Latvian tradition a toad is sacred as a form of the milk mother. The hostility in contrast to and in addition to other positive attitudes is repeated with witches, other magic users, and devils, as either a later, more Christianizied attitude, or possibly reflecting conflict among different magic-user groups or different supernatural conceptual schemes.

Muktupāvela has argued that the holiday preserves signs of shamanic pratices and that the magic blooming fern once chose the shaman or magic user during this night. Finding the blooming fern is being initiated into the supernatural and acquiring special, supernatural powers. Most often witches are mentioned in the dainas in connection with Midsummer. In the positive aspect of gathering medicinal herbs, they are healers and wise women. Such magic practices as circling the fields naked are also related to fertility.

Finding the blooming fern gives various powers, such as invisibility, or fulfills wishes. Its deepest interpretation is its symbol of cosmic creative power, specifically solar. Today, the most common interpretation of finding the bloom is sexual, but the greater context in the oldest information stress supernatural power. Considering that initiation into magic use was not the ordinary person’s concern, especially as witches were increasingly persecuted, a fusion of concepts considering the erotic nature of the festival is not remarkable.

In some broad terms, the great calendar festivals resemble each other, and apdziedāšanās was involved in some regions at other festivals than Midsummer. Unlike modern Christmas, which in recent times has become a quiet family holiday, the great winter celebration, like the great summer celebration used to be noisy. It was a time when the Otherworld opened, and ancestor shades as well as other supernatural spirits, witches, sorcerers, and werewolves were about. Mumming, while different regionally, in many places took place in the latter part of fall and through Christmas. The mummers (ķekatnieki, danča bērni, budeļi, or miežvilki) represented supernatural beings, animals, or spirits of agriculture. (cf Adamovičs: 98) Their activities were to facilitate fertility: dancing, jumping, turning, beating or switching people with a rīkste, throwing water on them, crude and licentious behavior. They were rewarded by gifts of food. In many ways they act similar to the Jāņa bērni (“children” of Midsummer) making rounds of the homesteads and bringing fertility or good luck.

Adamovičs singles out Dievs and Laima of deities present at the Great Festivals “except when preparing for war then Road Mother, War Mother, and Moon were invoked in public cults.” (Adamovičs: 99) However, historical sources do not seem to support the exclusiveness, or even priority of these deities. Who was invoked seems to be regional. Only a few historical sources from eastern Latvia speak of separate men’s and women’s cult activities. Most sources state that men and women celebrated together both in parallel and interactively; that has been the practice at least in recent centuries. A few older sources state that men sacrificed a male animal and women a female animal. Stribingius (1606) notes that men sacrificed at an oak, while women at a linden in eastern Latvia. In any case, there is an emphasis on parallelism and its connections:

Man piedzima Jāņu nakti Baltai ķēvei kumeliņš;

Ja zirdziņš – tētiņam, Ja ķēvīte – māmiņai. (LD 32 500)

On Mindsummer night my white mare gave birth to a colt.

If a colt – for father; if a filly – for mother.

The pattern is similar to the phrase tēvam dēli, mātei meitas (sons for father, daughters for mother) as in parallel descent.

Midsummer singing is well documented and the particularly characteristic type is known as aplīgošana. It is essentially Midsummer apdziedāšana or celebratory singing, including agonistic apdziedāšanās contest singing, also known as aplīgošana. The censorious songs were an effective means to shame lazy and shiftless people, whose fields were not in order or houses not decorated with greenery and flowers. That is why everyone made effort to not be shamed and tried to complete the work on time, which was supposed to be done by Midsummer, so they would not have to fear aplīgošanās. One ritual activity involves the mistress to circle the fields; others involve riding horses around them. The closing song of Midsummer always has something about seeing Yāņi off to the next hill, where the next hill people see if off to the next, and so on until it reaches the sea:

Pavadami Jāņa dienu Līdz viņami kalniņami,

Līdz viņami kalniņami, Līgo, līgo!

Lai pavada ciema meitas Līdz pašai jūriņai. Līgo, līgo.

Gaidīsim mēs citu gadu Tevi atkal atbraucami. Līgo, līgo.

We set off Midsummer Day to the next hill

To the next hill, līgo, līgo!

May the village girls see it off all the way to the sea. Līgo, līgo.

We await you another year, for you to come back. Līgo, līgo.

The aplīgošanās challenge songs are such as appear at other apdziedāšanās, except that since at Midsummer there is a division of male against female challenge singing, the songs tend to be more the courtship type where the young of opposite sex tease each other, except that everyone participates.

Mēs, puisēni, jaun’ būdami, Kā mums tika, tā daram:

Ejam meitas brāķedami, Kā auziņas braucīdami.

Puiši gāja siena pļaut, Trīs kažoki mugurā:

Nenopļāva gailim nastas, Ne kazai kumosiņa.

Vai, meitiņas, vai meitiņas, Jums jāiet čigānos:

Ne jūs mākat cimdu rakstu, Ne trinīta audekliņa.

Čakli, čakli, mūsu puiši, Kas tos puišus nepazina?

Rudzus pļāva raudādami, Krogā gāja dziedādami.

Briedim ragi nodiluši Krūmus, mežus bradājot;

Tā nodila puišiem mēles, Par meitām runājot.

Tā dziedāja jauni puiši, Kā tie mūsu suņi rēja;

Jaunas meitas gavilēja, Kā putniņi debesīs.

Gari mati, īss padoms Mūsu ciema meitiņām:

Kaķi cepa, vistu slauca Pašā Jāņu vakarā. (Tdz 53526)

Kviešiem iraid smalka zāle, Meitām gudra valodiņa;

Kas var kviešus izravēt, Kas var meitas nodziedāt.

Čīkstēdama, vaidēdama Ķīvitiņa gaisā skrēja,

Tā čīkstēja mūsu puiši, Jāņa dziesmas nezinot. (Tdz 53519)

We, lads being young, as we liked, we did.

We went spoiling girls, like separating oak grain.

Boys went to reap hay, three coats on their back.

They didn’t even reap a bundle for the cock, nor a bite for the goat.

Girls, oh, girls, you must go a gypsying:

You knew nothing of mitten patterns, or twill weaving.

Diligent, hard-working, those boys. Who didn’t know our lads?

Weaping when reaping, to the ale-house singing.

The buck’s antlers are worn down. Tramping through brush and forest.

That’s how the boy’s tongues wore down speaking about girls.

That’s how our boys were singing, how our dogs were barking.

The girls were exulting like birds to the sky.

Long hair, short counsel, our village girls:

Cooked a cat, milked a hen on Midsummer eve.

Fine is the wheat grass, clever the speech of girls.

Who can weed the wheat? Who can beat girls in song?

Squeaking, whimpering the lapwing flew through the sky;

That’s how our boys were creaking for loss of Midsummer songs.

That Midsummer songs continue to be generated is illustrated by entries in 2001on Bērziņš’s folklore site <http://www.svetki.lv/jaanji/ligodz.htm>:

Jāņu māte sieru sēja
Jāņu tēvs to izbrāķēja

Midsummer mother made the cheese wheel.

Midsummer father spoiled it.

The song can be interpreted as a double entendre.

B. Wedding as the Great Human Holiday

Lec, lec, māsiņa, No kumeliņa,

Negaidi tautiņu, Nocēlājiņu

Leap, jump, sister, dismounting your horse,

Don’t wait for the groom folk, to help you down!

(Wedding song that exhorts the girl to show her spirit, and do honor to her family as its representative)

Tilti rībi, tautas jāji (The bridges clattered, suitors were coming) (LD 18993)

The word derēt, related to IE *der- (to tear, to divide out, to pull out) in its Baltic etymological development has the meaning of “to be made useful or usable”. (LEV I: 209) Thus there is the sense of purposeful necessary violent change associated with the concept of adaptation. The verb, along with its alternative līgt related to līdzināt (to make equal from the sense of cutting something the same height), refers to sealing a contract, either that of marriage or of work (LEV I: 520-1). In the figurative sense the terms mean to settle or calm down.

Māsa naidu sacēlusi, Sūta brāļus līdzināt. (LD 13765)

Sister has raised discord, Sends brothers to even it out.

The formulaic key word saderēt in the closing formula, then, has the sense of both sides having been made useful to each other by adjusting in addition to the understanding that a formal agreement or contract has been made:

Šodien manu augumiņu/ Ar tautieti līdzināja.

This day my body was adjusted to the bridegroom.

In apdziedāšanās the relationship or boundaries of two groups is adjusted through a ceremony seen in embodied imagery as being in better fit. If a dispute occurs, a smoothing-over ceremony of adjustment is necessary. And in a wedding the couple is described in physically embodied terms as being adjusted so as to fit together better.

Of the three great celebrations (godi) of human life marking the primary passages (birth, wedding, funeral), the wedding celebration is the high point analogous to the zenith of the sun’s journey. The largest number of dainas consists of wedding songs, and the primary drama is structured in terms of a play war involving two armed clans (kāzinieku draudzes) and bride capture. The participants are divided into two initially hostile war parties (kaŗa draudzes), the vedēji (bride-nappers or bridegroom’s people) and panāksnieki (chasers or bride’s people). The military terms are emphasized; there is talk of pulki (bands), flags, and war trumpets. Swords were sometimes carried, even after peasants were legally barred from doing so.

Semi-professional women singers were invited to the wedding party in Latgale. Apart from singing at the entrance into the house, at the table, they performed apdziedāšanās, addressings the new couple as well as every guest. (Muktupāvels)

Maksājiet, maksājiet Manu skaistu dziedājumu:

Jums bij labi klausīties, Man mēlīte deldējama. (LD 974)

Pay up, pay up For my fine singing:

It was good for you to listen, My tongue to wear down.

Like the wreaths at Midsummers, the bride’s crown and the bridgeroom’s have transformative powers. In the wedding, they serve to emphasize a change into another state and role, from that of unmarried to married. While the bride is the focus of the celebration because her change is more dramatic, it is significant that there is a weaker parallel in terms of the bridegroom’s hat as a symbol of the male.

Straubergs recounts the events of a wedding song war recorded in Alsunga, western Latvia. (Latviešu tautas dziesmas, VII: x). A woman from the bride’s side guards a hoard of tassels, apples, cheeses, or something else. Young men, presumably from the groom’s side, find an opportunity to “attack” and either scatter or keep the items. The bride’s side women take off their shawls, gather the tassels, and stand behind the table in the middle of the room. The groom’s singers assemble on the other side. The song leaders stand in front of their group, the locītājas (second voices) beside them, and the groom’s side begins the initial song. Later the menfolk join in to help, and eventually everyone is involved on one or the other side. Although the bride has already been taken to the home of the groom and is found by the bride catchers sitting by the table with the groom, she is still considered to be a representative of her natal family.

The songs LD 8282-9080 in Baron’s Latvju dainas are about gossiping, reputation, and “people’s talk” (ļaužu valodām, slavu un neslavu, paļām, nievāšanu, nicināšanu, mēlnesību). Many of these are also sung by the bride’s people (līgava’s draudze) who in turn are singing and in all ways putting down the bride. (Arājs: 195)

Unlike apdziedāt, which is not really negative since the desired outcome is positive, the term aprunāt (lit. to talk about) seems to be entirely negative, meaning to put down or gossip about. It is a primary complaint of girls against boys,

Dionisius Fabricius in Livonicae historiae compendiosa, 1611 says that the participants eat, drink, sing, and dance three days, the men and women catching some sleep on benches next to each other. He says their dance step consists of jumping on both feet.

The bride capture enactment does have basis in historical fact. In the past, before Christian law and practice forbade it, raiding was a fact among tribal peoples, and desirable women a primary booty. Arturs Goba (Ojārs Ozoliņš) in his Ceļs uz Biterīnu recalls vivid tales of raiding between enemy Estonians and Latvians in a hostile border area, including one tale where the captured Estonian women kill their captors and escape back to Estonian land (p. 183), or where one woman helps her clan take revenge and reclaim her (p. 198), and a tragic love story where yet a different captured Estonian woman and Latvian soldier fall in love, have a child, but she is claimed by a Latvian chieftain, resulting in an inter-clan fight with her death and the father having to flee with the surviving child from the clan (p. 200-201). Actual bride capture, of course, would not have been the primary wedding type even in the borderlands in feudal raiding times. From the standpoint of a girl’s family, theft as opposed to arrangement is not optimum. While human beings are flexible and survive under very adverse situations, being a slave and having natal family members killed in a real raid would not be desirable for a woman. However, a staged raid offers the most imaginative, exciting version without the cost, and allows for greater flexibility in arrangement when resources may be limited.

C. Fall and Winter Fertility and Well-being Rituals

Ritual songs are ethnically very stable due to their elaborate ethno-social context, as are also lyrical songs due to their image-oriented structure, whereas the narrative songs are more autonomous and easier to translate...the old layers of Estonian folk music have been preserved, if at all, in a surprisingly conservative form. New music layers have appeared alongside of them, leaving their structure essentially intact. The extreme conservatism of archaic musical phenomena has also been noted by musicologists from Latvia, Lithuania and elsewhere. (Kristin Kutma) <http://haldjas.folklore.ee/folklore/vol2/ident.htm>)

During special occasions of crises, a saberi (lit.“to pour together”) celebration was held. Neighbors would bring grain to brew beer in common and make bread, as well as other things to sacrifice, which included all agricultural and particularly dairy products as well as wool and flax products. (cf Adamsons: 107) There is almost no information about what kind of singing took place at saberi festivals in the earliest sources, and it is not clear if the historical saberi were harvest festivals, or festivals arranged ad hoc for emergencies. However, there are a number of different fall festivals, varying by region, which has retained the sense of interconnectivity of cosmic and human parallels in creativity and fertility.

Ethnomusicologist Ansis Ataols Bērziņš in his web site course on Latvian festivals summarizes a revived actual mock fighting ritual, sometimes also involving competitive singing between males and females during the fall festival Apjumības, which has a marked fertility tone and explicit sexual symbolism:

Of particular note is the struggle over the stebere. The mistress of the household (saimniece) gives the the stebere to the barvede, usually the most active and mouthy woman able to lead the women’s and girls’ group to put the lads down through song. It is a carrot strung together with a pair of onions or some other similarly shaped fruits or vegetables. The barvede and other women tease the lads with the stebere.

Sing, sing, barvede,

With the billy goat stebere.

I will poke out the nostrils of the lads

With the billy goat stebere.

Sing, girls, sing, women,

Guard the stebere.

The boys try to take away the stebere, and there is a lively struggle until the boys finally get the stebere and divide it among themselves. In this case the stebere symbolizes a phallus. As for Martinmaas, a billy goat was slaughtered. Since the folk songs usually speak of a billy goat stebere, there is reason to believe that in the past there was a struggle over a real goat’s phallus and not its replica.

Gather, my gatherers,

I will slaughter the billy goat tonight.

The group leader herself

Gets the billy goat stebere.

In general Apjumības were a “naughty” festival, appropriate for a fertiltiy festival. Today such performances are, of course, not fertility rites, but re-enactments with erotic entertainment as one function. But documentation of even more graphic fertility rituals among other Indo-Europeana peoples have been made, such as the classic I-E horse sacrifice where according to historical documentation, the queen enacted copulation with a dead horse, or its member for the sake of fertiltiy. (cf Agrawala, 99)

The mumming period, depending on region anytime from the end of fall to around the New Year, is another time for mummers to round the farms. Since the old pre-industrial base is gone, it is not necessarily believed, but it is known that they bring blessings from the Otherworld. There are similarities to the Balkan and English Morris groups, except mumming in Latvia seems mixed, rather than restricted to either all male or all female groups as in the Balkans. Both a father and a mother lead them, with the participants being known as children. Cross-dressing, such as among all-male Bulgarian koukeri or Romanian calusari may be done by both sexes. Also, the dancing is more an imitation of the bear and other animals than the high, acrobatic exhibition leaps as among Balkan men. In Latvia there are masks and costumes representing animals and Otherworld beings, but there is no theater of a king or other participant being killed and revived. Additionally, spring dainas mention young girl singing “troops” carrying flags led by leaders, perhaps recalling Bulgarian Lazaritza groups or Macedonian and Croatian girls’ groups honoring the goddess Lada. The correspondences seem more than casual of the Balkan and Baltic groups, notably importance attached to bees, health, and fertility, but there are no comparative studies to my knowledge.

During the masked activities mummers sang songs while making rounds of the farms, some of which are similar to the apdziedāšanās, except they were nonresponsorial. Some examples are: <http://www.svetki.lv/xmas/z6trad/apdz.htm>

Protu, protu, redzu, redzu, tais mājās slinkas meitas:

Logi, soli nemazgāti, mēslu čupa pagultē.

Čigānos laizdamās, vilku biezu kažociņu:

Citur deva ēsti, dzerti, citur vēzdu par muguru.

Ķekatīna, maza sieva, pazudusi kupenē;

Ņem sudraba šķipelīti, meklē mazu ķekatīnu.

Ko tu gaidi, vecais puisi, šogad sievas nepaņēmis.

Visas tavas vecās brūtes salēkušas čigānos.

Budēli, tēvaini, tev garš deguns:

Visu gaļu sakāri deguna galā.

Saimeniece cisku kasa, negribēja gaļas dot.

Vai tu kasi, vai nekasi, tāpat gaļa jāpiedod!

Budēli, tēvaini, tev gara bārda:

Dod manām meitām istabu slaucīt.

Čigāniši bēdājās: nava krēsla būdiņā:

Lepnām meitām platas lūpas, tur būs laba sēdēšana.

Dēlu māte, vilku māte, Abas vienu ceļu tek.

Dēlu māte vedekliņas, (Vilku) māte jērus tek.

(mummer song from Tukums, Kurzeme)

I can see, I understand in this house some lazy girls.

Windows, benches unwashed, a big mess under the bed.

Going a gypsying (mumming), I wore a thick coat.

In some places they give you food and drink; in others they hit you in the back.

The mummer woman, a small woman, lost in the snow drifts.

Take a silver shovel, look for the small mummer woman.

What are you waiting, old lad, this year you won’t get a wife.

All of your old brides have gone to gypsies.

Mummer, uncle, what a long nose you have:

All the sausages can be hung on the tip of your nose.

The mistress was scrubbing a bone, not wanting to give any meat.

No matter if you scrub; you must give some meat.

Mummer, uncle, what a long beard you have:

Lend it to our girls to sweep the room.

Mummer children were sorrowing, no chair in the hut.

Proud girls - thick lips, there’s a good place to sit.

Son’s mother, wolf mother, both going the same road.

Son’s mother for a daughter-in-law, wolf mother for lambs.

A song from Jēkabpils claims,“My father was a Gypsy, I am a fine lady (jumpraviņa – Latvianized “Jungfau,” often used ironically). My mother was a Gypsy, I sought a lord’s son.” The song is ironical, since in the daina world Germans and Gypsies represent polar extremes in terms of worldview, lifestyle, status, power, and privilege. A lord or lady, meaning a German, would be the extreme mismatch of a Gypsy. The German represents the high but oppressive class through with all the finery, pomp, and circumstance that the Latvian peasant looks at with cynicism and envy. The Gypsy represents the antithesis of the values and circumstances the hard-working, frugal peasant maintains and for which his alter ego yearns: freedom, including freedom from social restraints represented by living in the forest or wandering, or social norms represented by stealing. The shades of Latvian ancestors that the mummers act out appear in the form of the wild Other – animals, Gypsies, strange and grotesque beings, women dressed as men and men dressed as women. “Many of the animal masks that are used by Christmas mummers (ķekatas) is connected with this sense of changing or shape-shifting during the solstices.” (Vība: 80)

There are also apdziedāšanās songs from Christmas, including the formulaic “without shame” songs that are initial formula used to frame celebrations as special and sacred with behavior and language that is not mundane:

Ai, bagāti Ziemas svētki, Kalpi kliedza, zirgi zviedza:

Kalpi kliedza piedzēruši, Zirgi zviedza neēsuši. (LD 333372)

Oh, rich Christmasfest: farmhands shouting, horses neighing.

Farmhands shouting in drunkenness; horses neighing without food.

The song suggests a history of changing values. Celebrating with revelry and noise is increasingly viewed negatively as Christian values become increasingly entrenched. There is, as a result, an expectation that at least Christmas be celebrated as one of quiet peace in contrast to the more archaic merrymaking.

↑ Contents

IV. MYTH, BELIEF SYSTEMS, AND COSMOLOGY

The nonGerman peasants have grown up without religion or the service of God, and they have only what the Devil has given their forefathers with idolatry in groves and forests and other magic. [Bulov, 1565 church visitation proclamation (Straubergs, 47)]

Trejdeviņas burvenes, trejdeviņas raganas, skreita uz melon jūru! Tur jūs ēdat,tur jūs dzerat, tur jūs sprāgstat pa vidu pušu. (LBV I: 388)

Thrice nine magician women, thrice nine witches, run to the black sea! There you eat, there you drink, there you burst into half. (incantation against witches – the black sea = the swallowing destroying cosmic sea)

Baltic peoples are sometimes known as “the last pagans of Europe.” Lithuania became officially Christian at the end of the 14^th century with the marriage of Jogaila to the Polish Christian princess Jadviga. Among the common people in the countryside, vernacular beliefs dominated until the 15^th – 16^th centuries with the era’s aggressive Reformation efforts, enforcement of Christian law, and translation of the Bible into the vernacular. Substantial vernacular belief system that is not Christian persisted and was documented in the 19^th century. Baltic mythology has a potential, largely unrealized significant value to an understanding of Eurasian vernacular belief systems whose roots predate Christian ones in the area.

Primary data sources, each requiring its own methodology and each with important limitations, are found in archaeological, historical documents, folklore, and linguistics including archeolinguistics, etymology, and toponymy. The historical sources are mostly those of unsympathetic outsiders. Nevertheless, in a surprising number of cases sources from various fields corroborate some old layers in the dainas and other folklore, such as archeology corroborating pre-Christian burial rites, which continued to be described in the dainas long after they were no longer being practiced. Variants of a song contain different details that placed together form a concept with mythologically significant information. The myths that emerge from the dainas have in effect been formed from mosaic pieces, rather than long narratives.

The most thorough compilation of historic records is found in Wilhelm Mannhardt’s work, and the most thorough bibliography as it pertains to Latvian mythology is found in the works of Kārlis Straubergs (incl. LTB I-II) and Haralds Biezais; additionally Pēteris Šmits made the classical compilation of Latvian folk beliefs (Latviešu tautas ticējumi I-IV). Belief systems, cosmology, and mythology are difficult to contain in genre, as they are abstract superstructures throughout the modalities of culture, in addition to being on-going dialogue throughout society. Interlibrary effort at time of writing did not yield access to the most recent scientific bibliography compilation of historical sources, so I resorted to the laborious old method of crosschecking classic secondary sources in addition to the primary compilation of Latviešu Tautas Ticējumi and Latviešu Tautas Buŗamie vārdi I-II. Kokāre, Kursīte, and Vīķis-Freibergs have published scholarly books on mythology in the 90s, also designed for a wider, more popular Latvian audience. My summary comments are drawn from a lifetime interest in the subject and an extensive personal library of commentary and primary sources.

Propp and the structuralists, such as Levi-Strauss, consider an underlying distributed semantic within a culture to link different types of narrative as sources for myth. In Latvia the primary sources of myth, however, are lyro-narrative songs in addition to the folk tale and other folklore, such as riddles and sayings. Without going into the intricacies of A.J. Greimas’s complex structural analysis of myth, in simplified terms Greimas considers wedding to be an example of the resolution of conflict and a means of restoration to an original state of a contract, a state of order (in this case equilibrium) in which the new can be reintegrated. (For a summary discussion of Greimas’s structural analysis and selected list of his publications cf Eleazar Meletinsky’s article “Structural-Typological Study of Folktale” in Soviet Structural Folkloristics.)

Lithuanian scholars have done much of the current research on historical Baltic culture. The range of material is extensive, including archaeological, ethnographic, folkloric, historical, and mythological sources. Marija Gimbutas originated the idea of the interaction and only partial fusing of concepts from two historically different peoples in the Baltic, the original Old Europeans and the incoming Indo-Europeans. In mythological orientation the first were oriented to the female, to water, stone, vegetation, moon, snakes, and toads. The second were oriented to the male, to the sun, the sky, and horses. However, in the Baltic, the female element held its ground to the point that a primary symbolic interaction is between water and light or fire. The female orientation is so strong that where most Indo-Europeans have Dawn goddesses and only some, such as the Hittites, have strong solar goddesses, in the Baltic the Sun goddess becomes of central importance. Thus, the two active creative forces are female: water as the Great Cosmic Female Generative Source inherited from the Old Europeans and the Indo-Euroepan fire (Fire Mother) and Sun Mother-Daughter. Both fire and water are associated with the creative/ sexual act, and either magical or ritual activity seems implied in such daina motifs as building a fire in the stream (straumē kūru uguntiņu).

Mythologist Norbertas Velius in his interpretive search for underlying organizational patterns in his The World Outlook of the Ancient Balts (1989) devotes much of his efforts to establish basic cognitive and ideological oppositions, related to the location of the Baltic tribes, on the gross level divided into west and east and mediated by a central location. Cognitive slots are open-ended, though not unlimited or random, and some oppositions, such as up/ down, high/ low, right/ left, east/ west, top/ bottom, south/ north, white/ black, day/ night, moon/ sun, male/ female, old/ young seem to be fundamental cognitive experiences in the sense of Lakoff, Johnson, and other constructivists. Velius, having divided the Baltic tribes into eastern, western, and central makes some interesting generalizations. Thus, dowry chests are lowest in the west and highest in the east, with grave burials corresponding as below ground in the west and above ground covered by a barrow in the east. (p. 24-26) He notes the opposition of water (western Balts) to fire/sun (eastern Balts) as mediated by plants (central Balts), and with the center as generally representing an area of reconciliation and balance. (p. 27) The play between fire or sun against water (which is associated with moon) is strong in Latvian daina poetics, with such examples as the sun daughter washing her steed or the paired sun horses coming out of the cosmic sea. One of the favorite and striking color combinations is the dark blue mēļš of a woman’s cloak set off with gold-colored bronze inlay patterns. Similarly black, night, the male moon, the elder age set, the left, and female orientation are the special focus of the western Balts. The eastern Balts are associated with white, sky, day, female sun, younger age set, right, and a masculine orientation. (p. 32-49). But the threesome and the twosome alternate, as when sky and the number one associated with the eastern Balts becomes opposed to the earth and the number two of the central Balts rather than water of the western Balts. One problem is that the historical sources are later, from the 16^th century for the western Balts, even though in many ways the culture seems to relate to still older more female-oriented patterns, but sources for eastern Balts go back to the 13^th century.

However, Velius implies that the balanced values of the central peoples came to dominate later historical periods, while the west as the smallest area largely disappeared, but not before leaving certain basic patterns, most significantly a female-orientation. The female orientation, however, is also very strong among the central peoples, notably the importance of Laima (Fortune), earth, the dawn goddess, queens in stories, and erotic joking. (p. 94) The earth is female, though Velns who comes into the Baltic with Indo-European herders as a god of cattle represents a simultaneous alternative acquiring earth god characteristic. Thus two different conceptual cultures meet, but do not totally fuse. The more patriarchal eastern peoples, coming originally from the upper Dniester area with a stronger herder culture and a male cattle patron Velns contrast with the western peoples who have a female cow patron with attributes later absorbed by Māra. The eastern peoples begin to make a strong cultural impact in Vidzeme by the 6^th –7^th centuries. (Leinasare: 75)

Indo-European focus on sky and fire never totally completes domination of the Old European sphere of deities in the Baltic. As in other traditions, the already marked sky god (Dievs), becomes God reflecting syncretic Christian influences. As farming becomes the primary economic activity, the shift is more toward earth rather than water. Most of the deities remain female, the male gods representing different aspects of sky and atmospheric phenomenon (dark sky -Jods, thunder -Pērkons, wind -Vējš). Among some more martially inclined peoples or classes Pērkons comes to the fore of Dievs. The cattle herder god Velns becomes totally chthonic, and the primary opponent of Pērkons. Apparently an old view of the Otherworld as a pasture with flock has been retained in the dainas where the dead sister is described as herding shade cows. Velns retains his associations with a number of animals.

One deity has an interesting past presumably both in the Old European and the Indo-European belief systems, the bee goddess known as Austeja among Lithuanians. Apparently the bee was considered a model of an ideal working community, with bees splitting up to go on honey raids, but returning with nectar for the hive. Associated with that was a social kinship, known as a bee brotherhood bičiulis (trusted friend) who shared honey from swarms that went into another’s territory. In the association of bee, honey, light, sun, and amber there is also the aspect of life and regeneration.

There are a number of websites devoted to contemporary practice of native Baltic religions, such as http://www.romuva.lt/jonas.htm. This site stresses that the different ways of practicing Baltic religions are the natural result of different period influences, starting with shamanism in the oldest, followed by a focus on the feminine divine, and most recently swinging to a more masculine divine.

Dievturi

The loosely organized neopagan revival movement Dievturi (literally “keepers of the way of Dievs”) is a native religion with active groups of practitioners in most countries with sizeable populations of ethnic Latvians. Dievturi practice private family rituals and ceremonies that draw from research on how such rites were conducted in the pre-Christain Baltic. Larger, public ceremonies called daudzinājumi are held at major song festivals and attract other Latvians who wish to experience Latvian cultural roots. The Dievturi have had a disproportionately large influence on Latvian culture, and are actively interested in current traditional research. They are more oriented to practice than dogma, and the writings of the 20’s and 30’s, which launched the movement are recognized to be in need to updating and revision (R. Spurs, personal communication).

After a traditional dievturi evening celebration of the “time of the ancestor shades” (veļu laiks), held in 1998 at the meeting house Dievsēta, located in central Wisconsin, some participants met the next morning to discuss how they felt about innovations and changes that had been made:

(We) spoke also, if it was necessary to keep strictly a definite, unchanging tradition, or to allow it to change and develop further. After all, we can only operate with the possibilities and views of today. Innovations are added, (such) as the passing of the candles around the ceremonial table that allowed (the possibility of) a word to each in turn, to call or not to call out an ancestor shade. (It was decided:) most important is to maintain an appropriate tone (noskaņa). (Lelis, no pg.)

Latvian pagan movements, such as the dievturi, have been involved in reconstruction efforts for to use in practice. Ludvigs Ādamovičs (1884-1943), a church historian hostile to the dievturi movement, wrote one classic mythology summary with a bibliography (1937) as did Pēteris Šmits (1918, 1926). Lutheran minister Jānis Sanders (188-1951) tried to retain basic Christianity with Latvian form and spirit, wearing an amber cross rather than silver, singing dainas instead of hymns, and avoiding words that couldn’t be translated into Latvian, such as “Amen”. A Latvian native religion based primarily on daina material developed and was registered in 1925. It survived the war to become active in helping create summer camp intensives in exile and returned to Latvia, so that there are now three dievturi churches, one in Latvia and two in North America. It attracted numerous artists, writers, and educators.

Adamocičs, emphasizes, without serious subsequent contention, that Latvian native religion seems to have developed its sense of immanence more rationally and less mystically than in India, closely connecting it to active work practices. (p.53) He also explains Latvian resistance to the concept of abstract evil with the lack of severe contrasts in the geography. (p.53-4) As an example, Hell with brimstone and eternal fire and punishment of sinners that is common in Christain beliefs, is a latecomer in Baltic mythology and doesn’t succeed in eliminating earlier beliefs.

The dievturi movement in present day Latvia has incurred new hostility from Christian and moral majority groups. One line, instead of looking at contemporary dievturi practice, judges the movement from articles written by the movement in the 1920’s and 30’s (cf Bula, 1998). Others attack it in terms of alignment with “amoral modern movements” such as “phenomenology” (!). (cf Kuchinskis) As of time of writing, there had been no engagement of a serious nature addressing actual issues of dogma and practice. Unlike the period of 1989 when old Latvian traditions were an expression of patriotism, many of the current young generation consider this “graveyard” study in contrast to recently available hipster culture.

Regional Differences

The different Baltic religions historically vary considerably, and even in Latvia, there are marked differences that can be broadly divided as western and eastern, pretty much following old tribal divisions even to the material recorded recently. Thus the Jesuit Peter Culesius in 1599 in his visitation account of Rēzekne in western Latvia speaks extensively about a pagan “priest” and an essentially dual division of sky and earth gods, but more hierarchical than other documents in that he speaks of the earth “god” as being lower (who may be either Earth Mother or Velns since female divinities may be termed “gods” and can be identified as to gender only in context of other texts). Historical information about different deities can be mapped out in time and place and links between different deities resemble links made between daina-songs. Thus in 1789 A. Hupel (Topographisce Nachrichten von Lief- un Ehstland 1-3, IV, Riga, 1789: 382) links the earth mother to yet another male deity, mājas kungs (house spirit) noting that cult details are similar. An essentialist would become discouraged with Baltic mythology as only general patterns can be easily observed. Descriptions by Culesius suggest a more gender-divided and patriarchal religion in eastern than in western Latvia, and this distinction seems to be strengthened by archaeological evidence as to some broad geographical differences. According to him, women worship the mother of gods, Ceradis, and there is a fall festival where women sacrifice a hen (strangely beating it to death with hardened bread sticks while also drowning it), while the men sacrifice a rooster in separate ceremonies. Families have sacred space in the forest with sacred family trees, where at least some ceremonies appear to be communal for both genders, though women worship at the linden and men at the oak. However, Lasicius and Strykovski state that both genders worship together and the priest is an ordinary farmer. Sudavian texts mention that both sexes participate in the feast of souls, but sit apart. The evidence on gender division is incomplete, but in any case, in the daina world, perhaps because of constraints imposed by the manor system, both attend all celebrations, the one clear exception being the spring pasturing celebration by male herders. J. Stribingius Jesuit report from 1606 states outright that the gods are different depending on place, people, and needs. The west does not appear to have strong gender division in cult practice, where the earliest cult practices seem to be either mixed or markedly female-oriented. Zemgalian women were buried not just with jewelry, but also with their tools, hoes and sickles, just like the men with their tools, and otherwise the archaeological evidence speaks for gender egalitarianism. (Vasks, Vaska, & Grāvere: cf 128)

There are a number of attempts at a “Baltic world view,” such as Norbertas Velius, basing his work on V. Toporov, V. Ivanov, and J. Lotman, who considers “the ancient Baltic world outlook, based to a considerable extent, on the mythical conception of nature and society” (p. 10) to “reflect the views and beliefs prevalent in different periods beginning with the remote Stone Age” (Ibid) in spite of the fact that much of the material was collected in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Ivanov and Toporov consider semantic oppositions associated with time, space, and social life to be deep structures of Baltic belief systems. (Dini: 223) Velius stresses the fact old beliefs are not simply replaced, but “new conceptions to the old surviving beliefs” are added. (Ibid) Thus the binary system of oppositions is later subsumed with a ternary system. (p. 12) Furthermore, he considers three different geographically related outlooks, “each dominated by a different opposing member of a great number of oppositions,” (p. 15) with the outlook of the central Balts and their emphasis on west-east dominating. (p. 14)

Daudzināšana or apdziedāšana (celebration) of all creation

They worship all of creation – sun, moon, stars, thunder, birds, and even four-legged creatures down to the toad. They have their sacred forests, fields, and waters in which they dare not cut wood, work, or fish. (Peter of Dunsburg, circa 1400)

Six hundred years later an Australian Latvian summarizes her study of religion in dainas:

We can be placed within different religious systems, but God for us is Latvian. We don’t have a stern god, an angry god. Our God is benign, appearing as a bright, white light, and helpful. We find him all around us and in us, in nature and its processes.” (Muižniece, 1997)

This is the default conclusion, about the fundamentally benign and helpful nature of deities, focusing sight on the good, and avoiding invoking the dark forces. Differences arise in interpretation: if dainas are fundamentally treated, say, as a woman’s genre, or if they are the genre of a suppressed and oppressed people, or if what is important is their different strands of nonChristian and Christian syncretism. Modern neo-pagan and nature religion movements in the Baltic are also strongly associated with ecological movements. While the sources agree that worship took place in forest groves, on hills or by a water source, archaeologists have uncovered evidence that at least some Baltic peoples also had sacred buildings.

Durkheim’s (1915) classical position that the primary function of religion is one of social control and value upkeep has been challenged, problematized, and elaborated. For one, different social segments have differential access to symbols of a society. They may have very different experiences, interpretations, and uses of what may be seen as shared cultural symbols in a total set only theoretically and analytically. Expected differences would fall across primary social divisions, such as gender, class, or education. However, the Marxist uptake of Durkheim that some segments exert dominant normative pressures on others in terms of cultural symbols because of their economic and political hegemony is still broadly relevant. This, particularly since dissenting and alternative forces and even systems, counteracting such symbolic imperialism, are also recognized. In the Latvian case, there is considerable compression of information of the available sources. This is balanced by the fact that in early times the societies were not highly differentiated and later, after conquest, differentiation was constrained by the ethnic group also being the lower serf class. The most significant differences, then, would fall along regional and gender lines. There are many common Baltic and common Latvian concepts.

Ecological Wellsprings of Baltic Mythology

The earliest sources about the Baltic peoples note that they worshipped natural forces around them in the forest, waters, fields, and in the sky. Certain plants, especially trees, and animals (elk, bear, snake, toad, bee, birds), were singled out as particularly sacred. There are numerous collective spirits, such as laumas (in later Lithuanian tradition confused with raganas – witches) and velni who are both spirits of nature and etymologically and narratively related to the dead. The former are female spirits haunting forest and waters, sometimes said to be drowned girls, akin to Slavic vila or rusalki. The second are archetypically male, inhabiting swamps and deep forest pools or the netherworld, and etymologically related to veļi, spirits of the dead. Sometimes velni have mothers and daughters, which suggests that laumas and velni are something like two clans. However, since they do not seem to intermarry with each other or even appear together, though both laumas and velni may have human partners, they seem to belong to separate, alternative, and nonmerged traditions of the dead. The forest, the original place of burial, before burial was mandated in graveyards by law, is also in the realm of the Other World, whose location varies depending on various traditions. The word velis (shade) is etymologically related to the word velns (devil), a being who resides most commonly in the forest swamp or pond, but also in the netherworld. Veļu māte (Shade Mother) rules the land of the dead and Velns (Devil) in some systems of belief may have been her consort or brother. (cf Adamsons: 62) In Latvian tradition Velns doesn’t actually appear together with Veļu māte, unlike Lithuanian Veliona, an example of unfused belief systems. However, as an individualized deity or demon, Latvian Velns often has a female associated with him, a mother, a wife, or a daughter. It is possible to speak to the dead at their burial place, most commonly in the dainas under a white sand hill, historically the dominant burial form. The alternative of burning, which becomes popular in the Iron Age, involves another belief system with the dead released with the smoke to go the way of the Sun across the sea. Because different, mutually non-integrated belief systems are simultaneously at play, there is no point in trying to force them into an unambiguous, logical, noncontradictory theological system. The structures move around freely enough that a trickster effect may appear to be at play even when there is no deliberate trickster figure being created. The exception is the dual Velns/ Dievs pairing where Dievs tricks the more primitive and gullible Velns out of his creations, possessions, and treasures – most of the great artifacts of civilization (including fire, cattle, tools).

On one of the listserves I talked about the subject with a woman in Latvia acknowledged as knowing the traditions well:

Aija: Each soul (dvēsele) more or less remains on earth. That is known as civilization.

Ausma Ābele: That could be. For instance among Latvians the shades (veļi) never appear in individual form, but as a group – the shades, not even as the shades of this farm and the shades of the neighboring farm.

There are, of course, different ways to interpret and recontextualize what is available of past belief systems. Vycinas (1990) in his study of traditional Baltic (pre-Aistian and Indo-Europeanized Aistian) worldviews speaks of a relationship that is something like Heidegger’s Da-Sein [Unbounded Being Open to the World] (Vycinas: 3). The Great Godess, who appears in different guises throughout different Baltic historical eras, is an “ultimate reality,” nature surrounding one in a time when myth, art, and life were less differentiated. (Vycinas: 5) Vycinas draws heavily from Gimbutas’s massive work on what is called the Old European (around 7000 B.C.) heritage, which is focused on rebirth as other forms of life, but particularly trees, birds, reptiles, and forest animals. Vycinas points out that, for instance, in a transition period that lasted millenia, the shrine poles of Indo-Europeans replaced in symbolic significance Old European living trees, which among others, included grave markers and depictions of the world and the sun tree. (Vycinas: 29) The positive relationship to bird, serpent, toad, and tree symbolism that persists to the present is seen as a continuous presence.

As one increasingly is immersed in a study of Latvian (Baltic) mythologies, one becomes aware of some of the different multiple traditions and influences that percolated to the Baltic or developed there, as well as peculiarities that make it difficult to link to other traditions even when it is obvious the link exists. The Indo-European base, for instance, seems to often be in an either incipient or fragmented state, so that one has to be careful to be informed by, for instance, Dumezil’s findings, rather than using them as a template. The sun goddess (PIE*sawel - sun), for instance is both elusive, and archaic with a prominence that is closer to the Hittite sun goddess of Arinna, especially in her relationship aspect to the thunder god, than what is known of the Celtic Sul. There is a dawn goddess (PIE*aswos – dawn) Austra, but also a regional god of light Ūsiņš who may be etymologically related. As among other IE peoples, there is a focus on the Sun or Dawn Maiden as the cosmic bride more than a goddess, reflecting the patrilocal transference to the husband’s clan. There is a Celestial Smith, such as in the Caucasus, which is not overly surprising, since the Baltic peoples derive from Indo Europeans who left the original homeland not through the Balkans but skirting the Caspian Sea. The celestial hierarchy is incipient, with the sky god Dievs in a fairly egalitarian cosmic society. The thunder god Pērkons may have risen to prominence among some Balt warrior societies, and amulets similar to Thor’s hammer have apparently been found in eastern Latvia. As with all Latvian deities, even the Thunder god’s agricultural role is uncharacteristically emphasized over other functions compared to the more warlike use of the theme by neighboring peoples.

Characterization of Daina-world Mythology

Baltic mythology is more akin to poetry before the development of formal philosophy by a specialist priest class. The dainas as poetic expression are closer to the early Vedas than the later Upanishads of India. No systematic theology was developed in Latvian mythology, nor a specialized priest class, and cult rituals were pretty much decentralized. The dainas also represent different voices from different times and places fixed by different collectors. Accordingly, while one may find semantic correspondences with the classic mythologies, there seems much to compare with the syntactic organization of nonwestern mythologies that have low levels of social hierarchy and specialization. While the fundamental structures of Levi-Strauss’s mythemes seem helpful, I have not found anything particularly remarkable. Thus raising a child up to the sun is a sign of giving it life and fortune corresponding to up and right as positive. Down and left are negative, and throwing down into the water or sinking below the earth are signs of destruction. Thus infanticide is suggested when the child implores to be lifted up into the sun and not thrown into the water, (compilation of dainas related to infanticide in Mežāle, 1998: 26-40) as the people of India also put it, “to be washed back into the universe” (Glassie, 1989: 231).

Duality seems mostly apparent on the local level. Thus, consistent with Indo-European duality white/light is positive, while black/dark are negative. But there is an alternative tradition, which would be consistent with the “Old European” of Gimbutas where black is wealth, insight, fertility and rebirth associated with the earth. White on the other hand bleaches bones and represents certain illnesses. Thus, ultimately both black and white represent death, life, and rebirth in alternative traditions. Vīķis-Freibergs notes that white is “not...a single, unified semantic marker.” (1980: 219). Ultimately both black and white each represent death, life, and rebirth in different contexts and alternative traditions.

The deities are not highly anthropomorphicized, and their proper name is often still identical with the physiological element. Thus, even in the 19^th century the sun with a feminine ending (saule) as the deity is Saule (Sun-Woman) or Saules meita (Sun Daughter). Thunder is “Thunder” (Pērkons), and the name for the sky-god Dievs is etymologically related to the “shining daylight sky” (PIE*dyeus – sky,IE *dei-, *deiwo- dī – see Karulis, I., p. 216). The structural spheres of deities and songs and stories about them follow the deeper structuralizable divisons fairly closely. They are still invoked in art and poetry, as in a song sung at Song Festivals, “Saule, Pērkons, Daugava” by M. Brauns using the words of Rainis: “Saule - our mother, Daugava (River)– nurse of our pains. Pērkons - striker of Velns - he is our father.”

Religious reflections don’t center on a cosmogony, though there are cosmological narratives (legends, tales), which, are difficult to align with the mythopoeic daina world or other folklore, such as incantations, as to some degree belonging to different belief systems, the daina one being the most vernacularly original and oldest. The Earth Diver theme of two companion gods, one master of water and the other master of sky, is well represented in the Baltic, most often associated with Velns and Dievs. However, there are also fragments about celestial eggs and primal waters, which suggest Finno-Ugric affinities. There is a tripartite as well as dual division of the cosmos but different metaphors and specifics. There is a cosmic tree and a cosmic hill. The nether world may be part of the earth, not equally divided under it, as in the cosmic egg model with the earth a floating yolk island.

The cosmological concepts of rhythmic and cosmic motion, notion, order, esthetic, and right have to be inferred, rather than being worked out. This fluid state lends itself to a modern reworking in terms of shifting and partial truth, tied to shifting and partial perception of reality, a philosophy suggested by Heraclitus and Aristippus of early Greece rather than highly sophisticated thought of the Far East. It lends itself well to Wittgenstein in the impossibility to speak of wholes or universals except in metaphor and except what one has chosen to bind in hermeneutic categories and focus upon. Finally, it can lead to the concept of belief tolerance, of a continuous need to adjust or attune to the rhythms of the other, and to being in harmonious relationship with all that surrounds one. Meaning can be seen more in the process of living, specifically metaphorically linking singing and working, and the dynamic interaction of different threads or paths of life. Along the way to this desired balanced state, there is aggressive confrontation of the potentially threatening foreign other, expressed in apdziedāšanās.

Mother cult

Another characteristic of Latvian mythology in addition to strong animistic aspects is a strong mother cult, noted in 16^th century sources (a zoomorphic Milk mother appearing as a toad). The “mothers” include those of wind, fire, water (including sea, river), forest, field, and animal in addition to more highly individualized deities. The mothers often have not acquired a strong individualized personality but are understood as the generative source, power, or force (“mother”) of something. The focus is not genealogical, or on the offspring, but on the creative forces directly. Thus, Meža māte appears opposed to Meža tēvs but is more often invoked and represented. The mother/ daughter duality is markedly represented, though the emphasis is on two aspects of the goddess rather than on genealogy. Saule appears as mother or as daughter, as well as mother and daughter(s). Sometimes the daughter aspect is poorly represented, if at all, as in Laima. Laima’s daughter is more likely a human favored by her, an honorific similar to calling festival celebrants “children.” Sometimes it seems there are two different conceptual systems, with an emphasis on either male or female, such as Vējš (Wind) appearing alternatively with Vēja māte (Mother Wind), or Velns with Velna māte (who may be related to the death deity Shade Mother - Lithuanian Veliona or Latvian Veļu māte). Where the male god is clearly the dominant figure, such as Pērkons (Thunder), sometimes there is nevertheless besides the sons a powerful daughter (who is singled out in Lithuanian tradition from her brothers) or wife. But what stands out in particular are the very many mothers, such as those of sea, water, fire, field, and so on. Rivers are generally seen as female. Tacitus in 98 AD says that the Aestians (western Balts) worshipped a mater deorum and the figure of a wild boar was carried into battle. The female orientation of divinity, while not classically Indo-European, is characteristic of at least some Baltic belief systems. Esther Jakobson argues that as among the Siberian Ket people “elements of the natural world-earth, sun, moon, water, and so forth-are personified as female” the female-oriented belief system is common among pre-shamanic more egalitarian Eurasian nomads in contrast to Indo-Europeans who do not have a spirit world that is dominantly female. (Jakobson: 184, 187) Scholars (most lately Kokare, 1992: 45) have noted the significant association of “two deities with a predicate in the singular.” Among the Siberian peoples, as in Latvian dainas, the sun and the earth appear together as associated female figures. (Jakobson: 219) It may suggest a duality of parallel descent as even more unusual (archaic) than the duality of male and female household. One can imagine a historical change from female oriented to male oriented as: “mother-daughter =>mother-father=>father-daughter and father-son. Latvian mythology, though having all examples, has retained a strong mother-daughter schema.

Within this complex relationship are echoed ancient tensions between an archaic understanding of the cosmos organized by reference to a omnipotent, unvanquishable and complex female principle on the one hand, and, on the other, a social and political order centered on human energy and order, particularly on that of males (Jakobson, 201)

However, such scholars as McGrath (on the Indo-European Sun goddess) and Agrawala have argued that Vedic texts and religions developed by priest classes in general distort even Indo-European practice among common people. Agrawala points to Vedic textual evidence on Aditi showing her to be the Great Goddess par excellence even in the Vedic period. (Agrawala: 17) The dominantly male nature of the Indo-European sky is problematized by pointing to an archaic alternative Dyaus-Aditi (Dawn) pairing. Agrawala notes that while the hymns of Rgveda do not give female divinities high significance, in a few passages Sky is addressed as female. (Ibid: 45) Additionally Heaven and Earth, while usually spoken of as a male/ female pair, are also rarely and strangely called two mothers or two maidens. (Ibid) Aditi is known as the infinite sky goddess with Dawn being her face, the mother of gods, and the primordial cow – nourishing mother. This, and the Hittite sun goddess and thunder god pair, suggest that the ascendancy of the sun goddess in the Baltic had very old roots and a complex history that is important in not underestimating the conceptual strength of the feminine principle. There are only a few dainas about a mother of God(s), and they are not particularly informative. However, this, though scanty information can not simply be dismissed to fit a preconceived model. It is an excellent example of how oversimplistic generalizations and inferred and deduced characteristics about belief systems in patriarchal societies can be misleading and false.

Unlike the Finno-Ugric runic and regi-songs (cf Aado Lintrop, <http://haldjas.folklore.ee/folklore/vol11/oak.htm>), the Latvian material doesn’t appear to have many examples of sister-brother deities or heroes stated as such, even though the sister-brother connection is important on the social level in the daina world.

Animism is sufficiently strong that trees, animals and just about anything focused upon may have human-like characteristics and marked gender, to a degree forced by the choice between a masculine and feminine ending (the neuter having dropped out of Latvian). One of the strongest dualities is within the tree cult where the oak is seen as emblematic male and the linden as emblematic female.

The linden, or lime tree (Tilia cordata, Latvian: liepa)...and the oak (Quercus robur, Latvian: ozols) are considered the national trees of Latvia. The oak and the linden tree are characteristic elements of the Latvian landscape. Both trees are still widely used for medical purposes. Medicinal infusions are made of linden blossoms as well as oak bark. Latvian dainas (folk songs) often reflect ethical and moral concepts of earlier times. Amongst other trees, these folk songs most often mention the oak and linden tree. In traditional Latvian folk beliefs and folklore the linden tree is looked upon as a female symbol, but the oak - a male symbol. The nation’s reverence for these trees, which in earlier times were considered sacred, can be witnessed, for example, in a landscape where, in the middle of a cultivated field there still remains a lone large, sacred oak or linden tree. http://www.latinst.lv/li_symbols.htm

To understand the dainas it is necessary to have knowledge of the symbolism involved, such as that of the linden standing for a woman:

Sasēda liepiņa, ar ozoliņu;

Mūžam sasēda, ne vienu dienu. (LD 16078)

Linden sat down with the oak tree.

Forever sat down, not for a day. (wedding song)

This is true in particular for the erotic dainas, many of which are double entendres, such as a “linden crotch” standing for the female vulva in 35056,1. Other trees also have gender, but they do not usually appear as a couple. The fir or pine may be seen as a girl, the bird cherry as a wife, and the apple tree as a mother. Similarly among animals, the cow is marked within the female sphere, and opposed to the horse in the male sphere, rather than cow/ bull and stallion/mare.

It is rather unproductive to try to set up the kinship structure of the deities as they relate to each other, since they are fluid, but the deities can be seen in terms of recurrent or stable relations of alternating contest and cooperation among them. The sky deities appear to be involved in a wedding drama, though the actual hieros gamos is not emphasized, even though there is evidence that such, or betrothal, is being celebrated at Midsummer. There also isn’t strong evidence for a cult of a dying and reborn god, though the Sun daughter does appear to drown, go to the netherworld, and be reborn and some have argued that Jānis is such a sacrificial god. There is no one primary combat myth, though there are feuding gods and feuds, especially of sky gods against darker ones.

Saule in her aspect as sun maiden appears as the bride variously of any of the sky suitors (Dievs, Mēness Auseklis, Vējš, Pērkons or even some of their sons). L. v. Schroeder identified the sky wedding to be a primary myth of the Indo-Europeans in 1923. Saule is also consistently involved in various cosmic feuds with different deities. The grand sky myth appears to involve the breaking of a betrothal or marriage contract as well as courting, feuding, marriage, and death, divorce, or betrayal followed by resolution and rebirth. Saule is also the central marker, if not always the focus of associated myths, with the seasonal holidays. Saule’s return in the spring and wedding or betrothal in the summer is characterized with her spinning, changing colors, and dancing. People observe her rising. They bathe in streams running east, or in the dew. Waters penetrated by the sun’s light is magically curative; there are many poetic dainas about the dancing of light on water. McGrath proposes that the Sun brought down to the hearth becomes the hearth goddess. She proposes as a fundamental Indo-European conceptual scheme the sexual magic of fire/water with fire representing the feminine and water the masculine, associated with the moon. (McGrath: 147) In contrast to Dumezil, she proposes a structural relationship: Sun [red, female, hot, blood, fire, summer]: Moon [white, male, cold, semen, water, winter] (p. 179) This, of course, is almost an inverse of Robert Grave’s White Goddess scheme (white moon goddess, red sun god) but does fit the Baltic material better, except the specifics are much more fluid, white, for instance, being associated with sky divinities generally and blood, alternatively either as female menstrual blood or as male warrior blood, but opposed to honey in turn associated with gold or amber.

The sun/ moon couple appears in wedding games as an ideal pair and the stars may be considered their children, but in mythology they quarrel and separate. The estrangement or feuds between Saule and Mēness is explained either by differences as to their respective spheres (“daynight” division into day and night, and of summer and winter) or by the Moon’s adultery with the Morning Star. In the dominant Latvian versions strongest in eastern Latvia, gender is reversed and Auseklis, the male Morning Star has a problematic relationship with the Sun’s daughter. In some versions the female Morning Star is conflated with Dawn, but the theme of either adultery or conflict between suitors remains the constant and relatable to other Indo-European belief system structures. In the recurrent theme of Saule’s feuds, the hostilities seem to be over the proper place of each deity or over the breaking of a marriage contract. Saule is involved in hostilities with Dievs or his mother, usually in relation to their offspring’s courting behavior. She is also involved in the quarrel of rain and sun as to who should predominate when. She argues with the moon who should light the night and who the day, but this quarrel is settled amicably. She becomes the target of Pērkons’s striking and shattering a cosmic tree whose branches she must gather, or a jug she is washing (the jug having both cosmic and sexual meaning). Alternatively, she is defended by Pērkons who slashes Mēness for his affront to her. In some dainas Saule herself punishes and strikes Mēness with a sword or throws a silver stone at him. The theme of two feuding sky deities representing different families or spheres of influence, many related to the cosmic wedding cycle, appears to be of major structural cosmological importance.

The feuds and divorce of sun and moon do not prevent focus of most dainas on the joyful courtship activities or identification a human couple with the sun and moon.

Mēnestiņš kulti gāja Ar sidraba sprigulīti;

Saules meita līdzi gāja Zvaigžņotiem vaiņagiem. (Tdz 55019)

Moon went threshing with a silver flail;

Sun daughter went along stars in her wreath.

Saule also appears in the “two mothers” theme with Earth or with a human mother:

Mother, my dear mother! You are not my mother for life.

This sun, this earth. They are my eternal mothers.

Sun, Sun; Earth, earth With me are at odds.

With Sun I made agreement; With Earth I could not

Until I gave her my body. (27579)

When Sun and Earth appear together as mothers, Sun is in the position of giving life, while Earth of taking it. Together they complete a simple version of the archetype of the Great Goddess. The identification and contrast of this and that sun in the form of the shade mother’s daughter as well as the sun daughter holding keys to the grave is linked to the contrast of rain and sun:

Lietus līst, saule spīd, Veļu māte kāzas dzēra;

Veļu bērni dancodami Dzelžu kurpas noplēsuši. (LD 27799)

Rain is raining, sun is shining, Shade mother is drinking a wedding.

The shade children dancing have worn down iron shoes.

The term “to drink” meaning “to celebrate” suggests the forming of a contract or alliance if one also remembers that magic users were initiated into the craft by drinking together. Two contrasting states, that of raining and that of sun-shining, appear in a liminal world of contradictions, where a wedding (=life) is celebrated among the dead (if the dead one is a young unmarried person who did not marry and have children on earth).

One interesting local feature of the Baltic is that there is no patriarchal style goddess of war, though there is a barely anthropomorphicized war mother (kaŗa māte). Though a source of feuds and wars, she is not a goddess of sexual love, such as the Ugarithic Asheroh. All the goddesses are involved with the full range of female life, especially birth-giving, rather than specializing in just one function. Even Laima is not confined to casting fate or apportioning assets or wealth (bagātība). Latvian mythology appears to have a strong female perspective, as well as presence.

Another deity Velns is involved in hostilities with both Dievs and Pērkons. Besides Christian influence demonizing Velns as the Devil, there also appears to be an older antagonistic relationship of the dark wet earth or netherworld and the bright sky as separate from the antagonism of bright/ shining to stormy/dark mostly expressed as atmospheric phenomenon. The darkest and wettest part of earth (swamp, deep forest lake) is the dwelling place of velni, an archaic location of the netherworld. It appears to be a negative opposite of a positive marital relationship of Sky and Earth, or Thunder and Earth. One Baltic tradition positions Sun and Moon as the first parents with Earth as their daughter, though the male sky/ female earth duality does not seem to be clearly worked out in Latvian tradition. While the different tribes and their descendants who formed regional cultures had alternative, though intersecting, beliefs and myths as suggested by differing and similar burial practices and archaeological artifacts, some major structural lines can be seen as similarly underlying the different versions.

Dyadic interaction and dual structure (opposition, apposition, doubling, twining) are means of organizing a largely fluid, rather weakly anthropomorphicized, and mostly nonhierarchical Latvian mythology. The sky twins (Dieva dēli) are a significant example of the use of the doubling concept. They are similar to the Greek dioskuri and court the Sun maiden and try to save her from drowning, or maybe even rescue her from the land of shades in the tales of the underground princess. Sometimes the sky brothers appear as the Morning and Evening sun, at other times as the two horses of the sun, and Saule even goes hunting with two hounds.

The dominant view that has developed is that strong hierarchy seems to be a later Christian phenomenon. As summarized by Kokare: “Neither hierarchy, nor subordination are characteristic of Latvian mythology, but spheres of activity and function, divided with large strokes.” (Kokare, 1992: 57) Kokare agrees with the classic academic view, as expressed also by Vīķis-Freibergs: “Most of the mythology has older roots and “can not be tied to a Christian lexicon.” (Vīķe-Freibergs, 1997: 122) The dyad appears as two aspects, the mother and daughter representing two stages of a life, or they may be more strongly opposed as the idea of the tree being rooted in the earth with the branches reaching to the sky. Dual opposition is strong in a large group of cosmological tales with Velns and Dievs as the co-creators of the features of the world. Antagonism is a common feature and it is usually Dievs who takes on the role of culture hero who steals fire, cattle, and many culture objects from the gullible, more primitive giant Velns. Velns is a god of animals, especially of cattle, or their creator in the tales where Dievs steals them, especially the cattle, away from him. The earth diver tale type is well represented in the Baltic. Velns, but in some cases simply a “water being,” is the earth diver helper to Dievs. (Latviešu tautas teikas. Ancelāne, 1991)

. Scholars have differentiated belief system layers parallel to diachronic language studies, as common Indo-European (for example the shining sky Dievs related to Sanskrit Dyaus), common Baltic (Laima, Pērkons found among all of the Baltic tribes), belief systems particular to the different tribes in the Baltic (the light god Ūsiņš among the eastern Balts, Milk Mother in the form of a toad among all Latvian tribes), and detailed regional differences, such as what kind of mother spirit dominates.

The Balts were the most northern of the original IE expansion, and they retained many of the features of a less specialized society in their belief systems. Perhaps their mythology did not develop as in many of the IE warrior states. In any case, an IE patriarchal military state is not what appears in the daina world. The speculation is that what is represented correctly as Indo-European, is not necessarily emblematically Indo-European typical of militaristic, heroic, and patriarchal prototypes.

Among all the Baltic peoples bees are seen as sacred communal insects, compared to diligent and productive sisters. Since the Mesolithic, there are cult objects relating to the snake (zalktis and Lith. gyvāte), symbolically and etymologically related to the term for “life” (dzīve) and other animals, such as elk and bear. Their continued appearance, with an efflorescence of grass-snake motifs in the “crossbow” brooches of the 5^th – 9^th centuries (Latvijas PSR arheoloģija, 1974: 171) and into modern folklore suggests some artifactual continuity of chthonic mythology. In the Latvian case, the chthonic is more concretely associated with swamp, deep forest pools, and the wild aspect of the earth than a more abstract underground.

Sun, sky, and light phenomenon mythology was brought in by Indo-European herder cultures starting with 2100 B.C. as evinced in archaeological objects, such as jewelry and amulets with sun symbols (circles, wheels, and further elaborations). (Zemītis,: 16-22) The sun remained the focus of mythology into modern times as the measure of cosmic time and festivals. Paired variously with different deities, she overshadowed the male moon, the default husband, and appeared as a double with her daughter (also in the plural). Even though in Latvian folklore the sky god Dievs retains the status of first among gods rather than giving way to Thunder, Pērkons is one deity whose sacrificial cult remained to modern times in the Latvian area: “What shall we give to Pērkons for the summer harvest? A measure (lasti) of rye, a measure (lasti) of barley, another measure (pusbirkavu) of hops.” (LD 28 818) Work remains to clarify by region how the mythology may have differed between Eastern and Western Balts on the coarsest level, and regionally thereafter. In Latvian mythology the relationship between the different sky gods who all are linked to Saule or her daughter(s) as suitors and/or husbands, indicate shifting differentiations and associations (Sky with or as represented by Thunder, Sky with Dark Sky as Bright Sky, Sky with or as represented by Moon). Though Sky and Earth are only weakly linked in the dainas, the duality is strong in incantations. The focus is rather of sky deity interrelationships on the one hand, and of moist earth and water deities on the other hand without a particularly strong sense of intermarriage between the two groups. Intermarriage of different classes of deities, in fact, unlike in the south of Europe, does not appear to be a strong motif. It is as if the different classes retained some independence and insularity, rather than being merged into a hierarchical system. While formulaically the possibility exists of all deities to have families, in terms of frequency, they are mostly seen by themselves or paired with another deity, not always a spouse. Powerful male deities are more likely to have families appearing with them than powerful female deities (except for the mother/ daughter pairing).

One of the most powerful dualities in Latvian mythology is that of mother/ daughter in parallel to father/ son. It is strong enough to think of parallel descent, daughters born of mothers but sons of fathers. All the female deities have either developed daughters, or such by theoretical extension. The mother/ son theme is not well developed. Similarly when fathers have daughters, it is more weakly developed than the sons. Thunder does have a daughter who is placed in contrast to her brothers. In contrast, Pērkons conspicuously appears with his whole family including a powerful wife and/or daughter in addition to a number of sons - all of them involved in thundering and rain-making. The number five seems particularly associated with the Thunder clan. A number of the female deities are sometimes said to be the daughters of the Sky god. Even the syncretic pagan-Christian deity Māra has only a relatively few songs with a son. Jesus essentially has not entered the daina tradition.

The triune concept (Maiden/Bride, Mother, Crone) is weakly developed if at all in the Latvian materials, but perhaps the witch-grandmother generation has been split off with the effect of demonization, or else dainas may simply be following the rule of ideally only two appearing on the stage at any one time. Attempts to place the Laimas in a threesome pattern (Laima, Dēkla, Kārta) have not been successful. Differentiation by age seems to be absent.

In addition to parent/ same sex child (Saule, Saule’s daughter; Sky, Sky sons) two conjugally unrelated deities with interest in the same activity and therefore in conflict (Sky and Thunder, Sky and Fortune, Fortune and Fortune or Fortune and Misfortune, Sun and Thunder) appear. Sky sons may also appear in the multiple instead of as twins. On the edge of Latvian - IE evidence, there is a dim link of Thunder’s wife to the Sun, just as another links Sun to the Midsummer god’s wife. In addition to fragments of master myths, one senses alternative regional versions, syncretism of different pagan systems, and pagan systems with Christian. What sifts out is the Sun as the central focus of the heavenly deities and a Sky-who-has become Chief God helped by Christian and/or monotheistic influence, but only emergently so in a still largely democratic society where other deities retain their sphere of influence even as Dievs encroaches on it. The goddess Māra attests to the power of pagan traditions to integrate the Christian Mary into a largely pagan semantic field (Earth goddess, but also encroaching on Laima’s sphere of influence, tending to absorb other goddess functions). The Baltic pagan influence was, in fact, so strong, that debates as to the pagan or Christian nature of Māra, both as to name and characteristics, continue even today.

To my knowledge there has been no serious attempts at a definition of “myth” or “mythical” in Latvian literature. It is not attempted in the two books published in 1999 by two of Latvia’s eminent folklorists: Janīna Kursīte’s Mītiskais folklorā, literatūrā, mākslā (The Mythical in Folklore, Literature and Art) and Elza Kokare’s Latviešu galvenie mitoloģiskie tēli folkloras atveidē (Primary Imagery in Folkloric Rendering/Performance). In the 1998 Myth Colloquium at Indiana University William Hansen raised the question if myth is necessarily sacred narrative, pointing to Malinowski’s association of myth and sacred ritual as the source for the generalized philological view. I asked if there was any evidence that the Greeks did not associate mythos with the sacred prior to Xenophanes:

I am thinking of Eliade’s contention that the Greeks are the prime example of people who emptied mythos of religion and contrasted it to logos and later historia. Eliade implies with his use of “emptying” and with his other example, the Judaeo-Christian one, that peoples generally considered myth as sacred prior to their (at least formal) development of what would be equivalent to logos and historia.

Prof. Hansen responded that:

Other societies have stories that appear to be the same sort of narrative in terms of structure and content, and that are not connected intimately with ritual and therefore, it seems, are not regarded as sacred...I did not see the presence of evidence for the Greeks regarding myth as sacred story…there are Greek myths…that have no known connection with ritual and do not seem to be treated with any special awe or constraints. At the same time, there are some Greek myths that were part of ritual, some of it very sacred such as the Eleusinian rites, some of it apparently much less so. So ‘sacred’ doesn’t seem like a good word to describe Greek myth in general.

Krišjāns Barons, for the most part, chose not to separate out the mythological dainas from the others, considering the course of life and the cycle of seasons as fundamental and the primary organizer. The word for “folklore” dzīves ziņa (life-knowledge) goes back at least to Ludis Bērziņš who in 1940 wrote an essay with dzīves ziņa in its title. By implication, clear distinctions as to which dainas are sacred and which mundane is not made. However, there have been attempts, such as by Michel Jonval’s Les chansons mythologiques lettonnes (1923) to isolate mythological dainas primarily by isolating those naming deities involved in mini-narrative. Even though the dualism between sacred (Viņsaule) and mundane (Pasaule) seems fundamental in Latvian materials, there is considerable fluidity what goes into each category. There are many parallel dainas where the subject changes if it is sacred (a deity or spirit) or mundane (a person) or unclear (an animal) so that a practical classification would always tend to be arbitrary. Vīķe-Freibergs has classified the sun daina corpus in three parts as cosmological (cosmic realm in contrast to mundane), physical (cosmic time piece), and metaphorical (teiksmainās – mythical, legendary, sun as goddess) but acknowledges some arbitrariness as inherent in the attempt. (1997). Sources before the transitional 15^th and 16^th centuries, during which time the Lutheran church decisively set out as its mission to eradicate abgottliche zeuberei (Godless magic), are sporadic. During this period witchcraft, sorcery, and werewolf trials pushed pagan practices largely underground and introduced Christianity in earnest, although it first became genuinely successful only with the Moravian Brethren. They, as the Catholics, were more successful in a more thorough syncretization, although in the case of the divinity Māra in the Catholic areas of western Latvia, the balance apparently went to the native, rather than the Christian. One problems with the 15^th and 16^th century sources is that not only did they collapse regional beliefs, but they lumped the beliefs of the different Baltic peoples together, which encouraged the adoption of Old Prussian or Lithuanian deities by 19^th century romantics and has been a continuous source of derision since. Some Latvian deities can be historically identified as previously regional: The male light god Ūsiņš in the area of ancient Sēlija, the twin fertility deity Jumis mostly in Zemgale, and Māra in the few Catholic areas of west Latvia.

Of primary interest are J. Stribingius for eastern Latvia in 1606 and P. Einhorn for western Latvia in 1627 and 1649. V. Mannhardt’s Letto-Preussische Gotterlehre, written in 1870, but published in 1936, and Die lettischen Sonnenmythen (Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1875) are the classic compendiums of many of the older historical sources. Straubergs (1939, 1941) and Šmits (1040-1941) list many primary sources by outsiders, including the church visitation protocols of the 17^th and 18^th century. Historical sources, however, are supplemental to the sources collected from the Latvian people, mostly in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, particularly the folk songs.

Needless to say, it is highly problematic to try to infer a belief system that precedes the time of texts recorded. However, there are many vernacular nonChristian practices described in dainas that were no longer practiced at the time of recording, such as holding a wedding celebration following the death of an unmarried person: “My kinsmen remained in this sun without (bridal) gifts; bring the dowry chest to the (burial) hill, pass out gifts to the kinsmen.” (27811) There are also dainas that suggest active belief at the time of collecting of, for instance, a spirit or god behind the stove or in a bush in the yard, probably referring to the house spirit (LD 34 368, LD 13 232) and denials that the person is a witch, only a herbalist. There are dainas that speak of giving sacrifice, a gold ring to Laima, so that a birth may be successful (LD 1096).

Some aspects of nonChristian belief system seem clearly expressed. Thus, for instance, the association of the life principle with women, and concretely with yoni female sexual organs, still had strong basis in practice and belief at the time of folklore collecting. (cf Adamsons: 55) Lifting up skirts and mooning were ways of both fending off hostile magic and increasing fertility. The Midsummer Mother would walk through the field with raised skirts, as Saule is depicted doing in the folk songs. A Latvian listserve member (Sveiks, 1999) remembered lower class uneducated old farm women to have mooned each other when extremely angry during a quarrel. Ritual coupling in the fields to ensure its fertility can be inferred in the more distant past from the historical accounts. (cf Adamsons: 55). Trees and greenery seem to be an especially favored symbol of fertility. Thus green as perhaps a stronger color of fertility, although red is the preferred color after the primary white, and the combination of white and red is seen as especially good. The term zaļā dzīve (green life) today has acquired some sense of living on both the innocent and wild side as typical of youth. Wreaths, as worn on Midsummer by even animals, are sign of fertility and the efflorescence of nature. The spirits of fertility in the fields include the regional Jumis, often paired with his wife Jumala, and the gausas or sāta spirit sometimes depicted as one of the mother spirits. Wild vegetation and the forest generally are seen as sources of primeval power and therefore are the gathering place of those involved with the supernatural - witches, sorcerers, and werewolves. Holy groves were those whose vegetation was to be left growing undisturbed and even breaking a branch was forbidden.

Christianity selected the sky god Dievs to be the Latvian name for God. If he had supreme god status at the time, it would have reflected a “best among equals” rather than absolute power. Hierarchy and centralization were still weak even in the 13^th century, and because of subsequent depression into a serf class, full hierarchical ascendancy wasn’t complete even in the 19^th c, except as outsider hegemony. One would expect that mental organization of the supernatural would be related to socio-cultural experience and reality.

Deities seem to be foregrounded and invoked as need for them arises. Vycinas periodicizes the importance of Baltic deities according to historical era. He considers Zhemyna (Latvian Zemes māte) of the Marshes to have characterized the earliest period before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans 3000 B.C., followed by an ascendancy of Cereal Zhemyna and an increase in the importance of Perkunas (Latv. Pērkons) or Thunder and a differentiation of Veluona (Latv. Veļu māte) or Shade Mother as well as Medeine (Latv. Mežu māte) or Forest Mother and Patrimpe (Latv. Ūdens māte) or Water Mother from Zhemyna of the Marshes. There are some archaic connections of different sacred animals, such as snake and bee, “A black snake came into my bee garden. That was not a black snake; it was the bee mother.”

Vycinas notes that in the Aistian world, even during the era of Perkunas after the second Indo-European invasion, unlike the Greek Olympians, the supremacy of Sky over Earth was never completed. Zhemyna’s importance to farmers matched that of Perkunas, even though he was predominant in the warrior layers of Aistian society. Mother Earth continued to be honored for giving birth to everything, even gods of the sky. (Vycinas: 61)

The strong matric focus of Baltic religion of early peoples in the area, and the emphasis of Indo-Europeans on sky and fire apparently fused, causing changes in Baltic religion. It seems that the importance of the original hearth fire goddess Gabija (Latv. Uguns māte) contributed to the importance of the solar goddess, associated with fire in the sky. Unlike the Dawn goddess who in many Indo-European religions was important only as the bride whom the sky god suitors seek, the Sun as Mother and Daughter acquires powers characteristic of a powerful solar deity. However, the warrior function increased, as Slavic tribes from the 5^th century on began to press into lands where the Balts lived. This, and related changes in agricultural production, tilted religion and society to a stronger patriarchy, but without the hostile take-over sense of one group of gods over another that one senses in archaic Greek and Scandinavian religion:

The Indo-European invasions were primarily non-destructive. On the contrary, they contributed to the cultural growth of the native Aistians by merging with their deities and by assimilating their own Sky gods and forming thereby a mutual mythical religion. Nothing like this can be said of the Slavs...The Aistians had co-existed harmoniously with the Finnish peoples, who had inhabited areas north of the 60^th parallel and northeast along the eastern side of the upper Volga, extending southwards to the middle Volga...the Finnish languages, although totally different from those of the Aistians, contain, nevertheless, many Aistian loan words...the result of Aistian influences through common agricultural practices and implements. (Vycinas: 64-65)

The Baltic clans of the east who first come in contact with the Slavs are also the ones who exhibit martial and patriarchal characteristics most strongly. Even in the 19t^hcentury, the western, especially the area of Zemgale, like the bordering area of Zhemaitija in Lithuania, seems to have preserved more matric elements, such as women presiding over rituals in which both sexes participate. (cf Adamovičs: 104) Vycinas considers the latest phase of Baltic religion to be the era of Laima (Fate, Destiny). Although an ancient deity, an “original daughter of the Great Goddess,” (Vycinas: 104) she became foregrounded as the result of changes in the fortunes of the Baltic peoples, which included the conquest and subjugation of the peoples who became Latvians. Indeed, an unofficial Latvian “hymn” prior to the second independence, often sung outside of Latvia by émigré Latvians, included the words, “Laime decree over us, give (protect) our land. One tongue, one soul, one land ours.” In many dainas, however, Laima is barely personified, or is individualized as each person’s Laima.

The Sun as a Central Marker in the Calendar:

The sun is a central reference point in the calendar (its holidays, the division of the day) even though both the lunar and solar calendar were known and used, and in basic concepts of space (saule, pasaule, viņsaule, aizsaule).

Direction is seen dually, rotationally “ar sauli” (with the sun path, clockwise, analogous to the motion of grinding with a quern, constructive magic) and pret sauli (against the path of the sun, counterclockwise, destructive magic), opposites canceling the other out, as well as reversing action being fundamental in magic incantations. The motion of turning a quern is likened to the clockwise movement of the sun. Ritual dancing and magic motions involve running around a field, a tree, a building usually “against the sun”. Circular dance-moves, rolling the yule-log, and creating a magic circle are examples of magic circular motions. Orientation is often important, as the differing burials with the head pointed in a particular direction reflecting changing concepts among the different Latvian peoples, sometimes the sexes in reverse. Sunrise (east) /sunset (west) seem more important than north and south, often characterized in terms of winds. In the daina world western orientation seems to be the strongest, this being the direction of the Baltic Sea and it is here that the island in which the sun rests is depicted as well as the sky Otherworld. Locations of the Otherworld change with different belief systems. The land Vāczeme (Westerland) is also applied to modern Germany, though earlier it referred only to the land of the Old Prussians. In many songs it is not possible to know if the reference is mythical or realistically geographical.

While the subject of Viņsaule and the calendar has been covered in numerous articles and essays (cf Zicāns, Klētnieks, Pakalns) the most recent work on cosmology was a result of the work of Vaira Vīķe Freibergs and her husband Imants creating a sun daina corpus as a computer accessible database). Her interest in the calendar as it relates to human life continues the tradition established by Barons and continued with elaborations.

The cosmological division into realms of apposition and opposition, This Sun That Sun as the concrete everyday world vs the world outside the farmstead, including the psychological realm of the sacred, dead, and divine is characterized in a daina as: “This sun I know, that sun – I do not known.” The dying recently dead, severely ill, or person in mortal peril is said to be between two worlds, as in dainas about the woman giving birth: “ Now my bride is sleeping between two suns.” (1122) Some dainas (49519) mention two suns, anthropomorphicized as Mother Sun and Daughter Sun(s). The earth is etymologically related to the sun (saule) as “undersun” – pasaule. In the dainas, the two sometimes appear bound with one predicate “this sun, this earths...she.” Since the sun is feminine, and the mother of the family is compared to the sun, and females are sometimes compared to daughters of the sun (Goba, 1990, stating that females were ritually called such in eastern Latvia). The result is an unusual asymmetry with a female sun ordinarily more powerful and important than a male moon.

Time is also differentiated as to saules mūžs (sun, cosmic time, shared also by two images of long-lasting -water and stone) and mūžs (finite time, applied to humans, animals, trees, and others having an observably finite. (“For the water, for the sun, for them to live a sun’s life.”) The length of a person’s life is seen as similar to the path of the sun climbing and descending a hill or the course of the day-night unit (“two ways the sun runs”).

Division into two carries over into the mundane world of humans. A bride is likened to the sun, the bridegroom to the moon and the sun is most often addressed as “mother” and takes special interest in women. The work of the homestead is supervised by the saimnieks (pats) and saimniece (pate, pati). A son being unable to take over charge of the homestead from his father before he has not taken a wife suggests the concept of master as complementary to the mistress. Annas (26^th of July) was one traditional day when a new mistress took charge; it may suggest an earlier wedding time than the common fall period when the harvest allowed a more resplendent feast. Other oppositions include rīts, rīt (morning, tomorrow) and vakars, vakar (evening, yesterday), both of which also serve as in-between times.

Another basic dual concept is that of pats, pati (ones own) = īsts (real, concrete, immediate) contrasted to svešs (foreign, strange, other). It is most elaborated in two large song corpuses that have the concept of “two mothers”, the orphan songs and the in-law songs as the contrast between ones “real” (īstā māte) mother and “other mother” (svešā māte). While the orphan acquires a stepmother, the wife in a virilocal marriage acquires a mother-in-law (also vīra māte – husband’s mother), both of whom are the most relevant female powers in the household. The Gypsy figures as the archetypal, frequently romantic fantasy Other, one who unlike the peasant, travels over the world (pa pasauli), and is imagined to have freedom and lack of responsibility that the peasant can only dream about. The free city of Rīga functions similarly as a world in contrast to the one inhabited by the peasant.

Of particular interest is the apposative, “Viena saule, viena zeme” (One sun, one earth) formula common to a number of dainas as the sphere common to all humans, divided differentially. In addition to two mothers the relationship of sun and earth may also mythologically be that of mother and daughter, one giving birth to the other (with alternate versions of who is the mother, but sun also logically dominant), and the concept of sun (saule) and earth (pasaule) are also linked etymologically since “earth” is literally “under-sun”:

Viena saule, viena zeme, Nav vienāda valodiņa:

Pār upīti pāri gāju, Jau savāda valodiņa. (LD 21129)

Viena zeme, viena saule, Nevienāda pasaulīte: Citam zelts, sudrabiņš, Citam gaužas asariņas.

One sun, one earth, not the same language:

I only crossed the river, already a different language.

One earth, one sun, uneven world:

One has gold, silver, another bitter tears.

The sun, or her daughter, keeps the keys to the grave (Otherworld), which links it with the other sun and the apparent drowning or wading through the sea of the sun. The Shade Mother is mentioned as meeting the dead person at the gates of the Other World and the dead person must first sleep in the liminal in-between area of the two worlds. Burial with head toward the west suggests that the dead person is following the path of the sun, as does the popular song about the orphan asking the sun to take many good evenings to her mother. The existence of alternative burial rites gives an insight as to changes and diversity of belief in existence following mortal death.

One regional difference is the shift in gender of deities. One regional apposition where the male solar aspect is brought out is the opposition of the light god Ūsiņš (etymologically related to female light deities with the root *aus-/ūs-, Karulis I: 91-2) as associated with spring and rebirth in balance with and opposition to the declining autumn god Mārtiņš, whom Karule even calls a “dying sun symbol” (1996: 303)

Ambiguity rather than ethical duality

Another characteristic of Baltic religion is the prominence of symbols, which are ambiguous in contrast to their being evil in the development of Western belief systems. Thus the snake represents rebirth, intelligence, fertility, and strength. (cf Stikāne: 186-7) and the toad represents the Milk Mother. Wasson in his classic work on the Amanita muscaris notes that the Baltic is one of the few places that views mushrooms positively, rather than as toadstools or poisonous ones. Velns (Devil) and velni (devils) don’t become ethically evil even in the most recent times. Dualism doesn’t become ethical dualism and the two polar opposites never totally separate out but remain as co-defining.

A fundamental division is between Light (shining heavens, day) and Dark (night, stormy and dark heaven) as well as between Sky and Earth/Water. With the widespread entry of Christian symbolism from the 17^th – 19^th centuries, the archaic unitary Other world is divided into Heaven and Hell. Opposition of Sky/ Heavenly Light::Earth/Water appears to be a local and age-old distinction. In this older view the dwelling pekle of chthonic beings velni (Christianized to “devils”) was not strongly differentiated from the earth, but was the wettest and wildest part of the outside – swamps and deep forest pools. Hell is not a place of punishment up to the most recent layers of belief. Of interest is that the possible corresponding anthropomorphicized mythology of these forces so strongly focus on the sun that conspicuously the treatment of the Earth Mother/ Father Sky opposition is weak. Earth Mother often seems to give birth autochtonously, while the Sky is listed as one of the many bridegrooms (Moon) of Sun or her daughter (Auseklis specifically associated with daughter only).

The absence of a Zoroastrian type of ethical absolute good and evil may have to do with distance from the concept’s homeland as well as with the very late entry of a Christian concept of Satan. Mythologist Elza Kokāre states strongly what others have noted: “There is no authentic, archaic deity in Latvian mythology that embeds in itself the principle of evil.” (Kokare, 1999, p. 193) The dangerous deities appear to be ambiguous deities with the negative side foregrounded, and this apparently a recent occurence. They include: Velns, Velna māte (Mother of Velns), velni, Juods, Juoda māte (Mother of Juods), Pīkols, Nelaime (Misfortune), Lauma, Laumas meita (Daughter of Lauma), laumas (dangerous forest or water fairy), raganas (witches), vilkači, vilkata (werewolves), skauģi (thieves using magic), burvji (magicians), vilces (snake-like thieving spirits), and spīganas (much like vilces). Fairies are described as having to discard their skins or clothes when shape-shifting to human-like appearance. Sometimes Viesulis (Whirlwind) and Vējš (Wind) are associated with Velns, and witches are identified as being able to start storms. All of these forces or deities are disruptive or associated with chaos, marginality, solitariness, in-between and wandering characteristics. All of them possess power and force, but dark or violent, not evil. Kokare notes that even Misfortune, when seen as the opposite of Fortune, is analyzable more in terms of a negation of fortune, its lack, rather than Evil with characteristics of its own. (Ibid). Similarly Juods (the Black One – Lith. juodas, Est. Juudas, Finnish Juutas) who is sometimes opposed to Dievs, is in fact, more the dark, stormy aspect of the sky, than its opposite. The dangerous spirits seem to be related to the dead: velni (etymologically related to veļi – shades), jodi or kāvi (spirits of dead warriors who can be seen fighting as the Northern Lights, and laumes or svētas meitas (spirits of drowned girls). The most clearly negative characters in the dainas are those who use black magic to harm people and disrupt society, as “Who cursed with magic (nobrīnēja) my far-carrying (skaņu) voice? (436) Gossip (aprunāšana) and those who are critical of others (pēlējs) are condemned.

However, already in 1973 Jaan Puhvel raised the question if in their diligence to throw out pseudo-mythology linked with primarily Old Prussian sources, the first Latvian and Lithuanian mythologists hadn’t thrown out the baby with the bathwater. He noted the persistence and consistency of the Old Prussian sources about the dark, dangerous, and angry deity known as Patollus, Pykullis, and the like resonated with Lithuanian sources. In 1974 Marija Gimbutas pointed out that C. Szyrwid in 1629 had equated “Velnias yra Piktis” and Karulis notes that the adverb pikts (hostile) is related to the Latvian mythological being Pikuls, Pīkals, Piktulis, Piķis, Pakols (Karulis, II: 47). Vīķe-Freibergs (1997: 91-94) reviewing these sources, focuses on K. Polis’s equation of Latvian piķīts with peķīts as the personfication of the female vagina, which together with the Estonian term for the fertility deity Peko/ Piken, underscores the fertility aspect of the dark deity known in Latvian as Piktulis, Piķis and identifies him with Jupis and Velns. Thus, none of the sources is irreconcilable with Kokare’s contention of the absence of an abstraction of evil in archaic Baltic tradition. The potentially hostile Baltic deity that lives in dark, moist places, probably an amalgm of several concepts, as in his association with the ancestor shades (Lith. veles, Latv. veļi), the Baltic and Slavic patron god of cattle Volos/ Veles is also the primeval source of endless fertility and riches. (Beldavs: 1984) In fact, it is possible to consider that in these Baltic asymmetric yin/yang interrelationships, there is a tendency for the dark to be seen as the more primeval from which light separates out and emerges than the reverse.

Even in the more international and male-oriented corpus of folktales and stories, Velns (translated and equated with “Devil”) runs a gamut of meanings, including helper (just as velni associated with the dead are ambiguous – sometimes dangerous, sometimes helpful). Kokāre points out that many songs also take an ironic stance toward Velns and Juods, and the invectives do not have the force of terror: “Skrej ar Dievu, skrej ar Vellu, Diženais tēva dēls! (LD 15749) “Velns par mani gan bēdāja, Es par Velnu nebēdāju: Es sasitu Velna galvu Deviņos gabalos. (LD 34082) “Velns was concerned about me, I was not concerned about Velns: I slashed the head of Velns in nine pieces.” However, while only a few in contrast to folk tales there are some interesting dainas where Dievs and Velns meet and fight. In the context of tales where the two, similar to the Scandinavian male god pairs go on sometimes raucous adventures, there is a sense of an old layer of two brother gods who may come into conflict, rather than good vs evil forces.

Velns ar Dievu cīkstējās Vinja meža maliņa;

Gana grūda, gana rāva Dieviņš Velnu lejiņā. (54776)

Velns and Dievs were sparring at the other end of the forest;

Mightily Dieviņš pushed, mightily he pulled Velns down (the hill).

The image of sparring – pushing and pulling as to who goes down the hill is similar to the calendar god imagery, where the spirit of the season is defeated as another ascends. The image is also used in reference to hostile forces (Nelaime – Bad Luck, Ļauna diena – Bad Day, or hostile people) trying to push someone down the hill or into the water, while in contrast helpful forces (Laima – Fortune, Dievs) pull them back up the hill, out of the water, offer a plank to cross the water or hole, and even offer a chair:

Es negāju to celiņu, Kur nogāja ļauni ļaudis.

Ļauni ļaudis, ļauna diena, Tie ved mani lejiņā;

Ņem, Dieviņ, tu pie rokas, Uzved mani kalniņā! (9118,1)

I didn’t go that path where hostile people went,

Hostile people, bad day; they lead me downward;

Take me, God, by the hand, lead me up the hill. (The older deity in other versions is Laima)

The calendar and the daynight embody the ambiguity of dual exchange and alternative replacement. While one succeeds the other endlessly, the darker forces have a different value, and are viewed with apprehension even in an ethic that is stoic and accepting of the inevitable. The dual relationship is in this sense inherently asymmetrical even if it does not develop to the level of ethical dualism of good and evil.

This study does not focus on the in-between per se, but acknowledges it as inherent in duality. Of the many oppositions and appositions, there are the expected basic prototypical ones such as up (hill) and down (water, valley), earth and sky. Conceptually there seems to be more of a sense of space between discrete units, occupied by such divider markers as fences, road crossings, thresholds, fences, and borders. (Olupe 1989: 29) and others have noticed that among the expected basic elements seen outside of human time (earth, sky, fire, and water) one finds also such nonclassic ones as “stone.” (Ūdeņam, akmeņam tiem dzīvot saules mūžu. It is for the water, for the stone to live the time of the sun.)

Dainas also acknowledge that two realms are intimately connected and influence one another. Thus the dance tune equates fertilizing thunder bringing the fields summer rain to the dancing that is done in celebration of the resulting harvest in the dwelling of the farmer. The stamp of feet and the jingling of the metal platelets attached to the boots of the men and the skirts of the women recalls and honors the gift of the Thunder god:

Pērkoniņis rūcināja Visu garu vasariņu;

Lai rūc mana istabiņa, Jele šādu vakariņu.

Thunder-god rumbled all the long summer;

May my dwelling rumble this one night.

Laima (Fortune) as the Creative Connecting Principle

In dievturi neo-pagan theology, the third of the fundamental deity triad consisting of the dual Sky (Dievs) and Earth (Māra) is Fortune (Laima). While there are a number of studies addressing Laima in terms of philosophy and theology, including that of Biezais, the momentous, classic, or definitive study has still to be done as many of the fundamental issues have not been adequately addressed in terms of how the relational concept of laima has operated in folk psychology and philosophy regionally and historically. A common consensus is that dominantly Laima prescribes the overall gross limits and bounds for individual will, which exercises significant choice and carries considerable responsibility. The Baltic concept of laima ranges between the fatalistic and completely heroic, and sayings and proverbs illustrate a broad gradient (each the forger of his luck, don’t wait for laime with your decorated mittens on, laime as a grain for a blind chicken, misfortune comes without greeting but calling fortune won’t bring her, laime spotted as the stomach of a woodpecker, turn to the sun so the shadow remains behind you). Also, there are numerous dainas that acknowledge laima not to be equal opportunity, some getting mostly tears, while a few lucky ones can boast, “Laima is my mother I am Laima’s daughter. Whatever life I wanted, I chose it myself.” Although Baltic religion has been compared to the Vedic religion of India, there is clearly one major difference. Baltic religion focuses on an interactive experience of the surroundings in an involved way, such as singing to it, and seems to give little consideration to contemplation. It has been described as a practical, rather than mystical religion.

Kokare in passing in her discussion of the ethnogenesis of the local Kurzeme deity, Dēkla, who appears to function alongside Laima, or is her synonym, discusses the etymology around the stem dēt and the concept dēklis. (Kokāre, 1992: 61 –62). Two concepts in particular seem divergent, dēklis as an egg, which is left in a nest so the hen will continue to lay eggs (dēt olas) and smelted iron that is used to repair old iron tools, like ploughshares. In the first, there is an attractor, something like a crystal seed or center that attracts and coalesces substance around it. It is consistent with the daina descriptions of space around the homestead being “round” as if a compass is drawn around a center. The second image is of broken pieces being mended by a molted substance or glue that hardens to hold the pieces together. The mythological dainas include a number of images of shattered jugs, shattered trees in “nine pieces,” which some deity must gather and put back together, apparently a commentary on the problem of One and the Many. There is also the phrase in beekeeping dores dēt, which has to do with preparing a dwelling for the new bee swarm. Finally, there is a song:

Sēd, meitiņa, nebēdā, Nesēd tava dēkļa laime;

Dēkļai zirgi nosvīduši, Tev vietiņu meklējot. (LD 6629,5)

Stay, girl, don’t fret, your dēkļa fortune is not sitting; Dekla’s horses are in one sweat finding for you a place.

In this daina the local Kurzeme deity Dēkla, who has the same functions as Laima, is most likely finding a suitable young man whom she can join in marriage to a suitable young woman, and preparing the space the woman is to inhabit as a married woman. Kokare points out that I. Bušmane’s folklore recording in 1987 in the Kurzeme region of Nīce yielded the explanation that an older woman with a gift for language acted as match-maker and was called a teicēja (literally, sayer, meaning recommender, the same term used also for a recitative song-leader). She would recommend the pair (ieteikt) to each of the sides. The various meanings of dēkla, then all have the sense of bringing together at least two discrete entities into a stable apposition. Even in the case of the egg dēkla, the seed acts to attract others, or in the case of the man-made bee-tree hollow, it is supposed to attract the swarm.

Disputation as a theme also appears in the semantic field of laima, as well as division into parts. Laima more often appears as a pair than in triplicate. As a pair it is more likely to be adversial than as two cooperating sisters (Laima and Laima). This is emphasized by the opposite being a negation: Laime and Nelaime – (Fortune and Misfortune). The distinction is reinforced with Laima appearing on a hill and Nelaime is in a low place. [Laima sits on a hill; Nelaime in the vale. LD 1220,5] Alternatively, usually seen as Christian influence, it is God (Dievs) who disputes with Laima over the life and death of an individual: “The whole day passed for Dievs speaking with Laima: who will die, who will live in this white sun.” (27684). “Dievs and Laima on my account are feuding. Dievs gave me cropland, Laima denied me a ploughman.” Songs that name the place of each emphasize that the deities each control their own discrete sphere: “To Dievs the hills, to Laima the vales, to the bee the oak trees green.”

In songs about the woman about to give birth, two deities are often said to know if the woman will emerge into the sun, usually picked from the pool of Laima, Dievs, and Māra. Finally Shade Mother may be opposed to Laima, making ready a place, depending if the person will live or die: “Not for everyone does Laima make a place…For some Shade Mother makes a place” (LD 9246). But in the funeral songs a human acknowledges another asymmetrical dualism between the human temporal and the cosmic eternal:

Māte, mana mīļā māte, Ne tā mana mūža māte;

Tā saulīte, tā zemīte, Tā ir mana mūža māte. (27729)

Mother, my dear mother, you are not my eternal mother;

This sun, this earth, she is my eternal mother.

But in another sense, it is Laima who predominates as the creative and destructive force or principle of the universe. The word laist is etymologically related to Laima and describes the activity with which she creates as releasing from something that already exists in another sphere as if separating out a quantity of water from the reservoir. Laima is the most powerful goddess, associated with verbs of creation, destiny, and fortune: laist, likt, lemt, vēlēt, rakstīt (Kokare, 1992: 41). That is why even when the sky god Dievs acquires a status of first among gods and is identified with the Christian God, Laima retains enough of her power that Dievs is forced to consult with her on fate, fortune, and destiny. Laima is present at birth and at that time casts the broad outlines of someone’s life, and she also is present at all the rites of passage as a personal goddess, barely anthropomorphicized beyond her function:

Tu, Laimiņa, laidējiņa, Tu mūdiņa licējiņa.

Ka neliki laba mūža, Liec man ilgi nedzīvot. (LD 1210)

You, Laima, releaser, you a life-caster.

If you cast not a good life for me, let me not live long.

Vycinas referring to the most characteristic activity of Laima, laist (“to let be, to destine, to create”) states that human creativity and fortune are but aspects of the cosmic force: “Laima as diviness – the ultimate reality – was Nature in her everlasting, eternal course of creativity – of construction-destruction.” (Vycinas: 108)

One may say, however, that the basic operative force of Laima is a dual Latvian Yin/Yang equivalent, represented more digitally than analogically. Thus, Mazulāns in his work, simultaneously pragmatic and philosophical, in deriving the basic geometric patterns from the intertwining of two strips observes: “One is without rhythm. One large or small remains one without impression or meaning. Two create rhythm and the impression of change. Two and more lines, forms or colorings in a rhythmical harmonic change create a rhythmic, harmonious physiological impression...it is a positive and life-enhancing force.” (Mazulāns: 196)

The overall impression is that Latvian folk art stresses discrete units in their combinations, almost entirely geometric, with only some more fluid designs and those with a tendency to geometrization. One particularly fruitful area is that of mitten design as this is an easily accessible, still commonly practiced craft that uses designs and compositions in miniature found elsewhere. Variety is achieved in the concept of endless combinations. Thus, Rita Drīzule speaks of adaptation of values, “Just as practically gene combinations do not repeat, so there are endless combinations of values in a culture.” (Drīzule: 7). This can also be said of stringing together chains of dainas for solo singing and of the relationships of elements within any one-daina stanza. How these elements fit together is expressed in the concept of saskaņa (harmony) or saderība (concord). Thus when one says, “sader miezis ar apini vienas mucas dibenā” (the barley belongs with the hops in the bottom of the barrel” there is a sense of placing them side by side harmoniously in addition to this being right, belonging. The idea of connection or link between discrete units is expressed by the concept of laipa (plank, footbridge) even more commonly than that of tilts (bridge). Drīzule decodes its symbolic value as, “A laipa (was) symbolically thrown in front of the bride as she walked into the in-law courtyard in order to confuse hostile forces. A linden laipa...as a spiritual plank is something one generation throws to help the next. The concept of laist (emanate, differentiate) is used in the creative process in which Laima or Dievs are involved. Pasaulē laist is a form of birthing or forming into this world from the Otherworld.

Vīķe-Freibergs notes that both the finite and plentitude model can be found in the daina world, with the latter dominating. The first considers a limited number of goods available to humans, so that increasing one’s own welfare is at the expense of someone else. This results in the skauģis (the jealous one) who attempts to steal through the use of magic. The second model considers that an endless supply of good is available from the Otherworld, so that it is unnecessary to steal from others. (Vīķe-Freibergs, 1997: 142)

The asymmetrical relationship of the familiar human world and the greater surrounding world of nature is also both accepted in that ultimately the human world is a part of the greater world, but it is also contested. In modern terms humans create greater space for themselves as a group, if not as individuals, by creating greater organization within greater forces of entropy. In daina terms, human activity ornaments nature. The transformative function of humans of nature to culture is positively recognized and evaluated in terms where this activity is seen as part of nature, as its ornamentation, not its destruction:

Koša pļava, kad nepļauta, Vēl košāka kad nopļauta,

Tad palika vēl jo koša, Kad samesta kaudzītē.

The meadow is bright uncut, brighter yet when mowed,

Even brighter when the hay has been thrown in stacks.

The pre-industrial agricultural homestead or hamlet nestled as an island within a greater expanse of forest and marsh, and the fields and meadows created by man appeared to ornament and amplify nature, rather than destroying her.

Various Latvian movements which find vernacular spiritual belief systems to be of fundamental importance, neo-pagan, dievturi, Christian with a provincial orientation, or New Age seem to use a common ground in what is known as living ancestral inheritance. or presence. They find meaning in textile, especially woven belt, geometrics. Or as already did Old Europeans , they find meaning in stones viewed as sacred on sacred hills or by sacred healing and wisdom springs, as well as places marked by geo-energy “water and fire lines” identified with dowsing. Going to press, an article, “Kā būtu, Kā nebūtu: Svētceļojums uz Pokaiņi (How would it be to be or not to be: Sacred Journey to Pokaiņi)” by Daila Rotbaha (Literatūra un Māksla Latvijā, March 15, 2001) appeared about a particularly geo-energetically marked number of related sacred sites in the Pokaiņu Forest of Zemgale. It is here that the lines of fire and of water seem to coincide and are felt to communicate patterns of wisdom and healing. Sacred sites are endangered as ecology has come under attack by market forces, especially in the clearing of forests for lumber sale with a loss to future generations. The sites may have been the destination of pagan pilgrimages from other lands to the Baltic as recorded in the oldest historical documents before the Teutonic conquest. The Pokaiņi Forest site is felt to be most sacred. It recalls the Zemgale area of Latvia where the last pagan resistance took place, and where in historical times werewolf bands were rumored to have assembled from over the Baltic as the time of witch-hunting began. Ivars Vits’s book, Trejdeviņi Latvijas Brīnumi (Three Times Nine Wonders) also discusses endangered sacred sites (2001).

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V. THE DAINA-SONG

Delimiting what is a song in the daina world

A ‘simple’ song…is - a complicated cultural package involving props, social organization, and text, supported by deeply held beliefs. (Worlds of Music: 168)

Dzīvesziņu, kas ir tik saudzīga pret visu dzīvo šai pasaulē, cik vien saudzīgi tas iespējams.

A worldview that is as considerate toward all things living in this world, as accepting as it is possible.

(Ausma Ābele, Sveiks listserve, 12/25/00 on the daina worldview)

Dziesmiņai, nabadzītei, Abi gali pazuduši

Jemsim bērus kumeliņus, Iesim, galus meklēdami. (K 958, 8292 LTdz)

The song, poor beggar woman, has lost both ends.

Let us take bay horses, ride and find those ends.

Latvia through the daina world.

(Gregory Schrempp, Jan. 19,2001, Ph.D. defense)

To the Latvian the dainas are more than a literary tradition. They are the very embodiment of his cultural heritage, left by forefathers whom history had denied other, more tangible forms of expression. (Vīķis-Freibergs, folklorist, 1975, now President of Latvia)

The concept of “daina world” may be variously related to a psychological space refered to in dainas as pasaule (world). Freibergs writes, “Mummers are neighbors who have gathered together from around the wider surroundings – who in poetic exaggeration have become (representative of) the whole world (pasaule).” (Trejādas saules: 84). Similarly the archived daina world, which contains a huge semantic domain is more than text and its commentary is analogous to the Bible in Biblical scholarship. The artificially constructed archived daina world, which continues to expand as new material enters it, is potentially accessible to all Latvians, though in the words of poet O. Vācietis, “Singing one and the same words we each sing a different song.” (p. 60) Different people recall different “other ends” or formulaic phrases as they create a verse that is understandable to others. Just as a ritual with emphasis on recurrence is actually very creative, since each performance is different but anchored to others, so the choice of songs from an archived collection can also be creative because their use will vary with context and yet have a sense of timeless archetype.

Folksongs have experienced the same historical periods as have the Latvian people and it is reflected in the language of the songs...the oldest layers are concerned with some very old work concerns...herder, bee-keeper, hunter, fisherman, ploughman...forest clearer, thresher, miller, weaver, spinner...” (Skujiņa & P1utele: 12)

History cannot be directly and simply accessed through the dainas, though it is mined for its archeological content. Historical periods are collapsed, but even so, the daina world does yield information on some specifics, through such methods as archeolinguistics, and also many broad epochal patterns can be identified from references that match with historical information of a period. The earliest texts from the 16^th and 17^th centuries show the persistence of essentially the same structure, style, and themes into our time.

The overall interest of this study is in the phenomenon of singing, the performance and the functional context of singing, rather than idealized categories as such. Without subscribing to essentialism, this study is contextualizing what Latvians mean and what they associate with the word daina beyond a simple structural description of what is basically a vocal (more than instrumental) genre with a highly rule-governed, epigrammatic, poetic, and melodic text based on eight-syllable trochaic, dactylic, or mixed structure. A purely symbolic analysis decoding texts, using the paradigm of structural linguistics and semiology, to relate symbols to social discourse is obviously incomplete. The stability and transparency of the relation of symbol and social meaning is problematic. Direct apprehension of the real is not possible; it is mediated. However, constructive and structural approaches, including the use of grids and templates, are useful as hermeneutic devices. There is no illusion on my part that the real can be apprehended directly, only elicited by various different, sometimes competing and mutually exclusive, self-contradictory means. Patterns across modalities are flexible and variable.

The many structural, symbolic, and cognitive analyses of dainas, including the whole corpus of commentaries on the daina world, are a heuristic entry into it, which for most Latvians has a meaningful existence in this era of instantaneous global communications. Since all research tools inherently reflect some kind of cultural or individual bias, older approaches, such as the structural, should not be dismissed out of hand if they have revealed insightful information. In the Latvian case, since there is a strong ongoing cybernetic interchange of scholars and subjects of their common Latvian heritage, it is often impossible to disentangle aspects of emic and etic. While aspects of the daina and apdziedāšanās can be compared to analogous materials in other cultures, there is also a totality that is its own.

The Latvian people have a huge corpus of some two million dainas, much of it published, considered perhaps its greatest national treasure, and even called the “second Latvian Bible.” Since it was recorded by hand when modern recording methods were unavailable, something of an ethnopoetic approach is overdetermined. The dainas are, in fact, creatively used, endlessly translated and incorporated or transformed within modern artistic genres – literature, drama, musical compositions, and citations in scholarly work. Depending on the performance medium, they are “rescored” in the sense that musically they may be appear considerably changed. All three of the major Bearslayer creations accepted as national (the Pumpurs literary epic, the Rainis drama, and Zālīte-Liepiņš rockopera) incorporate folk singing of differing levels of translation, from a recreation of the recitative chant through meters uncommon in the Latvian language, like pentameter.

The texts stored in archives and published in fundamental publications as well as countless selections, are constantly activated and recontextualized in the different Latvian societies. In effect, a text is a mnemonic device that is animated and brought into life through performance. The history of some texts can be followed through different publications for several hundred years. Dainas so fundamentally permeate Latvian culture and identity that they are as if dissolved and subsumed in the air that is breathed. The different formulae and associations are derived from different times, places, and singers. However, there are both emic and etic reasons to associate them into one corpus. Observationally, if not always consciously, relationships, redundancies, commonalties, and coalescent units emerge from variables. There is enough internal consistency of some larger patterns that one may say they refer to certain conditions of pre-industrial life that were most characteristic of certain historical time periods. But, they also include concepts that transcend these eras linking what is “Latvian” in some broader, more general sense. They record shared life-experiences that are not merely individual, but collective in the long term. The musical perception is clearly regional in nature and one of the most important functions of singing is to create group identity. However, much of the music was tied to recurring rites of both the calendar and the course of life, which cross borders, so themes can also be seen as crossing regions in broad patterns, especially those relating to mythological and magical worldviews.

While members of a community differ in their ability to process and utilize shared knowledge, even a small child knows basic elements and operational rules to use them. This is most obvious when dealing with the concrete technology and design of material culture, which one learns from childhood as a result of participating in experiences of work and play. While no two members of a culture share the same knowledge, each creating their own world of knowledge by associating personal experiences, enough of the most basic elements and rules are shared and known by everyone that it is possible for someone to step outside the culture and identify it as having its own character. Some signs and behaviors become consciously emblematic of group identity, such as the favorite songs of a song ensemble. One may successfully operate within a culture by manipulating a small number of elements and rules.

The supernatural sphere is a paradigmatic concept Viņsaule (Other-sun or Otherworld). Viņsaule provides a sense of the eternal and universal, both an imaginary source and the target of projection from the mundane Real-world of direct concrete human experience. From this mutually projected feedback relationship of Other and Self emerge a number of themes, such as contesting halves, alternating twin presence, and oscillating motion often described as “swinging” or “shuttling”. The neighboring Estonians also have archaic ritual or cult “swing-songs,” apparently women’s magic songs. Southern Estonia and northern Latvia seem to have significant correspondences in structure and melody pattern in spite of having languages in entirely different families. However, a primary difference of Finnish and Baltic poetic structure is that the first is based on the one-liner, while the second on the two-liner or coupled distich.

The common emic perception that the dainas form a unified corpus in spite of being recorded in different times, places, and by different singers and collectors is possible because “the song” is not well-defined or specified beyond a vague sense of “our song” with the membership of “us” as fluid. The song is seen as having life beyond any single instance of its performance or that of the individual who performs it. By claiming it as one’s own, one participates in tradition and partakes of a kind of immortality through sharing of centuries old traditions. Thus V. Baumanis rock and ballad group Dienu Virpulī sang in 1960: “Leaders speak, and leaders fall. Song is not crushed. The sun rises and the sun sets. Song goes on…” A daina states that while the individual dies, his words remain because others carry them:

Bērza sieksta sapuvusi, Tāsis vien palikušas;

Nomirt bija, sapūt bija, Vārdiņam še palikt. (LD 27675)

Birch bark container has rotted, only bark shred left.

It is so: to die, to rot, for the word alone to remain.

It must be acknowledged that in popular Latvian understanding there is an understanding of “the” song as recognizing diverse local performance instantiations as sufficiently related to be classified together in one category. It is a part of analogical, associative thinking that recognizes patterns in something new by analogy from past stored experiences. Thus, on one listserve a user complained that an already covered topic was being brought up as new:

Are we going to sing the same old song , this time in a different melody, that we already sang around the 10^th of Nov.?” [Vai tad mēs sāksim atkal dziedāt to pašu veco dziesmu, šoreiz tikai citā meldijā, kuru jau pagājušo rudeni ap desmito novembrī nodziedājām?] (Pistole, Sveiks, Feb. 22, 2000)

Recognizing something on the basis of a past experience, when not only is it not identical, but also may only appear to be similar by analogy is to stimulate neural network pathways, which consist of neuron connections or associations that form memory traces. The brain, as a collection of distributed neural networks with neurons linked by synaptic connections can be seen as somewhat analogous to the semantic field of the daina world architecture with words or groups of words acting as nodes with preferred and possible connections to others.

The basic text unit of the daina is a semantically self-sufficient quatrain, the predominant form in Baron’s classic publication. Others before him had published quatrains rather than strings. The couplet or distich is the fundament of parallel verse construction, central also among other neighboring peoples and even to the Finnic Cheremiss who were neighbors of the eastern Balts when they were further to the east and south before migrating to the Baltic. The neighboring peoples may also share certain formulaic phrases, such the the opening formula in burial songs, “Why did you die?” (Rinholm: 130). The shortness of the daina quatrain is appropriate for dialogic alternating singing, often repeating a distich to complete the quatrain. The form familiar to most Latvians today is a more or less loose narrative association of quatrains, known as tautas dziesma (lit.“folk song”), the term many feel should be used instead of “daina.”

The two-part analogy basic daina microcosm structure mirrors the cosmic structure of this sun (šīsaule) and that sun (viņsaule). The primary syntactic function of dainas seems to be to establish homologies and analogies between the social order and the external world, thus causing culture and nature to mirror each other. It is a fundamental principle in the organization of knowledge, indigenous categorization, or modeling as speaking to ultimate values, aspects of cosmology, the ground of perception, organization, and image formation that gives the self a sense as to what is beyond it. Since Feld found this dual organization in the Kaluli case (p. 41), it may be basically cognitive, rather than culture-specific. The two structural “halves” of the daina unit together form a generative mechanism, source and target being the wellspring of metaphor. Metaphor, like humor, involves associating two things, except in the case of metaphor there is emphasis on analogy rather than upon some striking aspect of incongruity as in humor. A verse metaphor-unit is either chained in nonresponsorial singing or shuttled back and forth in responsorial apdziedāšanās. Both forms of singing are seen as similar to the construction of a honeycomb by a bee.

The action of singing is seen as a form of creation in the sense of making a mark or inscribing, which in pre-literacy days literally referred to cutting ownership signs in bee-trees or making patterns in textiles and other media (raksts, rakstraudzis – sampler), An example of images from the dainas is illustrative: the woodpecker beating an aural pattern while incising a visual one (rakstā sist), is described with the same term that is applied to using a flail swung or beat in rhythm (rakstāsist). Raksts is a very broad term for pattern, sign, composition, or rhythm with both aural and visual aspects. Abstracted, it becomes a lifetime framework pattern decreed by Laima visualized as in the case of finding one’s “life friend.”

Dziedādama vien staigāju, Kā irbīte rakstīdama;

Dziedādama ietecēju tautu dēla sētiņā. (6)

Singing I went about as the wagtail inscribing (leaving tracks). Singing I quickly came into the yard of my future husband.

The origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul. (John Banville, Endgame)

The concentrated or compressed form of artistic information has led some Latvians to try to decipher arcane or expert codes. A claim was put forth somewhat seriously as to “pre-writing” code in the elaborately patterned women’s belt from Lielvārde, as well as the mezglu raksti, which some claim were actual knotted mnemonic codes of yarn-balls, acting as more than the simple ownership signs on bee-trees, boundary posts, and musical instruments:

Man dziesmiņu pieci pūri Ābelīšu dārziņā.

Ik dziesmiņu izdziedāju, Satin dziesmu kamolā. (LD 47)

I have songs five chests full in the orchard.

As I finished singing each song, I wrapped it into a song ball.

Relating cultural systems is natural in the study of Latvian traditions. Before the formal field of semiotics was developed and the Prague School of linguistic theory with the pioneering work of Roman Jakobson, Jan Mukarovsky, and Petr Bogatyrev in the late 20s and early 30s became fully known in the West, Latvian researchers already seem to have something of an intuitive sense of polyfunctionality of cultural practices, of the social function of art, and the mutual interdependence of systems of significaiton. Indigenous terms for semiotic signs, such as raksts, zīme, and even rota highlight the isomorphism of human experience in different modalities of art, music, language, myth, ritual, and so on. The term zīme appears to be equivalent to the Peircian index and the verb zīmēt means to draw a sign or picture. . Rota is either something ornamented, like jewelry, or a spring song sung in eastern Latvia. Raksts also refers to weaving, writing, song composition, and the creation of a magic talisman – the war flag. To ierakstīt is to incise, to engrave, or give physical existence to something. O. Lisevska writes, “I am written (ierakstīta) into the white birch book. I am played into the mighty organ of the pines. Now I can wander the earth safe. What is engraved (ierakstīta) can not be erased.” The sense of raksts is something incised on or in a field resulting in a unit foregrounded from a sequence or field of rhythmic structures, a section as if “cut” from a larger composition. The term may refer to an entire composition as limited by the media, or any section, or any element one chooses to isolate. In a sequence of geometric units, such as a border or belt, there is a clear sense of geometric discreteness. A unit may meet up with another, merge in an Escheresque fashion form following form, or even geometrically penetrate it, but there is never a sense of combining. To be sure this is a function of geometric textile-work, weaving or metal inlay embroidery peculiar to the Baltic. Mathematician Valdis Klētnieks started work on the geometrical raksts of textiles, though he died before completing his work. (cf Karlsone in continuing technical analysis of belt pattern types) But the concept is relevant to apdziedāšanās in that it indicates how deeply and structurally the experience of plaiting and weaving is analogized to the process of creating songs, or of creativity in general, and how seeing in terms of discrete almost mathematical units also is consistent with the experience of concrete textile pattern creation. This is in contrast to the more vague and abstract, though acknowledged understanding of fusing, or loosing identity. While the timeless beginning and end state is often seen in terms of the ultimate reality of fluidity in the waters or the sea, even in mythological tales movement from order to chaos is seen in terms of discrete units “drowning” or the alternate imagery of melting snow or smoke rising to the sky. Ultimately there is indexicality of man-made creations to raksti in nature, such as a bird leaving a trace in the sky, birds, of course, also being messengers: Dziedādama vien staigāju, Kā irbīte rakstīdama. (Singing I went about as a partridge leaving my mark. (tracks). (LD 6).

A composer of either songs or textiles is a rakstītāja and she may be inspired by raksti, rhythmic regularities or patterns, observed in the forest, such as pine needles. The ultimate rakstītāja is Laima, goddess of creation, fate, fortune, art, textile crafts, music, and women. All the Baltic goddesses weave, spin, and do textile work, but along with Laima, the Sun is singled out.

In nonresponsorial singing the daina distich has been seen as both a self-contained unit that can be flexibly strung, chained, or fit together with other distichs in a honeycomb fashion, It is a node in a net of self-organizing relationships, and a temporary or unstable collection of smaller formulaic units historically surprisingly resistant to change, even as the smallest component is syntagmatic and analogic. Because of its shortness a daina song is ideally suited for antiphonal singing, a call requiring an immediate dialogic response. Responsorial performance maximizes improvisation, and apdziedāšanās songs are at the strongest end of the continuum as to instability in melody and verbal text, even as the performance itself is keyed as maximally archaic and the values expressed of at least the initial selection continue to be related more to a pre-industrial agricultural way of life than to today’s realities. That is because performers both learn their material from living tradition and archived sources. Unlike most Latvian ritual and work songs, the apdziedāšanās songs do not have refrains, as they would interrupt the desired uninterrupted back and forth flow of singing.

A conservative language, strict metrical rules, rituals tied into stable recurrences such as seasonal holidays, and a value and respect for ancestral heritage are among stabilizing aspects of the dainas. Thus, syllabic irregularity is confined by strict rules to end syllables. Having the archived dainas as a common source and standard for various aspects of culture, language, and imagery is another stabilizer. Polyfunctionality or the use of the same tunes or songs for different ritual events also allows for comparison of closely related material, as does the use of a limited number of tunes adapted to different circumstances, or varied in performance context. Different aspects have differential rate of change within any region and regions differ in development rates also.

Invariantly characteristic of dainas of different performances is a matter-of-fact, unsentimental even dispassionate tone. They are compressed, economic, lucid, pithy, profound epigrammatic nuggets, the distichs often quoted as proverbs, while two distichs are coupled as a daina-song unit. Their attitude is akin to proverb in being simultaneously clear and profound, laconic but gentle, more playful or ironic than bitterly sarcastic or sardonic, appearing to be uncomplicated and yet saying what can’t be said otherwise. A daina is a drop of water that is a microcosm of the ocean. Just as serious things are expressed through humor, judgment may also be made indirectly through dainas. Dainas are not best described as meditative, contemplative, didactic, or speculative. Rather a stoic tranquility and sense of balance emerges from the concrete and deceptively simple or straightforward. “It is precisely from this concreteness that the potential for tremendous generalization arises.” (Kokare, 1998: 15). Each concrete concept has rich associations elsewhere in the daina web apart from the metaphorical. (Kokare, 1998: 16). Freibergs relates the dual structure to a psychology quite different from a modern angst-ridden, cut-off state: “The archaic serenity expressed in the folk poems comes from centering one’s attention on the natural world and allowing oneself to be gently carried along in its ever-recurring rhythms.” (Vīķe-Freibergs, 1977:540) They are concerned with a direct grasp of reality with concrete imagery, rather than analysis with abstract concepts. The serenity also involves a certain distance or emotional stoicism, even where grief in funeral laments or tenderness in courting songs is expressed. The strength of emotional impact comes from understatement. In its minimalist imagery some people have compared the daina to the Japanese haiku, even though the structures are very different. Kokare (1998: 24) cites an example where, remembering that the daina young man’s greatest pride is his horse, “indirect pride in a young man’s horse, condemnation of a best friend’s treachery, but above all the grief in loss of one’s hoped for ‘life friend’ are all expressed in the thirteen words of four lines:”

Better the wolf ate my hundred-coin steed,

Than my friend took away my long hoped-for bride. (Ltdz III 3066)

Yet the tightly packed emotion has to be inferred. Also the overall tone of the daina corpus refuses to be tragic in spite of a large number of orphan songs and other songs dealing with dark issues. The dominant tone, while unsentimental, is life affirming, positive, and proactive. This is another reason why dainas so often are used as inspiration.

It is particularly salient to see a daina unit as related to other daina units, to emphasize its polyvalence, and to note multiple voices engaged in dialogic. Variants of each other, clusters of tunes and texts are viewed as typologically related versions that can be organized, stored, and retrieved as families, and are analyzed structurally. The melodies cluster around fixed centers and the basic tones of a melody may only contain the most stable pitch values. Thematic and formulaic relations, while also accessed through key words can group the texts. A huge amount of overlap occurs even when there is a clear invariant, as some texts may only vary in small detail, through the substitution of a word.

Unlike the epic style, the other is most often engaged using first and second voice, but in the exchange of insults, the third voice becomes more prominent.

K. Barons introduced the word popularly used for Latvian classical folk song, daina, though in Latvian it actually appears only as a verb. In Lithuanian it is a noun with the sense of “little” or “secular song” and some linguists, such as Zolmsen and Jēgers (but opposed by Endzelīns) consider the daina to have been a dance song: IE *dei- (“swaying, whirling”), Latvian dial. daiņa (restless person), daiņāties, dīņāties (to stamp in place – same action as described in the word mīņāties), deinis (jumper, dancer), dainēt, dainot, daiņāt, daiņot (to play, to sing, to dance joyfully, to sing harshly or unpleasantly or shouting), related to diet (to dance often with jumping, to frolick). (LEV I: 196, 215) The movements referred to in this complex don’t appear to suggest the light, fast, and regular steps (teciņus) of most kinds of folk dancing done today. Stamping in place and jumping are favored movements associated with ritual dancing, such as at christening, or maybe even mumming where animals movements are also imitated.

The word that actually appears in the daina collections is dziesma (“song”) and is used in the title of the academic publication that is now being published. It is related to IE *gēi- (sing, call, shout), also etymologically related to IE *ghēi- (bright, shining) in the Baltic development where *gei- (> Latvian dzie-) and Baltic *gai-, such as Latvian gaisma (light). The Lithuanian archaism gaisma (“singing”) is also associated with gaisme (rejoycing). (LEV I, 252)

To sing, then, is to come into being as simultaneously visible and audible, a joyful and powerful event. The ideal Latvian song sound is described as far carrying (powerful, loud) and clear. The etymological sense associated with the verb dziedāt has associations with powerful calling, shouting sounds (Karulis I: 250), which resonates with the strong, forthright sound of women’s style of singing well known in the Balkans and other parts of Eastern Europe. A special type of far-carrying sound is described as a gavile, sometimes translated as “yodel”. It is a full sound commonly done solo by herders. In the morning the sun was greeted with such gaviles, and the rooster who otherwise fulfilled this function of loudly greeting the light (dawn or the sun), is the only bird designated as a dziedātājs (“singer”) (LEV I: 252). However other birds, rather than the rooster, are said to have taught people how to sing, notably the nightingale (lakstīgala). While in Latvian dziesma includes all genres of song, in Lithuanian giesmē is a sacred song associated with mythology (LEV I: 252). The word daina is probably used today in everyday speech because it is shorter than tautas dziesma. Apdziedāšana (as the more general form of relating in contrast to apdziedāšanās) is a highly personal, celebratory way of relating to the world, addressing each concrete form of nature (sun, tree, bird, flower, river…) or person through song rather than prayer, acknowledging the great diversity of colors (as in the concept dārdedze – rainbow) or sounds. The terms dudzēt,dārdēt indicating resounding sounds as something is touched (Karulis I: 203) is relatable to the term daudzināt, which is used by dievturi for celebration through singing. Semantically they are related to terms for strength, health, and increase in the daudz (many) group of words to which the mother of rivers Daugava is also etymologically related, meaning a river rich with many overflowing waters (Karulis I: 203). Thus to apdziedāt is on a deep etymological level a positive concept associated with vitality, fertility, and increasing abundance. Since anything can be sung about, apdziedāšana is marking, focusing, or foregrounding, paying special attention to it, giving it honor, and thereby investing it with special power, perhaps akin to Rudolf Otto’s idea of the numinous. Therefore, if a song is apdziedāšanās is more situational than a particular type. Indeed, the agonistic apdziedāšanās challenge songs are scattered throughout the archive collections in addition to concentrations at the appropriate celebrations. This underscores the situational use of these songs.

Barons placed the songs about singing first, following a Finnic and Baltic tradition of seeing the magical word (=song) to be the generator of the world. When the daina in the national view symbolizes "Latvian song" it is timeless in a langue sense and perceived as eternal, mythically without beginning or end, the privileged expression of the people. A specific performance was seen primarily as an instantiation of a continuous process. Levi-Strauss writing on myth as sharing sameness and differences with language expresses something similar to common Latvian folk view: "language itself can be analyzed into things which are at the same time similar and yet different. This is precisely what is expressed in Saussure's distinction between langue and parole, one being the structural side of language, the other the statistical aspect of it, langue belonging to a reversible time, parole being non-reversible. (Levi-Strauss, SA,p. 205)

The first recorded Latvian incantation (Dzelzeniek, trumelniek, Atsleedz dzelzhu vārtus, Nosakliedze vanadziņš, Dzelzu vaarte daardeedam.), recorded in 1584 as a Jesuit report on pagan practices to their superiors, has a formulaic structure and phrasing similar to dainas collected in the 19^th century (cf LD 2570, 31481). Such a regular appearance of imagery within a particular daina form pattern suggests continuity of a belief system and symbolic language that was transforming and adapting to historical changes. Possibly genre may differ using the same material in the delivery of the performance.

Unlike a responsorial singing performance that is supposed to be unbroken uptake of sound from one side to the other with the necessity of clear verbal delivery, the incantation is delivered in an unbroken whispered mutter.

Some images and metaphors seem to be recirculated through time and space. They appear to have a level of stability that approaches the objectifiable and act as memes or information packets or units similar to biological information code-units, genes. These are contagious. They replicate, and mutate from mind to mind and propagate through communication networks and face-to-face contact. There are also material objects that are passed from generation to generation, sometimes reduplicated and there are objects in the landscape, such as stones and trees, which outlast a generation and attract stories. Thus, even a culture without writing can transmit a large corpus of information with surprisingly slow changes. Finally culture is, in the Geertzian view, shared symbolic experience and does not live and die within a single brain, but lives distributed in the brains of all the participants who are of mixed generations as well as other social category members. Cultural information is redundant and the basic code, message, structure, or cosmology appears in many versions and variants. Until the 19^th century most Latvians lived in an oral culture, less individualistic in information than is possible in literate cultures. The highly individual is not picked, transmitted, or remembered as readily as what is widely understood and accepted. This does not mean, of course, that there actually is any underlying ideal version. However, a heuristic, working, or etic unit can be abstracted for the purpose of communicating cross-culturally or outside the culture.

The amount of actual concrete historical and geographical information preserved in the texts varies, but in comparison to long narratives, it is very weak in actual names and places. Dunsdorfs points out that some songs do, however, identify the composers of the song and who is being addressed. (Dunsdorfs: 45):

Viļķenieši, vella bērni, Pirtī dzied pērdamies;

Sveiciemieši, bāleliņi, Laukā dzied ecēdami. (59995)

Viena pate kupla liepa Skrunenieku novadā.

Tai pašai zari līka Citā kunga novadā.

Those from Viļķene village, devil children sing in the sauna washing; Those from Sveiciems village, brothers, sing in the field harrowing.

Only one, a bountiful linden in the land of Skrudenieki.

Even those her branches were leaning into another lord’s region.

The daina corpus is the fundamental standard and source of the Latvian literary language even thought its distinctive poetry idiom differs from standard contemporary speech. The language of the folk songs includes archaisms and dialects as well as some old idioms and barbarisms.

While there are many studies of versification, their relationship to the music has not yet been fully worked out. The importance of dainas to Latvian language and culture is similar to the one attributed to Russian by Bailey:

The linguistic idiom of folklore is a subcode of the Russian language and in some respects is supradialectal. The linguistic features of folklore collected over the past two centuries in widely scattered geographic regions show a remarkable uniformity…folklore is conservative and traditional so that it changes only gradually; this pertains to the genre system, melodies, poetic devices, poetic meters, thematic motifs, and language, all of which may preserve archaic characteristics, although the amount of archaic material in a work may vary according to genre, area, historical epoch, or performer…linguists have turned to the folk idiom as a source of information about the history of the Russian language. (Bailey: 40)

Relating key concepts

While reconstruction seems difficult enough in the Latvian case, there are some impressive attempts even more heroic where written text is lacking altogether. Using only visual imagery from archaeology and ethnography, a study of Eurasian nomad symbol systems has been made in The Deer Goddess of Ancient Siberia. A Study in the Ecology of Belief. The approach carries Geertz’s ethnographic “thick description” as a means of elucidating a system of relationships to an impressive level:

Reconstructing the complex arrangements of animal prey and predators is not simply a matter of fitting together pieces on the basis of a visually satisfying pattern or according to principles drawn by analogy from other, neighboring cultures. The reconstruction of symbolic systems undertaken here assumes that even in the absence of written texts, regularly recurring patterns of imagery over time reveal a logic and an evolving signification…meaning may still be fathomed in the persistence and change of images and in the relationships of one visual image to another within the symbolic systems to which they are bound. Meaning thus emerges as an organic process with its own impulses toward variation, transformation, ambivalent negation, and resolution.” (Jakobson: 3)

The approach is not just looking at isolating elements, but discovering the relations of the elements and seeing that out of them emerge key concepts and formulizations (Jakobson: 24), an “ecology of belief” (Jakosbson: 26). Symbolic codes emerge based on metaphor, analogy, metonymy, and syntagmatic sequence. Prototypes in the sense of what first appear in the record, and are subsequently modified can be noted without claim to origin. However, while Jakobson finds astonishing convergence of a key concept across broad spaces of time and place, Latvian mythology seems to be much more a compression and intertwining of some very different concepts related to different times, places, and cultures. In any case, it is an assemblage, not an isolated unit, that carries meaning differing from culture to culture, and the danger is to project meaning from one culture to another without internal evidence. The discussion of problematic projection of Indo-European patriarchal concepts into the society of formerly more egalitarian Eurasian nomads in Jakobson is a warning to look at the Latvian materials in terms of internal evidence, instead of projection:

Particularly among South Siberian peoples closer to the Eurasian Steppe zone, pre-shamanic as well as shamanic cults reveal a complex intertwining of elements suggestive of sexual and social tension. This sexual tension unquestionably reflects slowly changing political structures dependent on an ancient shift of political power away from a female-centered clan structure, and the reintegration of that power within a male tribal elite. These cults also reveal tensions between pre-shamanic belief systems and the later shamanic cults into which they were ultimately integrated. (Jakobson: 180)

Jakobson sees evidence for sexual tension in changes of elk and bear cults with shifting from pre-shamanic to shamanic specialization. (p. 182) The puzzling association of female sexuality with bears in some Latvian bawdy dainas seems less anomalous when one considers the Siberian Ket people equating bear and woman. (Jakobson: 183-4) Latvian society after conquest was artificially kept on the household or clan level as an alternative to the hegemonous state dominantly German culture, thereby also retaining a more egalitarian cast.

The first folk song, recorded with melody as “Manne Balte Mamelyt” in Friedrich Menii, Syntagma de origine Livonorum (Dorpat, 1632) is a double entendre (nerātna daina) about mice getting at the girl’s “butter container” and the girl asking her mother for a cat to take care of the problem. It was recorded thereafter without significant changes in poetic structure, meter, or melody style in the Baron’s collection of nerātnās dainas. Menius also emphasizes the improvisatory nature of songs sung by young people to greet and satirize guests according to appearance and behavior. He also describes polyphonic vocal drone singing with a teicēja, second voices, and a choir that he likens to the drone sound of German peasants using the bagpipe.

Significance of daina world

Krišjānis Barons called the dainas “songs of the flow of life” and built his classification and typology around this concept. In her biography of Krišjānis Barons poet Saulcerīte Viese^¹ characterizes dainas as an “epos of daily life...the greatest art treasure of the Latvian people”^² and starts with the words of another contemporary poet Māris Čaklais:

On this earth beneath the sun we are three and a half billion. Of these only one and a half million are Latvians, which is like one and a half drops of water in the sea. What song can one and a half drops sing about the sun? and yet- on this earth beneath the sun is a land-Latvia, on this earth beneath the sun is a nation-Latvians, on this earth beneath the sun this nation has a song about the sun:...”^³

Māra Zālīte in the forward to the rock opera Lāčplēsis sees the folk song corpus as the potential source of epic, an insight similar to Lonrot’s when he composed the Kalevala largely from folk songs:

Each epic character has a traditional semantic field, a system of concepts, a sphere of associations. The composition has been created taking that into account. Perhaps it can be called the mosaic principle, where the audience must for itself put together from separate “pieces” the total scene, freely using connective devices, such as association and allusion. (Zālīte: 9)

Folk song collecting has been a traditional folkloric activity involving participation of all levels of society, learned as well as untutored, almost entirely on an unpaid, voluntary basis. Even the Father of Folklore Krišjānis Barons received no outright payment for his fourty-five years of daina work. It was a labor of love in common, folkloristics as a widespread folk activity. Collectors of songs came from all corners of the society, dominantly teachers and clergymen. Saulcerīte Viese recounts some of the stories about early collecting:

A peasant...learned to write merely by noting down dainas. A young mother dedicated the time she spent at her child’s cradle to this task. Four sisters, all of them skilled weavers, and blessed with lovely voices, got hold of a log book, and for twenty-five years they entered folk songs, and drew local patterns and designs on pages intended for captains’ officers and records of the ship’s routes. All these people expected no reward.” (Viese: 11)

Thus the daina world is not a product of a selected elite, but on different levels, a world constructed individually by many, but self-organized to form a collective entity:

He (Barons) discerned an inner order in the chaos of a turbulent polyphony of variants, and this enabled him to perceive the dainas as a single narrative, created over centuries...He penetrated to the very core of the songs that he knew almost by heart. He absorbed their world vision that is based on oneness of nature, work and a time-honored tradition of humanism. (Viese, 12)

The whole daina universe is a collection of mental schemata, including rules of composing. One notes how variant clusters relate to each other in slight changes and how each daina relates to others in a dynamic web. Dainas are also mapped according to region, with the largest differences between the extremes of west (Kurzeme) and east (Latgale).

Each text is seen in reference to other texts, a part of a fluid and open network, where every word and phrase is related to those of others. While each daina is a self-contained unit, in singing practice it is not a fulfillment of conventions, but situationally recreated. Certain ritual songs are associated only with particular holidays or celebrations, but even with these songs there is considerable fluidity of motifs and phrases. As one would expect from poetry and art, a text is inherently polysemic, rich with multiple meanings.

Fortunately, the region and performer were recorded with each Baron’s text, which is an important part of context. This gives an ethnogenetic sense of how a text is related historically and geographically to other texts, as well as how productive it was in generating significantly different variants. It also gives mapping information about mentioned practices and concepts within those texts and can flag anomalies of suspected texts as to known practices within the region of the text’s circulation. Kokare considers there is sufficient information to reach into some aspects of the life and thought of some regions even back to the 14^th century. (Kokare, 1992, p. 7)

Information is seen as something that is communal in that while it starts out as separate voices, these fuse and become frozen as texts and in this objectified way are transferred to others rather than in their original living expression. However, this does not negate the polyvocality and polysemy of the text when it is recovered and enters the living stream of active use. There is a folk tendency to objectify as in comparing the access and retrieval of songs or their formulaic parts in terms of winding up the strands into a ball and placing them into a container until they need to be taken out and unwound. The daina is a distillation or concentration of cultural knowledge, polyvocal in multiplicity and ambiguity and potential for use. Since many individuals share in the “code,” it is felt that “song” does not depend upon the memory of any single individual, but the essential structures exist redundantly throughout culture.

Latvian literature passing through different periodizations can be seen in terms of dialogue with, what Guntis Berelis identifies as “the Paradise Lost” construction (Berelis, 18-25) of the first generation of Latvian identity crafters, those of the middle and late 19^th century Awakening, elaborating the model offered by Baltic German iconoclast Garlieb Merkel (1769-1850). Sources for Paradise Lost include anything and everything that can be made to relate to it, but the daina world provides the closest available source of ancestor voices. With each generation, Paradise Lost becomes less romanticized, but no less powerful a common source. In the sixties it reached a Renaissance followed by its elaboration in the seventies whereby themes and imagery of dainas, such as nature and work, were reworked to create a virtual, literary world that appeared to be natural as the result of intense and detailed craft as in the work of Vizma Belševica who introduces ironic asymmetric dialogic, known as “argument of flower and axe.” Similarly, Imants Ziedonis in his quest for the eternally or mythically Latvian “Poem about Milk” in 200 texts draws from “episodes from country life, processes of nature, historical reflex, anecdotes, incantations, incidental metaphor.” (Ibid, 174, also 146-187) In postmodern nineties literature, where language is largely instrumental to create a story from the merging of phrases and metaphors, daina references continue to be used. The daina world, as any “monument,” (Ibid, 307 – 327), either of the hero or jester/carnival type, is a source for reflexivity on different cultural codes. Roots, springs, milk, and such are an important concern of Latvian arts. The daina deals with practical, subsistence activities and imbues these material necessities with aesthetic and ethical significance. “Almost all of our modern poets may be seen as continuers and developers of the daina tradition.” (Ancītis, Senču kalendārs, 1994).

Folklorist E. Kokare writes of the "active life of folklore through centuries from a deep past to the present," of a "living process" that "preserves rich information about the specifics and interactions of the surrounding environment throughout the movement of time, as well as purely subjective interpretation and expression (uztveri un atveidi) (1992, p. 5). However, she also notes that the "paradigms" of classical Latvian folklore belong to very old historical layers. Some dainas describe burial practices going back over a thousand years, and those no longer in practice but verified by archaeologists. In the appropriate slot of the same song type, one region may speak of a sword, another of a musket. Changes in religious thought can be glimpsed as the attributes of different goddesses are taken over in variant songs by the sky god Dievs, but side-by-side the old versions are retained. There are many elements in the classical dainas, and particularly the mythological ones, that suggest the kind of perseverence or stability of door lock type s with their modern descendants. Baltic area studies have always been strongly interdisciplinary and historically oriented.

Russian archeolinguist V. Toporov had a special interest in Latvian language, mythology, and folk song: “Latvian folk songs have preserved as in a reservoir of forms significant evidence from an archaic Indo-European period what only now can be seen in fragmentary artifact.” (cited in Sneibe:66) Endzelīns connected the word daina to the Avestan daēnā and the Vedic dhēnā, and there is the doina of southern Europe, notably of Rumania. Various researchers in passing have suggested similarity in form, function, and even content of the Baltic daina to the ritual veda of India. Since the Baltic daina, unlike the Indian sacred songs, was not the provenance of a specialized clergy, it seems a comparative study might be relevant to the mapping of an underlying Indo-European and Eurasian musical tradition, even though such broad attempts have now been largely abandoned. Additionally, the strong drone tradition of India makes this possibility of exploring sacred sound in Eurasian tradition attractive.

The first Awakening period was concerned with questions if lyro-epic songs were fragments of a larger “epic”. Bula points out that Propp always considered folk epic to consist of fragments, separate songs, which are combined by specialists, but not by “the people” who feel no pressure for that kind of consistency and unification. (Bula, 1998: 56) At the time they were conquered, Latvian tribes were not at a high level of feudal organization, and may not have had impact on the general population by professional singers attached to warlord courts. Probably there were characteristic men’s and women’s songs; some can be identified as such. However, tautas dziesmas and dainas have been dominantly, but not exclusively, women’s songs without a strong gender tabu associated as far back as the earliest historical sources. Men would join in the singing when they had had a few drinks and women would adapt songs from men, which they brought in from outside. Dainas appear structurally related to other Latvian genres, and their texts are also used as sayings, proverbs, incantations, and riddles. The two-part structure when consisting of question and answer are in fact riddles, and many riddles appear as dainas with the question in the first distich. Vīķe-Freibergs points out that some of the riddle dainas can be misread as simple metaphor when the kas (what) tip-off is omitted as in this riddle about wasps (lapsenes): Ubadziņi, bizenēja Pavasara saulītē, Kulītiņas sakāruši Ozoliņa zariņos. (2743) The beggars were buzzing in the summer sun, having hung their bags in the branches of the oak. (Vīķe-Freibergs, 1997: 161-2)

Dainas are commonly cited as primary sources in Latvian academic philosophical writing in addition to popular publications as illustrations of "Latvian ethos or worldview" (cf Kasparsons, Blese, Kundziņš particularly in Garklavs, PSPAF [Essays in Worldview Poetics in Folklore]). The assumption is that a daina singer, as any human being, must practically confront many of the same problems that the professional philosopher does in his philosophy. One dichotomy I have found unconvincing in its strongest form is the academic Social Constructionist or Essentialist one when a choice is given between the absolutely arbitrary and the absolutely rigid, the type of choice that doesn’t seem to trouble folk philosophy since it mostly practically operates in some middle range of abstraction while leaving other levels more open to self-organization.

Folklorists among Latvians are often viewed as keepers of the lore, collecting from the people in order to return it back for wider use. A well-known cartoon by Jānis Jaunsudrabiņš (circa 1920) shows "the father of dainas" Krišjāns Barons winding yarn from many little song containers into one large one. The cartoon draws from daina images of songs wound as yarn into song boxes (dziesmu vaceles). This great collector of the dainas, the person who spent most of his 88 years of life coordinating and organizing the recording of dainas is still a great folk and national hero, perhaps the only hero accepted by people of very different backgrounds who can’t agree on other political, military, artistic, athletic, or scientific heroes. The downside is that folklorists are often expected by the people to be advocates for conservative views instead of trying to record process in a more dispassionate manner. On the positive side folklorists are often valued because they have invested the time, and it is presumed that to become wise in tradition takes considerable immersion, even apprenticeship. At the very least, many Latvians would agree with the statement:

We should remember that in pre-literate societies symbolism is extremely complex and the more one knew the more one could read from such symbols.

http://www.holyrood.org.uk/picts/

A cluster of dainas about the impossible express plenitude as categories whose membership is potentially endless or infinite with a pre-existential twist: “Who can sing all songs? Who can speak all words? Who can count the stars? Pick out the pebbles of the sea?” These dainas set up an equivalence of singing and speaking with counting, sorting, and placing in discrete sets. In so doing it could be classified as relevant to philosophical concerns of the One/ Many or cognitive concerns with categorization. It is implied there is no end to singing and speaking and it is impossible to measure and categorize the furthest outreach of human perception.

The tension between diversity and unity is somewhat resolved in daina imagery of containment. While songs may seem to be generated potentially without end, nevertheless, they can be “rolled up into a ball” and placed in a container, which is put into an osier bush, a linden or willow tree, the orchard, or the hop garden. All of these areas are sacred to Laima, probably the most complex symbolization of the feminine divine and also the goddess of fate and fortune. She is also specifically named as the ultimate source of song and of life. The psychological storage of song in a container appears analogous to placing the body in a coffin, burying it in the forest cemetery made sacred by the souls that entered the physical bodies of trees, birds, or animals because such a sacred place of the dead is also the place of new life and regeneration. There are songs that state a girl became a great singer because her cradle was hung at the forest edge and she learned song from the nightingale and other birds. The view of authorship here is less emphasis on the individual than the collective. Placing the creation of culture back into or in proximity to the larger domain of wild nature and thus life-sourced Otherworld, is to ensure rebirth and regeneration. The sense is of taking something discrete out of the flux of living tradition and returning it back for safekeeping until it is recalled again to life. It is in something of this spirit that the dainas in the Archives are still used today. Even though they have been archived and recorded for a number of generations, the actual use of even fixed text is strongly oral.

Structure

Structurally each eight‑syllable daina is most often organized into two parallel equivalences of nature and culture, of the universal and the particular, of an address and a response. Some are straightforward dialogue of one distich voice answered by another distich voice, and this group is identical to the riddle with its question and answer. Nevertheless, in a song contest, if distichs are not exchanged, they tend to be repeated, so a full four-line verse is sung. All dainas are fundamentally based on two associated couplets, the two “halves” in the corpus of songs about singing, in some form of at least metaphorical dialogue. There may be an address and a metaphorical restatement of similarity. Sometimes both are condensed in the first distich, but usually the two "halves" of the daina represent a dialogic of two great domains of experience: 1) immediate human experience within the homestead ("us") and 2) observations of nature in general, concretely the forest surrounding the homestead or hamlet or the waters and skies adjacent to it ("everything else out there"), which further abstracted also becomes an Otherworld.Thus many daina verses in internal structure address the universal culture ‑ nature dichotomy. Often the effect is to compare something more concrete with something inferred and more abstract. That may even suggest a Kantian sense phenomena opposed to thought noumena. Actually Kant, who lived in what was East Prussia, aboriginally Baltic, apparently knew of the Baltic daina; in the preface to O.G. Mielke's Deutsch‑Littauische und Littauisch‑Deutsches Worterbuch (Konigsbeg, 1800) Kant urged the preservation of Lithuanian, especially as it appeared in the folk song, calling it the philosophical key to man's history.

It seems that the concrete, clear, and therefore more or less delimited is used to stand for its negation - extension, something that is not as concrete, clear, or as constrained. The infinite is created through thought processes of negating the only thing that a human actually experiences, sensations and concrete imagery.

Šī saulīte man zinama, Viņa saule nezinama. (27370)

This Sun (World) I knew well enough. That Sun (OtherWorld) I did not know

.Viena zeme, viena saule, Nevienāda pasaulīte:

Citam zelts, sudrabiņš, Citam gaužas asariņas. (FS 29, 456)

One earth, one sun, uneven under-sun:

One has gold, silver, the other bitter tears.

What is experienced in wild nature (forest) surrounding the homestead is related to known human activity at the homestead. The forest is also metonymy for the sacred Otherworld of deities and the dead concretely in that originally the dead were buried in the forest before Church prohibition.

The idea of one world being analogous, though asymmetrically weaker is also expressed in a common dance model, where a movement is first danced slowly, then repeated in a faster tempo and with greater energy. (Sūna: 117)

The asymmetry of the parallel dual relationship of the cosmic to the mundane, eternal to mutable, Otherworld to Thisworld, sacred to common, divine to human, stone or wood, abstract to concrete, macrocosm to microcosm is acknowledged throughout the large and small structures of the culture and in the metaphors it applies.

In the given deep structure of Latvian folk poetics all of the Otherworld localization concepts are included in the cosmological scheme. The Otherworld may appear aiz (behind) zem (under), or iekš (inside) stone//water//fire//earth. All of these poetic parallelisms in poetic tradition are connected to the ability of isolating the human, separating or placing boundaries between this living human world from that land of the dead (drowned, burned...). Stone// water// fire// earth exhausts possibilities for Otherworld localizations vertically or horizontally. All possible places where the dead, or what is left after a person’s death might remain are included: grave, underground, underworld, Hell, on top or inside a hill, sky hill, sky, forest, sea, behind sea in the west or north, Vāczeme, behind three times nine kingdoms, etc. (Mežale, 1998: 38, also citing Pakalns, 1986).

The different Otherworlds are, accessed depending on where they are conceptually for the situational moment: sailing by boat, going under water, climbing a beanstock or tree reaching into the sky, traveling and getting lost in the forest, going to the gravesite, lifting a rock or entering through gnarled roots of a tree, riding a bird or object through the sky, arising as smoke or breath, being dismembered or crushed, being transformed through shape-shifting, and so on. It remains to assess what weight each of these metaphors situationally carries within the different Latvian traditions of time and space.

Metrics

Almost everyone who has studied the daina in any capacity has invested time in consideration of metrics and music, and the study of metrics is highly specialized, but a survey of over a thousand compilations and the analysis of hundreds of texts on the level of James Bailey (Three Russian Folk Song Meters) is still to be done for the Latvian case specifically, and the Baltic case in general. Janīna Kursīte and Vaira Vīķe Freibergs, continuing the work of such linguists as Valdis Zeps who was concerned with syllabic aspects of Latvian metrics, wrote some of the most recent articles. There are several articles in LZA Vestis, such as Antons Breidaks article on the “rule of quantity of the fourth syllable of trochaic dipody” being short in trochaic songs, though there are exceptions in some Latgalian, Eastern Vidzeme, and Eastern Zemgale songs. (Breidaks: 13-16) This rule, involving a caesura after the 4^th syllable in an eight syllable line apparently came into being at the time of existence of the Latvian Middle Dialect, as previously in Indo-European comparative metrics the end syllable of an eight-syllable line might be either long or short. The later origin of the short end-syllables of multiple syllabic words is related to changes in the language, probably through Finnic (Livonian) influence. An important change in the Latvian language was a change from free accent to accent on the first syllable as in Finnic languages, resulting in loss of short end wovels and a shortening of the long ones. This results in an extra (lāpamais) syllable placed at the end of a line or half line. (cf Kursīte citing Endzelīns, 1996: 142, 143) Historic daina studies are, of course, inseparable from diachronic language studies. It is recognized that daina structure needs to be contextualized in a broader geographic area, since broadly it shares metrics and rhythms with its neighbors, the Finnic and Slavic peoples. Kalevala metrics are related, and the indigenous Livian folksongs belonging to Finno-Ugric language, do not differ markedly from the rest of Latvian songs. These considerations are broadly historical and geographic. Breidaks lists the fundamental linguistic studies (p.15-16) and notes that Endzelīns (1980, vol 3: 121-2) recognized Latvian folk song verse metrics developed before the reduction of two-syllable and multiple-syllable word endings. (Breidaks: 14) According to one view, trochaic stanza in its earliest roots developed from earlier, probably quantitative, eight syllable proto-Indo-European poetry. It may have been a parallel development from the ten-eleven (occasionally 12) syllable Indo-European verse which resulted in the smaller number of Latvian dactylic lyro-epic songs, which in turn developed and evolved into heroic epic in other parts of Europe, but not the Baltic. (Rudzītis: 92) In any case, it is thought that in the past there were more dactylic songs, but they were converted to trochaics, which was the dominant model. There are songs that have been recorded in both trochaic and in dactylic versions, and Lithuanians have preserved richer metric variability with more dactylics.

There are a number of strict composition rules, which will not be covered here. Perhaps one to note is the concentration of short words at the beginning of the line or half line, and long ones at the end; in fact, a line may not be closed with a single syllable word. The shortness of the 4^th and 8^th syllable, and the 3^rd and 7^th syllable having to be long are modern transformations of archaic Indo-European versification quantitative organization. (Kursīte, 1996: 153) The dactyl, often used in magic songs, is such a modern descendant of more ancient 11-12 syllable constructions, which can easily be restored to come up with such an “epic construction.” (Kursīte noting V. Toporov, 1996: 159)

Furthermore, Kursīte considers the polymetric, mixed trochaic-dactyllic meter particularly characteristic of apdziedāšanās and nerātnās songs, as well as Christening ones, to be easily identifiable with prototypical Indo-European versification principles, and finds other metrical characteristics that identify these dainas with concerns of magic. (Ibid) Furthermore, she states that the division of a verse in two, and the division of each line into two is a microcosmic reflection of cosmological dual division, thereby associating singing with the process of cosmic creation: “The folksong functioned as one of the models of the cosmos.” (Kursīte, 1996: 180) This confirms to the re-creation of the four-cornered house with the same model. (Ibid: 188-189)

The first volume of the daina collection as published by Barons, and elaborated by others, is reflexive: dainas on dainas and daina singing. A daina usually does not acknowledge diachronic change, but rather stresses aspects of continuity, the inherited collective creations of ancestors. However, they do identify regional and individual differences: “Es gribu mācīties igauniski padziedaat” (I would learn To sing Estonian) or “Pēc leitīša es dziedāju, Pēc leitīša gavilēju.” (I sang Lithuanian style; I yodeled Lithuanian style.)

A time-consuming immersion in the source-tradition of the daina world of over two million archived units will be made easier as it becomes more readily computer accessible. Researchers typically spend years to get a sense of recurring, redundant and interconnected concepts common in the past, and attempt to translate them into language understandable today, informed by, but not prescribed by scholarship on play, ritual, festival, liminality, ambiguity, wit, gender, conflict, and myth as sacred knowledge.

In the balance of perceiving flux but communicating with discrete elements, clarity rather than appreciation for ambiguity is a value. Linkages are alliances, and analogies are linkage attempts to make sense of disparity. Thus, singing together is either a test of compatibility or a ritual to unite what is known to be different. Dievturi gatherings still open and close with ceremonial songs:

Together sing one song, we who are in the room.

If the song fits together (saderēt), We'll live in harmony.

With God we came together, With God we part,

With God may it remain this song-filled room.

Latvian dainas are one of the very few extensive and well-documented cases of women's song traditions being accepted by the entire nation as their primary source of national identity. Many songs that acquired the meaning of protest and alternative culture grew out of an earlier tradition protesting harsh treatment of orphans or by in-laws. These are songs of females trying to survive against the odds. Historical sources from the 16th century on agree that women predominated in daina singing and composition. Significantly fewer songs are of characteristically male pursuits, such as war and bride seeking. When they are sung by women, they acquire a woman’s point of view. Thus, the cycle of songs with the formula “Better that my mother would have [thrown me in the river, thrown me in the fire, cradled a stone] applied to the female experience of loosing honor because of gossip or becoming a slave or servant in a strange household is linked in parallel with the same formulae to the cycle where the “other half” of the song is about the warrior leaving home: (See Mežale, 1998: 26-40 for songs about forms of death, sacrifice, and infanticide.)

Labāk māte mani mazu Būt’ upē iemetusi.

Nekā lielu audzējusi Asajam zobenam. (LlTdz 22631)

Better that my mother had thrown me small into the river

Than to have raised me for the sharp sword.

Some male-typical attitudes are modified with a female poetic "I". This may include such boasting songs where the girl speaks of striding the earth so that it shakes and other typical male gestures with the formula adapted from male boasts: "I was a girl, I had power/ I could boast."

I’m a girl, I have power (vara); the earth shakes as I walk;

The boys dare not approach me, nor take my ring (by force). (13177)

I’m a girl, I have power (vara), I can boast.

I can buy a whole crown's manor with all the soldiers inside. (13179)

Comparing the women’s boasting to the more numerous and appropriate male boasts, it can be concluded that genre was weighed more heavily than gender when the occasion called for it. That is, when women put on aggressive song displays, they apparently borrowed from the male aggressive repertoire, such as the war song cycle. Under serf conditions there was little opportunity and greater risk for men to display or develop a song tradition asserting power and control. Perhaps a tradition developed of tolerating females to display strong aggression as a surrogate for emotions that could not otherwise be displayed openly by the suppressed underclass as a whole, or by the most obvious segment of the population able to realistically carry out physical aggression:

I’m a lad; I have force I can boast

I carry Riga in my palm, Jelgava in my armpit. (13186)

Regional grounding and multiple voices

The change from regional to national focus is one of the major changes in the 20th century. While the original geographical location of particular daina clusters can be located, current usage is increasingly panLatvian. Perhaps only the largest regional differences corresponding to the divisions of Latgale, Vidzeme, Kurzeme, and Zemgale (which also happen to approximate old tribal territories) remain with east and west more strongly differentiated than north and south. Diversity and layers of musical culture characterize Latvian traditional music; alternatively one may speak of the different traditional musics of Latvia.

The process of changing to a panLatvian perspective and the lessening of strong regional differences has been characteristic of the past century. The sometimes popularly lingering concept of a Volksgeist collective is being changed by contemporary scholarship. But people assimilate that which fits into their own basic traditions and is useful in developing them further. Sometimes it is more a matter of adopting a better and more fitting label for the same phenomenon. The daina world has, of course, never in reality been an undifferentiated collective.

From the time of the conquest of the separate Baltic tribes that became the Latvian people in the 13^th century, there has been strong pressure for the diversity that existed historically and geographically to be subsumed also by the common goal of constructing an alternative culture to that of the oppressors. For such a broad commonality to be viable and widely accepted, a high unofficial tolerance for diversity had to be developed as well. Particularly this was so since there was no central means of enforcing commonality except on the local level through psychological mechanisms. Commonality among a people living in scattered settlement pattern and valuing individuality is possible insofar as it is vaguely defined or loosely interpreted with few strong core assumptions.

This is consistent with Wittgenstein's theory of family resemblances and gradience (1953) as interpreted by Eleanor Rosch (summarized and related to key opponents of "classical theory of categories" in Lakoff). Wittgenstein proposed family resemblances rather than essences as the key to category identification. Wittgenstein focused on clear, most structured cases within each category and found them sufficient for identification, even in the absence of knowledge of boundaries. This is in accord with natural language and common thought practice that ignores or doesn't particularly concern itself with locating exact boundaries, but assumes that boundaries do exist. As Eleanor Rosch points out (p. 36): "in the normal course of life, two neighbors know on whose property they are standing without exact demarcation of the boundary line." Thus, definition of categories is not well defined, members may not necessarily share attributes, and some members are better examples (prototypes) than others. The daina tradition is valued because it gives grounding to the diversity of all the individuals who consider themselves Latvian. The corpus, while unbounded is concrete, a touchstone. Participating in the tradition is to reach beyond the finiteness of the individual and his specific time/space. At the same time many voices and generations populate the daina world from different regions. There is no single Voice, but the potential for endless interpretations, which, however, are not random, but limited by the text. This allows for manipulation of tradition for special purposes. Both proverbs and song wars provide opportunities for different voices to be heard.

If traditionalism is strong in the Baltic, the "normative is not a determinative" (Bauman, F722 notes). Even though Latvian dainas and Latvian philosophy related to them emphasize commonality, such is possible only in relation to or reacting to the dialogic opposite: different perspectives, ambiguity, dissonance, contradiction, and conflict. To further cite Richard Bauman, "multiplicity is the key feature". Additionally, ambiguity adds flexibility. Thus the daina voices frequently disagree within the agonistic aspect of the daina world. If there is striving for and even a sense of unity, harmony, and consensus it is because it is essentially tied to the process of dialogue, dispute, and constant adjustment. One striking formula stands out as an accusation that the other person is in error. A strong contradiction is prefaced by the formulaic "He lies...” (kas to teica, tas meloja) or “it’s not true” (nava tiesa):

He lies who said Sun on foot goes:

Through a needle forest she drives by horse;

Over the sea in a boat. (33811)

It’s not true, it is false, that Sun sleeps at night.

Did she arise in the morning where she set at night? (LD 33813,1)

In the second distich the singer clearly states her own theory in contrast to the first. Kursīte considers half of the mythical dainas to be in the direct question and answer form, similar to the riddle, which she calls the “ritual dialogue format.” (Kursīte, 1996: 170-173) It is related to the sense of fear of naming something dangerous directly, but using indirect reference instead.

Information redundancy does not in itself negate tolerance for diversity. A relatively high tolerance for contradiction and ambiguity can exist within a highly integrated and stabilized culture. Some dainas explicitly acknowledge, and most seem to assume, multiple points of view:

Living on the border (Uz robežu dzīvodama,)

Three ways I bent my speech. (Trijād' loku valodiņu") (36206)

One recurring motif is imagining an alternative identity and characterizing its separate style. Thus mummers say they are behaving “Gypsy-style”. Even among modern emigres there is still enough of a sense of regionality that they will refer to themselves as čikagieši (Chicago-people), ņujorkieši (New York people) and so on. For Latvians throughout history living next to neighbors that not only spoke different dialects, but different languages (Finno-Ugric and Baltic even being in different language families) was a common and practical experience. Coordinated or complementary difference can be a source of strength:

High she sings, long she drones, lilting all the day.

My sisters sing thinly, I'll sing deep and fully. When the two of us sing, the earth itself sways.(translation of "Aiz kalniņa linus sēju" folk songs, Latvian Song Festival Program sheet, July 1978)

I-Thou relationship of singer and world

Another characteristic favorable to the development of tolerance in Latvian daina culture is the direct face-to-face communication, dialogue, or confrontation of the opposing voices. A tradition of tolerance and openness can develop out of counter-cultural experience of disadvantage. Lalita Muizniece in her dissertation on Latvian burial songs and in her article in Freibergs (1989: 136-147) explores the poetic "I" of dainas which addresses and engages anyone or anything on an immediate "Thou" level, whether it be a person, deity, tree, animal, or what we would consider an object - a stone, the sea, the grave:

The strategy of naming the non-human participant of the discourse in a direct address uttered by a human voice, allows the singer to identify it before letting it speak...The dialogue form, moreover, provides a more dramatic setting...” (Muižniece in Freibergs: 146)

The daina world is animistic and largely egalitarian. Anyone can sing; anyone can address anyone. A dialogic structure is in place for the potential development of an ethos/ideology that recognizes commonality in diversity and diversity in commonality. Even the deities are addressed on familiar terms, though, of course, the "dialogic" (to use Bakhtin's concept) is asymmetrical, which, however, is played down. The poetic I sometimes argues with or complains to these deities and sometimes is even irreverent, bitter, or sarcastic:

Three summers Shade Mother a honey cake kneaded.

Eat it yourself, Shade Mother, I would yet live.

Sun, Sun, Earth, Earth with me are at odds.

With Sun I made agreement; With Earth I could not

With Earth I could not until I gave her my body. (27579)

I saw my Laimiņa (goddess of fate & fortune) halfway in the water. Would she have drowned all the way from my tears. (9189)

Janīna Kursīte points out that in addition to implicit dialogue in which all dainas are to some degree involved, there is also the direct question and answer, which starts out with a question (who is shining, who is shimmering?) followed by an answer in the second distich (Dievs, Saule...) At some point a daina becomes a ritual dialogue, a riddle, usually with a formulaic question, “Guess, other people...” (Atminiet, sveši ļauids...) (Kursīte, 1992: 5-14)

In her “The poetic imagination of the Latvian dainas” Vīķe-Freibergs comments on another prevalent daina characteristic:

The diminutive serves to impose emotional distance, to take the edge off the unpleasantness referred to. This (is)...but one level of what is a general tendency in the dainas - the transmutation of the common, the harsh and the ordinary by transposing it to the realm of poetic imagination...becomes a device for affective focusing. (p. 40)

The diminutive is less an indicator of size than of poetic attitude. The singer can address a dangerous animal (wolf, bear), a force of nature or divinity (sun, thunder), or a formidable task (quern grinding) through the mediating device of a diminutive.

This type of understated daina song irony passes into modern black humor and crosses genres into the modern sociopolitical anecdote. Humor is a tool for survival. In terms of Nozick's closest continuer theory, econational poetry and satirical or ironical anecdotes inherit much of the daina "spirit". While folksongs continue to be sung today, they have acquired too much of the character of the classic or ancestral sacred to be as freely improvised or consciously varied. During the Soviet occupation, which discouraged and not infrequently legally punished expressions of Latvianism as "bourgeois nationalist relics" (reminiscent of German wars against "savage relics"), both genres flourished, sometimes in writing, especially in clandestine or disguised writing, in oral tradition, and in handwritten or that in-between channel of hand-made publications (hand-outs written and reproduced for a specific occasion - programs, lecture aids, visuals, etc.)

Language constraints

Unlike its closest relative Lithuanian, Finno-Ugric significantly influences Latvian with accent on the first syllable. Thus, falling rather than rising rhythms are normative, except in the Selian region. The intonation of a narrative phrase of a recitative song has an approximately corresponding undulating melody contour that descends at the end. The complex question of the Finno-Ugric linguistic and anthropological substratum is discussed at length with extensive bibliography in K. Ancītis and A. Jansons, “Vidzemes etniskās vēstures jautājumi,” p. 25 - 68. See also bibliography on physical anthropology in Latvia. Country and People, p. 291, and article pp. 289 - 291).

Daina world culture could be examined in terms of illuminating an early type of “Western,” though, it is not default or typical Indo-European, namely in its alternatives to the patriarchal, militant, and male-centered in mythology, cosmology, and music performance. The influence from Finnic is also significant. Such intimate Latvian words as “girl” (meita), “boy” (puika), and “marry” (laulāt) are of Finnic origin. The daina world, therefore is connected to the Indo-European world, but not simply a variation reducible to it, and attempts in starting with an IE model and trying to fit daina data into it will result in direct conflict with some important assumptions. Trying to adapt Dumezil’s tripartite model too strongly is a case in point. Another example is the word arājs, with broad IE cognates that lead to terms for aristocrat in developed Indo-European. In the daina world the term simply means “ploughman” with positive connotations analogous to the American “free farmer” of an earlier time, suggesting someone who is self-reliant and has pride in his work. It lacks the specialized racial caste tone of the distant cognate of Hindu society “Aryan” as Baltic society did not reach such an organizational state to develop a native apartheid caste system.

The daina world records different societies through time and region, but the dominant feel is of relatively unspecialized societies lacking developed, strong hierarchy, and retaining a more primitive pioneering farmer character. The dominant world that appears is not that of warriors or powerful warlords, but of simple farmers who would as opportunity present itself also become seasonal raiders (Vikings). While not warrior women, women are not depicted as powerless victims of a violent world. They are valued for their strength and character and wisdom - integral aspects of the feminine, while weakness and shallowness are not even salvaged by beauty. The word gods is applied to both genders, though virtue is not identical for male and female. The way the word is used for male and female is dominantly dual and therefore at least asymmetrically equal, rather than sexist. Sexism and racism are of course potentials if certain conditions develop, but remain undeveloped to a specialized degree because of the particular historic and geographic conditions of the Baltic peoples. In terms of the historic-geographic studies initiated by Anti Aarne and developed by Stith, which established variation in time and space of concepts, the oicotype rather than the pure abstractified general type is of special interest.

Correspondences of Karelian and Latvian singing have been noted, though the more definitive work has yet to be done. One can imagine a mutually intelligible, though linguistically disparate, Baltic cultural area, which became the source of the different national cultures.

One of the listserves to which I subscribe is Folkloristi, sysoped by Ansis Ataols Bērziņš. Some of the folklorists, who are also all practicing leaders or members of folk ensembles or folklore groups, participated in a discussion on apdziedāšanās. They briefly switched to the topic of authenticity, and then continued to the topic that had the most current interest to them as to what kind of performances and with what degree of individual artistic interpretation should a group that calls itself a folk ensemble or a folklore group perform. A translation of a selection of the conversation follows:

Subject: Re: folkloristi: apdziedašanās/aprunāšanās (Folklorists: antiphonal insult singing and talking)

Aija Veldre Beldavs (2/3/00):

Folklorist Aivars Zariņš from Madona wrote the following in the Sveiks listserve. Would anyone have comments on it? I have had similar experiences in the United States.

Aivars Zariņš:

It has been observed that apdziedāšanās texts don’t repeat, or repeat rarely. Usually a few words are changed to fit in as needed for the current situation. The caller (teicējs) can create from either known formulae or improvise completely. I’m more interested in the creative moment, so that is what I’m focusing on. It appears the Suitu sieves (Suitu Women) have such a large dowry chest (pūrs) that they can literally create authentic text on the spot. It seems there are a few people in Latvia who are successful in doing that. I once met three men: a Lithuanian, an Estonian, and a Latvian: Mature men with considerable experience from the Socialist period. When they sat down at the table during the social part, they sat against each other and it started…! This happened without melody or rhyme. Essentially speaking (in Russian), but in content similar to apdziedāšana!!! It appeared to them to be something of a ritual that was being repeated who knows how many times.

Ansis Bērziņš, sysop of the Folkloristi listserve and leader of folk song and dance ensemble, Maskačkas spēlmaņi:

I have noticed certain formulaic verses are sung at the very beginning or when the previous topic has been exhausted or (it) has turned unfavorably to one side. Otherwise something thematically appropriate is generated on the spot. Speaking of the Suitu women (suitenes), it is more a case of confidence and popularity rather than dowry. I have often observed among them somewhat previously prepared techniques. Many other ethnographic ensembles have no smaller an inheritance (pūrs), but they don’t know how to present themselves (nostādīt), and with it – to sell themselves.

Aija:

How is it that the Suitu women learned this attitude and isn’t it possible for others to learn from them?

Ansis:

First of all time. They began to make appearances already in the (nineteen) twenties. Second Suitu mentality. Third – they sing in a language understandable to the masses (in contrast to čangaļi). [The term čangaļi is an idiomatic term for Latgalians (in eastern Latvia) who speak a very distinct dialect.]

Arturs Uškāns 2/4/00

From playing at weddings in Latgale (to 120 participants, uncounted beyond that), where the guests are being sung about, in some ways the Suitu women don’t hold a candle. There have been times when we contested against them, the formulaic verses end, we improvise, but the host women surpass us anyway. There was only one time that one of the host women after the verse at our turn whispered in our ears, "Nu gona, gona puiseiši, dūdit i myusim padzīduot.” [Now, enough, enough, lads (diminutive). Let us also sing some.] I think that was connected with the singing traditions of a specific village where the old hostesses pass on their inheritance to the new singers. I should add that these women don’t sing in any ethnographic or folklore ensemble. Unfortunately, at that time I was not involved with recording folk traditions. As far as mentality, with many Latgalian apdziedātāja singers one could ‘plow the earth’. We still have to learn such joy of life and generosity… As far as ‘understandable language,’ then I don’t understand why all the ‘Riga people and other čyuļi (Latvians who aren’t Latgalians) at the wedding do understand what is being sung about. They only pretend in Riga when relatives from Latgale are visiting that they don’t understand Latgalian.;)

Aija

Hmm…would you say the Suitu women are more aggressive than the Latgalian women?

Arturs (2/4/00)

It is not about aggression, but rather genes. For myself, I must say listening to the Suitu women, yes I like it, but listening to the Latgalian women there is a liking that involves much more. It could be something like being among good friends at home where everyone is really enjoying themselves. Continuing along such thoughts, what has been said about learning (songs) isn’t really about the manner of singing or the clarity of the performance, but a consciousness of one’s region, of one’s very biological being. That is one of the reasons I am now driving around Latgale, filming the old musicians and singers who have never learned music in school. A whole book could be written about these travels because a videocamera can not possibly reflect the personal thoughts and feelings when, for instance (thought there are many examples), an old woman who having worked all her life milking cows in the kolkhoz by hand, plays the violin, and in answer to what instrument is easiest to play (harmonica, zither, etc.) answers, Prūtams, ka vijuoli, kū ta es ar tik sastruoduotom rūkom velj varu paspēlēt!" (Of course the violin, what else could I play with such overworked hands?) And at that moment you feel even on a biological level to which people you belong and what folklore is.

Ansis:

I’m not saying that the Suitu women are better or worse, I only wanted to explain their popularity. That they are the most popular ethnographic ensemble is without dispute. Among other things the Suitu mentality can be compared not only to that of the people of other regions, but also to Kurland (western Latvia) mentality. The Suiti are very individualistic and are very proud of that. Maybe that is how their ‘aggressiveness’ can be explained in a positive sense culturally and politically.

Aija:

How rude is it to use the word čangaļi? Isn’t that from Mērnieku laiki? (an influential 19^th century novel)

Ansis:

I haven’t met any Latgalians who received it as overtly negative. Furthermore, I have heard them call themselves that (mostly in the context of contrasting Latvians, čyuļi, to čangaļīši (something else). Although I’m allowing there might be prejudiced people who wouldn’t like being called čyuli. But among other things, I have met many Lithuanians who don’t like to be called leiši. Then they immediately call Latvians horseheads (zirgugalvas). In their view those are equally insulting terms, but in mine no. And it seems I am right.:)

(On others understanding Latgalian:)

I’ve met quite a few people who didn’t understand. Especially when singing. Especially if tantuki (the deep country female folk singers who usually aren’t in folk ensembles) are singing. One must take into account that usually people who have connections with Latgale or Latgalians attend weddings in Latgale.

Rolands Rastaks (2/6/00)

The Suitu women are there all right; they know where the money is. I think for money they would strike up a song and sing about (uzdziedās un apdziedās) all those who are there and who aren’t there even in a striptease bar. And that’s not bad. But are there any others who can do that? I don’t understand why the bitter words in one dance song: Jurmalniece uzdancoja, man par pieciem aboliem. Ja es butu jurmalniece, es par desmit nē. (Sea coast woman danced for me (just) for five apples. Were I a sea coast woman, I wouldn’t do it for ten.’ Why NOT? Excuse me if this isn’t on topic.

Ansis (2/7/00):

I really don’t know…from what region is that song? The answer could largely be depending on the relationship of that region to “sea coast people” (jūrmalnieki) and what they understand with that term.

Rolands Rastaks (2/14/00 (about the sea coast women song)

The song is from Dzērbene – in the region of Ineši. I don’t know the name of the caller. It is danced in three parts. In Valka we sing and do it as Sudmaliņas.

Arturs (in response to Ansis’s question about how was a musical event, ETNO 2000 from which he just returned.)

It went well, but there could have been more people and better sound. But this was the first time and in Daugavpils. In any case those who attended (about 200 people), apparently had not expected anything, but the reactions were most enthusiastically positive. Of course it generated discussions among intellectuals if folk music should even be presented in such a fashion as did the Ilģi and Laima musicians: flashing strobe lights, setting off smoke, and blasting discotheque during intermissions. It’s possible a larger scale repeat will happen in Baltica. We’ll see.

Aija: How about apdziedāšanās, say at talkas, on Midsummer or other holidays where the participants are young people so there would be more of the teasing aspect.

Arturs (2/18/00)

What young people do at Midsummer in Kurzeme, I don’t know, as I haven’t had the occasion to be there. It’s been a while since I was at the kind of Midsummer where people simply come to the bonfire to sing, drink beer, and so on. For already fifteen years, being a musician, it’s been a workday since with my ensemble we play various Latvian dances at various large social gatherings. That is why I could better tell about how a number of years back in a Russian village we were being protected from the public by the police. But last year Russian youth asked Latvian girls to teach them Latvian dances. This really isn’t about apdziedāšanās, but in this ‘big (symbolic) apdziedāšanās between Russian and Latvian groups we are slowly gaining. I think today that is the biggest difference between Latgalians and Kurzemians in attitude (where in Kurzeme it isn’t a problem, since the Russian population is concentrated more in the East). But a mutual bantering (apcelšana), a good-natured teasing doesn’t happen only at talkas and celebrations, but is a part of everyday. Everything is dependent on the atmosphere.

Aija:

Having grown up here, if there were a number of Latvians, they tried to get out to the countryside, light a bonfire or even set up a pole with a pitch barrel and sing at least some līgo-songs. What happens at your dances (danči) – are they similar to what happens here at the Latvian centers which are in the countryside? After a staged performance, people separate and there is an American style picnic with more drinking than singing. But at least there is a Midsummer fire and a Midsummer father and Midsummer mother usher the evening in.

Arturs (2/8/00)

It is like that here also – the countryside, the fire, the līgo-singing – all that happens. Those events where we play are meant for large numbers of people, for instance at the Rainis Museum (let us say, organized Midsummer celebrations), where different people drive in – some from Rīga, some from neighboring homes. In the beginning there is ligo-singing, the lighting of fire, singing songs about the prominent and leading people attending, etc. – all as should be at Midsummer. Then dancing, beer drinking, and general merrymaking. If someone wants to get drunk, that is no problem as beer selling goes on all night (if one’s own basket is empty). Most people, however, alternate drinking beer with dancing until the morning light. At the dances we play the same Pērkonītis, Oira, Cūkas driķojas, etc. – it’s enough for the night. Conflicts arise if drunken Russian young men arrive, who “need” discotheque. In many Russian areas they play only that at Midsummer. The word “integration” in practice means a lot of work on the part of Latvians. Most Russians stubbornly cling to Soviet traditions and wait for the good old times to return. Most of them are workers who came here during the Soviet period and don’t particularly stand out with their intellect, but rather openly jeer at Latvian culture, songs, dances, language, etc. (the apdziedāšanās from their side?). The fact that after observing our dances, at least some of them think to ask a Latvian girl to teach them means there is some minimal form of change in attitude and thinking. That’s what gaining the ‘upper hand’ means.

Aivars Zariņš (2/9/00):

I’m finally back on the net - back to the original question. Of course, I don’t think apdziedāšanās has 5 variants that repeat as formulae, but the use of formulaic songs can be observed. The point is that there are people who aren’t in folklore ensembles or something similar who are capable of improvising new, high quality lines, and in each region there are also their own šabloni – rituals, which have to be repeated to key in the appropriate moods (sajūtas).

Aija:

Do only Russian young men arrive – not Russian young women?

Arturs (2/9/00):

If there are Russian girls, they are not intrusive or aggressive. I know some Russian girls who dance Latvian folk dances in Laima, speak good Latvian (among themselves Russian however), as well as know and dance Latvian dances. Of course, this is the more intelligent percentage of Russian youth.

Aija (on Russians disrupting Midsummer with discotheque demands):

It sounds a bit like a raid (sirojums) (on part of the Russian young men) that ends peacefully, the Latvians retaining their musical traditions.)

Arturs:

We were talking about Midsummer and the “raiders” were from the surrounding homes, who also came to celebrate, but found something alien (Latvian folksong, dance etc.). I’ve observed that intellectually challenged people instinctively are driven to protective measures when there is something strange, unknown, that in turn is expressed in an aggressive fashion (especially among youth). The musicians, of course, can also, get roughed up (norauties pa tauri), but on the one hand the police protect them if the playing is in a Russian village, but otherwise Latvians are in the majority. The second case wins out because they keep on celebrating and ignore them (the Russians). An excessively in-your-face occasion can result in the aggressor getting smacked in the chops (if he can’t be talked down peacefully). The celebration continues in any case.:)

Aija:

Could someone explain the idiom norauties pa tauri?

Ansis:

=dabūt pa purnu. (to get it in the snout)

Would you believe it, even such expressions it turns out are unknown.:))))

Arturs

Thank you, Ansi! Otherwise I was thinking for some time how to explain it somewhat more intelligently.:))))

In any case synonyms: dabuut/norauties pa: muti, purnu, tauri, strebjamo, zhaunaam, klabekli, paaksti, gurkji, bieti u.t.t.

Among other things, folklore worth studying (similar to nerātnās dainas)

From: Arturs(2/14/00):

I believe the speech we now use has not developed just recently. Ask those men living in the West who in their childhood during the first Latvian republic time spent some time in the harbor region how they talked among themselves and how harbor workers, sailors, etc. talked. You don’t even need the harbor region – ask how boys would talk at the outdoor dances or in the field transporting manure when girls weren’t around. I think the language which has been taught children outside Latvia for 50 years has been protected from the previously mentioned lexicon as rude. But here the language has gone its natural development and has also been polluted with all kinds of Slavicisms. I would like to mention an old man in Toronto with whom I was staying. He knew an idiom from the time period he lived in Latvia (emigrated in 1945) that we either did not use or time had changed. If one adds all the coarse songs, poems, and vulgarisms in Russian, then with all our Russian language knowledge it was more polite for us to keep quiet.

Subject: folkloristi: Pavisam cita opera - Man vajag palidzibu (Another Opera – I need help)

Aldis Sils:

I’m looking for a description of the old ritual dance/ singing game (rotaļa)(?) “Visi ceļi guniem pilni” (“All the roads are full of fire”) I remember the music and text from an old Skandenieku recording (ieraksts), Does anyone know this dance/singing game and could they send me the description to my e-mail address? Does anyone have any idea what the dance/ moves mean?

Aija (2/14/00):

There’s a description of the Cesvaine rotaļa in two versions in

Valdis Muktupa'vels, Dindaru, Dandaru (Rīga: Avots, 1989), nr. 109, 110. The words and description suggest magic/ incantation: “All the roads are blocked by fire. All the roads are closed with keys. I will have to ride it through/ With God’s help. I will have to ride it through/ Break the key.”

"Visi celji guniem pilni, Visi celji jatsle'ga'm./ Jas buus' jieti visam cauri/ Jar Dievin'a pali'dzin'./ Jas bu's' jieti guniem cauri, Pus'i lauzti jatsle'dzin'."

Ansis (2/15/00):

> Aivars:

> Who is the person who composed this song? They should give the

> directions how to dance it.

Ansis:

Are you saying it is fakelore (viltojums)? What are your reasons? In Muktiņ’s book it says it was recorded in Cesvaine.

Aija

Someone could check if Muktupāvels correctly listed the source as from: Music from E. Melngailis Latviešu mūzikas folkloras materiāli. Texts in: Latviešu tautas daiņas IV (p. 389 - 391).

Aivars Zariņš (2/15/00)

I don’t think there is anything faked or bad if people sing and dance. I think there are many variants and we can pick what to use; the main thing is to stay with the original (spirit). Composition is an essential aspect of any song or dance, and if we don’t know the author (we call it a folk song or dance), then I as a part of the people can continue this tradition, changing it after my tastes. However, if one doesn’t have ability to do justice to tradition so that it has appealing value, then it is better to stay away from improvisation.

Ieva Pīgozne:

My views are strongly similar. I believe it unfounded to view that today no one can create high quality “folk” music or dance. But I’d like to hear some other views. Is it perhaps that the “contestants” themselves look upon their own compositions askew. Maybe it is because it is ever harder to find unheard and unseen genuine originals. And those who have found such don’t want others to have it too easy to get to new songs and dances. Is that possibly why new material is evaluated as unesthetic (though for the sake of argument, let us say that objectively that is not the case). Or are there other possibilities?

Ansis 2/15/00

I don’t agree. The uniqueness of folk creation (tautas daiļrade) lies in its communal aspect. One person is not capable of thinking up something like that, no matter how gifted and knowledgeable. Or even a contemporary group. It is as a sea washed pebble – take it in your hands and feel how in centuries the waters of time have smoothed it. No jeweler will create something like that. He will create something beautiful, but nevertheless it will be different.

Nonsense (about not finding originals)! At least Latvians can’t complain. You don’t even have to go on folklore expeditions; you can go to the Folklore Archives and muck around a bit. I’m not jealous of new material. But let’s be correct and call it new material (jaunrade) and not folk song or dance.

Ieva(2/15/00)

How do we feel about postfolklore, Iļģi? How do we feel about the use of new instruments? And where is the boundary between what you may and may not do? Is it not the case that the boundary is determined by each person’s openness, tastes, and convictions (pārliecība)?

Ansis (2/15/00)

Oh, that’s another question. We were talking about songs (melodies or texts) and dance (choreography or melody or text) creation. For instance find appealing words and think up a melody or find a dance where the choreography hasn’t been notated or a description given. Or separately, instruments, arrangements, etc. – that is all interpretation and that really is a matter of taste about which, of course, there is no point arguing. And generally – sure, one can do anything, but the pretensions arise not in the matter of doing, but the labeling. If a folk dance ensemble or kokle (stringed instrument) ensemble is called Latvian folklore, well, then, we know…Let them be called original creation, pseudofolklore, or whatever, but not folklore. Because people, especially foreigners, see it and think it is folklore. It is like there is no law against selling plastic pieces that look like gemstones, but it is against the law to label them gemstones.:)) Iļģi correctly call themselves a postfolklore group. Or if one of the Rīga folklore ensembles decided to call themselves ethnographic (ensembles).:)

Arturs (2/15/00)

One must meditate according to one’s taste and vary according to one’s concrete sense any folk song even playing accompaniement to it on gas tanks (degvielas cisternām). If there’s a producer who can make something commercial of it – then forward! In our days any folk music is commercial if it is presented to other people, of course in gravy, but retaining individuality. That is how it is with world music. The musician himself must choose what and how he will play – if he will play the koklīte quietly in his room, or adds gas tanks to the kokle, finds a producer and goes to make a killing in the international arena.

Arturs

Dina Kalniņa (2/16/00)

Western scholars spend long hours writing about current traditional, the meaning of tradition is ever being defined, modern folklore scholarship gains ever more popularity. But in a country like Latvia where there are also people who are interested in these topics, everyone does it differently. As in the Baltica event, the jury expressed very different viewpoints as to what is a folklore group, how it should perform, and what it may do, but there really wasn’t any apparently real objective vantage. That is why it would be good to hear other thoughts as to what a folklore group should be in today’s Latvia, particularly focusing on the Rīga region. What do you think, can the traditional be made modern, such that would be attended not just by the parents of the members, their spouses, and fans from other folklore groups.

Aldis Sils (2/16/00

I think an ensemble that calls itself a “folklore group” definitely needs to be interested in all aspects of folk art, not just music and songs. It is too bad that some folklore ensembles forget or don’t observe Latvian folk costume wearing traditions. I understand that sometimes an ensemble chooses to perform in a costume that is comfortable and convenient, the so-called theater costume. That can also be taken as postfolklore. But why do we see among some folklore ensembles totally inappropriate folk costume arrangements????!!!!!

In over 100 years scholars have discovered a lot about lost folk costume making techniques. Let us use this knowledge to spread “correct” folk costume wearing among our people. That is not sufficiently widespread!!!!

Ansis (2/16/00)

(Reacting to Dina’s question about how to make traditional more current.)

I think it is possible. It seems there are two primary roads to larger audiences, of course strongly simplifying: involvement in postfolklore (other people’s folk music and music or instruments), a small tilt to the sacred or mystical, and enjoyment (rhythm, tempo, smile, understandable words, contact with the public, etc.)

As for the reason why Dina started this topic, as I think, because the Laiksne postfolkloric performance had caused dissatisfaction among the Rīga domes Kultūras pārvaldes people [hosting officials]; yes, it seemed their reaction was logical. If they are giving funding to a folklore ensemble, then they wish to see and hear folklore (as they see it). But if they begin to acknowledge artistic experimentation among folklore groups, then the cultural administration needs concrete criteria what a folklore group is. And of course if one wishes to receive funding, then one must accept the criteria (even if it doesn’t seem right or honest).

Actually to the question “what should be a folklore group” doesn’t have an answer. It should be such as is desired by the participants. It is another question who wants to listen to it. If it works, let them do as they wish. For instance, Silavoti ir essentially a dievturi (neo-pagan) choir, not a folklore group. But they like what they are doing and those who invite them to many events also like them. It is another matter as Helmi said after the evaluations in VEF: Baltica must be an authentic folklore festival. And that is why one must not be surprised that those same Silavoti are not invited. In that sense, in my opinion, Laiksne’s appearance in VEF was not correct – performance in an authentic folklore festival with a postfolklore program.

Aivars Zariņš (2/17/00)

Bitter (skarbi), Ansi, bitter.

I acknowledge straightforward talk about the topic of folklore. You are right about the definition of a folklore group. However, I consider that Laiksne also has the right to view itself as such. Even more so because it is capable of being such. It’s another matter what one likes in a particular time period. Traditional evening work bee (vakarēšanās) and forestry work songs understandably don’t interest the energetic and expressive girls of Laiksne. There is also a problem with sea songs when it definitely isn’t fishing season (or maybe I don’t understand something about these occupations.) In some ways I view original creations (jaunrade) as belonging to folklore - of course in the appropriate time and appropriate place. About the funds of the Rīgas Domes Kultūras pārvalde: Of course it is possible to bend for a ten, but I understand this time that was not the aim of the Laiksne performance. Perhaps Dina also has something to say; I won’t defend too much, who knows what people will think: rivals, of course :)

Aivars from Patmalnieki

Aivars Zariņš (2/17/00 on the topic of fakelore)

Finally a free moment to answer …excuse the delay. There were unsuccessful attempts to bring to life this singing game by Vārtumnieki (their own evaluation) and by Vita Meikšāne (now Krūmiņa). The latter had a very different choreography with a circle and slow movement around the circle. I won’t precise it and I believe it wouldn’t add anything to the discussion. The fact is that I haven’t observed a single coherent interpretation. It would be interesting to find some older person who remembers the course. But realistically and in my opinion more interesting would be to look at what has been published in TDA (Archives). Among other things, what happened to the poser of the question? In Ērgļi there will soon be an original dance competition “Jautrā pastaliņa”. Maybe one of the ensembles can be challenged to a talk on the subject.

From: Dina Kalniņa (2/18/00)

In Latvia there are various types of groups that practice folklore. The most characteristic is the folklore group (kopa) – the carrier into the future of ethnic culture, which however has not usually in full measure inherited it in an unbroken oral tradition, but has also learned from literary sources, interviews, and examples (beyond the person’s usual experiences). The repertoire of such groups is especially select. The group’s members are united in a broadly conceptual manner – holidays celebrated together, songs, social activities, etc. The other broadly distributed type of group is the folklore ensemble, where there may be no contact socially other than music. Today in Rīga one may count on one’s fingers how many people are receivers of direct inheritance (of the old style material -AVB) and work on a practicing folklore level. But why can totally inappropriate folk costume practices be found in some folklore ensembles?

1) Ignorance; 2) desire to be dressed in the most attractive (costume parts). Thus, the Lielvaarde costume has such a beautiful shirt, Kurzeme such wonderful crowns, but Zemgale the most colorful skirts. :)) But one must admit education has had an impact for some time. So suggestions how to make the costumes can be obtained in various places. These “errors” are most often found in choir and theater dance ensemble costumes. Errors in the making of folk costumes can happen to anyone, and also variation is possible.

Dina Kalniņa (2/18/00

That is why they are viewpoints – subjective. ;)) But to create even a theoretic basis and to perceive a folklore movement seriously, there has to be some objectivity; after all that is the function of a jury!? Well, our country has a representative democracy, so that anyone may express themselves.:)) If that were the problem, then it would be simple and I probably wouldn’t have started the conversation in this way. The problem in my opinion is something more. Folklore has never persisted in a frozen form. At this time the Rīga groups are only reproducers, and additionally each does it in their own interpretation = what happens is “stewing in their own juice” (vārīšanās savā sulā), but if you asked the Rīga school youth about what they know and believe about folklore and folklore groups, then do you think many of them would answer positively? I have to agree with Helmi Stalts that until something is done along this line on a national level, the situation won’t change. It’s not a matter of “folklorization” on a national level, but the creation of one’s own niche.

And what is an authentic folklore festival? The only person who has published topics on these definition themes is Arnolds Klotiņš and that was in ’89. But here it is: each one, if it is Andris Kapusts, Helmi Stalts, or me or someone else – has their own view on the subject, but has there ever been an attempt to look at all this with a cool mind without personal ambitions? And what is your information source (about the Silavoti not being accepted in Baltica)? After the First World Music Festival it was said about Laiksne that they were too authentic. We would like to have a concensus at least about your criteria for authenticity: in your view in the Rīga event was there even one authentic group?

From: Ansis (2/18/00):

Isn’t that normal that sometimes it is not clear what next, isn’t that an aspect of normal creative development? At this moment personally I am sure of what to do, but forward, you don’t. But tomorrow it may be just the opposite. I don’t think that is bad.:)

That’s how it should be (that Rīga groups reproduce). Any performance is to a certain extent reproduction and folklore particularly. But the creative moment and uniqueness is precisely in it, that each has their own interpretation.

Yes, you are right (about lack of current interest by youth of ethnographic folklore); that is a problem. However, the dynamics, in my view, are positive. With each year the number of people who respond positively increases. That is why it isn’t so terrible.:))

(As far as Helmi Stalts view that until something isn’t done on the state level, the situation won’t change.) That’s not the case that nothing is done. In the schools there are White Hours and folklore groups. Kultūras pārvaldes (cultural institutions) do give folklore ensembles funds. In the cultural capital fond there is a traditional culture section. In my opinion people who wish to do something have very good possibilities.

(About the criteria of the Rīgas domes Kultūras pārvalde officials.) Those criteria they can best explain themselves. They have to have some kind of criteria for any individual groups – choirs, dancers, horn liners (pūtējiem), or folklore groups. Otherwise they couldn’t even operate. Among other things Maskačkas spēlmaņi are called a folkore capella. When I was signing this year’s contract in January, it was written “folklore group.” When I wanted to change that, they told me that they couldn’t because they only had funding for “folklore group” (kopa) leaders. Formalism? Undoubtedly. But otherwise it is impossible to conduct business because otherwise there will be chaos. I suppose we should ask Ints or Liāna what are those criteria.

(As to the source of the information about Silavoti being excluded.) Signe said so. 74 groups had been accepted out of 150 for Baltica for performance.

(About Laiksne being “too authentic”.) That’s another problem. Indeed outsiders often have different views. They like folk dance collectives better than folklore groups. But do we have to imitate them just so we can tour more? In my view – no.

(If there were any authentic groups in the Rīga event.) No doubt you’re right, there are no completely authentic groups. Nevertheless there are some unwritten criteria which are understood implicitly. I can’t define them, they are rather elusive. But they do exist.:)

Dina Kalniņa (2/19/00)

(On uncertainty being normal.) In this case what bothers me is the folklore (folklorismus) movement as such. The creative moment will, of course, at times spark and at other times burn out. Right now each of the Rīga groups is in its own niche and goes its own way. Ok. But isn’t it worth thinking about the quality of the performance

so their performances aren’t viewed as less valuable than, say choir culture? We still have a tendency to revive, for instance, customs associated with agriculture. But what contact does someone who has grown up in Rīga realistically have with that? Authenticity and actualization would show up if the folklore group members lived in the country and kept up their farms, and then celebration of farm work would be appropriate. The audience has a hard time relating to say ploughing and reaping songs concretely. In my view, there should be an actualization of something other than “Latvians the plougher people” (arāju tauta). Here I’m generalizing, but knowing that you also know other group repertoires, I hope you understand me. You made my day (saying that the number of positive responses is growing). I have in mind a little survey about this topic among students in schools.:))) I’ve heard unofficially that the White Hours aren’t going to be on the program next year. The person who leads it represents the character of a folklore group, but as experience has shown, from these groups specifically come the continuers and popularizers of coming traditions. (About asking Inta or Liāna.) I also have that thought.:))

(About imitating to get tours.) In my opinion, no also! But going outside the country to tour is an ego-booster that you can’t get in Latvia. But that’s another topic that is less interesting to me.

(About unspoken criteria.) What do you think, isn’t it worth trying to write them down? Of course that can’t be done quickly, but at least we’d get some taste of science in our mouths that we lack.:)

1 Krišjānis Barons: The Man and His Work, 1985.

2 Viese, p. 7

3 Māris Čaklais, “Zāļu diena”, translated by Laima Rumpētere, in Viese, p. 6.

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↑ Contents

VI. SINGING, BUZZING, AND WEAVING

A.Singing in a Sounding World

A bonfire party, featuring a performance by a Latvian folk troupe of old women in brightly colored headscarves and heavy skirts who sang rude things at each other.

LUTES IN LATVIA (22-31 July 1997)

<http://ds.dial.pipex.com/silvius/lute/latvia.htm>

In his classic monograph Latviešu dancis the great music collector Emīlis Melngailis (1874-1954) starts out his chapter called “A sounding world of yore (Latvju skaņotā senātne)” with a tribute to a 90 year-old informant, Beltoviču Grieta, who has for him become emblematic of the Latvian traditional singer:

There are countless numbers of songs in the brain patterns of the zintiniece (master singer, wise woman) who has been composing her bottomless memory dowry with voiced wreaths from childhood on under her grandmother’s direction. The more there are, the more (she) wants to take in. In her realm of sound this zinteniece (wise woman) manages so as to be unconscious of her own prowess. She doesn’t sing from memory something unchangeable at all, something (merely) heard, but creates according to various voice lines within a region of some higher-level lawfulness…When I ask her to repeat, she begins her singing so: (example). When she doesn’t care for my pestering, she throws in an irregularity, a changed rhythm: (example). The second stanza is resolved differently. The mood is the same, but the line unique. If I ask her to stop or to repeat, something quite different will emerge, just as logical, but not the same (example). (Melngailis, pp. 7-8)

A mastersinger draws endlessly from a world of sound of interrelated plentitude. Everything has its own sound, tone, or voice. All phenomena can be addressed directly in the process of apdziedāšana (singing to or about). The way of direct address through celebratory singing does not differentiate between a person, deity, or natural phenomena. It is an alternative direct address to the more formal appeal lūgšana (the term used for Christian “prayer”) to a more abstract god.

The illiterate singers of Melngailis’s time developed a repertoire learning from mothers, grandmothers, other family members, and, according to dainas, listening to sounds of the surrounding nature. If inspired by nature, a song apparently is improvised by listening to a sound. The first half of a daina distich is more likely to be the formulaic source, while the second is the improvisatory lyric target. There are dainas that complain about the second half of the song being lost when the singer is unable to come up with an appropriate comparison to complete the song. Singing accompanies virtually all activities from birth to marriage to death. Smidchens notes that just as lead singers of peasant communities “have enormous active repertoires of songs and melodies which they can recall at a moment’s notice” (p. 231) so do present-day leaders of ethnographic ensembles. Additionally modern ethnographic ensembles, such as Kelmickaite, Tonurist, and the Stalti have the advantage that potentially: “Their passive repertoire includes every published collection of folksongs and the holdings of their national archives, as well. These are the sources from which they constantly take songs and learn or relearn them for performances.” (Smidchens: 231) However, because during the Soviet period the practice of traditions was often classified as nationalistic, bourgeois, and therefore undesirable, the performers of the grass-roots folklore movement often had to seek out grandparents, rather than parents. Seeking out the oldest generation also happened in the first Awakening because social conditions associated with literacy, industrialization, and urbanization had changed so rapidly in such a short time.

Music is, of course, an integral part of culture, a means of defining and expressing people according to different categories within a society. Therefore, the same recorded music will be interpreted and performed differently by different members of society not only on the individual level, but as representatives of their culture. What is being communicated by music becomes inherently problematic, a matter of level and focus. Sufficient distance creates the illusion of commonality that may be significant as a means of identification, especially for an outsider.

Singing is most often equated to the process of living in the many songs about singing. Everything in life is accompanied by song. It is also opposed to weeping and sorrow. This attitude is not naïve or maudlin, but comes from a life of hardship and is a concrete and effective way of dealing with adversity.

Bēda, mana liela bēda, Es par bēdu nebēdāju.

Liku bēdu zem akmeņa, Pāri gāju dziedādama.

Sorrow, my great sorrow, I didn’t worry about sorrow too long.

I placed sorrow under the rock; went over it singing.

The emic daina view of singing as the process of living seems to resonate with the modern ethnomusicological perspective that music is a complex socio-cultural expression involved in all important aspects, such as economics, politics, art, gender, class, and identity.

In nonresponsorial singing the daina distich is a self-contained unit but in performance it must be fit with another “half” though some distich pairs become so strongly associated that they are seen as verses, and that is how they are recorded and archived. The quatrain, in turn, is either chained in nonresponsorial singing or sung alternatively in responsorial singing:

During the process of singing a quatrain is followed rather freely by other quatrains. The choice of the following dainas is up to the singer; it depends on his/her ability, skill, knowledge, and is determined by the situation, local habits, textual associations, etc. Though each quatrain is short, the singing can go on for hours. (Muktupāvels, section 2.2, prepublication)

However, the manner of collecting in the past from individual singers outside their usual communal performance did especially grave injustice to antiphonal singing. The performance requires a call and response interchange of two groups and the singer forms her reply as an answer. Unfortunately, no actual responsorial performances were recorded until recently. I am aware of no published actual musical analyses of such performances. The lackof such analyses makes a study of apdziedāšanās difficult that has an orientation toward sociocultural context. In this paper, I, therefore summarize some of the internal evidence from descriptions of performance within the daina texts themselves as well as general relevant literature on the subject with the hope that with this preliminary work, interest in recording and analysis of field performances will be encouraged.

Blacking did not believe it methodologically proper to compare music from different societies or historical periods “unless they have in common many non-musical as well as musical features.” (Music, Culture, and Experience. Selected Papers of John Blacking: 13) Musical structures are related to a specific culture’s social relationships and ideologies. Informed by Durkheim and Alfred Schutz, Blacking subscribed to intersubjectivity or mutual intelligibility of its interpretive and expressive schemata, signs, and symbols where “music plays a central role as the carrier of symbols which are intended to create and sustain social solidarity.” (Ibid: 24) Musical performances can relate to or symbolize central themes of celebrations. In pre-industrial agricultural Latvia, the expectation was that anyone could sing and understand musical sound patterns as the result of imbibing techniques of composition and performance “with the milk of one’s mother” (ar mātes pienu). (Observed by Blacking among Venda, p. 57-8) In my view, intersubjectivity does not exclude the contesting of dominant patterns, nor does it mean that there aren’t contradictions.

Some key observations about performance have been emerging since the second independence. Dace Bula (1992:130) in discussing the 99 song recorded repertoire of G. Vanaga notes that she did not use logical or thematic progression in the chaining of her texts: “A key word in the previous text introduces the next theme; in subsequent texts this theme is varied.” She points out that in calendar custom (ieraža) songs, the songs come up as the situation for the activity warrants and in the long romances, they are connected in thematic consequence, but other songs come up associatively. (Ibid) This, of course, is structurally repeated in the responsorial call and response of challenge songs. Reflexive dainas stress the continuous flow of sound together with a witty pick-up of an element from the previous delivery as a launch of one’s own composition. This resonates with the general literature on the challenge genre, such as the Afro-American sounding or dozens, where success is measured by ability to incorporate something from the opponent to make it a true call and response.

When I asked through e-mail of ensemble leader Ansis A. Bērziņš <http://ansis.folklora> about the 1999 Midsummer celebration he attended, he didn’t consider that particular performance event to be memorable:

I was at Ērgļi at the Pelicēni but it wasn’t anything special. It was raining now and then, as is usual on Midsummer, but there was a large empty klēts-building which nullified the effects of the rain. There was apdziedāšanās, but not of high quality. The other side had singers with poorly developed logic and a low level of understanding of folk song structure. So now and then it was not possible to figure out what they wanted to say.:) In any case there was little enjoyment. We sang against them only formally. (personal communication, 6/99)

Clearly performance competence and a good match are necessary for a memorable contest. If there is significant disparity and one side is too weak to put up a good fight, the singing doesn’t last that long. The more evenly matched the sides and the wittier the callers, the longer the performance will last and the more enjoyment everyone will have. Ansis Bērziņš, thus, relates competence to both talent and knowing the tradition well enough to build on it improvisations. Skill is not automatic and talent has to be trained. Structure, redundancy, and a holographic ability to construct wholes from the cue of a few words linked together are positive foundations for creativity rather then its opposition. Only the performer who has mastered the language and principles of poetic construction has a wide choice of alternatives from which to choose and manipulate.

From his experiences Ansis Bērziņš affirms that at the beginning more formulaic material was used until the singers had warmed up, and then they would go into stronger improvisation routines. Formulas would also be used to bide time during theme-switching:

Of course as to apdziedāšanās and the choice between improvisation and known verses, then it is more influenced by the singer remembering or not remembering appropriate known verses. That is why usually at the beginning when the topic has not yet been developed, and with that what is appropriate is not what is of pressing relevance, one uses known verses. (personal communication, 5/19/1999)

Members of ethnographic ensembles, as the classification indicates, feel a strong sense of continuity between their performances and those of their ancestors:

That’s how it is. Unfortunately the masses like thrown together “world music,” though in my opinion the real value is in the actual ethnographic performances. No amount of musical perfection, professionalism, and originality can replace the natural beauty of something that was communally created through the centuries. (Ansis Bērziņš, personal communication, 5/19/1999).

Aside even from the folklore and ethnographic ensemble groups, Latvian music is seen to be connected to its musical folklore: “Folksongs...are the living source of Latvian professional music.” (Latviešu muzikas chrestomātija: 5) On the question of using the music of the local, nonprofessional singing groups of the countryside Ansis Bērziņš felt they gained from the exposure:

I believe they (feminine) can gain a lot – an outsider audience and maybe a trip abroad. For a countryside ethnographic ensemble that is something; their possibilities are much more limited. (Ibid)

The sounding world of the dainas

The first indication there is of a festival approaching is an anthropomorphicized representative or festival deity arriving, usually on horse, accompanied by characteristic sounds (skaņas):

Kas skanēja, kas žvadzēja Manā sētas pagalmā?

Tur sajāja Mārtiņbērni Ar sudraba zobeniem. (LTDz IV, 17402)

What was clanking, what was jangling in the courtyard of the compound?

The children of Martin (day) have ridden here with silver swords.

This is consistent with a world that is marked in every instance with song, sound, and music. But some beings are especially marked through idiosyncratic sound, most notably Pērkons (Thunder) who arrives with tricināšana (thunderclapping) or dunēšana (booming, rolling) and Vējšs (Wind) or Vēja māte (Wind Mother) who make wind noises such as klabēšana (rattling, clattering). Others announce their presence by the rustling of their favorite trees, still others with dūkšana (humming, buzzing), but different from the other gods, the day sky god Dievs arrives in something close to silence “without rustling the bird cherry blossom, or disturbing the ploughman’s horse.” Ceremonial clothes of the 13th century and earlier are characterized by attached metal platelets, and even after they disappear from all regions, except those in Kurzeme, the dainas retain descriptions how platelets jangle from the woman's headdress, her cloak, and the hem of her skirt and from the man's footcloths or boots and cloak. The metal platelets also reflect the light, so that the play of sound and light are interrelated and further related to imagery of light shining on water already leading into Otherworld mythic concepts. Even after embroidery replaces the metal ringlets squeezed around threads and platelets, daina songs retain imagery of light and sound in connection with the movement of the ceremonially attired. For example, sound, movement, and light are simultaneously activated in the word rotā, referring to a shimmering motion of the sun, as well as the refrain for spring songs or in eastern Latvia Midsummer songs, and the word for decoration, jewelry, and adornment. Songs accompanied by marked movement are called rotaļas (singing games) and merge into dance (dejas).

Janīna Kursīte emphasizes that there is a fundamental difference between the way Christmas is celebrated today, quietly with peace on earth, and the way it was celebrated only a few generations ago: “Rumbling, jingling, jumping, dancing (rībināšana, šķindināšana, lēkšana, dejosšana) that is characteristic of the solstice periods is to reproduce the creation of the cosmos. This renewal of the world is accomplished by the deities but also mummers and Yāņi children.” (Kursīte, 1996,406-7)

Many of the festival, calendar, and work songs are of the type known as recitative where melody and poetic line coincide more strongly than in the “singing” songs where the melody-line doesn’t follow speech intonations as closely. In these teicamās songs the melody is confined to a narrow interval. They are communal songs performed by chorus with a leader and second voice(s). The stanza consisting of two couplets or distichs is related to the melody structure, the musical period approximating the textual one, and is unrhymed. Other folklore genres, such as incantations and proverbs are related to folk lyrics, often imperceptible in difference from a daina distich.

Aplīgošana (“to līgo about,” parallel to apdziedāšana – sing about) is a type of singing linked to the specific calendar time of Midsummer. Defining the solstice songs is the refrain līgo with a sense of swinging or swaying motions (līgo laiva uz ūdeņa – the boat sways on the water) uniting with the sound. The swaying ligo-motion is one in which all of nature partakes:

Līgo saule, līgo bite Pa lielo tīrumiņu.

Saule sienu kaltēdama, Bite ziedus lasīdama. (32566)

Līgo Dievs ar Perkoni, Es ar savu bāleliņu.

Liniņu talciņš Brakšķēt brakš

Miežu, rudzu talciņš, Līgoti līgo. (LTD II, 1458)

The sun sways, the bee dances across the great field.

Sun drying hay, bee gathering flowers.

Ligo (sing, dance), Sky-god with Thunder-god; I with my kinsman. (LTDz, II, 3745)

The flax work party sounds "braks braks"

The barley, rye gathering ligo-sings and sways.

In singing every creature attunes to the sun's cosmic dancing. In a pre-Socratic daina world all of nature dances and sings. Even the death goddess, Shade Mother, dances on top of the grave greeting her new guest, “Shade Mother jubilates dancing on top of the grave. Many sons – ploughmen, many daughters - grinders of grain.” (27537) While in asymmetric dialogic, the living take leave of the dead “Turn a dance, kinsman in great sorrow. Having given your brother to the Shade (or Earth) Mother's daughter.” (27699)

A necessary requirement was that the lead singer teiceja (sayer, caller) have a powerful, far-carrying clear voice since understanding the words is a necessary part of the musical performance. The linguist Karulis liked to quote one daina, “Kas tā tāda skala mēle, manu dziesmu skalotāja. Ka tu tāda skalotāja, kam pa priekšu neskaloji?” “Skalu” is regional for “loud,” far- carrying, presumably open throated, and shows the humorously aggressive challenge of a song leader to the second voice, which instead of repeating and breaking the call of the first voice is improperly topping it: “Who is that loud tongue, making louder my song? If you are such a caller, why don’t you come forth and call?”^¹ The teicēja was singled out for special responsibility and the specific target of attack by the other side.

Uzvinnēju, uzvinnēju Viņpus upes dziedātājus:

Ne ar darbiem līdzu tika, Ne ar skaistu dziedāšanu.

(893)

I beat them, I overcame them the singers of the river's other side;

Neither could they keep up with work, nor in worthy singing.

According to dainas about singing, the lead singer is not simply yelling, but “calling” or “saying,” linking the speaking to the singing world. The kind of voice that is valued in addition to being far-carrying is one that is clear, bright, and focused. Two women’s styles are dominantly recognized, high and low. When high, it is the natural resonance of the singer’s voice, rather than falsettos, recognizing that some can sing high, while another low. Since the singers were also farm workers whose work was accompanied by singing, the singers were physically fit and with good natural breathing capacity. Each region was recognized to have its own different style, and a singer’s repertoire could include other styles she was familiar with than those of her group, as in the songs where the singer boasts she can bend her voice three ways appropriate to three different regions and their different styles.

The song is always directly addressed to someone or something in a form of dialogic as if anticipating response even when the singing is not responsorial:

Katra kalna galiņā. Zied ābele pret ābeli

Dzied māsiņa pret māsiņu Katra kunga novadā. (LD 251)

Apple tree blossoms to apple tree, each on top of a hill.

Sister sings to sister, each in a different manor.

The singing group was self-sufficient and the vocal drone was the only accompaniment. Usually the only musical instrument used in the vocal performances – and that usually at weddings – was the rattle-stick puškaitis, trideksnis, or eglīte, associated with women. It has handles with attached metal platelets to the disc mounted on it. It is usually small enough to be hidden under a woman’s shawl and struck on the open palm or the wood table. Sometimes broom length ones were struck on the floor for dancing. (Grasis, Garezers summer camp) The first name is related to the term for tassel (pušķis). In the colorfulness of the different colored threads and cut threads swinging free similar to jangles of the sistrum jangling a magic effect is created. The top of a small pine tree was cut to the third branch to make a literal eglīte (meaning “little pine tree”). The pine tree, as other trees, may be sacred in some belief system contexts.Archaic style” in Latvian music is usually associated with narrow intervals, different kinds of vocal drone, heterophony, and antiphony, a clear but far-carrying sound in at least a high and low natural voice, as well as certain calls and yodels.

A singing identity

Reflexive dainas on singing about the singer being an example of “singing people” becomes central to Latvian regional and national identity. Singing is equated with living and surviving. This view goes back in part to Baron’s arranging the songs about singing as emblematic of the entire corpus in the first volume:

Who can speak for me? Who can sing for me?

I was of those people, singers, speakers. (72)

Singing I was born, singing I grew up.

Singing I passed through life. Singing went my soul to the garden of the sons of the sky. (3)

I gave my sister, a singer to a stern (bargi) people;

When the in-laws began to feud, (rati cela) my sister went about singing. (189)

Always with my brothers I walked about singing;

Do not scold me, suitor (tautieti); even with you I will do so. (59)

Who can sing all songs, who can speak all words?

Who can count the stars? Pick out the pebbles of the sea? (38)

Searching for ongoing many-layered identity in historical singing descriptions

Dziesmiņai, nabadzītei,Abi gali pazuduši

Jemsim bērus kumeliņus, Iesim, galus meklēdami. K 958, 8292 LTdz

The song, poor beggar woman, both ends are lost

Let us take bay horses, ride out and find the ends.

Sie sitzen so oft ganze Nachte bei einander, indem sie immerfort nach derselben Melodie Gedichtchen uber Gott und die ganze Welt absingen. (J.G. Kohl, Die deutsch-russischen Ostseeprovinzen oder Natur und Volkerleben in Kur-, Liv- und Estland, 1841.

J. Kohl’s description stating that Latvians would sit all night by themselves singing about God and the World, among other evidence, indicates sacred folk song singing to be widespread even in the 19^th century, yet their description indicates them not to be church hymns but indigenous folk songs.

Texts of dainas not differing significantly from those collected later were written down from the 16^th century on. However, even in the 19^th century there was little recording done of performance and practice. While it is intensive and difficult work to put together the scattered evidence, enough information exists from the recordings even with all their failures, most notably that they were filtered through the Western academic classical canon of the day, to have a sense of Latvian traditional music that does give some idea of singing in the historical past. For one, the singing goes on today, a large number of daina-texts are commentaries on singing, and there are historical descriptions and text examples. As an obvious example, there are multiple sources that indicate ritual singing was an essential part of both mundane and sacred life:

The wedding participants danced through the night.

(Adam Olearius, Schleswig, 1647)

Dziedot dzimu, dziedot augu. Dziedot mūžu nodzīvoju;

Ar dziesmām guldiet mani Baltā smilšu kalniņā. (F596)

Singing I was born, singing I grew up, singing I lived my life;

With songs lay me down in the white sand hill. (grave) (3) (probably most quoted daina)

Collecting dainas for the purpose of choral arrangements was one of the most important ways of constructing Latvian identity in the 19^th century. Western (German) models for adaptation of folk songs for choir performance were used. Folk song use peaked in the folk music group and ensemble of the 1960s – 1980s as countercultural identity to official Soviet culture. (Smidchens) By this time there was a conscious attempt to avoid 19^th century Western models and return to reconstruction of performance as it was recorded in the field in the 19^th c. Apdziedāšanās became a part of staged performance.

The folklore movement in Latvia started at the very beginning of the 80-s. At that time it was more of a political action than a musical trend - singing and playing was inevitably accompanied by an interest in Latvian history, the very beginnings of Latvian national archeology, ethnography, mythology and traditions. All these subjects were at least partly forbidden and never talked about during the communist regime. At that time folk bands were more like centres of national studies and cognition. In 1981 Ilga Reizniece formed the Iļģi folk band. Like other folk musicians Ilģi visited old people – bearers of this ancient knowledge, learnt songs and mastered various folk instruments, made their national costumes and musical instruments themselves. Like other folk musicians Ilģi toured the country teaching people long forgotten songs, dances and traditions and striving to revive them. http://www.upe.parks.lv/english/ilgi.htm>

During this time Western music entered Soviet Latvia. The entry was uneven, surreptitious, and often bootlegged with a clear countercultural tone that often expressed a counterrevolutionary anti-Soviet stance. The culmination of this musical subversion of Soviet style was the rock opera Lāčplēsis, which is sometimes considered to be the third reincarnation of the Bearslayer myth after the “epic” first created by Pumpurs and the second a play written by Rainis. The present period is one of deep realignment with a multiplicity of traditions and proponents. There are varying degrees of recontextualization of old musical traditions as international urban and particularly American genres, such as jazz, rock, rap, and hip-hop become the musical lingua franca and dominant genres. There are also a variety of approaches, involving disputes of authenticity, as folk groups and ensembles enter the world music scene. Regional groups from rural areas rise to challenge the state musical hegemony, centered in Rīga and other urban centers. These urban centers, not the regional countryside, often provide the stage and setting for performances by rural groups and ensembles for larger urban audiences.^²

Recruitment of Regional Music for National Identity

The recruitment of regional music for national identity is the topic of much Latvian literature on music: how dainas became the voice of the Latvian people and how people from all segments of society participated widely and often with great enthusiasm.

Concretely, a large part of that literature is a treatment of how the primary music folklorists – Jānis Cimze (1814-1881), Jurjāns Andrējs (1856-1922), Jāzeps Vītols (1863-1948), Emīls Melngailis (1874-1954), Alfrēds Kalniņš, Jēkabs Graubiņš, and some others adapted folk music to the needs of choir music, as that was the primary purpose of recording folk music at the time. About 29,000 melodies are recorded in the music archives, the repository of systematic Latvian folk melody collection initiated in the 1870s.

The first descriptions of music and singing are from the 18^th c., and polyphonic recitative is described, often associated with the lower collective burdone at weddings, work parties, calendar occasions, and sometimes spring singing rotāšana. The singing is a part of the agricultural way of life. That includes apdziedāšanās of two sides in improvised contesting of wit and endurance, alternatively taunting and making fun of the other side sometimes for hours until one side runs out of appropriate songs. The recited melody varies according to the stress of the language and the content of the text. Lyrical songs may be sung solo or collectively in unison but also polyphonically, most often in two voices. These include social protest songs (satirical, orphan, recruit). Johann G. Hamann in his Kreuzzuge des Philogen, 1762, noted such details as singing by women in varied activities, rhythmic cadence within a narrow tone range, and the invitation of the best singers to weddings and name-givings of other farms. (Straubergs. 1952, vol. 1: xxix)

Ethnomusicologists, such as Muktupāvels and Boiko, have studied with musicians who perform in the countryside, are a part of the folklore movement which resulted in ensembles that fused regional styles to create a national sound, and have studied historical records, descriptions, and notations to arrive at a sense of the dynamic oral traditions of performance which changed in time and varied in space. The folk ensembles in particular are conscious of encapsulating and reflexively expressing national culture to themselves and to the audience.

Historical sources going back several hundred years generally attribute daina-singing to women and instrumental playing to men, a common enough Eurasian division. The sources generally express astonishment and/or repulsion at the barbarism of the music, suggesting it is quite different from their own experience, a number of sources comparing it to barbaric howling and gasping of wolves, which suggests the singing did not conform to Western art music canons. For example:

1550 - Sebastian Munster, Cosmographia: “When they sing, they howl plaintively as wolves and continuously repeat, shouting out the word ‘Jehu!’ If they are asked what this ‘Jehu’ means, they answer they do not know - that is how their ancestors sang, and that is how they sing.”

1610 - Dionisii Fabricius, Livonicae historiae compendiosa series. Stanno Ruiensi, 1795. (Published almost two centuries after the writing of the chronicle.) “Their songs consist of distichs that correspond as to number of syllables, are witty, and contain meaning in two lines. They are sung in the same tone and melody.”

1777 - A. W. Hupel, Topographische Nachrichten von Lief- und Ehstland, I - III. Riga. Has a lengthy description of how Latvians and Estonians spent much of their time in music and notes that women were the primary singers, particularly at weddings, but men would join in when their tongues were loosened by drink. He characterizes the girls’ singing to be shouting, and prefers the singing of Estonians better than that of the Latvians. The Estonians divide into two groups and sing in unison, one singing out, and the other repeating. The Latvians usually sing in two voices and drag out the last syllable, so that some do a bass-like drone.

1841 - Johann G. Kohl, Die deutsch-russischen Ostseeprovinzen, Dresden & Leipzig: “The singing is such that one of the singers of the women’s choir begins either something thought up on the spot or a verse that has happened to come to mind, and calls it out in a peculiar coarse melody. All of the choir participants fall in the last few words with an extremely long-held ‘o’. These ‘o’ voices differ by a third interval one from the other. Then the ‘o’ weakens and becomes more quiet, until all the voices in unison and suddenly, with almost a gasp expelling the remains of their breath, break off. When that is done, another singer starts a new verse solo with a new thought, to whose last words the choir again falls in with an ‘o’. Often they sit this way all night together and in one and the same melody sing songs about God and the world. The voices are so low and the whole sense of the music is so savage that at first it is difficult to believe the singers are girls. It seems as if in their choir rough warriors are singing; this savagery contrasts most markedly with the gentleness of the topic. Even in their spinning rooms the singing of the girls is of such barbaric howling and gasping nature.

Unfortunately, even though recitative leader – chorus songs are sung to this day, one can only imagine the sound. There are no recordings from the past that do more than suggest what the musical tradition might have been like in full bloom as part of pre-industrial agricultural life-style and thought. Considerable diversity of music types from different regions is represented, including homophony, heterophony increasing melodic thickness, and polyphony. Preference was given to text collection rather than music notation, to say nothing of recording possibilities. But more importantly, it was in the interest of the first Latvian musicians, such as Cimze, to prove the opposite: that Latvians were, in fact, a cultured and civilized people, not savages howling like wolves. There has been some interest in contextualizing Baltic musics among other Eurasian musics, drawing a map down to the Balkans in one direction. There is also archeolinguistic discussion of “the Illyrian conncection” (cf Dini: 29) or Thracian,” but the comparisons are not simple as Baltic music was filtered and normalized through Western high culture canons of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, especially by Cimze who adapted the music to Western (German) choral needs even as similarity to “Greek modes” were acknowledged. There are obvious characteristics, such as drawing out the drone sound, and enhancing it by cutting it off suddenly, that have persisted.

Descriptions of singing, particularly mentioning improvised apdziedāšanās at weddings, funerals, and work go back to the 16^th century. There is a two-voiced (with drone), narrow-range Midsummer song from 1782 (1777) in A.V/ Hupel Nachrichten von Lief- und Ehstland.. Garlieb Merkel in stating that at weddings Latvians dance and sing several days at a time to the sounds of fiddles and bagpipes concurs with many descriptions that continue with considerable consistency on through the 18^th century and into present times. Songs are sung quickly in the improvisatory style of chanted songs, and changes in meter from 3/8 to 2/4 corresponding to changes from dactyl to trochaic or the opposite are especially noticeable among the mumming (ķekatu) songs. (Latviešu muzikas chrestomatija: 10, 24-25). The older songs are in narrow range, sometimes with pentatonic elements, the newer favor diatonic natural scales, such as the Eolic, Myxolidian, Frigian, and Dorian as well as natural major and less often minor. Complex arrangements are also recorded. The melody typically is complete with the first strophe of the short daina quatrain. The metrical structure has strict rules and corresponds to trochaic, dactylic, or mixed. The folk songs themselves describe the process as “stringing” the two-liners or chaining the quatrains.

The Herder library houses 78 Latvian folk song texts and one melody, many of them popular still today. Most melodies were written down in the 1860s and 1870s and then again in the 1890s suggesting considerable stability. After 1925 melody texts were housed in the Folklore Archives, and the first phonograph recordings made. Folklore expeditions since that time have resulted in new material, as well as material that is similar to what was recorded before. Ethnomusicologist Valdis Muktupāvels shows how the performers of today’s folklore ensembles have developed in close association with the folk musicians and singers who perform in the countryside:

The newcomers learn those dances, thus continuing the tradition, which was revived and invigorated by the folklorists of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The real revival of folk dancing took place in clubs, pubs, or rural surroundings, but certainly not on the stage or within planned festival activities…The usual practice is not to use recorded music in folk dance parties, every effort is done to play the dance music live. It can be fiddle alone, or together with bagpipes, drums and accordion, which can provide the right accompaniment for dancing...Ilga and Māris are regarded as excellent musicians with a real depth of sound. They have learned music and wit from rural musicians and singers, and have absorbed emotions and power from nature. (Latviešu danči: 2-3)

Muktupāvels does not see the development of Latvian folk music in isolation, but contextualizes it in a larger Baltic regional context:

Folklore and folk crafts festivals in Vilnius, midsummer solstice celebrations, the first festival “Baltica” and many other events with a lot of dancing gave a strong impulse for that in Latvia. (Latviešu danči: 3)

The metric structure of Latvian folk song as sung today has strong rules. In his ethnomusicological observations Muktupāvels notes the high degree of uniformity of textual metrics, mostly octosyllabic trochaic with a small but significant percentage of dactylic and some mixed “set against a great variety of metres in melodies, from simple or compound duple metres to complex asymmetrical and mixed metres (5/8, 5/4, 7/8, 6/4=2/4+4/4, 7/4 and others). Such metres are common, as are changes of metre within a melody (e. g. in Midsummer solstice celebration songs, the texts are sung in 2/4, while the līgo refrains are often in 3/4).” (Muktupāvels, section 2.2, prepublication). This is consistent with Bērzkalns, “The very interesting metrical combinations show that the anonymous folk composer did not favor symmetrical solutions, contrary to the folk poet’s canonic rules.” (Bērzkalns, p. 537) He also notes that only a few seem to deviate from the temperate system. (p.537) The melodic structure is simple, consists of reiterating short melody phrases, the oldest built on two or three tones, this also being considered characteristic of Latvian folk song, (Sneibe: 64) and often guided by alliteration. Most recitative songs have a range of five or six tones corresponding to the number of strings on the kokle, but some cover an octave. Bērzkalns characterizes them as Greek modes and singles out the Dorian, Aeolian, and Phrygian (p. 537). Recitative melodies cover only one strophe (two lines), though melodies in nonresponsorial songs have 10, 11, 12, and more measures. The text, of course, consists of two distichs or one distich repeated. Repetitions and refrains, increasing the measures to 12, are characteristic of solstice līgo-songs, spring rotā-songs and other seasonal holiday songs, as well as other recitative songs. Contest songs are characterized by the absence of refrain, understandably because fast exchange would be interrupted.

The basic four-line structure goes back to Indo-European heritage and related forms are found among the neighboring peoples. (Sneibe, 1989: 61) Some recordings include breath being gasped so that the melody isn’t actually finished, or the drone may drag it, or there may be an exclamation. (Sneibe: 63). There is more freedom as to structure, such as measure, in the first distich than the second. (Sneibe: 64)

The melody-movement of older songs tends to be related to the speech intonation as varied in performance. The effect is half-sung, half-spoken with the musical melody flow related to speech. The same basic melody may cross genres and may be used for multiple functions. Sneibe considers melodic formula to be more fundamental than genre and sees Latvian music as an example of such polyfunctionality. The ceremonial voice (godubalss) is always associated with ritual and does not fully stabilize in melody and there is a higher degree of variation in text. (Sneibe: 65) Typologically related tune families are recorded and classified in terms of variants of the same type. The songs are thus multidimensionally and mathematically related as stable variants of each other. Sneibe follows V. Toporov who considers Latvian folk songs to be a source of studying archaic Indo-European musical pattern and structure. (Sneibe: 66)

Apdziedāšanās as magic ritual music

Occasions for responsorial apdziedāšanās as well as the recitative style of singing include the ritual calendar festivals godi, family cyle of life celebrations svētki, and work parties talkas. The act of singing as celebration is a life-affirming magic act; to celebrate-sing about something (apdzied) in the most general sense is to, as Velius puts it, stimulate “growth and flourish of all the living beings” addressed: (Velius: 69)

Lokatiesi mežu gali, lai balsiņis pāri skan

Dzied putniņi, dzied ganiņi, Mežu gali gavilēja.

Sway forest tops so voices may cross over.

The birds sing, the herders sing, the forest tops yodel. (cited from memory – commonly heard)

The great collectors of folk music, E. Melngailis, A. Jurjāns, and J. Vītoliņš connected apdziedāšanās with bourdon type of group singing, which Melngailis identified with the “ceremonial voice” (godubalss – lifecycle celebration voice) in his list of types of “voices” (balss), including for instance “spring voice, rye voice, wedding voice, long voice”). However, the three domains of recitative, drone, and ceremonial voice are not identical, though with significant overlap. Vocal drone is also found in other archaic style that is nonresponsorial, while what is regionally known as the ceremonial voice is usually but not always associated with the recitative polyphonic vocal bourdon.

Raisa Deņisova and Mārtiņš Boiko identify burdone as sung in Latvia as characteristic of the Eastern Balts who settled in southern Kurzeme, southern Vidzeme, and north Augšzeme, and West Latgale. (p. 10) Noting the work of Russian scholars in identifying Baltic hydronyms, they identify burdone singing among Slavic peoples as identical with Baltic hydronymic names. The conclusion is that the Slavic peoples (Ruthenians, western Russians, northern Ukrainians) borrowed this style of music from the assimilated Baltic peoples. (p. 11) Similarly some Estonians also borrowed this style of burdone singing, which was not characteristic of other Finno-Ugric peoples. (p. 11)

Breaking news at the end of 2000 was that Deņisova was to release her findings in association with genetic studies done by Finnish scholars that indicated a particular “Baltic gene” that centered in Latvia, but was also found in significant concentrations in Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland with the gene decreasing as in northern Russia in the east, Poland in the west, and Gotland Sweden to the north, but insignificant in the rest of Europe and absent in Asia or Africa. The information suggests speculation about an isolated population associated with archaic musics as there is a rough overlap in area where the gene is present.

In southern Kurzeme drone singing is combined with narrow-range recitatives, mostly at weddings or name giving, but in Bārta and Nīca associated with spring rites. Augšzeme or Sēlijaa (southern Latvia) is known for spring singing by groups of young girls gathered on hills, rotāšna, with the vocal drone. The Sauka district in Augšzeme yields a few polyphonic songs, which Boiko identified as related to polyphonic sutartines in northeast Lithuania. (Boiko) In western Kurzeme the spring songs were sung with the vocal drone, but without a rotā refrain.^³ Kurzeme has the most widespread drone singing, while Zemgale has the fewest surviving examples, but probably that was not the case in the past. Kurzeme is also known for a type of recitative that differs from the narrow range recitatives. Latgale, especially the west, has recitatives most often at weddings or work-parties. It is also known for the use of the refrain rūto instead of līgo found throughout Latvia and kalado Christmas refrain songs. Vidzeme has the most recently developed variations. But both a repeated drone, using one or two tones to repeat the text, and a drone with extended, long-sung vowel linked with refrain melodies were used in Vidzeme.

Benedikta Mežāle sums it up that “for apdziedāšana each region has its favorite voice, designated differently” and the style of delivery also varies from strong sounding to deliberately restrained. (p. 16-17) The singers know the neighboring styles and sometimes employ them, as well as there are some melodies that are used throughout all of Latgale. (p. 17) She observes that a Latgalian singer may claim that Kurzeme singers sing in the same voice, and vice versa, when the singer herself differentiates much more finely into kinds of voices she employs. (p. 18) This suggests that when someone speaks of “one” melody or type of singing, they are, in fact, only identifying very coarse features that help classify the song as belonging to a particular region or singer.

There appear to be a number of different archaic style musics. Mārtiņš Boiko identifies a type of song in Kurzeme, particularly its southwest, sung at weddings and name-givings, but which do not appear often with drones:

They differ from the narrow range recitatives. These could be called songs of contrasting registers. In these very unique songs the flow of the melody and rhythm is greatly influenced by the flow of speech, but they comprise all or nearly all the scale-range and within this range their melodies ‘behave’ quite differently from those of the recitatives: in the first bars the recitative melodies already comprise all or nearly all the scale-range of the song, reaching its upper and lower tones, also using the in-between forms. In the first half of the songs of contrasting registers only the upper part of the scale is used – around the extreme upper tone (first register); in the second half of the melody the lower sound of the scale and the ‘space’ around it are used in the same way (second register). Besides, the ‘space’ between these extreme tones (registers) often remains unused. The singers of these songs seem to be playing with the contra-positions of the melodic parts of various pitches (registers). In one type of these songs, there are even three elements to be contrasted. (Boiko, handout, no date)

Sneibe generalizes godubalss to be, that which is used on different ceremonial occasions, but especially in performing those considered as dievadziesmas (sacred or ritual songs), though the specifics vary regionally. The style classically known from historical sources is characteristic of the suitu region of Kurzeme: “The drone is sung on a vowel "e" (as in there), in unison with the last tones of the soloist, and in the end is raised one tone up to make a unison with the countersinger. The vowel quality of the raised drone is also changed from "e" to "o." (Muktupāvels, Ibid). However, other types of vocal drone are found characteristic for southern Kurzeme, eastern Zemgale, and central and northern Latgale. It is believed the vocal drone was formerly a widespread technique consisting of different types:

In few recordings from southern Zemgale the drone starts higher and then is lowered one tone down. In southern part of Vidzeme and Latgale syllabic drone is used, that is, the same text is sung both in the melodic and in the drone part. There are few cases of even/ monotonal and syllabic drone both being sung simultaneously in Kurzeme and eastern Zemgale…(Ibid).

There are also songs in south-eastern Latgale of narrow tonal range that do not use drone, but “are rhythmically rather free and highly ornamented.” (Ibid) The existence of a number of different archaic styles suggests some of the musical differences may go back to different musical traditions of the different Baltic tribes (cf Boiko).

The delivery style differed regionally, but required strong breath control. The Kurzeme style is considered sharp, intense, forceful in contrast to the more gentle delivery styles elsewhere. Anda Beitāne notes several Kurzeme styles, including one actually in Lithuania but inhabited by ethnic Latvians. “It is rich with strong accents. You can hear the characteristic combination of syllables. If a syllable ends with a consonant, then a vowel is added to unite it with the next syllable. So the singing has the effect of nonstop flowing where many, strong accents stand out.” (p. 11) In another region, the forcefulness is so strong, that the distich ending is “pulled off” (noraut) as the singer advances to the next line. (p. 11) A Latgale delivery involves “fasttalk” (ātrruna) with freely used long-held sounds that have to be improvised into the rhythm according to the mood of the singer. In Latgale polyphonic vocal drone is also associated with the work party (talka) voice in which work parties sing with the wind so other work parties who answer can hear them. (Beitāne: 12) Beitāne mentions the peculiar custom of the caller giving the drawer a punch with her fist when she is supposed to come in. (p. 13)

Zaiga Sneibe (1989) and Valdis Muktupâvels (1999) have done the most recent ethnomusicological analyses of apdziedāšanās. (In private communication, Muktupāvels singled out Sneibe’s article.) Responsorial singing is classically done in the recitative style.

This style is characterized by the domination of text over melody, and actually the melodic formula, which is in the base of a recited song, is varied according to prosody of the text. The "spoken" character of the recited songs is reinforced by narrow tonal range, usually not exceeding a fifth, by the lack of melodic ornamentations and by syllabic structure of the chant, that is, each syllable corresponds to one tone. (Muktupāvels, prepublication of Garland article)

Muktupāvels accepts the usual division of daina singing as “recitative” in contrast to “sung, though folk etymology recognizes energetic exulting outdoor gavilēšana (yodeling, shouting, exhulting, cattle calling) characteristic of herders as distinct from the action of dziedāt (to sing):

The sung songs are performed mostly solo, but other singers can join as well, thus resulting in a unison, two- or multi-part singing. Two- or three-part singing, resembling that of western Lithuanian homophony, is characteristic for southwestern Kurzeme. Singing in thirds with the melody in the upper voice can be heard all over Latgale, and this style is certainly influenced by liturgical singing. Besides, there may occur more or less frequently added thirds up from the melody, thus resulting in triadic sequences.

Melody of the sung songs, with its range often exceeding an octave, is basically as important as text, and lyrical character of those songs can be reinforced by some musical refinements: ornamentation, short vocalizations, refrains. Most of the sung songs' texts are the "long songs", though some quatrain sequences might be used as well. (Ibid)

Etymologically, however, even the word dziedāt is derived from the IE *gē(I) which indicates shouting or calling, consistent with descriptions of singing in the dainas as calling, and the historical sources as howling. (Karulis I: 250) Songs about singing also emphasize that the singing is far carrying and apparently in the chest register. The etymology of the Baltic verb dainot, however, seems to be connected to actions of swinging, shifting from one foot to the other, or dancing, which predisposes to the theory that dainas may have been in earlier times dance songs, rather than songs in general. (Karulis I: 196-7).

Sneibe notes interest in similarities found in different performances of different regions, which can not be explained by recent communication, but go back to structural and functional roots of those traditions: “In form, content, and function the ceremonial voice has close connection with other more generalized Latvian folk song characteristics, which belong to the most archaic and characteristic elements of Latvian musical poetics” (61).

Sneibe also notes that Melngailis’s recorded the Latgale godubalss as a ten-beat strictly structured recitative melody, excepting twelve beat Midsummer līgo songs, and then points other ceremonial voice text extensions with small end expressions like “eh” or “ai,” extra vowels, or long sounds at the end to be indicative of an old phrasing requirement, rather than anomalous. They have the effect of extending the beat and suggesting a melody structure history somewhat independent of the text, at least as now sung. (p. 63). She especially underscores Melngailis’s finding that instead of the expected 4+4+2 beat phrases, there is a tendency to pause only at the sixth beat and in the closing tenth beat, thus dividing into 6 and 4 beat phrases, which is somewhat independent of the principles that build up the text. Sneibe connects the repetition of the last textual phrase at the end, the uzvija, as adding two beats to make ten in conformity with the structural requirements of the melody, rather than a peculiarity of the text. (p. 62).

Since the literature on the subject is detailed, technical, and as yet unresolved, it may be sufficient to summarize that the answer of how to reconcile these apparently independent structural-phrasing principles in melody and text seems to lie in understanding historical changes that the Latvian language has undergone. Among complexities involved is the existence of the same melody in ten-beat trochaic meter versions alongside eight-beat dactylic meter versions. One of the characteristics of apdziedāšanās songs has been their use of mixed trochaic and dactylic meter in contrast to the majority of songs, which are trochaic, or the dancing and mummer’s (clowning) songs, which tend to be dactylic. Kursīte remarks on the strange polymetry, often of three lines, of many apdziedāšanās songs: “Polymetric three liners are most often found either in apdziedāšanās…or connected with name-giving (dīdīšanu – stamping in place while singing). (Kursīte, 1996: 159)

Gan baģāta tautu meita (8 syllables)

Ruda bija villainīte (8)

Caur zemi līdusi pie mana brāļa. (11 syllables) (LD 21 989,1)

Ēdate, vedēji, tā garda gaļa:

Tā jūs’ pašu balta ķēve,

Ko vakare atj`jāti. (LD 19 266,6)

Plenty rich is this girl,

Reddish was her shawl;

Crawled on the ground to get to my brother.

Eat, bride snatchers, that’s tasty meat.

It’s your own white nag

That you rode here. (Kursīte, 1996: 159)

In the recitative, the melody tends to be of narrow range, rarely exceeding a fifth, lacking in ornamentation, and varying with word improvisation. There is therefore variation from stanza to stanza in the music in accordance with the text. A stronger syllabic treatment of the text than usual in apdziedāšanās, emphasizes the words so they can be understood and responded to. One characteristic of responsorial songs is that they do not have refrains. Since the second voice repeats the distich called out by the leader, the result is a quatrain, unlike nonresponsorial songs where two distichs are linked.

Sneibe’s analysis of the interrelation of text and music, subsuming insult songs under a more inclusive and archaic category of “ceremonial voice,” significantly associates it with the sacred and with magic. She notes that ritual singing is communal - pulkā dziedams (sung together) - sung by a chorus, expressing the collective voice of a group seconding the improvised selection of the lead singer, and connected to rituals of magic (p. 61-2). She says. “In form, content, and function” this type of song...belongs to the most archaic and fundamental elements of Latvian musical poetry folklore.” (p. 61) According to Sneibe, even in the more recent examples, the process to a stable melody is not complete (p. 64) and the ceremonial voice tends to be polyfunctional or used at different ceremonial events. This suggests a less differentiated earlier mental frame that connected or did not strongly differentiate sacred ritual performances performed at different occasions. In short, it attests to a sacred frame in which the recitative drone was a key and the existence of a specifically sacred type of archaic and non-Christian music.

Sneibe confines her remarks to Latvian material, but it is interesting that drone singing has been seen as an archaic form of harmony by such music evolutionists as Bob Fink:

Early attempts at harmony, such as drones (used in Scottish or other bagpipes, or as one of the two "double flutes" in ancient Greece, for example), could have been an attempt to make a sense of "keynote" more audible. The accidental harmonies (and dissonances) resulting from this were a step beyond the earliest harmonies formed by singing the same chant or melody an octave apart (or at 5ths apart called "organum"). In organum, the voices all move up or down to conform to the single melody. With a drone, however, one voice carries a melody independently of the drone accompaniment. It is not hard to expect that some modifications of the drone (making it, historically speaking, become more of a melody unto itself) paved the way to early "counterpoint," which is the singing or combining of separate independent melodies rather than combining the same melody at different pitches to suit different voice ranges as in organum. (http://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/drone.htm):

Without engaging in theories of music evolution, here and there allusions to similarities of archaic style Baltic and Balkan vocal drone techniques have emerged (cf Akerbergs). However, the challenge of Karl Brambats’s seminal article “The Vocal Drone in the Baltic Countries: Problems of Chronology and Provenance” (1983) has not been fully taken up (though Muktupāvels and Boiko have initiated articles on the subject). For ideological, financial, and other practical reasons work has been largely local and little serious attention has been paid to broader mapping of Eurasian musics.^⁴ Brambats sees an underlying model in regional areas of the Baltic, the Balkans, and the Caucasus which he suggests may have a Thracian cultural connection, going all the way back to female-centered Old Europe culture described by Gimbutas. Also one might note the etymological similarity of doinas in the Balkans (Moldavia, Transylvania, Croatia, Serbia, Rumania, Greece) and duna, doyna, danaveda, daenas of India and Iran in addition to structural and musical similarities to Finnish Kalevala runa beyond the scope of this paper.

A typical description of the full recitative with all the voices is by Valentīns Bērzkalns:

A recitative song was begun by a teicēja (teller, caller) who sang a line alone; then, in repetition of the text, the melody was taken over by a number of locītājas (modulators). The locītājas were joined by several vilcējas (drawers, draggers, drones) who chose a single vowel and sustained it on one note until the end of the melody. Sometimes a song would have two such sustained notes, similar to pedal points. In addition, the group could be joined by a sijātâja or sīkaliņa who sang an additional ornamented upper voice. Hence, it was an improvised polyphony. The recitative songs did not have a regular text. The words were improvised according to the requirements of the subject matter and the conditions under which the singing took place.” (Valentīns Berzkalns, LCP, p. 537)

The delivery has to be loud, powerful, and clear – apparently in the chest register. The drone is broken off abruptly. Rhythm is beaten in a energetic way by the lead singers with a sistrum (trideksnis, eglīte). The exchange is non-stop. The other members of the singing group help the lead singer come up with responses, sometimes even starting up a song if the lead singer pauses for immediate lack of material. (Mežāle: 12) If it is known who the guests are, the singers may think of appropriate material ahead of time (Mežāle:11), as indicated in dainas about girls writing songs in a “chamber” Effort was made not to repeat songs, and the more original material was especially valued.

The melody varies even if it is the same “voice” that is being sung repeatedly, and is secondary to the content and accent of the words. This is the primary source of musical variation and creation in this kind of setting. The accent on words and the intonation of syllables is going to be different each time it is sung. Most often the variation occurs in the first and third beats. (Goldins: 78) The rhythmic figure can be seen as a musical reflection of syllable intonation. Goldins discusses the drawn intonation syllable (stiepti intonēta zilbe) in western Latvia, around Bauska and the suitu region, in Rucava, and going on to Selian territory, but is retained in Latgale mostly in the former Selian areas. (Goldins: 79) As a result of influence on the melody by what is stressed in the words, where in a dipody one syllable words are followed by three syllable words, there the beat in the second note will be higher than the surrounding ones, the common pattern in Kurzeme and Zemgale teicamās (chanted) songs. (Goldins: 80-1)

No one was supposed to be offended. Being addressed, though in insult, was to be offered good luck, and if someone was chastised, it was a way to bring things out in the open and thereafter consider it settled. A good lead singer was able to turn an address to something appropriate to the individual or occasion, as opposed to a random stock utterance. Genuine insults, disabilities, and overly serious or painful subjects were avoided. (Mežāle: 10) If the butt of the address was able to take it by returning the joke, or laugh about it freely, the joviality of the occasion was enhanced.

The Setu region of Estonia has polyphonic vocal drone singing but the lower voice sings the text while holding the tone, unlike the Latvian where the lower voice is a held tone and does not sing the text. A lead singer, a chorus group with two or three voices is also involved, and competition of groups occurs with group members assisting the lead singer in improvising material. A mapping of the musics in northeastern Europe would reflect the musical relationships of Finnic, Baltic, and Slavic peoples. Comparison has been done with Kalevala syllabic-quantitative verse meter and with rune-verse in that Volga-Finnic and Baltic peoples lived as neighbors in the Dniester region, and Finnic peoples originally inhabited northeastern Latvia, while Baltic peoples lived in the Ingria region.

The structure of the polyphonic drone Latvian singing group, again, seems to conform to both the dual and the tripartite structure and may inform a Baltic expression of one and the many. There are, of course, the two contesting groups. Within each group there is a song leader, one with a powerful voice and sharp mind whose voice stands out in contrast to but is also singled out as a spokeswoman of the group. While most of the collected drones have a two part scheme in that the second soloist continues the part of the leader, Karl Brambats suggests that the three part songs described in the early accounts were formerly more widespread than is indicated by percentages. In his elaboration of the conceptual scheme or model that seems to underlie vocal drone songs of the Baltic, Balkans, and the Caucasus, he makes the interesting observation that the modulator, the locītāja, picks up and does something “unnatural” to the first voice, which the word locīt describes as the process of folding, oscillating, turning, or meandering - and the analogous Epirus term as – breaking, cutting, or crumbling. The second voice locītājas are not seen as mechanically repeating, but bending, folding, meandering, twining, or twisting almost as if in a plaiting or weaving or the movement of bees. In the singing dancing game rotaļa the participants sing, “meander, bee, through the branches, if you find another, put her (him) in your place (ložnā bitīt, cauri zaru zariem, ja citu atrod, liec to savā vietā). Emīls Melngailis touches on the meander in another context by saying that a good dance leader leads as a “fox throwing meanders” (līkumus meta), not as a “wolf moving straightforward only. (Melngailis p. 13)

Dzied, māsiņa, pavilkdama, Dzied atkal locīdama:

Brīžam taisna mūža taka, Brīžam gāja līkumā. (LD 325)

Sing, dear sister, holding (pulling, drawing),

Sing again breaking (folding, interweaving):

Moments life’s path is straight, Moments it goes meandering.

Flowing continuous sound pattern

Melngailis also makes an interesting observation relevant to an understanding of the magico-religious aspect of the musical performance: “The foundation of music is a periodically flowing pattern (ritošais raksts).” [p. 14] The imperative to keep a continuous “flow of sound” (Cf RLBZK Rakstu krājums 16, 233, cited in Straubergs, 1952, I, p. xxx) suggests a magic process to integrate parts into the whole and specifically to unite the two opposing groups. It points to a deep structure activity apparently similar to what Granet and Schrempp have studied. The lead melody singer starts the next verse before the droners cut off. One side picks up in response to and where the other side leaves off. It is a magical activity, in some sense similar to incantations, which are also chanted in a continuous manner, to return the two to the one or the many to the one. Rapid exchange is also facilitated by melodies not exceeding a strophe. Also repetitions and refrains, common in recitative songs, such as seasonal holiday songs, including līgo- and rotā-songs, are dropped.

The illusion of continuous stream is reinforced by a memory that works as such, fusing what units are stored in the brain into a creative seamless whole without being consciously aware of linking separate units. The term plūsti valodiņa (flow language) is therefore a natural one coming from both the experience of streams flowing in nature and language appearing to be generated by a similar process. In view of the importance of snakes and rivers in Baltic mythology, and considering that both the snake and river move in a meander and is emblematic of the life and death and rebirth force, the continuous meandering movement of a snakes and rivers is suggestive of a “periodically flowing pattern.”

It is no accident that magic incantations are to be said rapidly one word after the other, without interruption, thus reenacting a primal flow. It is no accident that the apdziedāšanās is related to such a process by its requirement to be sung in rapid recitative without the interruption of breath or melisma, and the breath released with the voice suddenly being cut off. But the responder must be quick to take up where the last one left off, so there is no interruption to the skeining process of passing back and forth. It is also an illusion and function of memory that “the same” is being handed down person-to-person, generation-to-generation. Human memory has limits to distinguishing different versions of the similar, but a tendency to collapse like into the same. When dealing with the sacred or magic-purposeful, one will invoke what appears to be the powerful “eternal.”

One key is that the two, three (or sometimes even four) voices have to come together and fit together properly. Ending a strophe together in unison seems particularly significant. Straubergs: “At the beginning the song has the sound of one voice, then three voices, and at the end it is again unison: “Short was called, long was drawn, ending with a swing.” (Īsi sauca, gaŗi vilka, Kā līgoti nolīgoja, LTDz, I, xxx) The individual voice of the leader is taken up and altered or even broken by the second and then it is “covered up by a vigorous drone” (Brambats, p. 29) and becomes one with it. A powerful, long-carrying voice and the drawn-out long note creating tension is valued in both the Balkan and Baltic cases. Perhaps the locītāja functions as a mediating voice between the one and the many, the communal choir singing as if the never-ending, solid eternal or cosmic sound. She sets the stage for the constant background vocal drone, which is of deep sacred significance. One may also note the effect of starting out with maximum freedom as the leader (teicēja/ saucēja) calls out the song, to greater constraints as the second voice can not freely improvise but must repeat the first even if it does modulate it, but all become one ending with the drawn out drone emphasizing the strong linear movement, which is broken off suddenly. Akerbergs in her observations characterizes this phenomenon in relation to the singing group “Vilcējas” as having a notion of unison as polyphony rather than the western notion of polyphony as contrasting harmonics and independent line characteristic of western notions.

According to Akerbergs the Swedish-Latvian group stresses the importance of blending together to form an intense sound:

The blending together is another indication of the social nature of this activity, and the result, thus, is that you can’t really hear yourself – one doesn’t have the perception of oneself as an individual anymore. It is therefore difficult to hold onto a drone note because you have integrated so completely within the group-intense tone that you don’t hear yourself sometimes sliding down from pitch.” (Akerbergs: 12)

This type of singing, the people of the group listening to each other to try to produce the same sound, but in fact each creating their own tone rather than achieving say perfect pitch - heterophony, appears to be in the spirit of ganja singing famous in southern Europe. Akerbergs in her comparison of samples of Latvian and Bulgarian two-voiced drone singing as a response to comments about the “Balkan sound” of traditional Latvian songs seems to arrive at such a conclusion. Citing Donald Hall (1991), she proposes singers might be seeking the so-called chorus effect, resulting from frequencies almost the same, and creating a slow beat or bell ringing effect, “the ebb and flow of multiple beating”. (Ibid, 14) The effect is powerful and physiological. Latvian musician Austris Grasis from Germany in his classes of traditional music at the Latvian summer intensives at Garezers (Long Lake, Michigan) would emphasize that singing on a hill was the preferred group setting because the voices blended better at a distance in addition to carrying furthest from an elevation. Grasis’ practical observation could lead one to ponder the possibility raised by Fink:

Melodies were the most important feature for early musicians, and so they were able to accept the mix of the accidental harmonies and discords formed by the separate melodies, so long as it all created a tolerable whole. (Fink, 1980).

Drones, the magical ground

The ceremonial or religio-magical significance of the drone sound as a pitch-centered, single sustained tone producing a continuous low buzzing sound similar to a bee in the Baltic might be related to the drone and overtone phenomenon so often associated with magical creation and destruction of musical space as observed in healing rituals of different cultures throughout the world (cf Gardner, CD flyer, 1996). The literature on drones suggests it is the characteristic natural or root tone of an entity. As a low sustained humming or buzzing single tone, it provides musical ground or center. As a drawn-out sound it is accompanied by mathematically sequenced or spaced natural overtones or harmonics whose vibrations have a profound physiological and psychological effect, so that “everything happens over and in relationship to them.”(Reck, 279).

The Latvian pedal or non-syllabic drone, holding one syllable, “e” characterized as more intense and brighter or “o” characterized as thicker, wider, and more fluctuating (Akerbergs. p. 11) without ornamentation is classically used within the Latvian recitative godubalss tradition. In her sample of Bulgarian and Latvian two-voiced droning, Akerbergs found her Bulgarian sample to tend to take the upper note of the melody in contrast to the Latvian taking the lowest note. (Ibid, p. 8) Consistent with Reck, she agrees that the drone functions “to keep a solid foundation of tone, over which the soloist can feel free to sharpen and flatten...(since) the drone will return her to the original pitch.” (Ibid, p. 13) Similarly, Robert Erickson says, “If pitch is constant and unchanging we are free to attend to other dimensions.” However, Akerbergs found the Bulgarian syllabic drone in contrast to the Latvian pedal drone to be related to somewhat different views. (Ibid: 11) In contrast to her perfect pitch Bulgarian sample, Akerbergs found in the Latvian samples “when the drone enters, you can hear the soloist adjusting her pitch every so slightly to the drone, since the soloist sings pitches slightly sharp and flat, and does not always end up on the same tone she began on.” (Ibid: 13)

Dance specialist Jēkabs Stumbrs observed that drone sounds emanated from different sources of nature, usually background, such as the selected buzz of bees, and was capable of inducing altered trance states. In dance “the observer was not separated from the dancer. These dances created a sense of unity augmenting the sense of togetherness and self-awareness. In a group these people dancing felt capable of confronting supernatural powers - unknown and terrible powers of nature. Dance as religious expression is of course another important aspect of the celebration. In all celebrations primitive people have a tendency to raise intensity to its highest tension.” (Stumbrs: 1258)

B. Bee-Women Making Ritual Connections

In the Baltic the natural and most obvious insect producing a drone is the bee and there is much to support the economic, cultural, ceremonial, and mythological importance of the bee.

Amber, honey, and wax were primary exports from the Baltic in the 12^th centuries and poetically Latvia may be called Amberland (Dzintarzeme). 10^th century Russian chronicler Nestor mentions honey and wax as trade items from the Baltic region. (Rizga, “Meža drava daiņās,” p. 273) The Baltic peoples learned to not destroy the bee colony in honey gathering earlier than their neighbors in the Russian region. (Rizga: 274) In a 1349 treaty the Salaspils Livonians retained their rights to bee trees. Some of the last insurrections on part of Latvian nations against the German conquerors were on account of bee-tree infringements. Violations of bee trees was one of the reasons given for a number of uprisings, starting with the 1212 Autine Livonian uprising against the Cēsis knights. Latvian possession of bee trees decreased with each century along with other rights to the forest, which formerly was held in common. A few forest bee trees were recorded in the early part of the 20^th century in the deep forests of Dundaga.

Bees are frequently humanized. The term for their death is the same used for the death of humans, rather than animals (izmirt not izsprāgt). (Rizga: 279) The bee addresses the beekeeper commenting on the quality of the cavity the beekeeper has hollowed out for her home.

There is an implied dialogue in the songs where the singer bewails the bee complaining, weeping, or rejecting a newly hollowed home as being splintered or too narrow with songs that show anger, or reject the bee’s complaints:

Aiz kājiņas bitīt sēju Pie resnā ozoliņa:

Kam tā manu dējumiņu Skabardoju nicināja.” (Endz. 1162)

Šorīt biju agri cēlis, Trešu dēju ozoliņu.

Atskrējušas trīs bitītes, Vaino manu dējumiņu.

Še, bitītes, cirvis, kaplis, Dējat pašas, kā tīkamas,

Dējat pašas, kā tīkamas, Pa savam prātiņam. (Endz. 1163)

I tied the bee’s foot to the thick oak tree:

Why did she my hollowing reject as splintered.

This morning I rose early, a third oak I hollowed out.

Three bees ran up, complain about my hollowing.

Here, bees, have the axe and hoe; hollow it out for yourselves.

This group of songs seems to reflect domestic disputes, where the bee complains that the bee-keeper has made her house full of splinters, and others where the bee-keeper who is often identified as a “young man” becomes so angry at the complaining of the bee about his ineptitude in constructing for her a dwelling that he either threatens her with (mild) violence or tells her to build the house by herself.

Šķērsu bite silu skrēja Ar to ziedu vezumiņu,

Atradusi skabardoju Jauna puiša dējumiņu.

The bee criss-crossed the forest, a wagon full of flowers.

Splintered she found her home that the young man had built for her.

There is also a whole cluster of bee songs about the bee running, shouting, or crying about her home, or the forest being burned. “Bitīte kliedza, Bitīte sauca: Siliņi deg, Siliņi deg! Nekliedz, bitīte, Nesauc, bitīte, Snaudaļa kodeļu Dedzināja.” (Endzelīns, 1095, p. 294) (The bee shouted, the bee called: the pines are burning, the pines are burning! do not shout, bee, no need to call, bee, shuteyes girl was only burning a flax tow.) [The alliterative dactyl is lost in the English translation.] The motif of the burning house calls to mind the ladybug’s burning house, also a domestic vignette, as well as possibly relating to an archaic mythological narrative involving the sun goddess and infidelity among the celestials.

A tree is marked both by an ownership sign and by the fact that it is topped and capped with a pine bark roof and a stone, so that it will be slightly lower than its neighbors and thus protected from lightning and storms. (281) As bee keeping in the forest became increasingly restricted, bee keeping was moved to the homestead. Some of the hives made of capped hollowed logs with a valna-covered entrance were preserved in Latgale until the early part of this century. (Ibid: 290)

According to Bīlenšteins the family ownership signs were written on the valna (door) of the dore (bee dwelling hollowed out). To hollow out a bee dwelling was to dori dēt. The valna acted as protection from woodpeckers and bears as it was attached to a log that would strike the bear when he moved the valna. When a family member moved, they kept the original family sign, but added a distinguishing detail to the original sign.

Different members of the family owned different swarms. When a girl married and moved, she did not loose her ownership of the swarm. (Ibid: 280) Some swarms were owned by several people called dalībnieki (Ibid: 280), and bee trees could be inherited.

Healing drinks are made from honey and honey is offered at special occasions or to guests and has special symbolic importance at weddings.

Lithuanian (Baltic) kinship alliances were made by future and former owners of swarms, and the winter celebrations emphasize the role of mantic bees. There is strong evidence that provides an archaic means to link men who are not related by blood in a constructed social arrangement to a kinship system that is grounded on seeing female kinship as basic, natural, and unproblematic. It does so by projecting the idea of sharing a swarm, whose swarming is a matter of fortune and chance personified as Laima, to a fictional kinship, a bee brotherhood. In analogy to the fictional bee brothers, in a marriage the “real brother” (īstais brālis) and brother-in-law (ķeluvainis=sister’s husband) are linked in mutual obligation as socially constructed brothers. The very close relationship of brother and sister, where in many songs, the girl must choose between brother and suitor, as well as a significant cluster of songs referring to endogamous marriage, would support an archaic strong emotional threesome tie of brother, sister, and husband that is strongly evident in the dominant exogamous patrilocal marriage system depicted in the daina world.

Unfortunately Greimas does not elaborate, citing lack of documentation and hoping that it will be provide by “cultural historians,” on the issue if “the so-called aveline bičiulyste-bandžiulyste - cannot be explained as a social form of friendship ‘among women,’ and not among men.” (Greimas, p. 170) There are songs about singing that are concerned with attuning or adjusting into harmony with the other voice(s). Baltic songs that test the new sister-in-law (mārša) if she “fits” in the singing style of the women of the natal household, as indicative of fitting in socially and in the work rhythms, are evidence for a sense of strong female group identity and appear to have a similar sentiment expressed in Balkan ganja singing:

Let us try out singing with brother’s (cousin's) bride:

If the song fits together, living we will fit.

The fit is good enough with brother's (cousin's) bride:

In the winter grinding flour, working in the summer field. (306)

Bees are viewed as singer-women in the songs where a bee and gadfly feud and contest. Mantic bee singing is consulted at Christmas: (“Let us go listen to the bees on Christmas eve. If the bees are singing well, it will be a warm summer.” - Eima bišu klausīties/ Ziemassvētku vakarā./ Ja bitītes daiļi dzied, tad būs silta vasariņa.). Marija Gimbutas has written about the great antiquity of the Baltic bee goddess. In Lithuanian her name is linked with weaving, Austeja, and in the dainas the bee is honored as “Sky Daughter (Dieva meita).” This same address, “daughter of Dievs” is also that of Saule – Sun. Saule is also sometimes known as “Mother of Earth” and there are myths that consider the earth to be the daughter of Sun and Moon. In Latvian territory there are two regional bee deities, the beekeeping aspect of the light and horse deity Ūsiņš, and Bee Mother (Bišu māte) [cf LD 32446, Tdz 51728]. Different deities associated with bees are found among other Baltic peoples. The bee has semantic associations with much of the feminine sacred in Latvian mythology, through human enactment as that of the “Midsummer mother.” The black snake that is elsewhere identified with the Great Goddess (usually Māra) is also identified as the bee mother:

Melna čūska ietecēja Manā bišu dārziņā;

Tā nebija melna čūska, Tā bij bišu māmuliņa. (Tdz 51728)

A black snake came into my bee garden;

That was not a black snake. It was the mother of bees.

Furthermore, honey, and amber (“tears of the sun”) are metaphorically linked in a semantic field with the bee. Greimas notes that, as among the Greeks, Austeja is the guardian of married family life and the patron of females in passage from girlhood to married womanhood. (Greimas: 162; see Locke for discussion of Greek melissai or “bee women” and Demeter’s festival Thesmophoria). The semantic field of the sacred feminine associated with bees, honey, amber, and the sun is completed with the honey cake of the Shade Mother and her identification with the Sun Daughter, as well as fermented honey drink seen as healing or even as an elixir of life. All of the sacred feminine is also ultimately related to the sacred male as in the popular daina often heard even today:

Kam der kalni, kam der lejas, Kam der zaļi ozoliņi?

Dievam kalni, Laimai lejas, Bitei zaļi ozoliņi. (LD 30336)

Whose are the hills, whose are the vales, whose are the oak trees green?

For Dievs the hills, for Laima the vales, for the bee the oak trees green.

Bees are a metaphor for women, honey for sex, and blood-honey-tears associated with the three stages of being a “bride” [Lith. marti, Latv. līgava]: courted girl, bride during marriage ceremony, and young wife until the birth of her first child. (Greimas: 173-180) Stealing bees or honey is linked to the violation of a woman, and archaically both were similarly punished as assaults on clan honor by disembowelment after being fastened to a bee tree by the navel.

Nāc, puisīti, tu pie manis, Es tev došu medu ēst:

Man bitīte iešuvuse Vēderiņa galiņā. (LD 35 154)

Come, lad, to me, I will give you honey to eat.

The bee has sewn it there at the end of my stomach.

The value of the mistress of a household is underscored by Lasicius’s report that the “head” of a woman was worth more in terms of payment than that of a man, and the keys carried by her were symbolic of her power within the farmstead. (Greimas: 160).

Bitīt liela, bitīt’ maza, Bitīt šūnu šuvējiņ’;

Meitiņ’ liela, meitiņ’ maza! Meitiņ kreklu audējiņ. (8876 V 302, 2200 Latv. T.Dz. II (1980).

If she’s great or if she’s small, the bee is the sewer of combs.

If she’s great or if she’s small, the girl is a weaver of shirts.

The connection between bees, song, creative activity, and women is very strong. For instance, throughout the daina collection one notices the importance of bees and how bees are likened to the primary desirable female virtues (tikumi), such as industry, harmony (saderība), and productiveness. Further, woman is semantically linked not only to bee and honey, but also to the linden (the forest tree with blossoms for honey), and the sun (who sheds amber tears, as the source of maternal warmth and healing):

Kā lācīši man zirdziņi, Kā ozoli arājiņi;

Kā šūniņa man maizīite, Kā bitīite cepējiņa.

Es nelaužu liepas zaru, Es jau pati liepa biju;

Ozoliņa zaru lauzu, Man vajaga arājiņu.

As bears are my horses, as oaks the ploughmen;

As honeycomb my bread, as a bee my baker of bread.

I don’t break the linden branch; I was linden myself.

I broke the oak branch; I need a ploughman

Further there is link of woman as weaver-creator to Saule and Laima as cosmic weaver creators and bee as weaver-creator of the honeycomb: “Put on, brother, three coats. You have three weavers. (Your) sister weaves, (your) bride weaves, the bee weaves in the oak tree.” And the link of bee, woman, and sun imagery: “Oh, bee, oh bee, your great diligence! you ran day, you ran night without sleep.” The same formula is used for the sun running day and night without sleep. The bee also brings in symbols of the sun as blessing: “The bee is a diligent woman, a doer of great work. She fills the hive full with golden wheels of wax.” Other songs describe her building ability in constructing the honeycomb.

It is significant that the goddess of fortune and chance, Laima, is the patron of creation generally and of singing creation specifically. She is also the guardian of married life, of women generally, but especially interested in the female in-between state of girlhood and womanhood as well as all aspects of birthing. Laima, as also the bee, is associated with the linden tree emblematic of women, whose flowers provide nectar in forest bee keeping (dravniecība). Linden trees were sacred trees to which sacrifice was offered and linden forests were sacred forests. The decree of Laima, or chance, as she determines the swarming of bees, also determines with what deserving beekeeper a bee-woman should properly share “honey,” which is consistent with the erotic songs of apdziedāšanās sung by married women emblematic of fertility, as opposed to girls, and constrained to ritual occasions. In Latvian mythology the linden is fully juxtaposed to the male oak, not subordinated to it. The world tree can be either an oak or a linden. The historical sources are mixed if men and women made sacrifice separately, men to oak and women to linden, or if both sacrificed to the same tree. Probably there were tribal differences and possibly some gender differences may have fused in more recent times.

Baiba Putniņa (1991) explores the connection between the sacred drink of celebrations alus (beer), medalus (mead) and honey. There is a large section of dzīru dziesmas in the Barons collection about beer, its brewers, and its drinkers. Beer is mentioned throughout the cycle of songs, including young men’s and young women’s songs.” (Putniņa: 3) Alus is a ceremonial honey drink among all the Baltic peoples with many customs associated with its brewing and use, one of those being bringing in a bear for strength and bees for sweetness.

Iesaliņa malējiņa Bitīt nesa saujiņā; Alutiņa brūverīts Lāci veda namiņā; Liec, lācīti, savu spēku, Bitīt, savu saldumiņu! (LD 19627).

Apenītis tā sacīja, Gar skaistīti tecēdams: Meitaām diet, meitām lēkt, Puišiem rāpus vazāties! (LD 19549)

The malt miller (fem.) carried the bee in her hand; the beer brewer brought the bear into the room; give us, dear bear, of your strength, bee of your sweetness.

Hopling said the following running past the hedge. For girls to dance and jump, for boys to crawl and gad about.

Women often were the actual brewers, (Putniņa: 7) though the dainas more often specify the father to brew the ceremonial beer as at Midsummers in opposition to the mother making the ceremonial cheese. In any case, singing, women, bees, and brewing are connected in a number of songs:

Dziesmiņai māsiņai Otra puse pazuduse; Darīsim ruden’ alu, Meklēsim otru pusi. (LD 922,2)

Alutiņu brūvēdama Biti bāzu kabatā,

Lai dzied alus dzērājiņi, Kā bitītes stropiņā. (LD 764)

Biš spītenis I pārskrēaja Pār namiņa čukurīti.

Kas bijāt brūverīši, Lieciet miltus kubulā. (LD 19567)

The song, our sister has lost her other half.

Let us make autumn beer; find the other half.

When I brew beer, a bee goes in my pocket.

May the beer drinkers sing as bees in a hive.

A bee swarm went over the roof of the house.

Those who are the brewers place the flour into the vat.

In another song (19481) the beer is made magically sweet because the brewer has sex with his girl, but in another song (34421) the beer fails to ferment for the same reason.

Finally, one may add the bear to the semantic field of bees and honey. Not only is the bear addressed as a beekeeper, which is easy to understand considering the bear’s craving for honey, but the bear is, strangely enough, also associated with a sexually desirable woman and in erotic songs specifically her pudendum (the bear with a whistle in its mouth in the nerātnās dziesmas.) The connection of honey to sex is evident even in English. Finally, there are legends of sex or marriage between bear and human, resulting in the birth of a strongman (stiprinieks). The national myth of Bearslayer is based on such legends about Bear-son.

Insect humming and buzzing are often seen as of special sacred importance or even an otherworldly sound or communication, and drone sounds as well as honey drinks are used in healing rituals. Bees are associated both with life, sex, death, healing, rebirth, magic, and the divine female principle. The magical sword used by heroes to kill the monster, Velns, Mother Velns, Juods, or Mother Juods is made of bišu dzeloņi (bee stings – cf LD 1997). The sting of the bee is also equated to the sting of a sharp tongue, which is valued as a sign of intelligence in a girl: “Oh, bee, honey-one, your sharp sting. Three days it hurt; the fourth it still smarted.” It has sexual associations in songs where the Midsummer god Yanis climbs the oak tree, but is stung by the bee (Tdz 53 842). In tales witches ride bee trees or beehives through the air to their celebrations. Sometimes bees and witches are contrasted, as when bees are invited, and witches denied entrance to the farmstead during seasonal celebrations. (“Run, bee, where you will, run into my forest patch. My forest land is bound with iron, with silver it is girded.” or “Run, bee, where you will, run into my farm. My farm is wrought with iron, the witch couldn’t get in.”) Iron and magic girding keeps out witches and forest laumas.

A full study examining the world of sound as related to bees would be productive in connecting that to the drone perceived as buzzing, which also has been connected to the otherworldly and the magical.

In terms of apdziedāšanās, there are a number of dainas where the female bee is involved in agonistic dialogic with the male gadfly.

Bite, bite, mērga, mērga Ar dunduru strīdējās;

Dunduram zaļi svārki, Bitei vaska vilnānīte.

Pasasēdi bites meita, Ozoliņa zariņā,

Iekam sila sirsenīts Brūnus svārkus šūdināja.

The bee, the girl, the bee, the girl, she feuded with the gadfly.

Gadfly has a coat of green, bee a shawl of wax.

Sit well enough, bee daughter on the oaken branch.

The hornet of the pines was sewing a brown coat.

Kursīte has looked at some of the insect symbolism as related to cosmic themes (1996: 368- 374, 384-6), which suggest these should all be looked together as a complex. The mosquito appears to have a bigger role than the gadfly in a strange theme about falling from the cosmic tree, but, again, the sexual theme appears as when the mosquito is “beating” a smaller female mosquito (LTdz 25731 variants). The insect is also associated with magic users. Witches often fly about in the form of insects, such as butterflies or flies, or as birds. Stopping up the mouth of the witch’s body so the insect or bird can’t re-enter the body is a way of killing her.

The ritual song exchange is between a honey-making and honey-offering female insect and a blood-drawing male insect, apparently symbolizing a girl (tautu meita) and boy (tautu dēls) in courtship from different clans. The archaic and magic aspects of the apdziedāšanās ritual is further elaborated in light of historical contextual information, which shows married (but not necessarily elderly) women as the primary singers in apdziedāšanās, and the ones properly singing sexually explicit songs for the well-being and fertility of the clans being allied. Laima has blessed the young man who succeeds in having an industrious bee-wife: “How could life be better for the beekeeper’s son in the forest? The bee brought him silver in the hollow of the old oak tree.” The silver refers to precious metal he could trade for the liquid gold, but the scene set up is one of domestic happiness. In former times, not every man had the privilege of a wife; only one who had land or other means to support a family. Bees are seen as participating in different stages of the wedding, thus appearing as a wedding singing group:

Kur, bitītes, jūs ietit, Liela drūzma dziedādam'?

Iesim vaska ceļu liet, Dravinieka meitu ved.

Where, bees, are you going in a big swarm singing?

We are going to pour a path of wax. The beekeeper’s daughter is being taken (on her wedding journey).

And they participate in working and singing, with working and singing also semantically related:

Draviniekam diža laime, Bites riju nokūlušas:

Bites dzied, trani velk, Bišu māte gavilēja

The bee-keeper is in luck. Bees are threshing in the barn.

The bees are singing, the drones are droning, the bee-mother is yodeling.

The sound of bees and trees is coordinated:

Dimdi, dimdi, ozoliņi, Visi tavi zari dimd,

Visi tavi zari dimd, Visas zaru pazarītes.” (Endz. 1085)

Meži rūca, meži šņāca, Bites gāja kumuriem:

Man bij tādis lielis prieks, Man ielīda ozolā. (1086)

Stamp, drum, oak tree, all your branches were shaking

All your branches were beating, all the branchlets."

The forests buzzed, the forest hissed: bees were swarming:

I had so much joy; they rumbled into my oak.

However, bee-keeping itself is one of the few most strictly arch-male activities and tied to archaic tabus that defined the strictly separated gender roles of archaic Latvian society, which seem to involve activities of male and female groups in the forest (mushrooming, berry picking) more so than in working in the field. The collection of scientific articles in History of the Forests of Latvia until 1940 edited by Heinrichs Strods is a thorough, expert review of historical forestry, including forest bee-keeping.^⁵ The archive collections have many dainas on the subject, such as:

Es gribēju ar bāliņu Līdzi kāpti ozolā;

Aizsameta vilānīte Ozoliņa zariņā. (Endzelīns 1148)

Tautu meita skaidas lasa, Man ozolu dēdinot.

Paga, paga, drosuliņ, Pasacīšu brāliņam. (Endz. 1147)

Tautu meita skaidas lasa, Man dejot ozoliņu;

Šķelmīts biju, ne puisīits, Ja es tev to piedevu. (Endz. 1148)

Iesaliņa malti gāju, Bit’ ar lāci padzirnē;

Do’, lācīti, savu spēku, Bitīt’, savu saldumiņu! (685)

Bites māte man jautā, Ko dar’ veci draveniek’?

Dzēnu pina, valnu raksta, Saulītē sēdēdam’.” (Endzelīns, 1126)

Bitīte man’ māsiņa, Kājas āva ābulā…” (Endzelīns, 1097)

Līgo bite, līgo saule Baltābola kalniņā,

Bite ziedus lasīdama, Saul’ ābolu vītēdama. (Endz. 1103)

Cel, bitīt, vasku krēslu Zem resnā ozoliņa,

Tur sēd brāļi dravenieki, Tur māsiņas rakstītājas. (Endz. 1115)

Cep, māmiņa, tādu maizi, Viegli nest, gausi ēst,

Nu es iešu doru dēt Tālajā siliņā. (Endz. 1122)

Mans tēviņis dravu dara, Es aiznesu launadziņu,

-Tev, meitiņa, tā draviņa Par launaga nesumiņu. (1140)

Es izdūru sila priedi, Rakstīt vien nemācēju;

Gan bitīte norakstīs Medaiņām kājiņām. (1153)

Trīskārt bite riņķi grieze Apkārt manu cepurīt’,

Redzēj mani daiļu vīru, Daiļu doru dējējiņ’. (1156)

Dievs dod vilkam aklam būt, Lāčam strupu deguntiņu:

Vilkam aitu neredzēt, Lāčam medu nesaost. (1186)

Bite meitu aizdevusi Par deviņi ezeriņi…(1207)

Margodama saule lēce Caur ozola lapiņām:

Dravenieka līgaviņa Zelta naudu rēķināja. (1209)

Bitīt, tavu dravenieku Kungi lika cietumā.

Šūn, bitīte, biezu kāri, Vado savu dravenieku. (1212)

I wanted to climb with my brother the oak tree;

My shawl caught in a branch of the tree.

The girl is picking up wood chips while I’m carving a bee-house in the oak tree.

Wait and see, darling, I’m going to tell your brother.

The girl is picking up wood chips while I’m carving a bee-house in the oak tree.

What a rogue and not a lad if I forgave her that.

I went to grind the malt, bee and bear by the mill;

Give, bear, of your strength; bee of your sweetness.

Bee sister asked what the old beekeepers were doing?

They were plaiting a rope, carving a hive door, sitting in the sun.

Bee, my sister, shodding your feet in the clover.

Sway bee, sway sun, in the white clover hill;

Bee gathering flowers, sun swaying clover.

Lift a chair of wax, bee, under the great oak.

There brothers beekeepers are sitting, there sisters pattern makers.

Bake, mother, such bread: easy to carry, slow to consume;

Now I’m going to make a bee-tree house in the far-off forest.

My father was making a bee tree house, I took him lunch.Here, daughter, this hive is yours as return for the lunch.

I hollowed out the pine tree; didn’t know how to carve.The bee will know how to pattern it with her honeyed feet.

Three times the bee turned around my hat

She saw me a handsome man, a handsome maker of a bee hive.

God, give it for the wolf to be blind, the bear to have a short nose;

For the wolf to not see the lamb; the bear to not smell honey.

Thee bee gave away her daughter across nine lakes.

Glistening the sun rose through the oak leaves;

The bee-keeper’s bride was counting gold coins.

Bee, your keeper, was imprisoned by the lords;

Make, bee, a thick honeycomb; ransom your keeper.

In some dainas a bee father (1188) is mentioned instead of a bee mother leading to speculation if this is a regional or later hisorical development.

It is interesting that the vocal drone retained its ceremonial significance when the bagpipe also acquired great importance in the Baltic. Somewhat symbolic, perhaps, since the vocal drone if linked to the bee as an emblem of cooperation and social harmony in the daina world is primarily the voice of women, while instrumental music is that of men. The information Karl Brambats has compiled on the vocal drone further seems to support the view that the archaic functions of the Latvian ritual insult song contest were sacred, namely, to unite and bring into harmony what was sundered in some immemorial time. Original cosmic strife, resulting in division, is thus symbolically reversed through the Baltic ritual song contest.

C. Incantations as Weaving and Anti-Weaving

One may also note that etymologically Austeja is associated with weaving, and the bee is described as engaged in weaving. The specific action of uniting the two sides during the apdziedāšanās ritual could be seen in terms of a back and forth sewing or weaving motion, which the rapid antiphonal exchange suggests. The bee, the weaver, and a needle are seen to repeat the same motion of connection united in the magic action of the archaic term šūšana or sewing^⁶. Karulis, until his recent death, was the leading etymologist and excavator of history from language. He is also a proponent that the word Yanis is related to the Roman Yanus, as a deity of gates and of the year dually looking forward and backward.

The movement in terms of whole and parts, which in the apdziedāšanās ritual has the purpose of uniting and constructing, can be contrasted as opposite to magic incantations with imagery of dispersal. These zūdināšanās vārdi (disappearing words), of which records go back to 1574, have the function of destroying or averting harm or some undesirable activity. (Olupe, 1989: 26; Straubergs 1939) Imagery is invoked, such as smoke, steam, puffballs, grinding into fine particles - negative images of division that lead to dispersal and disappearance. They also have the positive effect of clearing and cleaning something negative away. Sometimes it is expressed as imagery of running water carrying away the undesirable, while in other zudināšanās incantations the imagery is of something drying up and becoming harmless: “The tall, great dry fir falls across the road. May the wolf’s path be as long as the length of the tree. May the wolf’s teeth dry up like the dry branches of the (dead) fir tree.” (LD 29 427)

Latvian folklorists, such as Kursīte, (1996: 269-272) have accepted the contention of V. Ivanov and T. Gamkrelidze that Baltic traditions, especially daina formulaic phrases, retained significant aspects of an archaic sacred lexic or divine language, and used by magic users and in rituals.

The functions of different female deities connected with different models of creation and creativity are largely combined in the goddess Laima, godess of fate and fortune also connected with the textile arts (spinning, weaving, plaiting), musical creation, and human fertility and birth.

Gimbutas (1989) considered the Balts to have retained the most archaic deity that can be reconstructed from the Upper Palaeolithic, that of the Snake and Bird Goddess of waters in her full power over the cosmic waters (sky), the waters of the earth, and the netherworld. This goddess is connected with a northern European cosmology of the cosmic egg. Laima is seen as her historical descendant. As godesses of Fate among many peoples, she is a plaitor of rope, spinner, and weaver of baskets, shoes, and cloth. Something comes into existence by twisting, interlacing, or intertwining two or more strands. Cosmic weaving is one metaphor for creation and significantly during Midsummer, the Mother of Midsummer is one of characters depicted as weaving. Additonally, Baltic myth uses biological models for the generative forces of the cosmos, both the ornithological and the human female as essentially parthenogenetic. Nature is transformed into culture through the raksts, a word for rhythmic repetition of pattern in different media, including music, art, work, and traces left in movement, such as bird flight. Jaan Puhvel (1974) showed that the motif of cosmic weaving and creation, Laima throwing the threads of life on a cosmic loom, spans both Indo-European and Finno-Ugric belief systems. In one mythical daina the moon god tears the sun goddess’s cosmic weave, thereby causing a cosmic rift: Sun-woman threw her warp, standing in the middle of the air-space. Moon-man running through tore Sun’s weaving.” K1707, 2788). Similarly witches, who destroy, heal, and create, are often accused of ruining spinning or weaving. Weaving and singing are related as creative acts overseen by Laima. Terms related to textiles are used to identify aspects of ritual antiphonal singing, such as the second voice being called the vilcēja (meanderer) while the drones are called vilcējas (pullers, drawers). In song, as in textile, something is created and something is fixed from the fluid pre-form process. The minimum offering to a deity is a dzīpars or piece of colored yarn, though a patterned sash is preferred. In the apdziedāšanās performance, there is rapid exchange between them and us as the strange is plaited or woven together with the known through dialogue. Riddles and mythical songs are a minicosm of the dialogue model in that they consist of question and answer, structurally similar to the call and response of antiphonal singing.

A term that could be explored as in some ways similar to weaving or sewing is laipot (to bridge). In Latvian it retains a sense of rhythmic movement similar to the term rotāt in that something, like the appearance of the goddess Māra on a rooftop (Kursīte, 1996: 263, cf LTdz 23555), may be described with the term laipot. However, there appears to be a more static sense in describing linking or bridging, the term for “bridge” being laipa. It grew out of an older sense of “to climb” as the older use of laipa refered to a plank or hewed tree leaned up against something used as a ladder. (Karulis, I: 491-2) Kursīte notes that the rolling motion of rotāt represents “what unites, binds, fuses, what creates a line, sequence, and order...the finish of a creative act, a harmonized solution.” (Ibid: 264) The act of singing is sometimes described in the dainas as unrolling a yarn ball of song, and completion as rolling the yarn back into a ball and placing it in a storage container. Apdziedāšanās in the emphasis on continuous exchange of songs could be likened to creating a skein.

The equation of sensory experience experienced through different sense organs, especially sound and sight, is not found uniquely in sewing or weaving isomorphed to responsorial singing or the movement of bees in creating honeycombs or the pounding movement of the pestle. A study of the many different terms for rhythmic motions, sounds, and visual patterns would show a universally understandable cognitive foundation underlying the specific socio-cultural elaborations.

1Taped lecture, Latvian summer camp, Catskills, unknown date in 90’s.

2 see discussions on listserve folkloristi based in Latvia.

3 Muktupāvels, prepublication to Garland article

4 See, however, Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 8.

5 Latvijas mežu vēsture līdz 1940. gadam. Edited by Heinrichs Strods and others. Rīga: WWF, Pasaules Dabas Fonds Latvijas Programma, 1999: esp. 344-356.

6 Karulis, 1992, II: 367 – 368, I: 91, taped lecture

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↑ Contents

VII . NERĀTNĀS (SHAMELESS, NAUGHTY, EROTIC, OR BAWDY) DAINAS

Kāzās iedama, Bezkauņa paliku; Pāriešu mājās, Turēšu godu.

Puisīts tek uz meitiņu, Meitiņ tek uz puisīti.

Vilka dobe celiņā. Tur tie abi iekrituši,

Biksītēm mijušies, Mutītēm devušies. (35415)

Viena pate Jāņa zāle Brīžiem stīva, brīžiem mīksta.

Ja tā stāvu nestāvētu, Nebūt kāzu, krustībiņu. (33693)

Going to wedding, I become shameless; Returning home, I keep my honor.^¹

The lad goes to the lass, the lass goes to the lad.

A wolf pit in the road and they have fallen in,

They’ve exchanged their pants; there they’ve swapped kisses.

Just one Midsummer stalk, at times hard, at times soft.

If it couldn’t stand up, there would be no weddings or christenings.

In his description of a Kurland wedding in 1649 Paul Einhorn in Historia Lettica is horrified: “They sing such unchaste, debauched, and profligate (nešķīstas, netiklas un vieglprātīgas) songs day and night without stopping that even Satan himself couldn’t conceive of anything more immoral and shameless (nešķīstas, bezkaunīgas). His descriptions are informative, though his opinion is that Latvian peasants are uncouth savages. He describes mumming and Yule log evening in Reformatio Gentis Letticae in Ducatu Curlandiae (1636) as being a shameless celebration with eating, drinking, dancing, jumping, shouting, and making terrible noise going from one house to another.

Nei kauna vecam, Nei kauna jaunam,

Šī diena, rītdiena Bez kauna laista. (35173)

No shame the old, no shame the young,

This day, tomorrow, brought forth without shame.

Bride chaser side sings:

Šķobies, grozies, Mūs’ māsiņa! Neļaun stādīt Stumburiņu.

Turn, twist, our sister! Don’t allow the planting of the tree.

Bride taker side sings:

Dievs dod mūsu bāliņam Stīvstumburu iestumdīt. (35475)

God, give it to our brother, to push in a stiff tree.

Sexual insults are a part of the insult song corpus. Their use is justified with the expression giving dues to veca tiesa” (old custom). They are part of a corpus that was most offensive to the German chroniclers and clergy through the centuries. Known as nerātnās dainas, they are published separately in volume VI of Barons’s collection and volume XII of the Imanta edition. Berzing (sic) and Eglis translated some of them in 1969. Since there have been no other serious, to say nothing of fully academic attempts to research the phenomenon of nerātnās dainas, my remarks also have to be of an introductory nature. One observation that emerges from this study is that if we look at the phenomenon simply from a contemporary socio-cultural viewpoint, there are going to be very different conclusions than if magical and supernatural thinking, which surely is an aspect of the oldest aspects and roots of the phenomenon, are also considered. Adamovičs (p.82) identifies the bawdy songs to be cultic, and there is outright association of magic with reproduction.

Pisa mani, grūda mani Zem resnā ozoliņa,

Lai aug tādi dēli, meitas Kā resnie ozoliņi. (35342)

Audziet kupli, sīpoliņi! Tēviņam liela ķeķe;

Audziet kupli kāpostiņi! Mātei kupla pavēdere. (34484)

Pista meita maizi cepa, Nepistā plācenīti.

Ņemiet, puikas, izpisiet, Lai cep abas mīkstu maizi. (35376)

Hump me, drive me under the great oak tree,

So there may be sons and daughters like the mighty oak trees.

Grow in big bunches, onions! Dad has a big bag;

Grow thick, cabbages! Mom has a thick underbelly.

A fucked girl bakes bread, an unfucked girl bakes only flatbread.

Take her, boys, and fuck her, so they’ll both bake soft bread.

In a contemporary setting, depending on the circumstances and company, the songs appear ridiculously funny, simply pornographic, or somewhat embarrassing. In a broader textual daina world context there is much more of an appropriate sense of a celebration of vigour, health, and fertility rather, than perversion. They are to be sung humorously with exaggeration, not to be taken personally or seriously, and with good spirits. Unlike the pornographic invective there is less hostility than camp:

Es pisīga, es vēlīga, Man laba veselība.

Kad atnāca rudentiņš, Man radās tāds maziņš. (34674)

I’m horny, I’m willing, I have good health.

When fall came, a little one (baby) came to me.

Fertility magic is associated with music. Kursīte (1996: 413-415), drawing from the historical etymology of Karulis (II: 93-94), underscores the fertility symbolism of the sistrum puškaitis used at weddings by the song leaders to keep time. The puškaitis is deliberately shaped as a tree in full bloom, decorated with ribbons, feathers, and even small bells. Etymologically the musical instrument belongs to the Indo-European term *phu- (swelling, blowing, fermenting, growing, blooming, flowering) all with derivatives concerned with fertility, spring regeneration, efflorescence, sexuality, and ornamentation. All celebration is accompanied with decorating with greenery, flowers, and wreaths, the activity described as decorating or ornamenting – puškot.

There are questions, as for all dainas, as to how much of what is described corresponds to known actual practice, as opposed to gross exaggeration or fantasy, or exists in practice but is nonnormative or practiced by only some segments of the society or under special conditions. Since no work has been done on the subject, it is not possible to answer that question, except to note that dainas in their complexity and breadth have the full range of different levels of correspondence for belief, metaphor, and practice. Since as apdziedāšanās songs they are required to be exaggerations and the subject matter is special occasion or nonnormative, their relationship to social belief and practice is particularly complex:

While obscenity, scatology and sexual proess are important themes in these exchanges, accusations must remain in the realms of the imagination. (Edwards & Sienkewicz: 130)

Similarly Rosalynn Shropshire describing her experience of the dozens or soundings among Afro-Americans, originally a male genre, emphasizes that the purpose of the performance is to learn to be cool under attack, including extreme verbal assault, even more aggressive than the Latvian model as it involves attack on the honor of the female relatives of the opponent. But also here degeneration into a fight is a failure of the default test:

One must out talk one's competitor, thereby getting the most laughs from the group. And one must not loose emotional control. No respect is given to emotionalism that escalates into a fight. The fundamental rule is that the insult must not be literally true because truth takes the group out of the realm of performance art into "reality." (personal communication)

That is, sung in an apdziedāšanās context, insults are not to be outright attacks and the butts are not supposed to take offense. The songs do not so much give direct information about practice, as giving information what is situationally considered normative and what is not, thereby being a source for attitudes and beliefs. Tabus and restrictions are a source of underlying normative value structures. As Mary Douglas has pointed out, they also are a way of marking what is civilized as practiced by “us” and what is animalistic and uncivilized as attributed to outsiders. (1966) Nonnormative as opposed to normative structurally is seen in terms of category or classification. Typically, gender tabus classify and identify what behavior is appropriate. Usually stronger, coarser, and more vulgar expressions are reserved for men and women who do not conform are classified negatively and marginalized. On Nov.16, 2000 I wrote to the folkloristi listserve in Latvia asking for help with the interpretation of a strange daina and also asking about offense taken if this song were used today:

Aija (Nov. 16, 2000, translated from Latvian)

I have come to a difference of opinion about the translation of the following ironic folk song:

Menckas tēvam piecas meitas, Visas piecas amatnieces:

Divas bures, divas zagles, Piektā kjernes laizītāja. (T.dz. 42400)

Father Mencka has five daughters, all five are craftswomen:

Two are magicians, two are thieves, the third is a churn licker.

Would it be possible to ask help to understand how strong is the irony insofar as knowing the craft, taking into account the candidature of these girls for being courted as wives? That is, if these lines were used in a current context, how strongly would someone feel they were attacked?

Vija Skrule:

Perhaps they would be offended if they really were thieves and churn lickers, but perhaps in our days a magician could be a rather profitable craft (depending on the proper marketing) and possibly interesting to suitors.

But if seriously, that’s the nature of Latvian humor – and if someone becomes offended, then in my opinion that shows guilt.

I don’t think there is anything terrible about using such songs today, many times similar ones have been heard.

Ansis Bērziņš:

I am suspicious it could not be an apdziedāšanās song. Who is the “mencka”? Is it the name of a farm? Perhaps there is something about fish? I don’t know anything about menca-fish customs...:)) In comparison:

Pērkons has five sons, all five are in the craft:

The first roared, the second struck, etc...

But if “Mencka” is a farmstead and the people are the inhabitants, then earlier that could have been a fairly strong attack (uzbrauciens). To say the truth, in our days, also, but it is hard to imagine a family who would have five girls of marriageable age, all living in the same farm, and besides that some neighbors would have come to sing insults about them (apdziedāt). :) But if this were used for a folklore ensemble, for another folklore ensemble where there was a leader and participants, then it would be light humor only. :)

This exchange raises some of the difficulties one has in reacting to the nerātnā daina corpus in particular because of its non-normative character. The term mencka suggests fish, which has both double entendre and straightforward mythological associations. I picked this song because, as Bērziņš immediately noticed, the mention of five and a word suggesting a type of fish seems to place the song as having supernatural aspects in its formulaic correspondence to mythological songs involving five offspring of a deity who have different functions. However, to classify a daina as only fantastic is to suppress the fact that many have been informative in historical research. Drīzule, among many others, points to many instances where a practice may be confirmed through separate historical documentation and archaeological sources. Drīzule points out that, for instance, orphan songs in their approach to suffering approach naturalism in addition to utilizing the fantastic, so realism is a possibility in at least some cases. (Drīzule: 195) Therefore, as in the rest of the daina corpus, vernacular beliefs related to practice different from or contrary to dominant normative Christian beliefs are almost certainly recorded within the nerātnā daina corpus. Thus, exceptional standards as to appropriate behavior may be invoked at Midsummer.

A practice mentioned as a joking insult is not simply ruled out as practice, only its situational appropriateness. Additionally there is the diachronic aspect. How the songs are used and interpreted now is no assurance they were so interpreted in the past. Some gross differences between attitudes in significantly more pagan 16^th and 17^th centuries, when complaints about them emerged, and later more Christianized periods are to be expected because of situational changes. It is unlikely that the presumably more naturalistic pagan attitudes dating back to raiding times when women were sometimes captured and then recaptured by hostile clans as booty, or where women and children were seen as ways of quickly replentishing a decimated clan, would be the same as later Christian attitudes, concerned with, for instance, with the spiritual aspects of chastity as much as practical ones.

The linguistic area of sexual terms are related to that of other Indo-European peoples suggesting associations that are aggressive but under control and related to agricultural work. The ancient term pist (fuck) is related to the Indo-European *peis (the up and down pounding action of pestle in mortar) and is frankly stated in dainas:

Es meitiņa, tu puisītis, Iesim abi velēties!

Ja tev laba bunga vāle, Sit manā silītē! (34676, 1)

I a girl, you a boy, let us go wash clothes.

If you have a good pounding dolly, hit it in my trough.

The concrete association with milling and other work that turns grain into nourishing bread underscores the healthy, productive nature of the activity rather than perverse masochism separate from the cycle and rhythm of nature, work, and their human artistic expressions. There are too many of the nerātnā dainas that treat sex as matter-of-fact to be reduced to prurience. The equivalent to the “four-letter” words in English are not to be used casually but not because they are bad words. It is because they are powerful, originally magic, words. The frank actions are not pornographic, but functional for the occasion. Thus the group of songs beginning with the formula stāvu, stāv (standing, stand):

Stāvu, stāv tev, tautieti, Ja tev stāvu, man gatava:

Ja tev stāv kumeliņis, Man gatava villainīte. (35524) or

Ja tev stāvu oša zars, Man gatava liepas sile. (35524)

Get it up, suitor; if it’s up for you, mine is ready:

If your horse is up, my woolen shawl is ready.

If the ash branch is standing, I have a ready linden trough.

The Balts had a number of festivals where erotic expression was an integral aspect, including Shrovetide, the breaking of flax period, and various fall harvest-home celebrations. There are many songs having to do with fertility, health, and vitality, which are most understandable in a magic context, such as ritual striking or beating at Easter with pussy willow branches or with branches during mumming to encourage fertility. The attitudes toward sexual health and fertility seem to be matter-of-fact in a way different from Western Christian ones until recent times:

Budelīti, tēvainīti, Izkul manu vedekliņ!

Es tev došu cimdu pāri Par vedeklas kūlumiņ’.

Mummer Father, thresh my daughter-in-law thoroughly!

I will give you a pair of mittens for beating my daughter-in-law.

Wife beating is not, of course, the subject in this song, but the mother-in-law as the senior woman responsible for the well-being of her family is asking the person representing the spirit world to perform a magic act of fertility on behalf of the young wife so she can bring the family children. Although coitus is symbolically associated with aggressive, or rather active, agricultural work (pērt, kult, sist), violence against women, including wife-beating is conspicuously absent as a topic of joking, and is condemned where it appears straightforwardly in the general daina corpus. Ritual beating is controlled, purposeful, and with positive magical results, but beating one’s wife for real would be harmful and destructive aggression, a loss of control. Alcoholism and ineptitude appear to be much more prominently singled out as condemned social dysfunctions. (cf Vītoliņš, 1986: 1183-1202) It is the dominant concensus of several generations of daina researchers that in the daina world a woman was treated with relatively egalitarian respect.

The singing of nerātnās dainas as the height of approaching emotional limits in apdziedāšanās has, of course, just as much polyfunctionality as any other aspect of folklore with different meanings to different participants in different times and regions. One of the functions of apdziedāšanās, including the singing of nerātnās dainas, is social control. Normative social control in the daina world is largely achieved through shame. Gossip (ļaužu valodas) is a major concern of the daina woman either on part of elders and neighbors or, if at courting age, of boys.

Benedikte Mežale in her study of apdziedāšanās in Latgale, largely Catholic eastern Latvia, strongly identifies and even equates the ritual with religious absolution as indicated by the title of the book: Apdzīduošona in Weddings or the True Absolution of Sins (Apdzīduošona kuozuos vai patīsa grāku atlaisšona). Mežāle speaks of the healing power of the ritual (dzīdynūšu spāku): “during the course of singing the participants are involved in a great cleansing, the biofield increases, spiritual components are reconciled, the person becomes more balanced, cleansed, and therefore healed…one may speak of the power of thought and word, which a person remembers in thinking and doing good.” (p. 13) She identifies the apdziedāšanās ritual as a woman’s way (sīvīšu rūta – p. 13). The nerātnās dainas are identified as sung for the purpose of the young couple’s fertility, and in her experience are sung only by married women:

In the everyday impropriety (nekaunībuos) were not allowed in the countryside. It was enough that everyone knew they existed…In a living apdziedāšanās tradition the songs found as Baron’s nerātnās are sung proportionally barely a third. Even today many verses circulate among children or grown-ups …which are publically never used; only now and then are told to each other…Calling out naked attributes leave an unpleasant effect in the area and people feel as if dirty water has been thrown on them. Only great cleverness can dampen and add a different unique sense. (p. 14-15)

Mežāle notes that straightforward depiction of physiological functions, while possible when a heightened sense of merrymaking has been reached (jautrības vilni) comes to the furthest edge (galejuo rūbeža) or even steps over the line (puorejīs aiz rūbežas). Finally, she underscores how necessary is the ability to perform the nerātnās dziesmas skillfully and with understanding (lylu sapruotību), how the dangerous, threatening, and uncontrollable is “wrapped in wool” (ītarpti vylnā). (p. 15)

Many of the nerātnās dainas in Barons’s collection would not be actually sung in a wedding as described by Mežāle, and they are not included in her collection, but, nevertheless, they are transmitted and known:

Don’t look for songs that are too offensive, what are called ‘raw’ songs. Of course such have been collected and many have been written down, but they are deformed and mostly without taste, don’t hold in folk song rhythm and are too Russian. But most of all I haven’t heard them sung in living tradition. Usually the lead singers just communicate the words outside of the wedding context, usually adding that they have not sung them because to actually sing such songs, then the insult-intent and drunkenness level would have to be who knows what. In short, such as wouldn’t happen. But maybe Laima has simply saved me from such weddings. (Mežāle 112 –113)

Mežāle is wrong about the most explicit and offensive songs in the Baron’s collection being technically faulty. It is striking how many technically, in terms of meter and structure, fit seamlessly into the daina world. And many of them are imaginative, clever, and sound authentic. Their persistence in being passed on from singer to singer, even if it is not actually sung in an ordinary performance, would rather argue for authenticity of the nonnormative kind. Also, others who have written forwards to bawdy song collections do not necessarily share Mežāle’s views. Mežāle also does not consider functions of erotic and bawdy songs from possible other viewpoints and settings than the ethical. What comes most obviously to mind is a general release of erotic tension, anxiety, frustration, and aggressiveness. While it seems reasonable that unmarried women would not sing bawdy songs, nevertheless they would have anxieties as to finding a suitable mate, especially if the optimum courtship period were running out. These anxieties could enter into the general atmosphere, considering that old maids and bachelors (both equally negative terms) are a primary butt of the songs. However, Mežāle’s observation that many of these songs would not have been sung in an ordinary 20^th century wedding is to be taken at face value.

It can not be claimed that a 16^th century still largely pagan mentality would have had effectively the same religious interpretation, or that all segments of society would have shared in the same view as today. Certainly, depending on the group, there would be greater or lesser tolerance for the explicit and in-your-face. It is not hard to abstract from Mežāle’s deeply Christian beliefs to other accounts that the ritual in general, even in a nonreligious perspective, while pushing at emotional limits ultimately intents to reduce tensions, rather than cause dangerous outbreaks of violence. To what degree, for instance, sexual licence may have been involved historically in the past among guests at weddings, Midsummers, or other occasions this paper cannot solve. That at least on some occasions this did occur is suggested by a number of historical accusations that deplore drunken debauchery, some of the songs themselves, and certain practices even today, but what those conditions might have been or at what historical periods can not be resolved here and would require closer examination of historical evidence.

Nieka laba nedabūju Tās māsīnas panākstos:

Ne es pate jāt dabūju, Ne auzīnas kumeļam. (35168)

I didn’t get much good at the bride chasing of that sister.

Neither did I get to ride, nor oats for my horse.

Barons has classified this as a bawdy song. While almost anything can be seen as bawdy in the appropriate frame of mind, even in English riding, oats, and horses have more than casual associations with sex. One colloquial term for joking or pranking is zirgoties (horsing around), which takes on a double entendre in that the horse is one euphemism for the phallus. Another term is iebraukt zirgu…(auzās, pupās, purvā) [to drive the horse into oats, peas, or the swamp], which I interpret as allowing emotions to confuse and get someone in trouble. Of interest is that the noun ending shows the singer to be female, and the song seems to be an example of women co-opting men’s songs.

Mežāle affirms that once bawdy songs are introduced, others may take on a double meaning, “resulting in considerable fantasy on part of the participants.” (Mežāle: 113) Indeed, many songs have the potential to be bawdy in a double entendre sense, and clearly are seen as such under some contexts. Or a song may be tweaked just enough to make sure it has a bawdy interpretation, as in the group of songs about the girl asking the boy to help her throw the hay in a pile. In its usual singing, it is closes in expressing tenderness without aggression, but in the second singing it becomes explicitly sexually aggressive:

Pati māku sienu pļauti, izkaptiņu asināt.

Tik vien lūdzu tautu dēlu lai sameta kaudzītē. (from memory)

Bija pļava, bija zāle, Bija laba kaudzes vieta;

Vajag laba tautu dēla, Kas iedūra kaudzē mietu. (LD 34 502)

I know how to mow, how to sharpen the scythe.

All I’m asking the neighbor lad is to throw the hay in a pile.

There’s the meadow, there the grass, there a place for the hay;

All that’s needed is a neighbor lad who could thrust a pole into the hay.

In comparison to Mežāle in eastern Latvia, the monograph on Suitu region singer Veronika Porziņģe in western Latvia makes little religious claims for the role of apdziedāšanās and while Porziņģe also did not write down the bawdiest songs, she does not question their authenticity. The Suitu region is known for a more aggressive stance, even though it also is a small Catholic island among Protestants.

(In a 1978 recording session) Both Veronika and Lielā Trīne allowed themselves only ‘proper’ (godīgus) texts when singing wedding songs – as appropriate to an unknown situation. To sing the nerātnās, it was not enough to beg; a crate of whiskey had to be promised. And even then the most pointed ones were not sung. Veronika did not ever step over the line where cleverness changed hands with shamelessness or vulgarity. Also in her notebook she has not written down a single ‘shameless’ verse. But she did know them! She even remembered from which woman she had heard them. (Dziesminiece Veronika Porziņģe: 12)

What seems particularly relevant, then, is that a distinction is made between what would be a personal attack on a particular person as to being appropriate behavior for that person and practices known in another context:

Ritual invective, like other forms of oral referring, sets out the values and expectations of society. Performers are given licence to focus on those qualities and behaviors, which are considered socially undesirable. By looking closely at the insults, which are offered it is possible to build up a very clear picture of community ideals…By focusing on the important structures and personalities, the oral artist relieves the tensions from outside and within society. (Edwards & Sienkewicz, p. 132)

It is possible to compare the Latvian material to topics covered in the journal Maledicta , since 1976 devoted to the study of “invectives, insults, slurs, curses, threats, blasphemies, vulgarities, offensive words and expressions, ‘bad words’, nasty or naughty language heard most often in stressful, angry and other emotionally charged situations, verbal aggression, slang for body parts and excretions, ‘dirty words’, blue words” and other vulgarisms and non-normative terms. (The Best of Maledicta: 7). The immediate impression is that the tone and effect of themes and topics of international currency involving representation of women appear to differ strongly in the Latvian version as having a largely gender-free, egalitarian, or even pro-female attitude.

Broadly speaking, today conceptually the Baltic fits into a “northern” type of general contemporary attitude toward invective and sex, including a misogyny perhaps less passionately personalized than in the south. While not an exception to misogyny and patriarchal attitudes, a strong pragmatism rather easily overrides emotional prejudices, pre-conceptions, and personal inter-family practice. The election of the first female President in Eastern Europe is an obvious example since she was seen as the best choice.

The bawdiness in the nerātnās dainas, while very explicit, neither appears typical of the male pornographic view, nor is it romantic or sentimental. Perhaps the closest in artistic tone and imagination are some of the old blues songs, such as Robert Johnson’s “Come in my Kitchen,” which stand out for their clever directness rather than crudeness.

Es puisītis, tu meitiņa, Aužam kopā audekliņu!

Tev šķietiņš, tev nītiņas, Man sudraba atspolīte. (34637,3)

I’m a boy, you’re a girl Let’s weave together some cloth!

You have the reed, you have the mail, I have a silver shuttle.

In his short, two-page forward to a publication of the nerātnās dainas in 1990 Knuts Skujenieks says: “as did our ancestors we feel the magic of words and protect the instruments of life from casual eyes and ears. But this tabu should not be absolute.” (Skujenieks: 4) His evaluation of the corpus is that it is “humane,” “sensible,” “clever,” “sensitive,” and “healthy.” (Ibid).

Some of the songs included in the nerātnā volume were sung by men night herding horses (pieguļa). Since pasturing was usually not so far from the homestead, sometimes young women would bring food or come to socialize. But in formal apzdziedāšanās performances they were most often sung by married women within ritual constraints once the contest was well under way and had become heated. Just as the song war is not left in the hands of young male aggression, which would have greater potential for turning into real violence, so perhaps powerful and potentially dangerous emotions involving hostility, arousal, discord, and grievance are mediated by those who are considered to have a special place between the sacred and profane and to have the maturity and experience to control these forces. The insults sung by the women consist of the use of graphic sexual terms that are not used in everyday language, gross exaggerations that no one would take seriously, or understatement and indirect reference recognized by everyone as double entendre. There are jokes about serving cooked genitals as inappropriate food for feasts. (34592) Some in mentioning miraculously quick pregnancies seem to even have fertility echoes:

Dievs nedod tādas meitas, Kādas meitas panāksnieces!

Nav saulīte nogājuse, Ar puišiem pelūdē;

Nav dieniņa izaususe, Ar čunčuli istabā. (34526)

God not willing such girls as the bridal pose girls!

The sun hasn’t gone down; already they’re in the shed with the lads.

The day hasn’t dawned, already with a bairn in the room.

Those resonate with other songs with miraculous births, animal couplings, and especially the sow giving birth to many piglets, or the mummer mother giving birth on the road (34916, 6), which have fertility suggestions.

Kur palika panāksnu Skaistās meitiņas?

Cit’ ar suni gubenī, Cit’ ar kuili midzenī.

Kas ar suni gubenī, Tai būs raibi kucēniņi;

Kas ar kuili midzenī, Tai būs raibi suvēniņi. (34914)

Budelīšu mātītei Ceļā tika radībiņas.

Uz akmiņa pirti kūra, Strautā slotu sutināja. (34916)

Where are the bride-chaser pretty girls?

One’s with a dog in the haycock, another with a boar in its lair.

Who’s with the dog in the haycock, will have mottled puppies;

Who’s with a boar in his lair, will have spotted piglets.

The mummer mother gave birth on the road.

The sauna was made on a stone, in the river the switch was softened.

Kursīte (1996: 7) sees totemistic identification of female with “pike, pig, marten, linden, wagtail, and Sun daughter” and of “perch, oak, wolf, hawk, and Sky son” with male. Such songs, which in a purely modern interpretation would appear just insulting, are positive as an indicator of health and fertility in a fertility context:

Kas tā tāda mella cūka Sēd pie mūsu bāleliņu?

Tā nebija mella cūka, Tā brālīša līgaviņa. (LD 21 236)

Who is that black pig sitting with our kinsmen?

That’s not a black pig, that’s brother’s bride.

While there are nerātnā dainas from the male point of view or else songs that are co-opted by women, most of the corpus does not consist of ordinary men’s recreational songs. Many can be understood in terms of the supernatural or magic or even the feminine divine. The term for the female vulva laimes caurums (Laima’s hole) while in a contemporary sense can be literally and amusingly translated as “portal of fortune and happiness,” if in mythological context is related to the Great Goddess Laima, becomes a much more awesome concept. The word tricināt, drebēt (shake, tremble) are used in two contexts. Kursīte points out that these are terms for ecstatic experiences, including that of sex (Kursīte 1999: 252 about the sun daughter’s leaf-like trembling in response to the sky sons). Similarly a sexual interpretation is reasonable in what appears to be both a courting and apdziedāšanās song about the gadfly’s ability to shake and tremble the oak branches in relation to the bee-girl. There is certainly erotic symbolism of the bee sting or of honey in other dainas. Finally cosmic creation itself involves sounds and motions that are recreated in such rituals as the noisy merrymaking of festivals and celebrations. Laima, the fate and fortune goddess of creation, makes it possible for life to emanate from the cosmic sea, which by destroying takes everything back into itself. The hole of Laima is not only the source of sexual ecstasy and the passageway of birth on an animal and human level, but on a cosmic level could be seen as the portal of creation.

That the bawdy songs were significantly connected with fertility rituals has direct evidence, such as the ritual with the stebere (phallus represented by vegetables such as a carrot and onions or fruit) in fall celebrations, which the female work party offers and is wrested away by the male work party.

Es mācēju baru vest Un steberi parādīt;

Es bij’ laba barvedīte, Man bij laba steberīte.

Puišiem nāsis izbadīšu Ar to jēra steberīti. (34639)

I know how to lead the group how to show the stebere.

A good leader of the group, I have a good stebere.

I’ll poke out the nostrils of the boys with a ram’s stebere.

What also characterizes nerātnās dainas is that many are not just pornographic imagery using graphic language, as is the following that lists the most common names:

Nevienam kundziņam Nav trejāds uzvārdiņš.

Kā manam peķīšam: Pīzda, peķis, petenīts. (35184)

Nākat šurp, ciema puiši, Še ir visi gabaliņi!

Še pupiņi, še nabiņa, Še ir pate grāvja mala,

Še ir pate grāvja mala, Melniem alkšņiem apauguse. (34487)

No lord has three surnames.

As does my snatch: cunt, pussy, nooky.

Come courting, village lads, here are all the parts!

Here the tits, here the navel, here the edge of the ditch.

Here the edge of the ditch, grown over with black alders.

Some appear as riddles and if they had not been placed in the nerātnā collection, one might not know they were double entendres:

Kas tā, velns, pār mūŗa muižu, Ne tai logu, ne tai durvju?

Vienas pašas nama durvis, Ar sūnām aizaugušas. (34822)

Kas tas, velns, par putnu bija, Nakti skrēja ezerā?

Sarkans kaklis, melni spārni, Divas lodes pakaklē. (34824)

What devil is that brick manor neither has it windows or a door.

Only one door, and that is grown over with moss.

What devil kind of bird was that dived into the lake at night?

A red neck, black wings, two balls in a wattle.

Many are quite imaginative, poetical, or humorous at the same time as they are direct and unsentimental, or use imagery that everyone can decode. Some are rauciously exhuberanat; others have a madcap way of putting someone in a ridiculous situation:

Šurp nākdamas, panāksnīcas Skārdiem šuva peteniņus: Mūsu puiši cauri dūra, Skārdi vien skanējās. (35479)

Made kauna negribēja, Mušas kaunu padarīja:Dui mušiņas sakāpās Deguniņa galiņā. (35081)

The girls of the bridal posse had sewn their cunts with tin buttons.

Our boys just pushed through, the tin ringing.

Made was prim and proper, but the flies didn’t care:

Two flies had a quick screw on the tip of her nose.

To suggest that a marriage had to be arranged quickly because the bride is already pregnant, there is allusion to her dripping milk. Or a woman may be said to have a child hidden in a shed or bushes. Alternatively the bride’s party girls may be jokingly insulted of being in a similar state. What is more remarkable about the Latvian corpus is that the men are insulted along the very same lines:

Ko, Jānīti, godājies(i)? Sen es tavu godu zinu:

Piecu bērnu tēvs tu biji, Vēl par puisi godājies. (34853)

Why, Yani, are you displaying honor? I know your honor too well.

The father of five children, you still pretended to be a lad.

The Victorian sense that females have only procreative sex does not seem to be supported by either the nearātnās or other related dainas, or by the range of knowledge exhibited in the nerātnā corpus, the frank acknowledgement of female arousal and desire, and the exhuberance shown as consistent with celebration and the language of ritual laughter. In addition to Propp’s study of ritual laughter in the tale of Nesmejana, Cohn identifies the ritual laughter to have a similar function in the Japanese myth about Ame no Uzume’s bawdy dance to lure out the sun goddess Amaterasu from the cave she has hidden and plunged everything into darkness and death:

As commentators such as Yanagita and Matsumura Takeo have pointed out, because laughter was thought by the ancient Japanese, like members of other primitive societies, to be an effective way of propitiating or placating deities, it played and important role in magico-religious rites. In particular, the laughter engendered by the exposure of the female genitalia was thought to be effective in promoting or renewing the regenerative powers of life, just as the female organs themselves were thought to have the power to subdue malevolent spirits. At any rate, the association of laughter with displays of vitality and (successful) efforts to resotre light and life to a disturbed world is very much in keeping with the comic gestalt pattern. (Cohn: 13)

The archaic nature of many of the basic associations is underscored for instance by Vīķe-Freibergs in her discussion of the formulaic “Lai skan (dzird) visa pasaulīte” (May the whole world resound). She concurs with a 1962 dissertation by Polis that in one case the Midsummer calendar and fertility deity Yānis’s position on the gatepost is possibly replaced by a representation of the female vulva (1997: 91-94). Parallels to the yoni - lingum cult of India come to mind:

Sit, Jānīti, vaŗa bungas Vārtu staba galiņā!

Lai skan visa pasaulīte, Lai sanāca Jāņu bērni. (53801)

Piķīts sēd liepiņā, Pelēkām austiņām.

Sit piķīti, vaŗa bungas, Lai skan visa pasaulīte. (53970)

Beat, Yani, the copper drum on top of the gatepost!

May the whole world resound, may the children of Yanis assemble!

Piķīts (the vulva) was sitting in the linden with gray ears.

Bang, piķīt, the copper drums, may all the world resound.

The frankness, the exaggeration, or depiction of vigorous sexuality not characteristic of Western values until recently, is not to say that sexuality is not controlled, or that either female promiscuity or adultery would be sanctioned. The bee cult seems to be a cult especially focused on married life concerned with normative sexuality. To what degree and under what conditions nonreproductive and premarital sex may have been either practiced or on any level condoned is yet an issue to study and most likely doesn’t have a simple answer. There are many songs about males trying to score by saying they won’t get the female pregnant, which suggest that premarital and nonreproductive sex were factually acknowledged. At the very least coitus interruptus is frequently depicted as birth control, as well as other forms of nonstandard or nonreproductive sex where the girl is “saving” her vulva for her future husband, though clearly having sex (35329, 35340), or there isn’t actual penetration (cf 35375.

Pis, kundziņi, kurpītē, Ne manā pežiņā!

Lai stāvēja mana peža Arājiņa dēliņam. (35340)

Pirms, tautieti, mani ņemsi, Es jau pist tev nedošu; Kad paņemsi, tad es došu, Saujiņā turēdama. (35329)

Fuck, lordling, in my shoe, not in my pussy.

Let my pussy wait for the ploughman’s son.

Before you take me as yours, young man, I won’t let you fuck me;

When you take me (for a bride), I’ll give you holding in my hand.

Many songs might be said to lack coyness in a Western and Christian perspective. In one song the pussy is straining its “ears” after the lads going to night pasturing (35001). In another (34887) the male is saying “gana, gana” (enough, enough) while the female is saying vēl gribās! (want more). In others the girl responds to advances by mock threatening to break off the phallus (35599), still others joke about her relieving “those needs” with a horn or other object (35349, 35350) until the real object is available. (Cf 35349) Some songs suggest she is not a passive partner in sex, as when she offers her “lake for the horse to swim in” adding “Ne tik dziļi, ne tik sekli, Pa pavadas galiņam.” (Not so deep, not so shallow, but restrained by holding the bridle.) In another she says she herself knows how to “shove the lad’s tool into her water depths” (Pate māku puikas rīku Sev dzelmē iepravīt. – 35256). A number of songs take pride in thick cunt hair as an indication of health and vigour, and some songs make fun of shearing it like wool. There is considerable aggressiveness displayed by the females that matches that of the males:

Brīnumiem es izaugu Viena meita māmiņai;

Man kūsītis sāvu stāv, Puišiem dūru vēderā. (34511)

Panāksnieku meitiņām Pucšķērītes kājstarpī;

Dodiet mūsu puisēniem Sveču galus nopucēt! (35241)

Panākst puiši piestu jāja, Pagaldē pagāzuši.

Vai jūs akli neredzat, Ne tai roku, ne tai kāju.

Ne tai roku, ne tai kāju, Ne melnajacaurumiņa. (35243)

Gribiet, puiši, ņemiet mani, Gribiet, mani neņemiet!

Es piesaku jums pie laika, Apuškā negulēšu. (34731)

What a wonderful girl I grew up, an only daughter for my mother;

My cunt hair stands straight up and pokes the boys straight in the stomach.

The bridal posse girls have shears between their legs. Let our boys polish up some candle ends.

The bridal posse boys were riding amortar Overturned it under a table.

Are you blind that you cannot see? It’s got no hands or feet.

It’s got no hands or feet, not even a black hole.

If you want me, boys, take me, if you don’t, it’s all the same!

But I will tell you ahead of time, I’ll not sleep on the bottom.

What also does not appear in the contest is direct name-calling, such as “whore” or “slut” (mauka), but the reason may be more complicated than avoiding direct invective. The females of the opposite side are accused of having such insatiable drives as to engage in outrageous and unacceptable behavior, such as having sex with animals, which is the same accusation as made for the men. Something like having sex with animals in an agricultural society is at least conceivable, and there are myths about animal and human lovers and spouses, but it is outrageous enough to not be taken as a real insult. In one comic scene the cunt is pictured lying in wait like a predatory animal with vagina dentata teeth instead of the maidenhead:

Pīzdiņ’ guļ vīrekstīs, Zobus vien erģīdama.

Kaut pipele zinājusi, Pīzdai purslas izbadītu. (35285,1)

The cunt was lying in the spirea, showing its teeth.

Would the prick have known, it would have pushed right through.

The term rīka meita (tool girl) appears in the corpus (34592) only in a contemptuous sense, opposed to the term alus puisis (beer lad – 35501) or staļļa puisis (horse groomer – 35526, 35527). The implication is that only low character or status people would engage in certain activities:

Staļlu puisis, rīku meita, Tie bij abi biedrinieki:

Staļla puisis izsukāja Rīku meitas pavēderi. (35526)

Horse groomer, tool girl: great companions.

Horse groomer brushed out tool girls’s underbelly.

Terms for a prostitute, in north Europe apparently being used archaically for an adulterous woman, such as kuņa (bitch) are found in the nerātnā daina collection, but according to Burgen (p. 77), calling someone by that name isn’t a deadly insult to people in northern Europe:

And if they’ve failed to protect or control their women and, by extension, safeguard the family line and the inheritance, he must bear some of the blame. We are talking, of course, about southern Europe. Northern European men just don’t seem to care what their women do any more. Call a Swede or a German a son of a whore and he’ll think you’re nuts. Call an Englishman a cuckold and the chances are he won’t even know what you mean. (Burgen:110)

Ko, Ieviņa, godējies? Es jau tavu godu zinu:

Visu puišu brūte biji, Piecu bērnu māmuliņa. (34848)

Why, Ieviņa, display your honor? I know your honor all too well:

You were bride to all the boys, the mother of five children.

There are a number of dainas that can be interpreted as the trade of sex for goods, the second perhaps one of the few cases of genuinely sinister domestic black comedy:

Gotiņ mana raibaļiņa Ar pežiņu nopelnīta:

Ja pežiņas man nebūtu, Nebūt govs raibaļiņas. (34725)

Ko, vīriņ, tu rājies, Neba tavu naudu dzēru:

Es pārdevu melnu jēru, Melnā jēra naudu dzēru. (34878)

My dear cow, my spotted one, earned with my cunt:

If I didn’t have a cunt, there’d be no spotted cow.

Why carp at me, hubby. I wasn’t drinking with your money.

I sold the black lamb and drank with its money.

The black lamb is, of course, a euphemism, and the wife has acquired a tragic form of independence from an inadequate domestic arrangement.

In contrast to modern urban male entertainment, it is striking that the nerātnā complex is almost entirely about courtship or domestic situations, with only a minority ascribing doubtful practices to other ethnic groups (Russians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Gypsies, Jews) and even those are not particularly rancorous.

Māmulīte bēdājās, Tēvam stega nolužusi.

Nebēdājies, māmuliņa, Vēl tas cegris (stegris) cilājas. (34960)

Mother was sorrowing that father’s tool be broken.

Don’t worry, mother, that tool is still rising.

In the nerātnā daina corpus there are very many instances of metonymy where negativity is lacking in the sexual organ, either male or female, standing for the person. In the classical literature on the subject, including the feminist, there is supposed to be a fundamental attitude difference as to metonymical usage of male or female sexual anatomy, for instance:

The worst insults for men nearly all come back to women: to being a cunt, what a woman is; a bastard, which is a woman’s fault; or a queer, like a woman. As men are so fond of saying, ‘Life’s a bitch’. (Burgan: 102)

This does not appear to be the case in the relatively egalitarian nerātnā daina world and the effect is less to demean as to personify the sexual organ and to release it from constraints of seriousness.

Rikšu, lēkšu pežiņa Pār istabiņu.

Pipele pakaļ Šņaukādama. (35427)

Trotting, cantering the pussy is across the room.

The prick is after her blowing spittle.

Depiction of anthropomorphicized organs doing human-like things like dancing would be consistent with values that do not consider sex per se to be shameful, but rather powerful in the sense of magic. It is consistent with a worldview where both the phallus and the vulva are symbolically displayed as powerful magic, as possibly in some Midsummer songs. In the songs where a female is depicted, as running through the forest blowing a horn, what is being laughed at is her inappropriate behavior, since as part of marriage symbolism, young men announce their courtship intentions by blowing horns. Additionally, the phrase buļļa ragu cilājot (to take up a bull horn) is a euphemism. A woman said to take up a male courting gesture, is depicted as being so “horny” that she looses control, assumes a male role, and therefore becomes laughable. And yet, there isn’t that sense of absolutely condemning or mortal sin equivalent; it is more a sense of laughing at the ridiculous and incongruous. There is also a strong element of female bravado:

Es izaugu krietna meita, es piemīzu ezeriņu;

Tur tie jāja, tur noslīka Slavenie tautu dēli.

Es to daudz nebēdāju, Ka man’s zēni neprecēja,

Kāp’ kuiļam mugurā, Jāju pate precībās. (34702)

Es, kāzāsi atnākdama, Skādi vien padarīju:

Es saplēsu mālu podu, Puišam dēlu pataisīju.

I grew up a mighty girl, I peeed a whole lake full;

There they rode, there they drowned: those famous suitors - boys. (34683,1)

I didn’t worry overlong if no one came to court me.

I mounted a boar and myself went courting.

Coming to wedding I just made trouble

I broke the clay pot, made the lad a son. (34663)

Similar to the mumming song:

Es mājās nepāriešu, Kamēr skādi padarīšu:

Citu gadu ap šo laiku,Tad būs mazi budelīši.

Nudie’ māte, kas dievvārds, Es bez puiša negulēšu.

Ņemšu puisi aiz matiem, Raušu salmu gubenī. (35196)

I won’t go home until I’ve made trouble.

This year about the same time there will be little ones, mummers.

Really, mother, I swear to you, I’m not sleeping without a lad.

I’ll grab a lad by his hair and pull him into the haycock.

(The term raut (grab) is the term used in bride abduction.)

There are a number of examples where something would be much more likely a genuine threat in real life from the male point of view, such as breaking the clay pot and making a child, and indeed this songs does have variants from the male point of view with a less ridiculous and more threatening effect. In the song contest a male boast is cleverly and with bravado co-opted by the females. On the other hand the tie to the cosmic and magic also exists with this image. Kursīte points out that the broken vessel is both a symbol for coitus and for destruction of the cosmos followed by reconstruction. In some dainas it is the sky god who breaks the vessel, and a goddess gathers the pieces to bind them into a new vessel. (Kursīte, 1996: 21):

Dieviņš kannu sadauzīja Pa vienam gabalam;

Mīļā Māra sastīpoja Ar sudraba stīpiņām. (Tdz 55 346)

Dieviņš broke the jug piece by piece;

Dear Māra bound the pieces with silver hoops.

In other dainas the Sun maiden gathers the branches of an oak tree struck and destroyed by the Thunder god. By a slight twist the sacred erotic can be turned to comedy. The motif of the shaking bride overcome by emotions appears on the sacred plane with the sun daughter(s) shaking with in the presence of the courting sky gods. In context of still other dainas, there is possible connection to the cosmological shaking of the universe as it is being created. Additionally, the nerātnā corpus has a strange type of mock insult parody. The young men are placed in an inverse, laughable, and yet believable position of shaking like leaves, overcome by emotions when speaking to girls.

Drebi, drebi, apšu lapa, Vējiņš tevi drebināja;

Tā drebēja puišu sirdis, Ar meitām runājot.

Shake, tremble aspen leaf, the wind shook you;

That is how boys’ hearts tremble speaking to girls.

Topics of insult generally involve putting the opponent in a ridiculous, laughable, and vulnerable position. “The simplest kind of verbal attack is to accuse another person of low intelligence or lack of culture. Usually this involves scatological images and anatomy, rather than sex.” (The Best of Maledicta: 12) Descriptions in the nerātnās range from slightly nonstandard, such as women peeing standing up, to slapstick or loosing control at formal, inopportune, and dignified occasions by something like farting. There are also outright medical problems, such as not being able to hold water. Generally they are cross-culturally recognizable. Appearance and clothing are commonly derided as outrageously inadequate, and especially noticeable are the many dainas making fun of the quality of one’s horse. While the horses of both males and females are made fun of, additionally the horse is prototypically associated with male display and as double entendre with the phallus.

Conspicuously absent are insults about female relatives or mothers. There are almost no references to homosexuality, but there are some to anal sex (35504 in a derogative fashion.

Vāciešam galva sāp, Man sāp sūdu caurumiņš;

Liec, vācieti, savu galvu, Pie tā mana caurumiņa. (35668)

The German’s head hurts, my asshole hurts

Place, German, your head by that hole.

However, oral sex is describd in a few for both sexes (cf 35002, 35139, 34524), as are various positions (cf 35144) including standing up (cf 35374), from the rear (cf 34974), and bestiality. Except for the last, they have a matter-of-fact tone.

Kuņa kuņa ganu meita, Suņam deva ganīdama.

Man nedeva, puisīšam, Ne svētdienas rītiņā. (34898)

Bitch, bitch, the herder girl, herding, she gave to the dog.

She didn’t give to me, a lad, not even on Sunday morning

Fantastic dainas where humans are accused of siring or birthing strange animals (cf 34904) underscore the historical roots of magic involving human – animal couplings and are another example of difficulties in trying to infer straightforwardly. Bestiality is not a real insult when it is fertility magic or the fantastic, nor may it be taken seriously as insult in the apdziedāšanās ritual. This does not, however, exclude unsanctioned practice. Voyeurism (35590) and autoeroticism seems to be straightforwardly depicted as practice. In practices, such as use of vegetables (cf 35418) there are no clues if the context is magic, realistic, or fantasy. All are probably possible components within an overall frame of insult and exaggeration.

Pēterīti, bāleliņi, Sāc ūziņas brucināt!

Es redzēju tautu meitu, Savu kūsi skrūvējot. (35066)

Rācenīšus ravējot, Dabūj rutku steberīti.

Visu nakti meņģējos Ar to rutku steberīti. (35418)

Dievs dod prieku, veselību Mazajam bērniņam!

Bērniņš zīda mātes cici, Māte tēva pipelīti. (34524).

Peter, brother, start whetting your pants!

I saw the girl, screwing her cunt hair.

Weeding turnips, I found a magic black radish.

All night long I was messing with the black radish.

God give health and happiness to the little child!

The bairn was sucking at mother’s tit, mother on dad’s cock

Because the songs are performed under liminal conditions, the question of to what degree inversion of ordinary expected male/ female behavior is a source of humor is relevant. But the answer is not as simple as it may seem in view of the broader context outside the nerātnās dainas, which do imply considerable egalitarianism and parallelism within clear gender divisions. Of course, the more exaggerated, the less probable. The question of tolerance of non-normative also comes up. Latvian society was in pre-industrial times rather individualistic in its scattered settlement pattern, thereby leaving considerable responsibility to the individual for his behavior, rather than having absolute tabus or rigid laws, so one would expect considerable flexibility in adapting to the circumstances. Also one may consider the trickster literature noting that by comically breaking social norms, the opposite, in fact is strengthened. Such elements as lack of control over ones biology and psychology, unquenchionable gluttony and sexual appetite, irresponsibility, and ignoring self-restraint codes are all characteristics of the trickster and liminality. But those historical sources that rail at “debauchery” as a part of certain celebrations, indicate named practices to be known if not standard or acknowledged. and suggest the relationship to performance to be sufficiently complex that recent Western characterizations of women can not be automatically assumed as models for female behavior.

These are farmwomen valued for their ability to do hard work and their ready wit; a helpless, dependent person is a luxury, not an asset. As in Balkan female singing, display of health and vitality is a courting strategy. Sexuality is an acknowledged aspect of being the potentially healthy mother of children, and also fundamental in cross-cultural standards of beauty with presumably different adaptations to broad socioecology. The Baltic has even been a source of a significant number of female Olympic medallists. In a 1630 witch trial a husband accuses his wife of being a witch and trying to strangle him, not a believable scenario for a physically weak person. (Straubergs II: 547) The daina woman is certainly not a langurous damsel in distress, and even if the depiction is exaggerated as in songs where parties of girls are described as a bunch of rowdies, the exhuberance is believable. The first song (35384) doesn’t even seem like much of an exaggeration, but in some cases could have happened, while the second case in comparing the girls to dogs peeing on fenceposts is clearly much more exaggerated. The third (34498) has elements of both realism and fantasy.

Meitas puisi piepeņķēja, Pie priedītes siliņā.

Kalaid puisis peņķējās, Talaid meitas gabalā. (35384, 1)

Bez ceļa nākuās Panākstu meitas,

Pār žogu lēkušas, Gar mietu mīzušas.

Egļu žogu pārlēkušas, Apšu mietu apmīzušas. (34498)

Ko, puisīti, knakstījies? Tu jau manim nepatīci.

Kurš puisītis man patika. Tam es pate palīdzēju. (34857)

The girls tied the boy to the pine tree in the forest.

While the boy was getting loose, the girls were long gone.

Cutting through back roads, bride chaser girls

Have cleared the fence, peed along the posts.

The pine fence jumped, peed on the aspen posts.

Don’t bother groping around me, lad; I don’t like you.

If I liked a lad, I myself helped him.

In one group of dainas the defense of female honor is humorously seen in terms of putting on military armor:

Šuj, māmiņa, man krekliņu, Šuj tērauda piešuviņu!

Lai tautieša vara diņķis Garām skrēja tirkšķēdams. (35477)

Sew, mother, for me a shirt. Sew a steel bottom to it.

So the suitor’s copper tool will run past, twanging.

To attempt to study to what extent and under what conditions nonreproductive and pre-marital sex may have actually been tolerated in the 16^th century when the pagan world view was still quite strong, it would be helpful to know the extent of the knowledge of abortificants and contraceptives by the “grandmothers” or “witches” who were both herbalists and specialists in birthing and fertility. Infanticide of undesired infants, most obviously resulting from rape in a raid, is depicted in a number of sobering songs. The unwanted child is often labeled as belonging to a foreigner and is returned to the waters (drowned), while “our” child is “lifted into the sun” or offered life with the protection of society.

Ko, Trīnīte, godējies? Sen es tavu godu zinu:

Divi dēli, trešā meita Guļ ezera dibinā. (34851)

Why, Trinite, putting on airs? Long I’ve known your honor.

Two sons, the third a daughter sleep at the bottom of the lake.

Another tragic topic covered but made light of in the nerātnā corpus is child neglect and death resulting from irresponsible mothering:

Jostenieku meitiņām Pilni grāvji bērnu brēca.

Citu bērnu vilks aiznesa, Citu zaķis nobadīja. (35115)

The Jostenieku girls had ditches full of crying babes.

This child a wolf carried away, another the rabbit knocked down.

It is possible that women might have had a high degree of control over their fertility, and therefore some freedom in sex. The factor that serf women were considered lower class, from the viewpoint of the German landowners, and therefore not having the same standards or respect as (German) manor women may be another factor to consider. The power of higher standing men, such as the manor lords over lower standing women, such as the serfs on their manors, does not escape depiction in the songs. It is also probable, to guess from current attitudes going back a number of gnerations in addition to internal daina evidence, that there was considerable tolerance of experimentation between a promised or betrothed couple, and that premarital sex between betrothed couples was apparently a not uncommon practice, suggesting alternative wedding arrangements.

Neliedzies, tu Jānīti, Tu pie manis klātgulēji!

Man pieder tavas auzas, Tavs bērais kumeliņš. (35176)

Don’t deny it, Jaani, you slept with me!

I own your oats and your bay horse.

The claim of the female upon the male and his assets by right of him having slept with her has strong social support and pressure for marriage in the event of pregnancy and has continued to recent times. Once a good match had been made, fertility, of course, was highly sought and desired. From the sociobiological perspective, indiscriminate promiscuity would not be a desirable reproductive strategy for the typical female in any society. However, absolute abstinence and intolerance for nonreproductive sex may be more of a Christian than vernacular and pagan value.

This is not to say that the daina world is an exception to international human differences in sex and gender in terms of confrontational explicit aggression. Latvian shares in the Indo-European metaphor of the male as predator and the female as prey in the form of a bird, small furry animals such as martens, or more startling to contemporary concepts – the bear. The metaphor is common in the wedding enactment and the male scores by shooting the animal or bagging the bird. However, in the daina world the songs are playful and fall in the area of limited and humorous aggression as an acknowledgement of tension rather than serious sadomasochism. They lack the tone of more serious aggression and in some cases have rejoinders. The popular folk song “Suņi zaķim pēdas dzina” (The dogs were taking up the rabbit’s tracks) ends:

Lai gan zaķīts līku, loku, Tomēr mednieks nošauj to!

Although the rabbit darts here and there, the hunter shoots it dead.

(cited from memory)

But sung to the same tune, is the opposite counter “Ai, sunīši, nerejieti” (Oh, dogs, don’t bark), which ends with the squirrel showing only its rear end to the dogs:

Maza bija, bet ražena Diža meža vāverīt’.

Asti vien tik parādīja medinieka sunīšiem.

Small she was, but clever, the worthy forest squirrel:

Showed only tail to the hunter’s dogs. (cited from memory)

Significant amounts of imagery circulating in oral tradition today is less playful and more sinister than what is in the nerātnā collections (dainas, anecdotes, beliefs, etc.) with explicit and aggressive jokes about girls as rabbits and scoring symbolized by animal heads as trophies on the wall. Some are close to the kind of cruel and sadistic humor described by Kurlents in heroic literature and bylinas. Not infrequently current harsh and crude jokes are described as Russian rather than Latvian. Strong and open emotionality is seen as Russian in opposition to the more reserved and indirect or even icy Latvian. On Jan. 1, 2001 I humorously challenged a New Year’s greeting of a listserve member who had posted a wish for the members to have fat rabbits or Santa Claus by asking if “fat” indicated promise of prosperity for the low birth rate in Latvia. (I was deliberately equating “fat” with “pregnant.”) Up to that point the exchange was still in light mode, but the answer was in dark humor mode, which contrasts to and is uncharacteristic of daina mentality. Heavy topics, including AIDS, had been raised in the previous month’s discussions:

I myself like thin ones better, on a plate or otherwise (and in general healthy food is such that afterward the plate can be be washed with cold water without problems) but who would wish diseased rabbits for others.

There doesn’t seem to be anything equivalent in the nerātnās dainas, and venereal disease doesn’t appear as an item, though there are many dainas about medical dysfunctions and abornalities that would interfere with normal sex.

Thus, an extended study would have to note value differences in historical periods as archaic, 19^th century, and 20^th century at the very least. Many of the nerātnās dainas have an archaic cast to them as being a part of the ritual of laughter. The frankness and female openness that one does not expect in Western society until recently may belong to a special archaic game, ritual, and language complex that has parallels in other cultures. Torn from context, the nerātnās dainas loose their normative-in-a-nonnormative context and become purely nonnormative or in some cases either just funny or pornographic, depending on values.

Lec, lec, Grietiņ, Tu vari lēkt,

Ne tev kūlās Ne karājās. (34950)

Jump, jump, Grietiņa, You could jump.

There was nothing swinging, nothing dangling from you.

Probably sung by the men:

Meitas brēca, meitas sauca, Baltas rokas lauzīdamas:

Vārna nesa pautu kuli, Jau pipeli aiznesusi. (35009)

Girls were screaming, girls were calling, wringing their hands:

The crow was carrying away the bag of balls, and had already taken the pecker away.

Similarly the cunt is depicted, as screaming and crying that the cock is drowning, but is assured it will come out all right in 35260,1.

The dominance of women in a public event for both genders is consistent with archaic views that believe women, particularly older women, to have special supernatural powers, particularly pertainintg to fertility, successful birth, and welfare. The ambiguous +/- power of the witch has not been turned into totally evil by a male psychology that polarizes women as attractive or not attractive (=hostile, to be feared or put down) with the capability of assigning social roles accordingly. It is distinct from inter-male recreation or inter-gender teasing and flirting among young people in courtship. There isn’t much available on how much public flirting was tolerated in the past, and the whole topic of joking relations between in-laws, marking special areas of potential stress and conflict, has not been studied. During the wedding, the relationship of daughter and mother-in-law is addressed directly through joking insult songs. Other obvious relationships would include sisters-in-law (māsa, mārša) and new wife with brothers-in-law (dieveri). Of all the songs with a male “I” the ones approaching real hostility are directed at the “daughter’s mother” (meitu māte) in the courtship phase as she obviously has considerable power as to her daughter(s) being accessible for courtship. As for relationships between unmarried young people, in the memory of informants, liaisons were carried on privately, and public joking was less teasing than rough public acknowledgement of sexual tension, and more likely between people who were not likely to be involved. If one were actually involved with someone, they would not want to call attention to it. The songs that focus on boy-girl relationships is a large corpus, and would require a separate study: LD9287-13175. However, the daina world is largely lacking in romantic love poetry with resulting ambiguous expressions of aggression and attraction:

Jokes directed against members of the opposite sex were aggressive and at the same time served as a means to steady the ambivalence of hostility felt toward the opposite sex and being drawn toward it.” (The Best of Maledicta: 67)

That is not to say, of course, that there is a lack of softer expression of tender feeling between courting couples or married couples. The section on courting (precība) songs has many examples. In fact, one thing that stands out in the nerātnā daina corpus is the framing of some nonmissionary types of sex as marital, rather than outside the family context. It might be expected that urban culture s would define prostitute.s conceptually more in market than social terms. There is also much parallel imagery of male and opposing female, though as far as song wars, Midsummers was the one definite time men and women sang against each other.

Dižens auga ozoliņš Mālainā kalniņā.

Pretī auga kupla liepa. Kas ozolu kaitināja. (LD 2804)

Stately grew the oak on a clay hill.

Facing (against) it grew the luxuriant linden teasing the oak.

Modern performances include informal teasing between young people; however, one should not simply extrapolate from the present to the past, especially since the sanction against unmarried girls participating in sexual insults is not necessarily observed in our times. Likewise, since individuals and groups have different tolerances, what speech acts would be regarded as genuine insults also differ. In present-day Latvia some serious re-negotiation of values is taking place.

The course of a virtual “song war” that erupted on one Latvian listserve last year, lends some support for the psychological basis of women-mediated ritual as opposed to spontaneous interaction. There were significantly fewer female participants, but they knew the songs better. The “war” ended somewhat abruptly as some of the men got too aggressive with their insults. This was repeated on a smaller scale in August, 2000. One of the female participants of the original “war” was sufficiently insulted by a sexual innuendo about chasing young boys that she quit posting for a while, even after an apology by the offender was offered. The joking started with the woman saying she did not prefer men with mustaches and beards as a way of telling someone who had shown interest in her to “buzz off” through joke, and therefore offering “face” for his retreat. But the man insulted failed to understand the convention and therefore instead of accepting this face-saving gesture decided to insult her back. The return insult that stepped over the line was that she should prefer a mature man to one who didn’t yet have hair. This, of course, comes too close to the serious criminal charge of pedophilia, not a joking matter since there had recently been an actual scandal involving government officials, though male. Women may know the ritual song and talk conventions better even today, while some men may not sense limits to aggression, thereby stepping over the line into genuine insult and/or dangerous aggression. As people got to know each other on the listserve, the level of tension decreased and adjusted to a generally more common level of tolerance that was higher than originally, and with less extreme “testing” of what would be tolerated.

Examples of archaic connections of comedy to bawdiness abound from archaic Greek sources, the sorrowing Demeter being cheered by Baubo, or in the Kojiki the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu being drawn out of her self-imprisoned cave by the indecent dance of a female trickster Ame no Uzume. (cf Cohn: 12 – 14) Interpreting Slavic evidence, Propp, also emphasizes the magic function of both ritual laughter and sexuality on the crudely direct level of exposing the genitals. These are “displays of vitality” (Cohn: 13) in the face of destruction, an act originally of magic. As mentioned previously, there does seem to be evidence for a yoni – lingam cult, possibly at Midsummer and surviving to today, the stebere phallus. If the yoni cult disappeared earlier than the lingam, it is more evidence for continuing patriarchalization of concepts century by century from an Old European period where, as Gimbutas indicates, the hedgehog was venerated as a womb, and the toad as the mother of milk. Where greater social differentiation and a more military-heroic reality with its ethic resulted in one gender revolution, influence from the Great Religions and the medieval realities they represented affected another. Today there is, of course, another paradigmatic shift in basic conceptual categories and orientation.

Along with the introductory remarks to the colloquial translations of select bawdy dainas, Sex Songs of the Ancient Letts (1969), there are several articles written by medical doctors in some of the folk song collections that don’t elaborate much more than to agree that the ancestors had a healthy and natural approach to life. Information on non-normative language does not appear in standard dictionaries. Even in Karulis’s etymological dictionary of archaic terms, the relevant information is hidden, rather than directly accessible. In November 2000 there was a minor public stir when word got out that an elderly professor who had published 1000 copies of a slim volume of invectives was unhappy that these copies had caught public attention. However, the words not used in polite company circulate as in electronic chats among young people.

As one concentrates on apdziedāšanās songs and nerātnās in particular, one gets the sense of entering an earthy agrarian world, rule-governed and with a strong sense of ethics, but perhaps rather different from Anglo-Puritanic heritage in its different division of frankness and indirectness. It is much more direct, but the directness is expressed artfully and with humor and is therefore an “indirect direct.” It is a comic world where even the most serious mishaps, accidents, violations, and misfortunes are reacted to with laughter ranging from sympathetic to invective. And it speaks of archaic, alternative ways of organizing society that the church tried to suppress since it became a power in its efforts to become the only conduit between the mundane and the sacred. Even today it has not entirely erased these concepts. One finds in this world something closer to nonwestern attitudes that have not been transformed by Christian models. The Berzing and Arsene book describes the wedding in earthy terms, and their remarks on apdziedāšanās are:

The German conquerors threw the Lettish wedding out of kilter by forcing the couple to show up at the altar for a church wedding. Thus, after the Christian ritual, the Letts separated. The bridal crowd went to her parents’ home to stoke up for the coming chase, the bride-nappers left for the groom’s diggings to prepare for the party. The ritual demanded that they undergo mock harassment and resistance on the road from ‘the bride’s guerillas.’ At the farm, the womenfolk would attack them caustically with songs before they were shown the dowry…[At the groom’s end] The confrontation at the gate would produce a ruckus as the group on the inside indignantly denied any knowledge of a kidnapped girl. Acid missives in quatrain form would fly over the fence (35395). Eventually the bride-chasers would be admitted-to look for themselves-and finally the bride would be found in some corner of the farm. During these preliminaries as well as throughout most of the wedding feast, the two competing choruses would blister the air with acid rhyme… (Berzing and Arsene: 138-9)

There is a strong sense that a restriction of graphic terms equivalent to what are known as “Anglo-Saxon four-letter words” to ritual almost surely has more to do with their magic power than with prudery, since earthy discourse is not absent from the everyday. Just as dangerous animals - wolves, bears, and snakes - were spoken of indirectly, so there were indirect words for private body parts in mundane circumstances. In the nerātnā daina corpus double meanings include assorted metaphors and euphemisms for having sex such as washing or swimming a stallion or colt in a lake, feeding oats to a horse, breaking a clay jar, a bear with a whistle in its mouth, ploughing or harrowing, digging or falling into a trench, a key unlocking a gate or box, scoring a bear, shooting or finding a marten or squirrel, offering a bun with a hole to a man, keeping a knife in a sheath, opening a box or door with a key, drinking billy-goat milk, being penetrated by an oak branch, and taking off a girl’s wreath. Female imagery includes black birches at the edge of a lake, a river overgrown with osiers, a drum, and a butterbox with mice after it. The billy goat horn, a drumstick, and the stallion are some of the most common male images. Situation and context determine if a term is sexual. Thus one must decide if the mention of a horse (kumeliņš) is a straighforward reference to a horse or a euphemism for the phallus. As the wreath is the symbol of the girl’s honor, so the cap is the symbol of male honor: “Kumeliņi, kumeliņi, Tu man kaunu padarīji: Tev kājiņa paslīdēja, Man nokrita cepurīte. Man nokrita cepurīte Daiļu meitu pulciņā.” (Colt, my riding colt, you dishonored me: your foot slid my hat fell off, my hat fell off in a group of pretty girls.)

Graphic sexual and scatological terms even today are, not used in everyday speech. And even today, in spite of fifty years of strong Russian influence, there is some resistance to using sexual terms in invective:

My view on invective and the influence of other peoples is that the ‘old’ humor of Latvians was more scatological (sūdains, mēslains) than sexually oriented, and that invective was essentially gender-free. This is in contrast to the Russian where most of the swear words are oriented toward the recipient’s family. Of course Russian influence has made its inroads. It appears that English speakers and Germans also don’t have this approach, and the strongest terms of abuse for Germans seem to be about pigs. (Ragze, personal communication)

Latvian tends to resort to foreign words, such as Russian, when in need of particularly strong swear words and the old collections of swear words do not seem to use sexual terms for swearing. Both “mother” and “brother-in-law” (suggesting familiarity with one’s sister) insults and swearing are conspicuously absent as recorded in archaic Latvian tradition, in contrast to their conspicuousness in modern Russian. Burgen notes that absence of mother insults is characteristic of northern Europe. (Burgen: 77) Philip Thody points out that modern Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Welsh don’t use sexual terms as swear words, while French, German, Spanish, and Italian do. (Thody: 143) The usual explanation is that historically Western religions have seen sex as shameful and emphasized its relation to sin. (cf Sagarin). The use of sexual terms for invective is an indication that there is shame or anxiety about such usage. The general lack of such invective usage in the traditional Latvian past suggests that the graphic terms were not avoided because of shame, but because they were seen as powerful magic not to be used mundanely.

Another indication that this was the case is that everyone in the countryside, male and female, originally knew the terms. This is in contrast to the repertoire of genteel/ women’s language vs. street/ men’s language where genteel women may be completely unaware of men’s street terms in urban cultures:

The fact that swearing in modern English no longer tends to be blasphemous, but to refer almost exclusively to parts of the body considered unclean, is an indication of how modern taboos differ from those of the past. In pre-literate and pre-industrial societies, taboos did not merely refer to what was forbidden. They also hedged around what was sacred. This concept plays little part in modern taboos. (Thody, 143)

Thus, Latvian still has the invective, vilks (velns, jods) tevi parauj (may the wolf [devil, dark one] take you or sasper pērkons [jods] (may thunder [dark one] strike you) as a reminder that in the past speaking the name of a dangerous creature would summon it even involuntarily. The verb parauj is strong enough to be used as an invective without an agent or an unidentified one: rauj viņu deviņi (may nine take you). (Straubergs II: 546, 644) The use of rupuce (toad) in Lithuanian as a strong swear word is further indication, since toads were sacred in Baltic belief systems, a sign of the Milk Mother, but the expression would only evoke bemusement to the typical Western ear. In Latvian the word rupeklis is used to mean “coarse, vulgar person.” Blasphemy doesn’t appear to be common in the daina world either, perhaps another indicator of the rather superficial layer of Christianity in it, predating modern secularism. Both thunder and velns (devil), however, are invoked from the list of archaic deities, but not the death goddess Veļu māte. However, since graphic sexual terms were known and spoken at certain times, but avoided at others, their association with supernatural power in view of other contextual information is quite likely.

Animal terms for women, such as marten or wagtail, or for their anatomy, especially referring to small furry animals, appears to be lacking in negativity, even though they may have little association with the supernatural. One might expect avoidance of reference to the bear as a dangerous creature, but curiously the animal is involved in the erotic semantic field both as the animal with a whistle in its mouth and the hunter shooting, hitting a bear in the “hole of Laima” (34934). The bear was one of the forms of the Great Goddess, and a bear cult did exist throughout Eurasia, leading one to speculations as to what kind of rituals could have resulted in the erotic associations and stories of heroic offspring of a bear and human. Its erotic aspect is a powerful indicator that sexuality in the archaic past was seen much more as magic with a probable greater ritual orientation to the female and fertility. This is in contrast to a more patriarchal view that sees sexuality as male-oriented and male-recreational.

The effect is of a society that is simultaneously more outspoken, in tune with the realities of life on the farm in close association with farm animals, and of a cultivation of discrete, indirect ways of speaking than modern English. To my knowledge no attempt has been made to study traditional Latvian distinctions in male and female speech. In its conciseness and unsentimentality, daina language is quite different from, say, English genteel, cultivated women’s language, though composed and performed mostly by women. It has some emotional equivalence to the ballad. But it also lacks the equivalent aggression of men’s colloquial language in English where, for instance, some form of “fuck” is sprinkled throughout every sentence. However, there is no reason not to believe, that as universally, the use of rough and non-normative language by men as a way of expressing aggression, anger, or assertion far exceeds such use by women.

A taboo is more violated when a woman utters obscenities than when a man does. Women have traditionally been seen as the gentler sex, and the custodians of civilized values… less prone to violence than men, the threat to resort to animal-type behavior is more frightening because less frequent. (144 Thody)

However, in the apdziedāšanās situation there doesn’t seem to be much distinction as to which insult categories are applied to men or women. Both seem to be equally accused of violating the culture/ nature distinction by accusations that they act like animals in their intemperance as to food, sex, and outward appearance. Even today the direct terms for the sexual parts don’t seem to have the asymmetric effect English has. Thody points out that “balls” and “prick” may be positive terms of assertion, but “cunt” is always negative. (Thody: 145) This is not the case in the bawdy dainas where the use of the female pīzda, peža (vulva, vagina) is pretty much in parallel to the male pipele, pimpis (penis). The parallelism of the use of archaic terms carries on in the chats among the youngest who are putting on a brash Western air (cf http://www.delfi.lv/news), while also retaining Soviet acquisitions of strongly abusive sexual insults adapted from the Russian (often not translated into Latvian), which are more abusive to women. The dainas have a matter-of-fact air that lacks abusive harshness even when strong emotions are expressed:

Ellē augti tev, peķīti, Ne manāi kājstarpē:

Tevis dēļi man’ vedīs Caur puriemi, caur mežiem,

Caur puriemi, caur mežiemi, Caur smalkiemi krūmiņiem. (34481)

My box, you should grow in hell, not between my legs;

I’ll be taken for your sake through swamps and forests.

Through swamps and forests, through thick underbrush.

Even contemporary Latvians know the last lines about being taken through swamps, forests, and underbrush as part of the abduction enactment of weddings. The song says straightforwardly and with humor that weddings are directly related to sex.

Atsasēžu ežiņā, Pasavēru pežiņā:

Tur man govis, tur man vērši, Tur man baltas vilnānītes. (34470)

I sat down on the border to look at my cunt.

There are my cows, there my bulls, there my white woolen shawls.

Of the possibilities of negative, abusive, or nonnormative terms, most appear gender-neutral or dialogic, rather than anti-woman and many are sufficiently archaic that they are understandable today only in terms of related historical concepts. Such negative traits as being lazy, stupid, clumsy, lacking in control, greedy, drunk, ugly, or intemperate are equally applied to the genders. One can see how the euphemism could develop out of double entendre that is more about magic, being indirect, or being clever than being ashamed of sex in the more archaic examples as opposed to a context with more contemporary awareness of the same being too raw. One interesting gender-free usage is in the equally negative attitude toward both genders as to single people past the courtship stage. In the daina world vecā meita (spinster, old maid) is parallel to vecais puisis (“old boy” – bachelor, negative, in contrast to positive contemporary sense). In context of the the courtship songs an old maid is negative because she is running out of courting time to make a match and form a family. In a modern context with greater emphasis on individual rather than communal, the shift is to a version about being less desirable because of lessening attractiveness and the biological clock running out. In the older context, a bachelor is equally negative because subsistence societies have little tolerance for nonproductive slackers, including shirkers of family responsibility. But outside the daina world, a bachelor is defined purely from the male point of view as having maximum freedom and minimum responsibilities. In the older view the focus is upon the individual’s value to the clan, rather than exclusively upon male psychology and dominantly more patriarchal perspective. Similarly, the ideal pairing is approximately the same age, but there are songs about older wives when material and inheritance conditions force a broader range of options, in parallel to older husbands, both considered less than ideal:

Vai Dieviņis man’ norājis, Ka man veca līgaviņa?

Veci pupi jāgrabina Kā pa liepu dobumiņu. (35670)

Is God chastising me that I have an old bride.

Old tits to rattle as in the hollow of a linden tree.

That in some cases the wife could be seven or more years older as attested by gravestone records in Kurzeme (Rūtens, personal communication) is another indicator that material circumstances had powerful effect in somewhat nonstandard or less than ideal pairings in an essentially subsistence economy.

Since contribution to the society in terms of family responsibility is valued for both males and females, but noncontributing behavior is not, a certain egalitarization is facilitated. In terms of the overall apdziedāšanās model, the dialogic and conceptual parallelism holds in the nerātnā daina corpus:

Ko puisīti, lielījies, Vella spieķi turēdams?

Es varēju lielīties, Man bij Dieva grāmatiņa. (34858)

Why are you boasting, lad holding the Devil’s rod?

I can boast also, I had God’s book.

If one did not have reference to the context of countless other dainas, one could interpret this at the extreme of opposing demonic male sexuality to female piety. However, considering that “box,” a term for vulva, is used even in English, and “book” is coded to mean the same, a Latvian familiar with the dainas would much more likely see the song as an egalitarian parallel opposition of male and female sexuality, opposing dark and light, earth and sky, devil and god in a humorous opposite inverse. Another indication that female sexuality may indeed have been a significant presence is indicated by some dainas where the sexual aggression of women is rejected:

Še atnāca parādmeitas (panāksnieces?). Pisti, grūsti gribēdamas.

Lai pis vilki, lai pis lāči, Mūsu puiši nepisīs. (35460)

The debtor (bride chasor?) girls came, wanting to fuck, hump.

Let wolves fuck (them), let bears fuck (them). Our boys won’t.

It is interesting, however, that modern polite Latvian lacks a common word for having sex, though kopoties (“to copulate”) is often heard. The old word pisties has become even stronger than “fucking” is in English because it is less often used, and to speak of a piselīga meita (horny girl) would grate most ears as too strong. Kursīte points out that the word mieslot, miesloties (related to the term for body miesa) was in use in common 17^th century language (Kursīte, 1999: 251), but it would only be a curiosity today. The term drāzt is used in the sense of “screw,” and as in English “to make love” is used euphemistically (mīlēties, maigoties).

A discussion on nerātnās dainas and related topics erupted on 1/21/00. Summary excerpts and translation:

Male In (1/21/00 USA).

Two, apparently American Latvians, by the name of Bud Berzing and Arsene Eglis published a book Sex Songs of the Ancient Letts in 1969 where they tried to translate the nerātnās dainas rather thoroughly

" My brother Johnny /35056 - 1/

Had shortness of breath

He walked many a ditch

In search of an herb

Which would cure him,

But all was in vain.

Then, while tending cows,

He found a medicine

In a linden crotch

That medicine sure helped

It made Johnny well again."

I wanted to know if dainas were translated in other languages…

In, begging pardon for a change in topic

Female #1(1/21/00, Latvia)

In honor of the 150^th anniversary of Krišjānis Barons
”12 Latvian Dainas” were published in Latvian, German, English, and Russian. The most “naughty” could be this one:

To each man comes a time

To rejoice and to exult;

When my turn did arrive

I jubilated likewise.

M2 and I could cooperate to translate some naughty dainas. I or someone else could type in the original language, but M2 could tanslate. I would like to warn that I would only pick out the ones most favorable to womenkind. :-)

Aija Veldre Beldavs (1/21/00, USA)

There are quite a few translations into other languages, starting with the original classic publications meant for the German intelligentsia and in 1868 I. Sproģis translation into Russian, then Jonval’s 1929 translation into French of mythological songs, Katzenlenbogen’s 1935 translations into English, and now in all kinds of languages, including Japanese. The scientific publication of 15 volumes that started in 1979, with volume VI published in 1993, has not been finished. And apparently they can’t be bought. In fact some of the earlier “rare” editions are easier to access here through interlibrary loan than these new publications that have all been bought out and I can’t even find in the Library of Congress. I would be thrilled if someone could inform me that I am wrong!! About the naughty dainas, it is sad because their scientific value has been underestimated. The Berzing/ Eglis book is now a bibliographical rarity and my copy was stolen. After a long search, I finally got another copy through the Internet. I don’t know if the authors have a right to republish. The book should have a new introductory essay.

M#1 (1/22/00, USA)

F1 offered to collaborate in the people’s field (tautas druvā). Ok, but I like some you wouldn’t:

Veca meita gauzhi raud,

Saulee pupi sakaltushi;

Tavas pashas vaina bija,

Kam neliidi kanjepees.

Weep not, old girl,

It's your own damn fault;

For sunburn on the tits,

You gotta smoke some pot.

M1 having translated a folk song

F1 (1/21/00 Latvia)

During the Awakening several naughty daina publications were made. I have Puisīts tek uz meitiņu (Boy Goes to Girl) published in 1990 in Rīga. Avots has also put out two attractive books more for school purposes, Latvju tautas dainas and Latviešu tautas mīklas, sakāmvārdi un parunas (riddles, proverbs, and sayings). There is even one rather naughty there:

Velc, puisiiti, bikses nost, Naac pie manis klaatguleet:

Es tev do'su ezeri'nu Kumeli'nu peldinaat.

(this is from a school childrens’ repertoire)

[Take off your pants, lad, Come sleep with me:

I will give you a lake for your horse to swim in

Translation mine - AVB]

But you wouldn’t pick this one:

Guli virsuu, tautu deels,

Es guleeju apak'saa;

Es ar Dievu runaajos,

Tu ellee raudziijies.

Maybe you’d like to translate it?

M1 (1/21/00 USA)

F1 offers for translation:

> Guli virsuu, tautu deels,

> Es guleeju apak'saa;

> Es ar Dievu runaajos,

> Tu ellee raudziijies.

Confucius say:

Man who lie upside down have stickup.

Lady who lie upside down have crackup.

[Literal translation, this is a variant of 35654 - AVB

You sleep on the top, young man, I sleep on the bottom. I was talking to God,/ You were looking into Hell.]

F1 (1/21/00 Latvia)

No poetics. One wonders if dainas can even be translated. It only remains to teach the other side Latvian. [By “other side” Au means the Vispasaules vīriešu komanda (All World Men’s Team) as someone jokingly called the men’s side. AVB]

M2 (1/21/00 Canada)

Ko raugoties ieraudz'iju,

Man t'ul'it j'apast'asta.

Urr'a, urr'a vecais velns,

Vid'u sarkans, apk'art melns.

[Translation:

What I saw looking I must tell straight out.

Hurrah, hurrah, old devil,/ The middle red, around it black.]

Aija (1/21/00 USA)

F1, could you tell more about Puisīts tek uz meitiņu? In my opinion some naughty dainas would be acceptable for appropriate age children. For instance this very well known daina in the context of life, family, and marriage:

Viena pate Jaanja zaale/ Briizhiem stiiva, briizhiem miiksta.

Ja taa staavu nestaaveetu,/ Nebuut kaazu, krustiibinju. (33693)

Berzing/ Eglis translate it as:

A single stock of Midsumeer Night's grass,

At times times stiff, at times flabby.

If it couldn't ever become hard,

There wouldn't be weddings or christenings.

But M1’s translation of the previous daina is very free!!

M2, maybe I’m wrong but I don’t recognize your daina from the Barons’s publication, but you can’t remember them all. Do you remember where you heard or read it?

F1 (1/22/00 Latvia)

Knuts Skujenieks introductory and concluding remarks, almost 200 pages, dainas with numbers. But M2 is not the only one who has seen something:

xxx savu stiivu biibi

Ar duureem saduureeja,

Kam tas raami neguleeja

Melnajaas biksiitees.

35137

[Translation: XXX his stiff thing

Pummeled with his fist,

Why wouldn’t it lay still

in his black pants.

M3 Male (1/21/00,USA)

Now, now, M1. The translation isn’t even close! What happened to “weeps sorely”. “Damn” isn’t even in the original text. Sunburn isn’t the same as “dried up”. And there’s nothing about “pot” in the last line. Going into the hemp field has nothing to do with smoking, but with making love. Try again.

M4 (1/22/00 USA)

Touche, F1, but in my Imanta 1968 Copenhagen daina publications (Ed. Švābe and Straubergs) # 35137 comes out differently. XXX have always been mighty men, but they have just had bad press:]. In the introduction to volume XII a doctor has analyzed the contents of the naughty dainas and I was surprised that searching for the blooming fern had deep moral significance and one shouldn’t have sex, and I had always thought it was the opposite! It also says that the naughty dainas don’t mention venereal diseas and those were introduced to Europe only later? [Remarks on current AIDS problem in Africa and number someone posted as joke.]

(Discussion goes into lengthy evaluation of Haralds Biezais theories on Midsummer as a time when sexual liberties are taken, versus the songs that warn girls to keep their wreaths and not sleep during Midsummer night. The thread concludes with acknowledgement of respect and/or relative equality accorded to women in the dainas.)

Cited dainas by F1 include:

Kas guleeja Jaa'nu nakti,

Tas ne Vellam nedereeja:

Neredzeeja Jaa'nu nakti,

Kad zied Jaa'nu papardiites.

Who slept during Midsummer night

Was of no use even to the Devil.

Didn’t see during Midsummer night

When the Midsummer fern blooms.

Es aiz kauna nezināju,

Kur tās savas acis likt:

Jāņu nakti līgodama,

Vainadziņu pazaudēju.

[I didn’t know where in shame

I could place my eyes:

On Midsummer night while ligo-singing

I lost my wreath. Translation - AVB]

[She introduces the song Haralds Biezais used as a touchstone for linking Midsummer to archaic carnival sexual practices in southern Europe, whose relevant distich is:]

Jaanju nakti nepazinu, Kura sieva, kura meita:

Vai bij sieva, vai bij meita, Visaam zaalju vainjadzinji. (33148)

[On Midsummer night I did not know, Who was wife, who a girl:

If a wife, or a girl, All had green wreaths. Tranlation - AVB]

M5 (1/23/00 Latvia)

I read the discussion on naughty dainas and thought about it if there was looseness (of morals) or not… According to what criteria? That of today, the Christian church, archaic times? If according to archaic times, it might be difficult to define what was looseness in archaic times. In my understanding, everything associated with Midsummer in those times was not considered as loose. The Russov Chronicle, the activities in the Brigita monastery what is now Pirita. Of course if we go by today’s criteria, looseness is not lacking, but such can be found also in other ancient rituals.

F1 (1/23/00,Latvia)

(Cites passages from Ārons Matīss who was inspired by Garlībs Merķelis about Midsummer as a festival of “reconciliation,” including the engagement of young people.)

The wolf may throw his hair, but not his nature. A Latvian doesn’t loose his mentality no matter what storms may cross. I don’t want to be presumptuous, but maybe it can also be attributed to Latvian women – “if the Russian woman is not beaten, she isn’t loved,” but among Latvians it can clearly be seen that the boy had to tiptoe to get close to her. Not for nothing even the most “naughty” dainas don’t seem so totally indecent. There can be no talk of any group-type orgies during the solstice. The place of the naughty dainas is only at weddings. Among others, the very weak activity of the “all nation…” team on the Internet testifies to that.:-)

M2 (1/23/00 Canada)

Aija, wait until it gets warmer, maybe Latvians will have gathered dainas and will have done something to advance the cause. In the spring all nature awakens and hormone production increases.

M6 (123/00 Latvia)

M2 already said it is too cold.

In (1/23/00 USA)

Be as it may with the world men’s team, but, Aija, if you consider why Latvian women are honored in the dainas and why she hasn’t had the dishonor as in other people’s customs, then praise belongs to the Latvian man who through the centuries has in his mind seen her as a beautiful and equal companion.

In who always loves and honors girls

M7 (1/23/00 Latvia)

He he…I must agree. Although in various aspects different national group representatives may have a pull on Latvian rabbits (zaķiem kabina), Latvian women are the best, taking things as a whole.

Best and regards,

M7, professional :)))

As a result of the discussion a female participant took out from her local library in Latvia the Skujenieks book and sent it to me to copy, and I returned it to her in time to return to her regional library. Additionally, an informant with whom I had corresponded for over a year, a man in his seventies, offered me personal information. Being aware of the discussion of nerātnās dainas on the list, he sent several responses to questions about them, followed by a “What the Hell, here goes” about his first sexual experience with a older young woman as initiated by and in the context of Midsummer celebration. The information leads one to speculate about Berzing and Arsene’s contention that “It might be theorized that the high degree of sexual freedom enjoyed by the Lettish young people paradoxically kept down the incidence of marital infidelity” (Berzing and Arsene: 297). The informant countered when I expressed surprise at the information that was being provided:

You are involved with dainas and interpreting our people’s folkloric past. You are a city person and wish to compare agrarian life and its morality with your own. But you really can’t do that because in the countryside, particularly in Latvia, where one farm is quite at a distance from another, young people didn’t have the same opportunity to meet as in the city, but their hormones worked the same. That was a time when horses pulled wagons and there were only a few cars in the city.

Excerpted and in translation:

After my father died, I often lived in the countryside in my grandfather’s farm, which was farmed by my mother’s sister’s family. I started school in the countryside. My aunt had two daughters and the farmhand had a very beautiful daughter, about 19 years old. Her work included looking after my nieces. All kinds of young men were always trying to get to her, how far they got I don’t really know.

It was Midsummer evening and night with the bonfire, eating, aplīgošanās singing and dancing. The farmhand’s daughter was very popular, but she just stayed there fidgeting (grozīties) by the fire. Toward morning she came up to me and asked if I had found the blooming fern. Of course I said no, because I didn’t know which ferns had blooms. Well, then come with me and I will show you. The bonfire was by the forest edge and the path through the forest led to a meadow and haycocks. When we got to the haycocks she again asked if I really wanted to see the blooming fern, and of course I said yes. I still thought it was a flower. [Graphic description omitted. The girl identifies the ferrn and blooming as having sex.]

Afterwards, the two returned to the bonfire “as if nothing happened”, and this was the start of a relationship that lasted through that summer, which the informant characterized as “a mutually beneficial experience”. He said it was for her a way of relieving sexual tension heightened by the attentions of her many suitors, without getting pregnant. The relationship ended with the summer and her leaving for the city, but he met her five years later with a husband and two children. “She said, ‘As you can see, I am happily married.’”

That is how it went. She had suitors, but apparently did not get involved with them sexually. She came to me to relieve ‘that need’. I remember telling her I will make her a child, but she just laughed and teased me, saying, you can’t make anything, because you still don’t have real pubic hair…For me there was no psychological harm. It was good school as to what a woman likes and with that I have never been selfish…because while it is easy enough for myself, one has to work at it with a woman…When I start to think of it, all that and the smells of Midsummer, it comes back to memory as if it were yesterday.

Upon my query if this was a common practice, he answered that he did not know, but suspected his case was not unique.

I don’t know if many young women got someone to satisfy their needs…. But in view of the discussion where someone had joked that they were thankful for a female pedophiliac in their youth recently…I thought I was not the only lucky one, but I didn’t say anything. To no one, not all these years.

When I asked if the practice was commonly known, he said that normative religious views would suppress public expression:

I guess one could call it (like) ‘Bible belt Puritanism’. If something like that happened with a nun, the church would hide it, as has happened in the past.

I don’t want to say these were widely practiced customs, or if they were customs at all. We lived in the countryside and fucking (pišanās - non-normative, rude use) was viewed there differently than among town people. Often one sees animals having sex and that is seen as natural. Everyone knows what is happening. Children imitate animals…one plays a cow and another a bull, not really having sex, of course…but they don’t think of morality.

In further response to my question as to the morality of the situation, he answered:

I don’t think we ever considered kauns (shame), gods (honor), or morality. We were only concerned about being found out and the unpleasant consequences. We were not ashamed of each other in the sense of being naked.

The forwardness and initiative taken by the girl may be related to speculation about the topic in another personal communication as to previous sexual experience, starting with the highly probable assumption that the primary motivation would be to avoid gossip on part of boys who are in the desired marriageable group. Along the lines of children experimenting, it was suggested there could be instances where a brother might take more than the usual liberties. In the most archaic dainas on marriage and courtship endogamy is clearly indicated as a known practice. In these dainas it is always depicted negatively, but as a real practice. While rare, at least now, among human societies it does appear as an alternative marriage arrangement in such societies with maximally diverse marriage arrangements, such as the Tibetan. (cf Durham: 42-153) There is a corpus of songs about “brother and sister marriage,” of the girl having to choose between brother and suitor, and the special relationship of brother and sister in the daina world that is changed when the suitor enters it. The Latvian material confirms the purpose of “lai radiņi biezumā” (so the kin stay thick) to have been an alternative way of keeping land and valuable property in the family, but condemns the practice in those songs that have been collected:

Vai dieviņi, ko darīšu Grib brālītis mani ņemt.

Raudādama, vaidēdama Notecēju upmalā.

Karu savu vainadzīnu Sīka kārklu krūminā.

Maucu savu gredzentīnu Zaļas niedres galīnā.

Laižos pati upītēi, Raudivīšu pulcīnā.

Labāk guļu upītēi, Ne brālīša gultīnā.

Labāk upes rauduvīte, Ne brālīša līgavīn’.

Ne brālīša līgavīna, Ne māmīnas vedeklīn. (Vītols, 1984: 64)

Dear god(s), what shall I do? My brother wants to take me.

Weeping, moaning I went to the riverbank.

My wreath in the fine-branched osier bush.

My ring on the end of a green reed.

Myself into the river among the pochards.

Better to lie in the river than in brother’s bed.

Better a river pochard, not my brother’s bride.

Not my brother’s bride, not my mother’s daughter-in-law

Whatever the circumstances and motivations of the girl’s boldness in finding so junior a partner, and without knowing if this was an idiosyncracy or a significant indicator of some more widespread practice, no conclusion can be made if it is culturally significant information. One possible explanation is a disjunction between two belief systems, one that creates expectations (because of betrothal or even more remotely initiation customs in the past) leading to sexual tension, but the other which discourages its expression and enforces it through gossip (Christianity, emphasis on virginity). In any case, the information provided by the informant is hardly unique that sexual liberties have been tolerated at Midsummer even to the present. With that in view, reconciliation of different belief layers and implied practice with many dainas about a girl’s honor, as symbolized by her wearing of the maiden wreath, needs to be worked out. There is evidence that an older belief layer equates the wreath with fertility and courting status as the prototype, rather than virginity as such as a subcategory. The songs about acorned wreaths (zīles), so common that the term also comes to be used for “bead” in a headdress, also seems to support the fertility significance in addition to the greenery and flowering aspect. (cf Gintnere: 85-101)

Sukā, māte, man galviņu, Zīļo manu vainadziņu,

Rītu jās trejas tautas Man augumu lūkoties. (LD 14131)

Comb, mother, my hair, place acorns/ beads on my wreath;

Tomorrow three suitors will ride to look over my shape.

A crooked standing wreath (šķībi stāvošs) is a euphemism for a girl’s honor, but what this honor is is not as well defined as one may at first thought. In some cases the wreath does not fit well as an equivalent for virginity:

Kālabad Anniņai Šķībi stāv vainadziņš?

Kā tas šķībi nestāvēs, Piecu dēlu māte bija. (34795)

Why is the wreath standing crookedly on Annina?

How is it not going to be slipping, She’s the mother of five sons.

If the wreath simply were a euphemism for the physical maidenhead, as it seems to be in some dainas, it could only be lost once. However, the term is used loosely to mean honor more broadly defined. That the maiden wreath was in earliest times a more general symbol for unmarried status in contrast to married is also suggested in that the groom’s mother may alternatively take off the bride’s wreath in the capping ceremony. If it were a deflowering symbol, one would expect the groom to take off the cap, which in many regions he does. Again, the different versions existing side by side suggest one attitude that is more female-oriented (verdant girlhood) in perspective, and the other more male-oriented (virginity). Additionally, Kursīte points out that the Great Goddess herself is the one who makes the change in status from unmarried girl to married woman in her form as the pike (līdaka) when she carries off the wreath in the relevant daina cycle. (Kursīte, 1996: 354) Additionally at Midsummer wreaths worn by everyone attest efflorescence.

Pregnancy before marriage is not, of course, desired, and if it occurs there is very strong pressure on the man to marry, and female promiscuity cross-culturally predictably marks a woman as undesirable or “used-up.” Perhaps even more than pregnancy, a girl would be concerned about being talked about by the young men as being easy, as well as censured by everyone else in a close-knit society. A universal courtship strategy where a girl has to appear attractive and desirable, but not overly available or anxious is not contradicted by Latvian evidence. There are also songs that are unambiguously monogamous, the dominant ideal:

Maza bija man lādīte Deviņām atslēgām;

Kas atslēdza pirmo reizi, Tas lai slēdza visu mūžu. (34999)

Small was my treasure chest With nine keys.

Who opened it the first time, Let him lock (use)it forever.

Nevertheless, in spite of a heavy normative overlay emphasizing maiden-status as is normative in a Christian culture, there may also have been in some deep countryside regions of Latvia among the farmhand class, an undertone of female sexuality that was publicly not acknowledged, but sometimes tolerated and seen naturalistically, especially at Midsummer and weddings when rationalized or justified as an old custom. Health and fertility, coinciding with a girl’s blooming and courtship period seem to be the focus, though gossip, especially by young men, and other strong social sanctions were constraints.

The most likely explanation is that Midsummer has retained echoes of one of its former functions, which was betrothal, and that after betrothal there was a certain amount of tolerance for pre-marital sex. Additionally, there seem to have been in the most archaic layers periods of sanctioned licence and exception since not only those of betrothal age participate, and everyone wearing a wreath obliterates the distinctions.

There was also the archaic daina world practice of meitās iešana (going to visit girls) by groups of young men. The girls sleep in the klēts (byre) and receive visitors. This, of course, is regulated, and not a free-for-all. It apparently included practices such as bundling (sleeping together without having sex). In addition to songs where the male guest asks the mother for a girl to sleep with him, other songs may refer to the medieval European practice when beds were few and winters cold:

Es, pats lāču šāvējiņš, Lāču gaļas nedabūju;

Stobru vien kustināju, Apakš sagšas gulēdams. (34671)

I, a bear hunter, didn’t get bear meat.

I only could move the barrel, sleeping under the blanket.

To my knowledge there is no study about Latvians on bundling or girl going, though there are many asides here and there in literature. My query to several folklorists in Latvia about the subject was met with the polite suggestion I find to interview an American Latvian who might have worked as a farmhand before World War II.

Clearly, a serious study of the nerātnās dainas would be significant for gender studies. Issues include asymmetric sexual politics versus a more balanced or cooperative egalitarianism implied in the daina world. Greater egalitarianism in sex seems to be associated with more of a balance of patriarchal power with the acknowledgement of female creativity and contribution.

...in most societies the sexual division of labor is one of the components of sexual identity, which makes any change especially difficult. In particular, a freeman cannot normally perform women’s tasks without ceasing to be a man – as was the case of the famous North American transvestites, berdaches...or without ceasing to be free – which would have been the outcome in Ancient Greece. Following this line of thinking, slavery in Antiquity would have been a systematic means of making men do women’s work. (Sigaut: 450-1)

The communal, ritualized joking in apdziedāšanās could also be contrasted to modern instances of artistic flirting as on the net, but, again, there are limits to what aspects could be compared. Beyond the scope of this study, would be examples of of modern electronic erotic ludic flyting, but what appears on Latvian portals is beyond the scope of the paper. I did look for examples, of erotic ludic flyting, which is artistic rather than a serious attempt at matchmaking, something similar to what I have seen in English. Thus, as a model for what I was looking for, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.jokes.limericks two characters, Jon Gearhart and Carol, carried on a lengthy public erotic teasing/flirtation match in 1999. The explicit effect and imagery is somewhat similar to that of the erotic dainas, though the limerick format uses different poetic devices, such as end rhyme. It is clearly an artistic performance rather than a seductive private chat. Gearhart is active on other newsgroups involved with verbal art play, such as alt.anagrams, while Carol seems to be anonymous. It appears the two people don’t actually know each other and are not in fact intending to become personally involved. They publically display outrageous graphic language as an artistic performance. For example:

Message-ID: <382DC5E5.9CAE8C09@crosslink.net>

Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 15:11:18 -0500

From: Carol <xoina3@crosslink.net>

Reply-To: xoina3@crosslink.net

Newsgroups: alt.jokes.limericks

Subject: Re: Planting a tree

References: <382B3287.1F85D9BB@earthlink.net>

Jon Gearhart wrote:

> Bare that lovely bush Carol dear

> And I'll cum give you my spear

> If your hungry beaver

> Needs a tree to relieve 'er

> Then I've got what she needs right here

> This woody of mine is no joke

> On his bark your beaver might choke

As she takes the whole horn
> She'll bump two acorns
> At the base of this mighty oak
> So get out your tree climbing gear
> Those boots with the spikey things dear
> I'm a masochist
> Since my mast ya kissed
> And I need more kisses right here---
> |
> gearhartXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX|)<-
I just got in a new shipment,
Of heavy duty equipment.
After sizing your oak,
You'll need more than a poke,
As I climb up to make my assent.
I'll start at the very tip top.
Making some of your branches drop.
Your sap will start runnin'
When I begin sawin',
And hacking with little chops.
Then only a stump will remain.
But you won't be in any pain.
Once those acorns I crack,
And plant them out back,
You'll grow over again and again.
So I'll plant you a whole new tree.
One that's sized just for me.
Leaving my mark,
Carving into the bark,
A heart with CJ and JG.
Carol ;-)

If there is anything other than a display of virtuosity between two verbally gifted role players, the net audience doesn’t know it. There is no communal culture to infer other than that of limerick lovers using an old art form with contemporary sensibility to enjoy erotic flyting.

Except among the youngest and those who get on certain electronic chats, outright sexuality does not seem to be a common topic of public discussion in Latvia, especially of mixed groups as it is considered invasive and private. For comparison and contemporary context, the information I accessed from the internet about current Latvian opinions on sex and gender almost entirely represents a male point of view, and the effort must be viewed as of an introductory nature. While gender categories and female sexuality were no doubt normatively controlled in any historical period, they may not have conformed equally strictly to normative Christian standards in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, but may have drawn from local indigenous customs of old standing with values that were not necessarily identical to the official ones. Their relationship to contemporary standards is even more complex.

It would require a separate study to adequately contextualize daina attitudes to sex and gender in contemporary Latvian experience, especially, since in the last years, as all other aspects of the society, they are in a rapid state of renegotiation and polarization. Generalizations about attitudes to sex and gender in Latvia today are complicated and multi-layered, and although there is much popular expression, I did not find academic analyses, so my sources are skewed to extremely aggressive male attitudes on the internet, which can not be covered in this study. What seems striking is the extreme of polarities in values on the subject in the public display between males and females of the older generations. The Soviet period following a pious middle-class Bible period added a type of gender-differentiated prudery and a different type of double standard that was different from the propriety that was natural in pre-industrial farm life.

An unfavorable demographic situation for females has created a market where female value has lessened from what appears to have been at least structurally a relatively more egalitarian situation in the past. The effect is that there are more young women who have compromised their reproductive roles with partners who are unavailable or inadequate as providors of children and more men who do not feel pressured to assume responsibility. There is also inadequate information and resources for adequate health care, so that among some segments of society there is considerable ignorance and prejudice in such matters as contraception and AIDS. On the one hand in some segments of society marital infidelity seems not only common but blatantly open for both male and female, but beyond that and probably related to recent politico-economic problems in Eastern Europe, sex marketing, low living standards, alcoholism, and low morale have become serious social issues that have to be confronted. Not surprisingly, examples of male predatory irresponsibility and low expectations of many females is not hard to find..In contrast, conservative religious views do not adequately acknowledge nonreproductive sex, even as it clearly occurs, resulting in considerable duplicity, hypocricy, and misinformation – all to the disadvantage of informed consent and sexual and reproductive female human rights. Anatol Lieven writes:

In all three Baltic states women – and to a lesser extent men – tend to marry very young. Often girls become pregnant (there is a shortage of contraceptives), or simply hope that marriage will aid their escape from home and passage up the housing list. Often it is simply the only way to permit love-making near censorious parents (and grandparents) in overcrowded homes…The result, of course, is to place all the stresses of life upon marriages which, as a result, are breaking up at an even faster rate than in the West. It is commonplace to find, in the Baltic, a woman in her late twenties with a failed marriage, a child, and nowhere to live except with her parents – or worse, with the husband whom she has come to loathe – and a fixed determination not to have any more children, however, many abortions it may take. (Lieven: 23)

This is complicated, however, by modern values on top of a vague north European tendency to egalitarianism, and strong diversity, or rather polarity, within Latvian society as well as other changes resulting from contact with the West and recent inheritance from Russia. Western style feminism is mostly a curiosity and when it exists, is in an incipient phase. The double standard seems more on the private than on the public level, and based more on demographic inequality than on genuine misogynic values. Again, the gender of the female President was not a serious question, and women with powerful qualifications are generally treated in terms of their office first and gender only secondarily, not unlike the atmosphere in the northern European countries generally, though job discrimination is another problem. In private discussions with Latvians in Latvia, the attitude toward the nerātnās dainas took on something of this strange double standard where the intellectual and public stance as to gender rights and egalitarianism exceeded private practice or the realities of inequalities generated when gender is seen in terms of simple analogic parallel, instead of some form of symbiotic cooperation.

One interesting modern gendre, called “savage dainas” (nežēlīgās dainas) in the words of the webmistress Gundega:

characterize our modern Latvian folk humor sense, way of life, and a general moral-physicological degeneration level. The collected dainas are from RADIO SWH Be Be Breakfast cassettes created by Fred and Ufo from what the readers have sent to them from e-mail, the listserve Kokteilis, and some other sources.

(http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/9810/maja.htm)

Pisies meitiņ, ko tu gaidi? Vai tu sava gala gaidi?

Atnāks nāve, paņems tevi, Tārpi pežu skrubinās

Visiem vārti izpušķoti, Kaimiņam nepušķoti,

Kā viņš izpušķot tos ies Ja jau šķūnīpakāries.

Alu, alu, zivi, zivi, Jāņu māte, nelecies,

Kad mēs beidzot būsim divi, Tad tu baigi norausies

Visa laba Jâòu zâle, Kas ir labi izkaltçta.

Jâòu zâli uzpîpçju, Mati skrullî sagriezâs.

Fuck away, girl, what are you waiting? Are you waiting your end?

Death will come and take you; worms will gnaw your cunt.

Everyone’s got greenery on their gate, the neighbor doesn’t have it. How can he decorate the gate when he’s hung himself in the shed.

Beer, beer, fish, fish, Midsummer mother - don’t get uppity.

When we finally are just the two of us, then you will really get it.

All is good Midsummer grass when it is well dried.

I smoked the Midsummer grass, so my hair got curled.

While there is some similarity to the pre-industrial style classic dainas, the topics are far more sinister and realistic, and they express the dark humor of contemporary society rather than the lighter, life-affirming older ones. In the four examples the overly stark and sometimes criminal scenarios include a threat, the use of drugs (smoking pot), suicide, threat of violence – perhaps rape. It is almost if there were a gothic recast to the old high-spirited and mostly playful nerātnā daina genre. Nevertheless, change is so fast that at the time of this writing different material was emerging, such as old humor portals <http://www. ass.lv> and the oHo listserve reanimated to a lighter and more egalitarian orientation. It is hoped my pioneering efforts will be already updatable as of publication.

1 (Ritual daina used as a formulaic opening in enactment wedding performance, from memory, though recorded)

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↑ Contents

VIII. ANALYSIS OVERVIEW

The irony of being alone is that you have no definition. What is you, and what is not-you can’t be known. Anything you can specify is going to be vague: ‘I am not the nothing which surrounds me.’ Aloneness and nothingness aren’t equivalent, yet one gives the illusion of the other. (Etter, personal communication)

Ko, bitīte, tu dziedāji,

Tev bij maza dvēselīte;

Lai dziedāja dundurītis,

Tas mācēja trīcināt.

Tas mācēja trīcināt

Pa ozola pazarēm.

(Āronu Matīss, 1888, #1766)^¹

What are you singing, bee girl?

You have a small spirit.

Let the gadfly sing.

He knew how to shake it,

He knew how to tremble

Branch to oak branch.

Ko dunduri, tu dziedāji;

Zirga asins vēderā?

Dziedāsim mēs māsiņas,

Salda alus piedzērušas.” (LD 779)

What are you singing, gadfly;

Horse blood in your stomach?

Let us sing, sisters,

We’ve drunk sweet beer.

Insults, consistent with ritual apdziedāšanās

Thesis

The traditional or classic Latvian antiphonal ritual insult singing contest apdziedāšanās may be viewed as a striking example, metaphor, or even archaic prototypical case of how meaning, identity, beliefs, concepts, norms, values, and paradigms are recurrently constructed, established, and reconstructed rhetorically and strategically in social action through dialogue, dialogic, and argumentation, while reinforcing value of and belief in long-term continuity and what today could be termed cosmic synchronicity. The performance grows out of a social context where there is a recurring need to confront psychological stress and ambiguity and potential dissonance in the meeting of two relatively equal participant groups, and equally the expectation of joyful, artistically meaningful celebration after a performance of possibilities. An important function of agonistic dialogue, as the term “song war” (dziesmu kaŗš) suggests, can be institutionalized conflict expression and/or resolution through ritual (Rappaport 1967). However, the settling of specific disputes, such as with Eskimo nith songs, is not the prototypical purpose, though it may be a way of relatively egalitarian neighbors to construct and adjust norms and values, sometimes imperceptibly and unconsciously, through dialogue, in contrast to concrete judgment rendered by legal authority. Most broadly the Latvian model appears to share with other societies of relatively low stratification a means for two different, potentially hostile, relatively equal groups to move from suspicious or hostile tension to a more relaxed state of co-operation, where at least in a controlled formally defined safe setting or space they are able to celebrate together, share food, and reorganize communication. Much of this is not consciously planned, but has aspects of system self-organization.

Apdziedāšanās (aggressive antiphony) is a special part of a larger apdziedāšanas (without the long “a” = celebratory) context and world-view. The general usage of the term apdziedāt, “to sing about” is not necessarily agonistic, but celebratory, including praise as well as blame, and a primary way of the subject to interrelate with the world. The aim is an exploration of sense or meaning of apdziedāšana in both its general and restricted usage, and the predominance of the specialized meaning of confrontation and contest (apdziedāšanās). Although apdziedāšanās are ludic “play war” contestings, as opposed to true combat, they are not without goal and purpose. Historically they have not been only simple, playful recreational entertainment. For one, there is not a passive audience or spectators. While there are certainly examples of stage apdziedāšanās performances today, even recently apdziedāšanās has had the capacity and potential to be involved in serious expression of aggression, protest, and confrontation, even to crossing the line out of the ludic to true aggression.

Humor as a device for going to a more relaxed state with the anticipation of pleasure can also be dangerous or ambiguous. As studies of archaic humor suggest, it was often used as a weapon, or conversely as resistance and sabotage. In those cases it was a deliberately cruel and mean-spirited form of aggression in the struggle for domination. The song war represents a solution beyond the dangerous and destructive way of reducing tension by subduing or killing the enemy, or a sublimation, modification, or adaptation of clearing tensions through deadly force. The constructive assumption is that if one may joke about something, distance is required and the subject has to be brought under control. The subject at that moment does not have the power of overwhelming and dangerous fury.

Attunement, harmony, and control of aggression are necessary in small societies. Behavior is usually controlled by the nonresponsive, limited aggression of gossip (aprunāšana) or at the extreme by all-out aggression of curse, witchcraft, and ostracism. Accusations and grievances are given public contesting possibilities in apdziedāšanās interactive ritual insult contests in a society that otherwise highly values harmony and self-restraint.

The ritual contesting is also an expression of cognition in terms of dual interactivity using a bipartite model, which could be characterized as a Latvian version of Yin/Yang schema, organization found throughout the modalities of traditional pre-industrial agricultural Latvian culture. In this schema culture and nature/ biology both mirror each other in important analogic ways, and culture is also a part of larger nature. In the historical patterning of performances using the bipartite model, both change and continuity are expressed. Recurrent instances of antiphonic apdziedāšanās performances, while each a unique experience, draw on collective memories of previous performances. The contesting model, a form of ludic fighting formerly with a deeper purpose than entertainment, is cognitively observable throughout social and cultural structures based on distinctions of them and us in social relations and divisions. The fundamental schematic model of the Latvian daina world is two parts struggling, contesting, feuding, or engaged in dialogue. That is the most dramatic form of complementary relationship, which can also be described as contradictory or ambiguous in the two parts never being totally separated since they can only be understood in terms of each other. The cosmos is divided into two worlds, the primary form of relation and exchange is seen as taking place between two parties, the structure of the daina stanza is fundamentally bipartite with a further bipartite divisions, and society is seen in terms of distinct categories, sometimes shifting as to content, but also fundamentally a relationship of two. Metaphors, language etymology, myths, style of singing, and the internal make-up of daina-units all are expressions of this basic schematic dynamic or contesting bipartite model. It is a binary system with such concepts as us/them, inside/outside, male/female, or kin/affine within a binary system that allows for endless coded combinations as well as permutations, like dual strands of DNA, with other binary combinations. While many of the specific dualities may be negotiated and change, as do beliefs, concepts, and even paradigms, the model seems to have been in use for an indefinite past, as long as it can be followed back in history. Much of the time it is not consciously employed, but is subconsciously self-organized. The psychological need to gain a sense of control when threatened by chaos and ambiguity does not change and Latvians have chosen to recall the complex social event known as apdziedāšanās in modern performances.

One may consider if this particular type of paradigm of opposites is an instance of conceptual negation and polarization, (Zemtsovsky: 189). However, the stated purpose of apdziedāšanās is to establish positive relations through interchange, occurring in a third state and resulting in changes of both originals.

In terms of both humor and liminality, two discrete cognitive units are brought into parallel interaction thereby assuming them equivalent for the moment, but at the same time remaining separate and different. Humor results from that instant of recognizing incongruity and undergoing a “rapid...cognitive shift which undermines an element of that unrelaxation,” and causing physiological relaxation through laughter (Latta: 45) After the ritual, the two groups retain their discrete identity, but the interaction has changed them. Traditionally most often changes in cognition are imperceptible, and the participants believe they have been involved in a recurrent pattern rather than emphasizing the negotiative aspect.

The most original proposal on my part was made public in the AABS Conference of 1998 where I read a pre-dissertation summary, and there have been subsequent discussions on listserves involving folklorists. I spoke of a semantic field that includes: bees, honey, a work band of sisters, a kinship based on honey rather than blood, sacred blooming linden trees, creation through weaving and through singing, the Fate goddess Laima (patron of song, weaving, women), and various prototypical oscillating movements both back and forth and up and down movements associated with creativity, and constructive or binding magic in contrast to deconstructive magic zūdināšana. The relationships are repeated throughout various small constellations or grammars of culture.

Types and patterns of apdziedāšanās performance appear to have commonalities with communal singing contests throughout the world. Apdziedāšanās includes the guest – host type, which makes interesting the vast literature on that model in Oceania where, unlike the Baltic, war dances are performed. Latvian weddings are among those throughout the world that enact bride capture drama where fighting with songs replaces actual violence in a region where raiding was actually one former historical way of obtaining a bride. The insult song exchange is a highlight of the enacted hostilities between the two groups. Another type, represented by the festival Midsummer, suggests something more like the singing exchanges studied by M. Granet in China, particularly since females and males sing against each other. That the model is more inclusive is suggested by work party insult song exchanges. Two different village or neighbor groups meet as equals, perhaps on neutral ground for the purpose of a communal task or goal. There is also the guest – host model, which is more asymmetrical. Generally, dialogic asymmetry is downplayed among Latvian contestants in different types of performance, accentuating complementarity, rather than hierarchy. Who is guest and who is host alternates at the bride’s end and at the groom’s end with shifting dominance.

The model is of two parties who do not contest for permanent dominance, even though there usually is an acknowledged winner in the specific performance. This can be contrasted as well as compared to the north European flyting model, prototypically male dominated, and more likely to anticipate real combat following ritual boasting and insulting (Parks, 1990). The purpose of flyting is to establish dominance and defeat of one party. A study of apdziedāšanās allows for an unusual glimpse into public rituals dominantly constructed and performed by women’s groups, and suggests that female domination of the performance is consistent with expectations of cooperation. In north Europe women were more naturally seen as peace-brokers in contrast to men as warriors (bāliņi). It also suggests the conceptual availability, as needed of a more egalitarian social model, alternative to an asymmetric, patriarchal one regardless of ones interpretation of social realities. It offers a study of cognitive structures both as collective representations and as individual innovation. The study does not make strong claims of homology, but points to etically observable and emically recognized recurrence of analogous patterns across such conventionalized expressions of experience, as genre. Looking in reverse at dialogic to the problem of One and the Many, Latvian cosmology seems to particularly focus on the level of the split of one into twos, never really disengaging from each other rather than on the generative aspect of one becoming many within a universal human awareness of the dynamic state of life.

Balance and adjustment between discrete, opposing principles seems to be a primary concern and concept of Latvian mythology, cosmology, and ritual, as exemplified by the metaphor of swinging, one interpretation of the Midsummer refrain līgo, as well as other rituals involving swinging, particularly at the spring equinox Lieldienas. Another is the back and forth creative and constructing action described by the word šūt (to sew) and the related siet (to tie or plait) as well as the action of weaving aust.^² Karulis points out that the bee, apparently of considerable importance in the semantic field informing apdziedāšanās, is seen as “sewing” a honeycomb. The Midsummer god Jānis’s room seems to be created by “sewing,” or rather weaving of walls by the wattle and daub method, a method surviving in the making of fences, but not the walls of buildings in Latvia (“Šūtin, šūta, pītin, pīta. Kā rakstenis izrakstīta.” [TDz 53648] Sewn as sewn, plaited as plaited, as an engraving incised.) (Karulis, 367) Midsummer is the primary calendar occasion when apdziedāšanās occurs, the apparent highlight of the cosmic wedding cycle. Karulis’s etymologies suggest that words related to the creation of something through a physical action that involves alternating, repeated motion is deeply embedded in the diachronic of the Latvian language. Finally, it would appear that repeated ritual striking or beating pērt in numerous celebrations for the purpose of fertility (Karulis, II: 38), as well as terms for the sexual act pist, pīst as related to the term for mortar piesta (Karulis, II: 10-11) could be included as possibly associated with the sizeable semantic field that sees the creative act as back and forth motion or interchange. The sense of striking or beating, often vertically rather than horizontally, are more likely to be seen as aggressive or even violent acts, unlike swinging, sewing, or weaving, or the making of honeycombs by bees. Sexuality prototypically involves both positive creation as well as ambiguous and often threatening aggression. Contests generally are often termed as hostilities or disagreements (strīds) and the song contest is indeed framed as an aggressive act in that it is termed a song war (dziesmu kaŗš) and metaphors drawn from military language are often used. The ultimate reality of aggression, competition, domination, and the predatory attitude are acknowledged, but also transcended, situated, and limited. Of course, the “war” is intended to be a play war, substitute-war, or contest with the function of reconciling two sides by reducing or venting tensions, rather than a violent destroying or subduing act. One side cannot exist without the other and the sides are seen as entities or categories persisting indefinitely, in folk terminology, “as long as the sun is in the sky” (kamēr saule debesīs) or “forever” (mūžīgi). Often, but significantly not always, the contest is erotic and an accepted occasion for the performance of bawdy songs (nerātnās dainas) once the insulting becomes heated. Predatory and overly aggressive sexuality is brought under control or civilized even as it is expressed.

Archaic style Latvian mythical concepts frequently appear dually in a state of oscillation, apposition, opposition, or twinning, starting with the archetypal ones of order and disorder, creation and destruction, fortune and misfortune, ordinary and sacred, serious or comic and tragic. In spite of Indo-European heritage and ongoing Christian ideological pressures, there appears to be marked resistance to coding in terms of absolute or moral good and evil. The dualism does not become fixed as polar or absolute; Zoroastrianism seems to have faded out when it reached the Baltic. The separation does not become complete, but the two are tied or connected together as companions, or as anti-companions. Thus, the chthonic deity Velns, though syncretized through Christian ideological pressures, fails to evolve to full Satan status. The old daylight sky god Dievs does not have an equal fixed or stable opposition. He may be opposed to the dark sky (Jods), a chthonic deity (Patollus, Pikuls), or the Earth.)^³ In some folktales Velns is helpful to humans, and often a trickster Dievs dupes him. In at least one folktale Velns is the primal “water being” and in many others the Earth Diver companion to Dievs. The sky god in turn tends to retain many of his old attributes and his evolution to God of the Great Religions is also largely incomplete in the daina world. It is as if in spite of heroic effort to create categories and boundaries necessary for communication and social life, the fundamental dualities can never be totally separated but neither can they be syncretized or fused. The trickster aspect may be the natural outcome of incomplete separation of duality; what order puts together, disorder tears apart. Latvian mythological deities appear to have a dual nature, or there is an appearance of two associated beings. The dialogic nature of this dual association is emphasized in that most often the pair, either antagonistic or complementary, is depicted as engaged in dispute, or a state of hostilities (ienaidā). Laima (Fortune) argues with Nelaime (Misfortune), Laima argues with Dievs as to the fate of a person, the Sun goddess Saule and Dievs are in enmity over the courting specifics of their offspring. Usually, this does not end in combat. The Sun goddess is in a state of enmity with the Moon god, her mate, over their division of cosmic space. Sometimes physical combat is depicted, as between the Thunder god and Velns. In one version the sun goddess strikes the moon god with a sword and cuts him in half for infidelity. The goddesses Laime (Fortune) and Nelaime (Misforutne) may struggle with each other on a bridge as to who will push the other into the water. Far more often, a pair of deities is depicted as walking and talking with each other, significantly in dispute.

Apdziedāšanās may be seen as a play with the idea that discreet categories are recognized, but they must recurrently be brought into alignment, their borders constantly adjusted as opposed to the idea of synthesis, fusion, and obliteration of those “eternal” (mūžīgās) categories altogether. The focus appears to be upon maintaining or developing discrete created order, often a laborious and even magical task, rather than deconstructing it. The obliteration of borders is seen as dissolution, a return to the destroying One, the cosmic flux. It is schematicized as immersion in water or a release in smoke through burning. Discrete units coming into conflict or tension try to adjust their borders without losing their identity (coming from the daina concept saderēt), so they will grate less harshly against each other, kin vs in-law, male vs female, and neighbor vs neighbor. There is no loss of identity, fusing, synthesizing, or even resolving the irresolvable, but there is co-evolution, co-adaptation, and co-dependency through dialogic, with an unusual twist in that the primary performance leaders and composers are women.

The folk awareness of what could be likened to entropy is consistent with the concern of oral culture to develop mnemonic devices, such as metrical patterns in poetry and balanced, rhythmic patterns in textiles, dance, and music, as well as other schematizations of experience. Walter Ong (1982) has pointed out, these are attempts to codify, store, and interpret information in the face of information decay, loss of memory, and the reality of the flux and entropy of life. Change, then, is not so much denied, as taken for granted, as surface movement or instances within basic cosmic principles, such as dual interactivity that recurs in terms of saules mūžs (sun time). While the surface references may change according to, for instance, genre (song, riddle, incantation, proverb), a deeper level may be preserved and transferred to another context and meaning. Thus, while both folk culture and academic culture have awareness of both construction and deconstruction, folk culture perhaps takes deconstruction for granted and focuses on the laborious effort of construction.

One indicator of this focus on construction rather than deconstruction is that Latvian daina culture is no exception in avoiding naming, calling on, or celebrating the dark, chaotic, dangerous, and destroying forces, as in the saying, “Vilku (velnu) piesauc, vilks (velns) klāt.” (Call the wolf (devil), and the wolf (devil) comes.) Rather it invokes and values what is lasting. Thus it values material artifacts – landmarks, heirlooms, and symbols of long-term existence, such as stone in Latvian culture, as a means of fixing and recalling memory and for the sense of continuity that is emotionally craved. Contracts and oaths, as of marriage, are made placing ones foot on a stone. In contrast, the interest of postmodernism has been the opposite: to deconstruct and problematize constructions that came to be taken too seriously by scholars with an essentialist, positivistic, or algorithmic bent. Latvian folk culture assumes as given that all creation will not only change, but also be swallowed and destroyed by the eternal. It tends to restrict invoking the sea because the sea is the source and destruction of life. Magic incantations do invoke the sea when the function is to destroy something.

Purpose

The specific goal is to identify an important but neglected area of Latvian tradition and make it available beyond the Latvian audience. The theoretical goal is to develop a heuristic that allows best entry into a historic corpus in hope that it may add to emerging models that make available significant, but difficult-to-access historic folklore. How does a phenomenology interested in behavior, kinesthetics, performance, and relations arrive at a heuristic with which to extract information from texts, concepts, and mental representations? How to account for variable stability in the transmission of knowledge and information across generations? Answers are afforded in the analogic connections whereby an existing cluster or domain of thought is linked to another target domain. For the purpose of study, one may say “let” there be a stable concept, even though this is a convention to observe process.

The intent is to situate the special, restricted apdziedāšanās (challenge, insult), performance, usually sung with the godubalss (ceremonial voice), within the general tradition of apdziedāšana (neutral or positive dialogic of singer and subject) within a daina-song world as common cognitive cultural strategy patterns for creating meaningful coherence. Situating these songs within a “classical” period when they were a central as well as integral part of a pre-industrial way of life not only grounds them in a specific discourse, but also adds depth to an understanding of different contemporary usages, which continue recursing to the same largely archived sources. Text and ongoing historical commentary constrain and suggest dominant conceptual patterns, while stressing polyvalence and a continuous creation and search of sense.

A corpus is, then, to be identified, delimited, translated, analyzed, and related within a larger context of information and scholarship on play, ritual, liminality, ambiguity, wit, gender, conflict, and myth as sacred knowledge. The recreational/ play function is strongest in current performances, but daina-texts suggest much stronger myth/ritual function in the past with use of military or hunting terms and allusion to myth and pre-Christian concepts of fate, fortune, order, and disorder.

As Krišjāns Barons and others have suggested within the daina world, the general sense of apdziedāt (“to sing about”) is a primary, fundamental and intimate way of the subject, usually in the first to second person, to interrelate with the world. The celebratory feature seems to correlate with magic thinking, the necessary participation of the subject in her world.

Dziesmas skan agri, vēlu, Dziesmas trīc Daugasnē;

Nevar kāzu, ne kristabu Bez dziesmām pavadīt. (35790)

Songs sound early, (songs sound) late; songs go forth to Daugasne;

Not a wedding, christening, if not sent off with songs.)

Challenge apdziedāšanās seems to asymmetrically stand out within the ambiguous or neutral apdziedāšana. It can be seen as within the agonistic tradition and a case of joking relations as treated in anthropological literature broadly ranging from West African cross cousin aggressive humor to Chinese alternating contest songs between men and women. While antiphony doesn’t necessarily require aggression, that is the default popular sense of apdziedāšanās today, and is potentially inherent in the concept. It would be incorrect to consider it a negative term because while one may place the value of negative on hostilities, the term implies or carries with it the expectation of a desirable outcome of those hostilities.

The force of such an initiating formula as “Stājatiesi sveši ļaudis abejs pušu istabā.” (Stand together, stranger people, each on their own side of the room) can be understood with greater depth in historical and geographical context. Much that is in the daina world can not be understood at all in the context of the world of everyday current without immersion into the historical roots of the subject. It is an immersion that has been made by significant numbers of Latvians, not only scholars, consulting both elder members of their community and archived sources, but people from all walks of life. Significantly, both second and third person address are usually used. However, sometimes the first voice is also assumed with the double effect of one side playing or speaking for the other with a resulting ironic effect.

Without a deeper structural understanding of how the Latvian apdziedāšanās relates to other cases of song wars in archaic societies and modern recontextualizations of old practices throughout the world, it is impossible to appreciate the deep historical roots of singing contests today, or how Midsummer has not only persisted as a recognized holiday in modern Latvia but is the single most important holiday that Latvians share in spite of it being seen as “pagan.” Not an insignificant number of Christians seem willing to suspend their Christianity for this day-night. There isn’t even much of a pretense of a Christian saint. St. John the Baptist with whom the Church has attempted to link the holiday fades before the presence of the “pagan” god Yānis. Many practices only make sense when one understands a different mindset and worldview where magic predominates. Songs have the magic power of creative sound and are commonly a part of ritual setting. In such a context songs noticeably cross into other genres, such as incantations, riddles, and proverbs. Finally, in contrast to today, where the function is primarily recreational even as there is a general sense that there is more, in the past there was a strong link with the sacred and mythical. Even today there is a tendency to allegorize or justify, thereby tilting toward the view of myth as a type of truth, rather than falsehood. Clearly, contemporary Latvians are continuing to have a deep dialogue between history and the immediate now. Many examples of poems and other literature that connect the past to the present and the natural landscape, could be cited, almost at random:

Skuju raksti mātes dotos cimdos,

Jānis zaļajām ozollapām vīts,

Tāšu svārkos cauri gadu simtiem

Tautas dziesma nākusi mums līdz.

Evergreen needle patterns in the mittens mother gave,

Yanis twined in green oak leaves,

Clothed in birch bark she has come with us

Through centuries the folk song.

(Ārija Elksne, Dzīvs Priedes Čiekurs (A Living Pine Cone)

Amber is our eternal mirror.

After thousands of years washed ashore

on the beach,

it will still reflect our thoughts,

and even if the finder be disappointed,

or sorrows, our pain, our joy

will spark back true

and will tell of the pines

that in eternal rhythm

sway, sway, sway.

(Krūklis, Dzivs Priedes Ciekurs, 1979)

Amber grain

With a bee

Asleep in lucidness

Transformed song.

(Zenta Liepa, ALA flyer, 1984)

In songs about singing the daina unit is compared to a pebble, often as a piece of amber, washed through time in the sea. As someone of this time picks it up, they realize it was once flowing sap from a living tree. Information is also seen as something that is communal in that while it starts out as separate voices, it fuses and becomes frozen as texts and in this objectified way is transferred to others rather than in their original living expression. However, it has the potential to be recovered and enter the living stream of active use. Another folk image is of winding up the strands into a ball and placing them into a container until they need to be taken out and unwound (sung). The daina is a distillation or concentration of cultural knowledge, polyvocal in multiplicity, ambiguity, and potential for use.

Dainas were not created by a specialist class, but are what remains of living traditions performed by ordinary people, notably by women. A historical treatment of apdziedāšanās, then, seems to answer the popular demand for “authenticity,” a way of reconstructing past representations for current needs.

Domain as Source for Usage

Apdziedāšanās is an aspect of what I am calling the “daina world,” a fuzzily bounded permeable corpus of collected texts. The daina world, largely available in archived form, has functioned as a symbolic classifier and dynamic reservoir and source-world for Latvians who otherwise often disagree. The focus is on an expressive textual world with texts as contexts for other texts. Although a constructed, artificial “toy” world, actualizable in performance, it holds valuable information about real things, including concerns in cultural history. Dainas ground and constrain performance, and are sources of inspiration and common reference.

The closest thing to a unitary locus of meaning as a wellspring or source of cosmology for differing Latvians is the daina world, but its interpretation varies with each reading. The rakstraudzis (sampler) of the Latvian weaver is a case in point. The more creative weaver did not slavishly copy designs, but used them as somewhat equivalent to dictionary reference in her construction of design. The song balls of yarn, if they physically existed, as has been argued by some, would have served a similar function.

The daina-song corpus of around a million and a half variant units archived in the Riga Archives is highly redundant in information. Contest songs, known in the restricted sense as apdziedāšanās dziesmas, are scattered throughout major collections, but most are concentrated in wedding, Midsummer, and work party groupings. Entry from any vantage will confront the reader with some of the same concepts or clusters. On the topmost hierarchical level of worldview many connections, domains, and conceptual levels can be identified and related. Related concepts are deeply embedded throughout culture. It is expected that a highly integrated stabilized culture will show strong intersemiotic connections among expressive forms throughout its modalities and would express its relationship to its ecological basis. The surrounding ecological environment has been mostly stable relative to the lifetime of individuals and spans different generations. It provides a particular cultural syntax based on concrete sensory experience of that environment. Information processed by the different senses is interrelated and integrated. Geometric shapes dominating in textiles are also repeated in dances and singing games, ritual motion, and architecture and are generalized in belief systems. Melngailis mentions a daina where the singer says she knit her patterns while listening to a drumbeat. Rhythm, pattern, and periodicity terms are related in Latvian etymology. So are Latvian signification terms, notably on raksts (pattern, sign, writing) and rakstitāja (pattern-maker, composer, in recent Latvian - writer). The verb rakstīt is used for song-composition, for weaving a pattern, for rhythmic animal movement (woodpecker pecking), and rhythmic flailing, threshing, or inscribing. Not surprisingly the dominant meaning today for rakstīt is "to write." There is a sense or image in the word of a foregrounded or selected figure which is really a part of an extendable pattern or ground that has no edges or whose edges are out of sight. Juhan Kurrick speaks of “established mythical themes of which the individual songs are only ambivalent and/or ambiguous expressions.” (Kurrick 22) The basic themes emerge if dainas are seen as a totality with each daina as a permutation, "part of the total fabric" (Ibid 24). Vaira Vikis‑Freibergs speaks of interconnections "between a whole cluster of key words or concepts" with each "key word...like a separate note which combines with others to form a chord" (Vīķis-Freibergs, 1980, 219) and of each recorded text as a “node in a multidimensional network, linked to many other texts by labeled relations of similarity.” (LPLFS, 1989: xi) One song blends into another, sometimes with only a change in word or phrase, a shifting tapestry.

That analogous interconnections and even synchronicity is felt to be common within the daina world is suggested by historical etymology linking different sense experiences. Thus, measures and their analogues figure strongly in the sounding world of the dainas. Laima not only decrees (lemj) or places/ situates (liek) a lifespan, but she also inscribes (raksta) a human life. The word raksts (sign, pattern, measure) has concurrently visual, aural, and tactile meaning connecting as analogous different sign worlds. A total sense of the extension is suggested by the word burtnieks (Lith. burtininkas) (prophet, magician, magic sign user, one who incises signs in a bee tree birkas): “ They are sitting next to each other, side-by-side. Both were kin children: your father burtenieks, my mother a raganīte (witch).” (LD 21051) The word for sign in Lithuanian and Latvian burti is in the oldest layers concretely connected with owner identification signs inscribed in bee trees.

On the other hand, the daina units are also often inconsistent, ambiguous, and contradictory in relation to each other. The multiplicity and the concrete vivid imagery have the capacity of great metaphorical power and endless interpretive possibilities. Shifting, alternating, and multiple realities are characteristic of a corpus of many voices, not normalized by authority. If the daina corpus is viewed as a text, it still is a fuzzy unbounded social text constructed by many unidentifiable authors only partially mapable to other traditions inside and outside the Baltic. Even slight differences and small deviations may be of considerable qualitative importance. Lotte Tarkka’s discussion of intertextuality, dialogic, rhetorics, and interpretation of Finnish oral poetry is relevant also to Latvian cases: “Coherence does not deny the existence of differentiation or fission, but simply stresses the dialectical process in which meaning is generated alternating between differentiation and association, as in intertextuality.” (Tarkka, 187, ff). Using the metaphor of net, as each daina is connected to other dainas, they are also eventually connectable to larger areas, such as the Eurasian, and ultimately to the human net. Of course, from any one specified point the outreach of the net gets dimmer and harder to see as it is further away.

Epistemological implications

Some basic questions underlie or are implied by the interests of this paper. To what degree do basic processes underlie all human thought and are universals? My own inclination is pragmatically cognitive in the direction of Mark Johnson, Eleanor Rorsch, and George Lakoff, who follow Wittgenstein, in awareness of mental processing that underlies common human experience in childhood. However, beyond very bare bones awareness, I take the position with most folklorists that almost all of the interesting information is in elaborated cultural and individual differences.

Problems of cognition and information may be seen for example in the analog/ digital relationship. Periodization, dividing into discrete units rather than continuous blends allows for efficient, flexible, and rapid communication, but can not fix the flow, only point to it. Imposing categories on the perceived environment is basic to all cognition, including music, art, and language. There is an assumption that meaning in folk music involves some shared, though not equally distributed knowledge by all participants, so that everyone can appreciate and participate in the performance or manipulation of available musical resources by the performers.

The daina world seems to take ultimate unity and the connectivity of everything for granted, and focuses on the practical task of defining discrete units in terms of concrete experiences.

My broadest impression after years of immersion in the daina world, is that of largely less specialized and less differentiated type of “Western” agonistic thinking before it became formalized, as prototyped for classic Greek tradition, to a passion for logical reasoning, linear and causal terms, and fixed category. It may appear in some ways more Eastern than Western, which may be deceptive. It raises the question of how folk philosophies are related to highly sophisticated philosophies of either East or West when vigorously scanned. Such questions come to the fore as to how holistic and how dependent in terms of context, relationship, or experience is the thinking of a tradition as opposed to how analytic, context-free, and contradiction avoiding. My own study is unable to address the philosophical issue directly, while recognizing it as relevant.

Some researchers have approached the philosophy of Latvian traditional beliefs by a study of the Latvian concepts and deity laime/ Laima (fate, fortune, destiny). To what degree does the individual agency and will of an individual matter in relation to situational forces? Within the mix and plurality of the daina world voices reflecting different experiences, commonalities appear to emerge that suggest a world that is not highly differentiated or specialized, but open to actualization and specific interpretation. Tranquility as a way of lessening suffering and a sense of the tragic by the acceptance of the nature of nature may seem Eastern, but is likely more broadly archaic as there is an activist aspect that is distant from what one may think of Indian mystical passivity and closer to Chinese practicality. The basic outlines seem to be those of fate, personified by the goddess, but there is considerable freedom and responsibility as to how the individual performs within those constraints and boundaries. To what degree does a person entertain ambiguity, contradiction, and the irresolvable, and to what degree is he open to actual dialogue where he will become modified by the experience?

Apzdiedāšanās ritual may be viewed as the persistence of long-term agonistic dialogic between “sides” or “halves” within a larger domain that is I-Thou celebratory apdziedāšana. As the confronting sides remain discrete, rather than fuse, one individual crosses over to the other side during the most important celebration, the cosmic (Midsummer) or human wedding. That causes realignments, even if just homeostatic, on both sides and sets up further exchange through mutual obligations. Underscoring this experience of knowing, forces an awareness and need to cooperate with the familiar Other, even as the Other remains such. A degree of tolerance has been reached even on this very simple, basic, or primitive level.

Epistemological methodology

Culture, the social production of knowledge, and the conceptual matrix can be approached through techniques developed in literary theory, such as hermeneutics, in that texts serve as context for texts. Close textual examination of the semantic field, which I call the daina-world, and analysis is my research core. Stable patterns, such as formulae, will be identified, as well as some of the voices in polyvalent dialogic trying to be heard and to construct sense. But daina-texts are also an example of historical social process, having been primarily recorded in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, characteristic of pre-Industrial and oral cultures. As greater context and supplement, I will pay some attention to extra-textual, and even archaeological research, in that it has been traditional in Latvian academic study of folklore. At least two levels of hegemony and subversion are relevant: the subject indigenous Latvian thrall population dominated by German landowners and clergy, and internal social dynamics. The latter is related to contest songs, but the former is relevant to understanding the mentality of humor among Latvians as reflected in their folklore in general.

These methods will be informed by a general background and lifelong immersion in traditional Latvian culture, history, and ecology with special interest in asprātības (clever retorts). Using Estyn Evans’ model,^⁴ I considered contextualizing the subject in different focus levels: ecological/geographic background, historical/political background, the daina-world and its commentary, and the play/wit and ritual/myth perspective. Perhaps the major difficulty and limitation, especially for a researcher outside Latvia trying to access obscure and difficult -to -locate material, is the regional aspect of the material.

The core of this study concretely focuses on the level of textual dialogic, informed by intertextuality and commentary for the purpose of gaining insight into dialogue between text and culture, diachronically in time and regionally in space. It is seen as motivated by and a preparation for the highest level of dialogue between self, society, and history (Calame-Griaule et al. 1983; Bruner and Gorfrain 1984). It does not see as contradictory attempts to satisfy an expressed continuing need of Latvian users: to have historically informed "authentic” source material available for ongoing use even as it is recognized that the concept of “authentic” is problematic from perspectives based on hermeneutics and phenomenology. It attempts to bring about the perspective of a performance-oriented folkloristics to archived, historical material and reinterprets “authentic” to mean “scholarly” rather than grounded in static representation. It tries to “reread, through their rhetorical structure” (Tarkka, 168). It recognizes as relevant to such demands for “authenticity” a commonly expressed emic Latvian sense of “our” rather than “imposed” tradition as a historical development akin to the aspirations of other peoples who have felt they were colonized or exploited by other cultures and have expressed a strong need for a counter culture or alternative to what is perceived as foreign hegemony (cf Franz Fanon).

No scholar can be unaware of the difficulties (cf Nordic Frontiers. Recent Issues in the Study of Modern Tradtional Culture in the Nordic Countries, 1993; Songs Beyond the Kalevala, 1994; Bula 2000). My approach to the archived, historical materials is to acknowledge that indeed they are seriously faulty sources of information, but that information transmission from real life is always problematic, and a scholar must work with what is available in accordance with his stated purpose. Information transfer from real life always involves a compression problem, high bandwidth, and high-density information. Information transfer by its nature is reductionist, and the researcher must outline the constraints. Associations are made, but they are self-reinforcing ones. Thus the daina archive is a compression of loose information so that things completely separate may get crushed together and computed. Differences and diversity are collapsed. No epistemological approach escapes postmodernist concerns. On the other hand, associations are far from random. The brain is a self-organizing system whose many parts work together to form a coherent system, sensitive to initial conditions. As the network of neurons in the synaptic web is activated, some basic patterns inherent in the available assemblage of information are “rediscovered.” The study takes for granted the concrete and specific social construction of reality and meaning and it acknowledges that the dynamics of culture are situated in social relations. It also assumes such construction has basic ascertainable constraints and limits, such as the laws of the physical universe, the human body, and long-term conventions generated over time and space that provide a very general universal frame. Another loose informative cross-cultural reality check is provided by the fact that Baltic materials are variously loosely framed within historic and geographic realities shared with neighboring peoples. Therefore some information about social relations and practice can be extracted from historical texts. In all cases, a ground up text-based rather than a top down information processing approach has been used as the basis of analysis.

The study acknowledges the concerns of ethno-poetics of the fundamental ambivalence or polyvalence of all expressive forms, which give rise to parallel levels of communication. By forefronting some particular views, such as female perspectives on song, myth, ritual, and other symbolic forms, it aspires to balance others that have not done so. It does not, of course, claim to be the only perspective.

To situate my textual study within contemporary usage, I devoted about two years to intensive participation on Latvian list-serves originating in Latvia where intense exchanges between iekšlatvieši (Latvian Latvians) and ārlatvieši (Latvians outside Latvia) occurred. Even though Latvia is now in an economic crisis and largely unable to fund cultural studies, the discussions did diverge now and then from economics and politics to interests more relevant to my study, even specifically to an extensive discussion on nerātnās (naughty) dainas and several on calendar holidays, including Midsummer. Such ongoing participation, in addition to memories of my growing-up experiences with apdziedāšanās, informs and forms a broader context, just as methodology in the broadest sense has included immersion.

The specific methodology is over-determined by the constraints of the available materials, archived textual materials together with commentary spread out in time and space and situating contemporary and historical ethnographic accounts. Often Latvian traditional studies have involved a sleuthing approach, grasping any and all clues as if to solve a puzzle, looking for patterns. This is a formidable interdisciplinary effort including archaeology, material culture, historical documents, language and historical etymology. The assumption is, as Gregory Benford’s suggests in Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millenia (1999) that artifacts, such as bones, DNA, and texts do communicate across historical time, and the task of the researcher is to find the best way to decode or interpret whatever is possible of the message. Redundancy is the key. Some kind of whole can be inferred from the parts, the “message gets through in a holographic sense.” (Benford, 55) Redundancy is also a key in that the parts are stored throughout culture and in the memories of different brains that variously communicate across age sets, gender, class, occupation, region, and other categories in addition to information that is restricted as category specific. Redundancy also operates on the genre and convention level, or stored as long-term values, norms, and roles. One may even think of information in the opposite sense of degradable, in Richard Dawkin’s sense of memes, as resistant to elimination because it endlessly disperses and mutates once introduced.

Only recently has attention been focused on individual performers (for apdziedāšanās on Veronika Porziņģe in western Latvia and Benedikte Mežale about eastern Latvia). Thus daina study faces similar problems to Biblical and classical studies sensitive to intertextuality. Daina study on the first or textual level lends itself to a cognitive approach with an interest in conceptual and semantic domains, cognitive maps, and relationships of motifs across texts, schemata, frames, and social behavior scripts. This is the approach taken by Vaira Vīķe-Freibergs who dovetailed oral-formulaic analysis to cognitive research, acknowledging multidimensionality. It also lends itself to semiotics and the play of tropes, an approach favored by Janīna Kursīte, familiar with the Tartu school and Russian semiotics, including Propp. As a consequence, much of the older concrete and detailed motif analysis continues to be informative, reframed in cognitive terms. All of these approaches seem to accept or assume that embodied, embedded, and basic explanations of the world are redundantly scattered throughout different culture modalities and are resistant to change. But this is not so much a matter of seeing through homology, as inferring holographically. These are not static approaches, as the concern is with the process of how schemes, genre, and other structural elements, associations, and conventionalized patterns are reconstructed and modified in the process of structuring discourse. Information is perceived, utilized, processed, and stored through structure. An awareness of that structure allows a limited amount of cautious integration.

Daina-songs do continue to be performed as living tradition, though general public knowledge and interest has decreased and has become more concentrated among interested users, such as the folk ensemble performers. However, or because knowledge is less generalized, public demand for “authentic” source-material continues to exist, as it has since the first collecting of folklore in the Romantic Period. Many users continue to emphasize the more constant and stable, taking variation and innovation for granted. Also, many users, in addition to learning by participation in living tradition from living people, recurrently return to the archives to be inspired by textualized, recorded performances, the extensive archived collections, dynamically described among daina motifs as ancestral springs (avots) or more statically as dowry chests (pūrs).

Texts were related in terms of and context for each other. This was not done exoterically, randomly, or in the armchair fashion. As a Latvian participating in Latvian communities, I have had a life-long interest in the “old traditions” and have for many years been asked to give lectures, write papers, and lead seminars on Latvian traditional culture. Because of the enormous difficulties and complexities involved, I believe meaningful daina textual study is possible only with a strong grounding in the daina tradition together with its ongoing commentary. This was the strength of the old scholars who, while they did not have modern recording devices to help contextualize their materials, nevertheless were studying either their own cultures or the cultures of their sisters, mothers, and grandmothers acknowledged throughout society, including by the menfolk. The daina world may well be as large an assemblage of traditional materials essentially created by women as is known, and with the highest relevance to cultural gender studies.

The broader background approach is thus holistic and holographic, drawing from life-time study of the daina-world, but for this study it narrows to an analysis that relates the Latvian antiphonal ritual song contests to a traditional oppositional or dual conceptual scheme apparent in Latvian mythology, cosmology, magic incantations, and ritual. Such dual concepts have been discussed by Russian scholars J. Lotman, V. Toporov, and V. Ivanov in addition to Roman Jakobson (1956) and the French scholar who is better known to the English-speaking world, Levi-Strauss. Structuralists were searching for information that was inherent rather than derived from immediate experience in the form of deep and universal cognitive patterns that would hold across cultures.

However, a study informed by postmodernism and intertextuality searches for ways to combine structuralism and performance. Gregory Schrempp, has suggested the term “performative structuralism” (personal communication) as a neo-structuralism for transforming the view from static to dynamic. This view allows ongoing substitution in a shifting oppositional relationship as evident in Latvian cosmology, instead of fixed pairs, and allows for more flexibility than Durkheim, Mauss, and Granet allowed. This view acknowledges with the cognitivists and constructivists that there seem to be conceptual near-universals embodied and embedded in common human experience across cultures (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Lakoff 1987), but that the oppositions are not frozen, but change in usage and across cultures. Cognitivists replaced old theories of categories as defining essential properties with concepts such as polysemy (related word meanings form categories), family resemblance (category members may be related to each other without necessary properties in common), and prototype (best example) of category.

The experience of duality seems to be embodied in such common human experience, such as biological sex and socially constructed gender, based on complex biological variables and life experiences. While in-between gender may be acknowledged in many cultures, dual gender experience is prototypical and basic, acquired by children at an early age. Where a dual gender system is marked and developed, as seems to be the case in the daina world, a duality of visions is also cognitively implied with far less negotiation than the question of asymmetry in social reality. This is not to say that gender characteristics, either as cognitive or social reality, are the same across cultures. But what is sex-typical behavior may differ considerably across cultures, and we cannot simplistically project from our present values to the past: “There are wide variations among groups in what is defined as appropriate behaviors for the genders.” (Doyle: 111) While it seems to be a cross-cultural statistical tendency for boys’ play to involve competition and conflict, while the play of girls more role-playing (cf Halpern), clearly there are different optimal levels for different societies of the extremes. Unfortunately, there is not enough information from isolated ethnic minorities to strengthen even the extreme observations by Berry, which found no significant differences in spatial ability perceptual skills among Eskimos where both men’s and women’s survival depended on its development. (Berry: 207-229) This is in contrast to the overwhelming evidence to the contrary across cultures where such gender egalitarianism aspects are not necessary for optimum survival. It is possible, for instance, that because native women were valued in terms of their work ability by the Baltic hegemony, a higher level of female task-orientation and/or competitiveness could have been optimal for the ecological conditions.

Since apdziedāšanās performances seem to have functioned as rituals of liminality or negotiating the in-between, the classical ritual, ritual clowning, and trickster studies are, of course, relevant. I also drew from my life-long interest in Baltic mythology as a source of information to fundamental belief systems evident in the daina world. This kind of multiple resource approach as context for whatever specific focus a scholar of daina chooses has been common in Baltic tradition studies. Such diverse fields as ethnopoetics, ethnolinguistics, performance studies, literary theory, mass communications studies, the sociology of play and humor, feminist studies, the oral-formulaic approach, and frame/ scheme analysis may contribute to the theoretical framework with which dainology is approached.

The sources of Latvian folkloristics include historical documents (travelers’s tales, church records and protocols, pastoral reports, grammars and dictionaries, and other records by nonLatvians) and oral folklore collected mostly in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Other genres of folklore, ethnography, history, archaeology, etymology and anything else that adds relevant information may be consulted.

Significance of Study

It is a hope this study generates further interest in a subject where a historical tradition dominated by women has become the major national source of identity. Songs originally expressive of a pre-industrial way of life, such as orphans or new brides among “strange people,” were recontextualized in the national awakening as protest songs of the Latvian people against their foreign oppressors. One type of “song war” became another.

Traditional Baltic constructions of duality illuminate the type of asymmetric dialogic Bakhtin introduced with historical evidence of archaic style that has become scarce, scattered, and difficult to access, especially considering the language barriers of small populations. This study is a pioneering effort in forefronting contest singing that has been traditionally female dominated in performance and creation, and is important to national identity. The daina world offers a view into Latvian traditional constructions of experience that is not just from the male perspective. The question of women’s and men’s songs, and their relationship is raised, but not solved. There is a lack of the male oriented epic and skop traditions in the Baltic, but there are less specialized praise/insult traditions that women cultivate. The perspective of regional musics is raised if, as Boiko has suggested, the polyphonic vocal drone as ceremonial voice was possibly associated with Eastern Balts in contrast to the sutartine round tradition of Western Balts. The study senses the call and response, as also the choir and choir leader model to have resonance elsewhere throughout the culture, and suspects it may even represent a minicosmos of patterns, cognition, and social structure. Reality is not primarily in the long-term units that come into contesting dialogic, but in the process of interaction, in the singing exchange that vitalizes these units, which have full definition only in terms of the other.

In view of such as Koskoff observing that many studies “have noted the links between women’s sexuality, their culturally perceived sex role, and music behavior,” (p. 3) apdziedāšanās is highly relevant to this interest and has received no attention outside the Baltic, and has been studied only in passing in the area. The ritual insults include aggression and obscenity that in many cultures is considered to be either male public privilege, or else from a male point of view marks women off as prostitutes or their equivalents. (Koskoff: 3) But in the Latvian case, even though the obscenities by females are indeed normatively restricted to ritual, and it is not considered traditionally fitting that unmarried girls sing them, the songs are not necessarily sung only by women past childbearing age who are not sexually threatening. The default expectation is that the performers are married rather than past childbearing, thereby stressing active fertility. Finally, the role of women in public musical performance cannot be dismissed as merely an inverse carnival or liminal phenomenon, but has far-reaching implications in terms of gender behavior and ideology. The musical activities do not seem exhausted by a “focus on their primary social roles” as socially defined by men (Koskoff: 49). Perhaps it is not a leap out of historical tradition that the President of Latvia, Prof. Vaira Vīķe-Freibergs, is a dainology specialist as well as psychologist.

Ideal and/or radical patriarchy tries to eliminate public self-construction of woman and makes her a projection of male vision, relegates her to the status of passive nature, which is ordered and brought under control by man to be useful to him, a construction out of dismemberment. In such a case, woman and nature can be categorized similarly as a challenge, a to-be-tamed wild state, the romantic, primitive questlands, or an object of predation. Latvian tradition is no exception in having strong male-centered predatory metaphors, but there is also a recognized public female perspective. Thus, the abduction drama is, as in many cultures, the central reenactment of a wedding, even though Latvian tradition recognized an alternative to patrilocal marriage, the iegātnis system where a daughter inherited the land and her husband was the stand-in until her children could inherit. In wedding games, as among other Eurasians, the suitor or bridegroom is depicted as a hunter and the bride an animal to be captured, but additionally there are, for instance, games where the bride and groom contest who will have the upper hand, such as who will surreptitiously step on the other’s foot first. While playful, they are actual mini-contests in that the male does not necessarily win. In addition to the male view, a strong anti-romantic counter vision is available that is female constructed and controlled, as well as publicly displayed and acknowledged within ongoing life, rather than relegated to special safety valve occasions.

In the Latvian case, the singing contests involving women publicly forefronted in performance do not occur only at weddings, but also at calendar holidays and other occasions where two groups of “strangers” meet. Latvians do not have epics, nor do they have heroic flytings, both of which seem associated with early military aristocracies; the Latvian peoples were at an early feudal stage when they were conquered. Ward Parks argues for the prototypicality of the male flyting, pointing to the fundamental association of maleness and aggression, and seems to dismiss ludic and even guest-host flytings as secondary and/or derived phenomenon. He even downplays the role of women who are involved in amatory ludic flytings or as goaders of warriors to shame them into fighting. However, I believe there is no reason to assume that a contest paradigm which could lead either to fighting or to cooperation can not be considered as primary with two options, one hostile and the other cooperative. The play or comic aspect of the serious may develop close enough in time to be considered its alternative or opposite option. It is possible that less asymmetrical alternative gender duality is played out as rationally consistent with other archaic constructions of duality that may have been suppressed, ignored, or eliminated by the dominant and great currents of history that followed specialization, including military aristocracy.

Some have found Latvian resonance with certain Eastern traditions more so than with developed postindustrial classical Western genres (cf Vija Vētra trained in the temple dances of India, current interest in Zen Buddhism, and Rūta and Valdis Muktupāvels interest in Siberian shamanism). However, what seem to appeal in these highly sophisticated Eastern traditions are their archaic roots, the less differentiated or specialized and pre-industrial (cf Chatteryi) rather than the developed later philosophies. They would therefore have analogies to “western" or European musical foundations that are sufficiently undifferentiated as to be “non-western” in the classical sense. The Baltic in numerous studies has been depicted as in-between, a crossroad, the hinterland, or a “shatter zone” not wholly West or wholly East from the viewpoint of classical Western civilization.

Special Difficulties and Constraints

The sources I have used divide into emic (texts, particularly songs about singing) and etic (daina commentary through history), both with attendant problems of translation, especially of the highly compressed daina-units. The undertaken study represents difficulty of the highest level and a single person cannot bridge these difficulties. There are problems of translation across a number of theoretical, cognitive, schematic, and linguistic levels and frames.

Although dainas are the most popular and best researched folklore genre among Latvians, little is available for modern scholarship in English, and the ones in other major languages are mostly outdated or outright antiquated. Even the older research in German and Russian needs updating. In English there is a collection of essays edited by Vaira Vīķe-Freibergs, and also a computer-accessible corpus of sun songs co-authored with her husband, articles in the JBS and several periodicals published in Latvia, several dissertations including one on burial songs and the one by Guntis Smitchens on recent use of song as ideological war against Soviet hegemony. Much of the older material focuses on aesthetics, ethics, mythology, or class conflict. Scholars in Latvia, making the shift from former Soviet hegemony to new information opportunities, have strong priorities but very limited resources. Apdziedāšanāss dziesmas, according to recent personal communication, have been treated only in passing, and to my knowledge there is no major work emerging on the subject.

Researchers have published works of fundamental importance in Latvian, but these have already become bibliographical rarities almost impossible to purchase. Economics have forced a situation where what is published is underprinted less than demand, and with no inventory to meet future demand. American universities have not acquired many of those fundamental works, such as the scientific edition of the Latvian folk songs. I was unable to find a number of needed publications through all the resources of the net and interlibrary loans, and was unable to purchase them in Latvia. The used book market is almost dead. Hoped-for efflorescence in Latvian traditional studies, as Latvian independence replaced a long-blocked Soviet period, has not materialized. The country is fighting for economic survival, so that its priorities are basic economics and politics rather than culture. A few excellent collaborative publications have come out, such as scientific articles on the Latvian forest in a socioecological context, Latvijas mežu vēsture līdz 1940.gadam^⁵ or the ethnographic survey of dairy farming and foods by Linda Dumpe.^⁶

Work is going on in assessing the state of materials in the Latvian Archives, particularly the Rīga Latvian Association Knowledge Committee collection, which is fundamental – what has been lost or damaged, and what needs to be published of unpublished dainas. (Vīksne: 31-7)

Because the topic is a high difficulty pioneering effort, much of the effort necessitated selecting, assembling, and translating a corpus together with select related commentary. The subject of apdziedāšanās has variously been touched upon, but there has been no larger study devoted specifically to it. In the past the clergy and nonLatvian ruling classes denounced apdziedāšanās performances as scandalous, vulgar, and unChristian. The first Latvian intellectuals were anxious to prove their people as “cultured” and concentrated on what they considered sacred and serious, largely taking the “comic vision” for granted and of less importance for serious research, thereby neglecting it. Additionally music research was filtered through classical Western academic standards, often inappropriately.

Research was also hampered with the extremes of too much uncatalogued generalized daina study, and too little of the most relevant information. Daina research has been a fundamental concern since “The Awakening” (Atmoda), as the Romantic period is also known, so the quantity of literature on dainas in general is formidable, a state similar to Kalevala research in Finland, but with the disadvantage of being more obviously colored by ideology. The subject of apdziedāšanās, however has not been treated more than in passing and I found only one article specifically addressing the subject (Sneibe). Research of relevant components of the performance schema has to be assembled, often from different contexts.

The past fifty years of folklore scholarship in Latvia before the Second (grass roots folklore movement preceding independence) and Third Awakenings (independence in 1989) were constrained within and by Soviet hegemony. Research was done within models approved by Marxist materialistic ideology. Putting aside those studies whose primary purpose and/or effect was to validate or celebrate Soviet hegemony, others attempted to work within the system, sabotaging it by either continuing the type of research that was done before the Soviet period, or to further more individual needs. Virtually no funding and no work on mythology and ritual was done during this period, although that had felt to be a strong need in that neither Šmits (narrative folklore) nor Barons (lyro-narrative daina) singled out "mythical" material as a discrete entity. Mythology is seen as involved with ethos, worldview, cosmology, ethics, and deeper questions of philosophy and psychology. The Soviet hegemony was therefore not interested in promoting potentially alternative sources of identity. In contrast, the 1994 February issue of Zinātnes vēstis (Science News) called for folklore scholarship to be a priority in the new republic. It specifically singled out mythology as a touchstone of continuing ethical values as well as continuing a tradition that is widely seen to go back to prehistoric times. The economic crisis, however, has not supported education and research generally, to say nothing of folkloristics specifically.

A Western mythological approach may find a strange inverse in the emphasis on the relatively short daina-songs as mythology sources, supplemented by short narratives (incantations, sayings, proverbs, even individual formulae) in relation to the longer narratives, tales and legends, prioritized in the West. But there are precedents in other cultures, namely the vedas of India. Often, Einhorn’s classification of dainas as hymni deorum, has been accepted as songs addressed to gods or supernatural beings, but more broadly addressed to whatever seizes the mind’s eye in a numinous experience. Lithuanian scholars, such as Norbertas Velius have identified a “unified system” throughout the territories of the Balts “based on the mythical conception of nature and society” as “traced in the oldest archaeological evidence, and its numerous relics” that have survived to the present and should therefore be “treated as a system, not as a collection of individual facts.” (p. 292) Furthermore, Velius, among others, identifies this system to be “primarily based on territorially variant oppositions typical of dualistic society.” (p. 293) The primary oppositions are modified in typical Indo-European fashion by the introduction of a third member resulting in territorially variant three-member oppositions” as constituting the “most typical feature of the world outlook and social stratification of the ancient Balts.” (p.294)

Scholarship in the Baltic in the past has tended to be integrative both in subject and in terms of scholars working with each other. Discrepancies in information between longer narratives and dainas have been explained variously, but most commonly the longer narratives are seen to conform more to dominant European patterns, while daina-songs are seen as more idiosyncratic of the Baltic region. For example, there is relatively little mention of Velns/ velni (Devil/devils) in the daina-songs, but there are many narratives about the same subject. Since the songs are largely an address or relationship of the singer to the world, when they are addressed to the sacred world, there is a strong tendency to avoid addressing the dark forces directly. If one does address, for instance, a disease spirit, it is done respectfully, euphemistically, and with the suggestion the spirit go elsewhere. Of the few dainas about Velns (Devil) or velni (devils), many are either in jest or comparing a hostile person, such as a mother in law or a stingy household mistress (vīra māte, velna māte = devil mother, husband’s mother) to the demons. In the narrative tradition, Velns has a much bigger role because the tales are about him, not addressed to him and there is more distance than in the lyro-epic song.

It is unfortunate studies of song wars were not done in the heydays of structuralism and functionalism and even before, while the pre-industrial way of life was more of a living memory, or only a visit to the countryside away. One can and should focus on apdziedāšanās performances as they are today, either as a consequence of the Second Awakening folklore movement or, where in increasingly isolated and abridged instances, they are still a part of countryside and family celebration. But with the passing of not only the pre-industrial age, but leaping into Western market economy, performers continue to mine what was unearthed in the First Awakening as sources of “authentic” inspiration. The vitality of this type of performance is largely carried by the numerous folklore ensembles, who however, as Smidchens (1996) has pointed out, are small, local groups who learned from the old country musicians, and are therefore the acknowledged younger generation inheritors of that tradition even by the old musicians themselves. (cf http://folklora.lv, http://www.music.lv/ethnomusicology).

I had no access to the actual early primary historical manuscripts of previous centuries. I was unable to access the compilation of historical sources that exists as a volume of the academic publication of folk songs Latviešu tautas dziesmas in 15 volumes that is being published in Latvia. Many of these have been compiled and relevant texts quoted and translated from Latin into Latvian in Latviešu konservācijas vārdnīca and are otherwise repeatedly noted and quoted by historians whose sources when used have been crosschecked. Some of them have been reproduced and/ or translated, such as several translations of the Henricus de Lettis Livonia Chronicle. One problem is the tradition to Latvianize the names of authors even in the bibliographies, so that the original can’t be reconstructed.

Important compilations of sources of the history of Latvian music is found in: Vītoliņš, J. and L. Krasinska, Latviešu mūzikas vēsture (History of Latvian Music). Riga: Liesma, 1972. I also used: Latviešu literatūras vēsture. I. Latviešu folklora. Edited by E. Sokols et al. Riga: Latvijas PSR Zinātņu Akadēmijas Izdevniecība, 1959. While I used the Latvian translations of the Vītoliņš and Krasinska book for historical sources as the basis of my English translation, in most cases, I consulted a number of Latvian translations, such as Spekke and Švābe, of the same passage to arrive at an English composite translation.

Foregrounded sources

I will briefly touch on some of the modalities of culture, which seem to be relevant to an understanding of dual organization, particularly myth, kinship, contest, and archaic style of singing. I consider Melngailis and Sneibe’s observation that the ritual song contest was often associated with an archaic style of singing, the Baltic vocal drone characteristic of western and central Latvian group singing in the last century (but more broadly known earlier), as another significant indicator of the originally deep or sacred aspect of the performance and the long-term persistence of an agonistic tradition where prototypically apdziedāšanās involves two groups in a ritual contest. I have sought to situate the Latvian dominantly female tradition in a broader transcultural context by looking at other archaic style or historical song contests of northern Europe, such as flytings, as well as ritual insult contests where the theoretics of the subject have been most developed by anthropologists even though they are nonEuropean (China, the Pacific islands, Africa).

Because the comic vision is a situational attitude, songs used in apdziedāšanās contests are scattered throughout the archival classifications. However, some are used repeatedly and are clustered in the sections on Midsummer, weddings, and work parties talkas. I have used the standard archival collection publications and additionally have looked at the repertoires of two contemporary singers, Mežale and Porziņģe. Additionally I am informed by my past participation in apdziedāšanās performances, though no documentation was attempted at time, and have noted discussions on listserves when obliquely relevant to the subject.

Midsummer is the prototypical calendar holiday for the performance, though insult songs resembling those at apdziedāšanās were also sung at other holidays, such as during mumming and even Christmas. Thus, exchange or singing of insult songs does not necessarily involve two fully assembled responsorial contesting groups, though conceptually the players always represent their group against another. The wedding is the primary occasion in the life cycle for apdziedāšanās. In the past separate activities took place at the bride’s end and the groom’s end, each involving ceremonial insult greeting of the guests. A song contest could happen at either end, but since only a few representatives from the groom’s side would come to take the bride to her new home, the full contest would take place at the groom’s end where both sides had assembled their singers. Insult songs range from playful to funny to invective.

Autobiographical dialogue

The combination of native speech knowledge, membership in the Latvian immigrant “learned” community, recently acquired semiotic and cognitive perspectives at Indiana University, and recent dialogue relationships with Latvians throughout the world on the internet may help serve as a bridge for the exchange of information between those in Latvia and those here. It is hoped that the experiences acquired here in the West may be informative to Latvian researchers in Latvia.

My overall background interest, following my own marginal rather than central membership in various groups, is in the liminal. In chaos/ complexity theory terms that is the edge where order and disorder optimally interact. The interest has included the relation of humor to aggression and confronting the strange, asymmetrical, or out of kilt; how people use humor and insult as weapon, defense, or tool; and how they deal with irresolvable differences, inequalities, and injustices. Though relationships are presented in stereotypical, essential, or idealistic code as within balance or harmony in the daina world, it is to suggest life as dynamic and ever adjusting, just as letters or numbers are used to construct literature and mathematics respectively. As a person of the 21^st century I am interested in how the daina world confronts ambiguity, discord, irresolvable conflict, violation, violence, asymmetrical duality or outright inequality (class, gender, generation-sets) - in short, the trickster and the “dark” aspects even as the value is placed on rhythm, balance, and looking to the bright side. Apdziedāšanās always seems to take place in the liminal area of adjustment and change as marked by rites of passage or rites of calendric passage known as the path of the sun or the meeting of two groups who have arrived at a border (no-man’s land, bridge, river, edge of great body of water).

I was drawn to the subject of apdziedāšanās from two experiences. In my early years I observed and participated in mini-song wars at Latvian Midsummer and wedding celebrations, usually performed as conscious re-enactments of the old ways. Outside these performances I noted the everyday biting wit of older Latvian girls and their taunting and teasing of boys as well as among themselves as a common, valued, and acknowledged form of interaction. It seemed a contrast to my experience with American girls I knew who did not particularly cultivate such mock aggression, whereas joking and mock insult was common enough a way of relating among males.

This kind of ribbing, jostling, bantering, and prank-making, I also found as a primary form of interaction later in the mid to late eighties during the early period of personal computer exploration by youngsters who were creating their own worlds in their rooms on cottage electronic BBS’s (bulletin boards) with the TRS 80’s, Apple IIs, and Commodore 64s. Most of the participants were also avid adventure fantasy role-playing gamers. When these cottage BBSs had run their course and given way to the Net, it seemed I would have a strong background to study the classical Latvian insult song tradition since insults were the weapons of the so-called song wars. In my mind there was a functional equivalent of what I had experienced in two very different contexts, one with archaic Old World roots, and the other an expression of the technological and commercial world of the Internet that is becoming increasingly cross-cultural and dominant for a class that wields power by virtue of access to the provided information. I also come from a background involved in science fiction (being on the organizing committee of ConFabulation at IU) and gaming. Shorthand expressions of camaraderie and agonistic flaming on the net had parallels to the old challenge spirit. Some of the folklorists in Latvia with whom I have chatted with electronically have also independently come to similar views that there are some parallels of apdziedāšanās, everyday ribbing exchanges known as villošana, and aggressive humorous exchanges on the net. However, no one has done an actual comparison study. Ritual exchanges on the net (including some flaming exchanges), other current social forms of discourse such as radio parodies (nežēlīgās dainas) sent in by the public, and historical singing invective contests with pre-industrial agricultural roots among Latvians can inform each other, and may be viewed with similar tools, such as those of trope analysis. Thus, there doesn't seem to be a huge discontinuity in that the children of peasants sometimes feel more at home on the net than in a literary culture, which when constructed in the West may be largely undigested and swallowed in huge chunks. What kind of deep structures appear to be linked when they reside in very different experiences and cultures has therefore been of interest throughout this study.

Both are examples of dialogic in the Bakhtinian sense and both operate in a space that is part of the surrounding world, yet also are marked off – toy or play worlds (drama, theater, virtual). But the similarity seems to be more in the psychology and aspects of liminality involved - humor as both controlled aggression and sheer playfulness, pseudo-contest, the emergence of group leaders who not only do much of the improvisation but also are entrusted with keeping things from going too far while the majority participants act more as drone accompaniment (in the case of apdziedāšanas singing) or lurkers who throw in a word of approval or disapproval now and then to the dominant, active voices one hears regularly. These are just some parallels and too many more come to mind for it to be a "forced" comparison, but what is salient is that there are several Latvian brains that have analogized the experiences of apdziedāšana singing contests and ritual electronic exchanges as "similar” information. This suggests the associations may not be anomalous or idiosyncratic.

Dialogue with history

I came to realize, however, that one can go only so far in understanding the classical source-tradition with conventional, modern humor. There are limits to the similarities. Why, for instance, out of all the possibilities, and when there are some truly despicable traits that appear elsewhere in the song corpus, are there recurrent themes about gluttony as when the panāksnieki (bride’s kin) are derided for being rapacious eaters when everyone is supposed to gorge for days at a wedding feast? Gluttony may be funny in contemporary culture, but it doesn’t carry the sting that it does in archaic Baltic culture where food can sometimes be scarce and a lack of control and an inability to manage and share properly suggests the person is akin to wild beasts. The outrageous sexual license of which the opposite side is accused is an analogous case where excess is seen as unsociable individual threat to a sensitive network dependent on cooperation. . Without historical context it would be recontextualized to a state of misunderstanding or not understanding what is plainly embedded throughout the texts, or a richer understanding of gender relations that were not necessarily identical to our own. For instance, comparative literature on such as cross-cousin joking relationships in Africa suggests a parallel answer to the puzzle of why the Baltic bride’s kin were allowed to sneak in and do various mischief at the groom’s and in turn they would be initially treated shabbily and this alternating abuse was all supposed to be good fun with no one taking offense.

Finally, one is struck by the recurrence of certain favorite insult formulae and themes, which to a contemporary person may appear as lacking in imaginary improvisation and humor precisely because of the repetition. Indeed modern performances warm up with the traditional formulaic songs found in the archives in the warm-up period and then in a more modern style seek novelty and originality. But Felix Oinas (1990, 155-70) has pointed out what is not obvious without immersion in the old texts, namely, singing the song “as it was” (dziedu dziesmu kāda bija) or “as the old people sang it” is highly valued in myth, ritual, or incantation, while improvisation is valued in performances keyed as recreational rather than sacred or serious. Trying to understand dainas only synchronically is similar to analyzing folk songs in terms of professional classic Western concert expectations.

Thus while having participated in contemporary apdziedāšanās throughout my life, I have not primarily focused on apdziedāšanās as it commonly functions today, but on the classic daina collection mostly collected in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries and available in the standard published sources. My experience with apdziedāšanās both conscious creative, participatory re-enactment as well as observation of stage performances has been on the level of diversion, education, and appreciation for old traditions. Daina-texts, however, suggest much stronger archaic ritual functions with stronger emotional investment in terms of gender and group confrontation. The military and hunting metaphors seem closer to realities when membership in groups was less a matter of choice than it is today. The nerātnās dainas that appear when the contest becomes heated condemned by foreign observers and the Church, out of historical context, appear to be erotic teases, obscene taunts, or just obscenity. But Granet, Propp, and others have pointed out that archaic sexual practices often have more to do with magic, social functions, and the maintenance of living order than archaic “libertarianism.” The prominence of married women in the performance of bawdy songs is consistent with their function as magic users, healers, and wise women as those who could control powerful and dangerous magic forces, of which sex can be seen as the prototypical opposite of death, as well as symbolizing actualized fertility in contrast to the potential fertility of the young unmarried. But as an expression of an alternative, rival world view, the public singing of nerātnās dainas was especially threatening, upsetting, and condemned by foreign Christian observers. The obscene taunts and erotic insults by older women must have seemed as if coming from witches,“Devil-inspired.” It is even possible that as obscenity they could be related to obsolete military defiance and aggression display (magic use or psychological tactics), now confined to a safer domestic setting, in addition to the more obvious functions (display of virtuosity, tension release, teasing) observable today.

Industrialization changed the old farmstead and hamlet way of life and radical transformation of expressive traditions weakened the social functions of apdziedāšanās as practiced consistent with the ecology of pre-industrial life. Confrontation and opposition through song took on different political revolutionary aspects and was historically re-channeled to the Song Festivals and later to econational poetry. Anecdotes and parodies are now common vehicles for sarcasm, irony, and black humor. In the early part of this century, there were also popular songs ziņģes, which were included as apdziedāšanš dziesmas (collected by Jānis Bērziņš, Labietis 54 [1977]).

Classical folk style apdziedāšanās has persisted to the present as recontextualized performance to some degree at Latvian weddings, Midsummer, and work parties, but for many Latvians they are now stage re-enactments rather than participatory re-enactment performances. As folk ensembles take on the role of primary tradition developers, the song leaders also are no longer dominantly older women, and the teasing nature of the bawdy songs is forefronted as appropriate to the courtship period.

In contrast, Benedikte Mežāle recently (no date) has written a description of the tradition in her native Baltinava region of Latgale as she has experienced it. Her descriptive book-length essay demonstrates that ritual insult singing when performed as integral to the life of conservative rural participants still has a primary function of constructive social catharsis, adjusting, and cohesion. As a Catholic, Mežāle compares the effect of the ritual to Confession and absolution. The lead singers are selected not only for their ability as musical performers, but also for their sensitivity and wisdom. They must know how far the insults should go, and who should be the targets.

The daina world, as a whole or a part, is used as liminal space both by Latvians in Latvia and in diaspora. Quotation of dainas outside singing contexts (and even within types of singing performances) is invoking the voice of the sacred, authoritative, communal, immortal, traditional - but not necessarily conservatively intended or received. As an example from contemporary Latvian television the voice of the grandmother in the Latvian “TV theater” (Televizijas teatris) is not necessarily the voice for conservatives. The era in which she lived as a little girl, and the period of National Awakening that she inherited, are times that were interrupted and largely destroyed by the Soviet occupation, a violent conclusion to the industrialization process that had already started to change the old rural-centered way of life that is referenced in the daina world. As in the Awakening, the traditions that were developed over time and which could be recorded or recovered, continue to be the vital, creative, and loosely unifying source of overall Latvian identity, that which in some way distinguishes Latvia and Latvians from any other people, while affirming their membership in the human community because they in fact do have an identity. The grandmother’s voice is a privileged voice not because it is conservative and out of date, but because it is vitally nurturing in that she holds knowledge, sacred because it is lived knowledge that the younger people have not experienced, but need in their own construction of meaning.

There is another irony in the clash of top down and bottom up approaches. Traditional textile specialist Aleksandra Dzērvīte recalled historical disputes as to what costumes should be worn by choir-members representing their regions. The choice seemed to be between replicas of the costumes of the parents or grandparents’ generation, which often amounted to what was left in the attics of each region, as opposed to free adaptation, which practically came down to artists designing these costumes equivalent to choreography of dances. The “ethnographically correct” or strict re-enactment view won out during the First Independence period. While the conservative approach doesn’t accord with current academic views of process and authenticity, in fact, it had the pragmatic effect of stabilizing what was available of the old traditions and providing common ground for subsequent innovation. Ironically it probably had more of an emic orientation than the second alternative would have, as it accorded with popular conservative views in contrast to those emphasizing change by researchers.^⁷

The Translation Problem

Douglas Hofstader in his analysis of an extreme example, Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwolky,” and his application of his “brain isomorphism” theory comments on the problem of trying to find:

‘the same node’ in two different networks, which are, on some level of analysis, extremely nonisomorphic. In ordinary language, the task of translation is more straightforward, since to each word or phrase in the original language, there can usually be found a corresponding word or phrase in the new language. By contrast, in a poem of this type, many "words" do not carry ordinary meaning, but act purely as exciters of nearby symbols. However, what is nearby in one language may be remote in another… When confronted with such an example, one realizes that it is utterly impossible to make an exact translation. Yet even in this pathologically difficult case of translation, there seems to be some rough equivalence obtainable. Why is this so, if there really is no isomorphism between the brains of people who will read the different versions? The answer is that there is a kind of rough isomorphism, partly global, partly local, between the brains of all the readers of... (the same material) . (Hofstadter: Part II: EGB, Chapter XII: Minds and Thoughts.)

The brain isomorphism theory opposes a strong version of the Sapir Whorf language theory and informs the creative process and creative translation as a creative movement from structure to structure utilizing sensory activation of clusters of concepts, somewhat relatable to what are known as semantic fields. Thus, translation versions and variants are endlessly generated, not necessarily in a Chomsky sense, but more generally, always constrained by structure. This concurs with the many translators and analyzers of semantic fields within the daina world have seen the network relationships of daina units as frozen or captured in countless numbers of daina song verses. In a site devoted to translating the same “Jabberwocky” poem, Russian translator Vladimir Shkurkin suggests:

My impression is that the best translation into Russian would require either a conscious or intuitive perception of the image each non-word brings forth, and then to attempt to evoke that same image by synthesizing a Russian word with perhaps the same Indo-European roots. As an example, the "gr-" words in both English and Russian have similar inimical images. Russian "grom", "groza", "gryzha", "grob", "griaz'", etc. are negative images. The "wr-" words suggesting rotation or twisting appear in both English and Russian. Following this reasoning, the construction of words to evoke images becomes a matter of simultaneously evoking the image and making things rhyme, with a coherent meter. Exceptionally talented poets can do this subconsciously, and careful artisans using conscious analysis can craft something given enough time. The best of the translations translate the image with image-evoking nonsense words of parallel structure, often using classical Russian poetic inversions. <http://www76.pair.com/keithlim/jabberwocky/poem/shkurkin.html>

While I agree with Shurkin that this would be an ideal way to evoke the daina flavor, it goes beyond my personal constraints of time. My translations are much freer, but they have leaned toward a preference toward common English and Latvian historical etymology when it occurred to me. A “psycho-linguistic conceptual space” approach sympathetic to Shurkin’s has also seen as important to utilize the very valuable resource of Konstantīns Karulis, Latviešu etimolo1gijas vārdnīca (Latvian Etymological Dictionary), the approach used also by Janīna Kursīte among others.

Translation involves multiple, complex decisions of compromise, such as resituating the source material into a framework of contemporary academic interests, when commentaries may be in a different frames. The process is as much art as science in searching for closest continuers going from one situational frame to another. However, no better alternative has been offered in translating from close textual analysis.

1 Thanks to Ausma Ābele from Madona, Latvia for copying and sending dainas about bees from Āronu Matīss, Mūsu Tautas dziesmas" Rīga, 1888 (from material collected in 1877, unpublished in Barons, Latvju dainas).

2 Karulis, 1992, II: 367 – 368, I: 91, taped lecture

3 Beldavs, 1984, on velns types

4 Evans, E. Estyn, Irish Folkways. Routledge: London and New York, 1988 (1957).

5 Edited by H. Strods, M. Zunde, E. & A. Mugurēvičs, D. Liepiņa, L. Dumpe. Rīga: WWF, 1999

6 Dumpe, Linda, Latviešu Tradicionālā Piensaimniecība. Piena produkti un piena ēdieni. Latvijas vēstures institūts: Rīga, 1998.

7 I am grateful to Ilze Akerbergs for lending me her copies of the first eight TV episodes, and her commentary on it in the form of a semiotics class research paper for Richard Bauman, “Language and Meaning in the Latvian Television Drama Series Lai Tev Labi Klajas (May Things go Well for You).

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↑ Contents

IX. RESEARCH CONCEPTS AND TOOLS

A. Aspects of Discourse, Structure, Translation, and Isomorphism

There are no voices but the researcher’s own…perpetuating the flawed model of art as a pipeline for delivering meaning, rather than as a social field for constructing, negotiating, and contesting it. (Walser: 39)

The act of (specially marked) communication is put on display, objectified, and opened up to scrutiny by an audience. Performance thus calls forth special attention to and heightened awareness of the act of communication. (Bauman, 1992: 44)

Perhaps the most difficult theoretical issue to deal with in this study is to apply a socially constituted sense of language and communicative competence (Hymes) to texts that were collected in the past. Texts are not realizations of normative structures, but are “emergent, the product of the complex interplay of communicative resources, social goals, individual competence, community ground rules for performance, and culturally defined event structures” (Bauman, 1992:33). The attempt in reverse when confronted with recorded text is to situate or contextualize daina structure and strategy within the interactive process in a postmodern context. The daina is relevant in terms of how it functions, is used, and communicates. Ironically, to see how this happens, one must on some level of study freeze or treat the corpus as if it were a thing rather than the trace of a process.

Structure is epistemologically a fiction, but mental heuristic proceeds through a certain objectification process as part of the communication process. It affords concrete reference and focus and emerges from recurrence as recalled by analogy. Structure is how the mind organizes, perceives, stores, and retrieves reality, which in its endlessness is otherwise chaotically inaccessible to the limited human mind. The philosophical orientation for this study is structural with a poststructural/deconstructionist understanding that systems are not complete, but at least potentially open as used. Of the concrete socially constituted signals one perceives some are generalized to a more abstract meaning level resulting in such structures as templates, which in turn become socially constituted means of further perception and so on recursively. Practices that are seen as being repetitions become normative custom or tradition. Ambiguity, contradiction, and what is outside the norm is either ignored or viewed with suspicion and anxiety. Knowledge of the new begins with a reference to what is felt as known.

The performance and discourse approach tries to determine what are the orienting frameworks, the interpretive procedures, and how social practice is constitutive and grounded in social relations. But the overwhelmingly dominant view of those who use the dainas as well as that of the daina world seems to take interaction for granted as unproblematic. From this perspective, chaos and disorder are fundamental facts that need no acknowledgement; the struggle is rather to bring dissonance and diversity into harmony. Pluralism is acceptable if it can be seen as coming under an overarching larger unity. Otherwise, it is seen as disruptive and undesirable. The native system of classification emphasizes the discrete, the long term, cognitively basic or middle-level, fundamentally embodied, and prototypical in the sense of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Brent Berlin, Paul Kay, and Eleanor Rosch. It is highly selective and downplays marginality and the blended in-between in favor of a system of fewer fundamental units, which tends to reorient or realign to express change, rather than split into finer units, not unlike using the letters of the alphabet to make words.

The accepted conventions or expectations are, of course, learned. But, the system is also efficient and productive in creating a rich and variable three-dimensional net, where all the points are ever shifting in response to each other. Change is seen less linearly or in change as in reorientation or realignment of stable categories that are inherent and part of the cosmos. The basic structural truths are there as if to be discovered, thus archetypal, rather than created, though with change the structure changes or evolves. Laima has woven the strands of the primary models. Humans have freedom, but within outlines that have been already set down.

Human localizations are tied in to a bigger overarching cosmic law. Within this greater web intertextuality connects everything to everything, and the component formulae are cycled and adapted in a creative process that can be described as bricolage within a tight structure. During the period they have been collected, they have been rather resistant to rapid change, particularly the basic structural formal elements and formulas. Regional analysis can come up with spatial configurations. Rozenbergs’s comparison of satire directed against native elite bajāri and Baltic German manor lords is an extended formal analysis of such temporal configurations.

Structure and function are important ways to approach meaning, though, of course, meaning cannot be reduced to them. Structure, concepts, and languages represent accumulated traces of experience. Each daina as a recorded text is an artifact to be used as a flexible resource. Among the ways dainas are used include aesthetically as poetry and pragmatically as wise words or, usually in distich form, as proverbs. Thus the meaning of a daina changes depending on the context and perspective. Dainas are multivocal - speaking with many voices, polysemic – having different meanings, and multifunctional. They are also transmitted through a multiplicity of channels, written and oral, parodied as modern nežēlīgās dainas on a radio comedy medium, and imitated in contemporary poetry.

I have turned to earlier approaches, such as those of Mauss and Malinowski and the classic Latvian scholars for inspiration in understanding the interrelationships of language, society, technology, and symbols. Since the dainas are often viewed as self-sufficient units, described as pebbles washed smooth by the waves of the sea in time and space, textual and literary criticism approaches continue to be relevant approaches. Additionally Latvian language has had considerable resistance as concrete concepts become more abstract, sometimes borrowing abstract concepts from neighboring peoples rather than extending meaning in an existing word. In the Latvian language, the interrelationship of words used today to old Indo-European roots based on prototypical experiences, is still rather easy to see. Such likeness of modern to languages to ones separate in time and space tilts the view to seeing iconic relationships or analogies to be long standing and for practical purposes rather stable. Such analogies could be seen as having accumulated to paradigm status, such as the metaphor of struggle and contest between two parties on a bridge or crossroad or other in-between state. Penetration into and withdrawal from opposing, enemy territory would also draw from experiences of conflict between groups. It does not take much effort to connect one type of back and forth motion with one from another realm, in this case with textile creation, with various kinds of agricultural tasks having repeated movement, and with the sexual act.

The primary focus of a folklorist is, of course, not typically on the universal or intercultural but on local way of speaking, the specific conventions or expectations involved, and focus how they are used in different contexts as flexible artistic and communicative resources. As can be expected, the more creative and gifted persons make full use of the manipulative possibilities. The genres in which apdziedāšanās has occurred are more open-ended and flexible than most, but being ritual in which conservation is valued, a diachronic perspective helps understand use of expectation or convention in the different genres active today.

The current academic discussion of postmodernist approaches in Latvian seems to be mostly a radical jettisoning of prior research rather than attempts to resituate prior and classical research within a contemporary orientation of discourse analysis. Should there be objection that there is no need of this classical research and classically collected folklore, one comes up with a theoretical as well as practical problem. The classical dainas and other folklore are seen as the very foundation of Latvian culture and identity. The past is not history, but a primary resource. The disjunction therefore is painful and unstable and in need of researchers to bridge it. For this reason the choice of the apdziedāšanās process is an obvious choice because it is an obvious example of negotiation, metadiscursive discourse in Todorov’s sense, and of trope to confront the complexities and conflicts of culture. In fact in its sense of group confronting group in a play war, it is the archetype of discourse and an opportunity to study musical meaning in a socio-political context. It acknowledges Durkheim’s understanding of ethnography as an expression of social relationships.

A cognitive approach is consistent with the realities of the research situation with an appreciation of form and structure as systems of coherence within an epistemology that is more phenomenological than positivist, fully participant in a way of seeing consistent with discourse analysis and ethnography of speaking. The approach recognizes inherent gross organizing pre-linguistic predispositions in the brain, such as the ability to learn language with minimum stimulation. It also recognizes tendencies to stability beyond a single brain, since at any one time multiple brains are involved. While cultural information is unevenly distributed to some degree it is shared and accessible to all members of the culture. Additionally, there are long-lasting physical markers in the geography of a community shared by individuals, offering historical and cultural ground, so information is not confined to the individual memory of one brain. The relevant intellectual lineage is rather hybrid, drawing, for instance, aspects from Herder, Bakhtin, Durkheim, Geertz, Eliade, and Feld. The ideology is constructivist, seeing that all systems and approaches are doomed to limits. It is aware of indeterminacy, chaos theory, complexity theory and self-organization as relevant to understanding how we relate to the world. It therefore is in sympathy with the efforts of Alan Dundes standing by the practical usefulness of morphological analysis of formalized structure and the necessity for typology and classification as orienting frameworks.

A fundamental assumption of discourse analysis is that music, as all art, is inseparable from politics, so that an analysis of texts and practices has to be situated as historically constituted and socially contested in terms of legitimacy and value. Memories and interests are different and may conflict strongly. Texts cannot be analyzed formalistically as if they were a cluster of traits that are self-explanatory in and of themselves, but situated within the discourses of the culture and society that produced them. The articulation of the primary divisions or categories of society, such as gender or class, have to be considered, particularly if seen as an alternative to another community or group. Thus the singing contest, even though a ritual and therefore a pseudo-contest or contest only secondarily, is still a site of contention for definition of concepts, delimitation of norms, evaluation of resources, and the control of individual behavior, and the delimitation of knowledge. In a conservative community, it is also seen as a reaffirmation of conceptual coherence as to primary categories, such as class and gender or group identity. Formulaic composition is one means of achieving this desired value.

There are strong versions or statements as to the social and historical grounding of music, such as Tzvetan Todorov who sees discourse only in utterance and a memory that operates only on an ideological field:

This is a poststructural view of music in that it sees all signification as provisional, and it seeks for no essential truths inherent in structures, regarding all meanings as produced through the interaction of texts and readers…Musical details and structures are intelligible only as traces, provocations, and enactments of power relationships. They articulate meanings in their dialogue with other discourses past and present and in their engagement with the hopes, fears, values, and memories of social groups and individuals. (Walser: 29-30)

Speaking of a text itself becomes problematic since its existence is a kind of illusion, a fixed artificiality. One may try to express meaning by saying a text is polysemic with potentially endless numbers of meanings, interpretations, and translations. Or the opposite, a text may be found in multiple contexts, with no significant formulaic variations appearing at for instance either a wedding or at a funeral. Or one may, along with Julia Kristeva who, harkening to Bakhtin, see a text as always a response to something and evoking a response with an inherent heteroglossia in the expression of multiple voices and discourses.

That acknowledged, the question remains to find grounding, pattern, and reason for conservation and its preference. How is it that a daina quatrain first recorded in the 16^th century turns up in an oral context in the late 19^th century among illiterate people who had no access to early written private collections recognizably the same? The singers themselves also feel they are singing as their ancestors sang. Living in a changing, largely oral world aware of the limits of memory, their ideology seems to be on the side of conservation, of maintaining what they consider timeless patterns in spite of constraints of memory.

Cognitivist Douglas Hofstadter suggests that neural isomorphism in the brains of humans, regardless of language or cultural identity, allows for “supertranslations” of certain universals. While essential correspondence between specifics of meaning is not claimed, there is interest in how one structure is translated into another with the source structure acting as a constraint. Todorov’s genre as discourse on discourse allows for models of composition or horizons of expectation to imply some pattern, even if generated through utterance and without inherent necessity.

Sociolinguists such as Mark Johnson and George Lakoff ground meaning in bodily experience and pre-linguistic structures called image schemata. Their transformation into concepts occurs in the process of generating from the metaphorical association of distinct image schemata.

Latvian traditional folklorists have concentrated on the level of formula and the constraints and limits provided by such text as grounding for shared preferred meaning and for limiting arbitrariness. Latvian sources, similar to, say Alan Lomax, implicitly link musical, artistic, and social structures in ways that might suggest the linking of performance styles to the broader communication characteristic of the community. However, this remains at the level of Alan Lomax’s insight, linking musical structure to social structure intuitively without resulting in usable theoretical insight. It seems to follow the sense in the daina world of dual relationships, where human structures are related to the structures of the cosmos out there surrounding them – what we call nature.

Another difficulty is that ethnomusicology has focused on the non-European world, while the focus on European music in the latter half of this century has been on the western elite classical tradition to the neglect of folk music in many parts of Eastern Europe. One is forced to rely on historical studies that have not been adequately bridged to modern ethnomusicological findings, and emphasizing structure and style when the meaning and context are inadequately addressed. Dainas are also constructed from a repertoire of elements or units and a set of relationship principles as to how to combine them. Thus archived dainas can be seen in terms of code that has to be actualized and implemented in performance, each performance, of course, being different.

No single person can, of course, bridge the different transitions. It goes without saying that there are very few sources on Latvian traditions in English, and the ones in other major languages are for the most part outdated or outright antiquated. But also hoped-for efflorescence in Latvian traditional studies following prohibitions in the Soviet period has not materialized. The country is fighting for economic survival, so that its priorities are basic economics and politics rather than culture. The academic journal Akadēmiskās Vēstis used to be in the IU library, but its successor, Zinātnes Vēstis, is not as of writing. A few excellent group publications have come out, notably Latvijas mežu vēsture līdz 1940.gadam, edited by H.Strods, et al.

The problems of translation from one system to another involve interpretation. One starts out with texts that are in Bakhtinian dialogic with each other and potentially with different interpretations according to context, so that a choice is made for the source word or phrase. A sample of daina humor, some of it usable in apdziedāšanās as covered in this study:

Ko tu nāci, kankarbiksi Jaunu meitu maltuve?

Visi tavi kankarīši Uz meitām cilājās!. (20430, Birzgalis p. 33)

Why do you come, rag-pants in the milling house of young girls?

All of your rags were rising toward the girls.

Kad es biju jauns puisītis, Es mācēju ģēģerēt.

Suni laidu mežiņā, Pats stāvēju maliņā.

Suns iztrieca vecu meitu, Salāpītu kažociņu.

Še, sunīti, zaķa kāja, Triec to meitu atpakaļ.

Stīvi stāv sunim aste Pret zilām debesīm.

Tā stāv meitas dvēselīte Pret jauniem puisēniem. (Birzgalis, p. 74-5)

When I was a young lad, I knew how to hunt,

I sent the dog into the woods; I stood at the edge.

The dog drove out an old maid, patched-up coat.

Here, dog, is a rabbit foot; drive the girl back.

Stiff is the dog’s tail against the blue sky.

That is how a girl’s soul stands in front of young lads.

Self-irony

Pret kungiem es neņēmu Savu caunu cepurīti;

Pret meitiņas māmulīti Saujiņā salocīju.

I didn’t take off my hat before the lords.

Before the mother of the daughter I folded it in my hands.

Māku diet, māku lekt Māku puišus kaitināt;

Kad uzliku audeklīnu Apkārt gāju raudādama. (7332)

I know how to dance I know how to leap, I know how to tease the boys.

When I threw on the weft, I went round it weeping. (7332)

Mock aggression

Es izvedu meitu māti Uz slidena ledutiņa.

Tik ilgām slidināju, Līdz meitiņu apsolīja.

Kad meitiņu apsolīja Tad ieņēmu kamanās. (Birzgalis, p. 94)

I took out the girl’s mother upon slippery ice.

So long I slid her around until she promised me her daughter.

When she promised me her daughter, then I took her into the sleigh

Šuj, māmiņ, man krekliņ’ sīkajām siksniņām;

Trīs gadiņ’ tautu dēls zobiem plēsa raudādams. (7379)

Sew, mother, a shirt for me with fine lacings;

Three years the suitor (tautu dēls) with teeth tore it weeping.

Sniedziņš sniga, putināja laukā mans kumeliņš;

To man dara meitu māte ne dod meitu, ne atsaka.

Snow is falling, blowing; my horse is outside.

That is the fault of the girl’s mother. She neither gives, nor denies (her) daughter.

Sakās panāksti Diet nemākoti:

Tā dej, tā lec Kā putra katlā.

The bride-kin say they can not dance:/

So they dance, so they hop as gruel in the pot. (Melngailis, p. 13)

Šo naksniņu izredzēju tautu dēla dzīvošanu:

Namā klētis, klētī stallis, istabā cūku sile. (26010)

This night I saw the bridegroom’s living style:

In the kitchen the granary, in the granary the stable, in the (living) room the pigsty.

Šķitu vēršus maurojam aiz kalniņa lejiņā;

Viņu sētu jauni puiši raudādami rudzus pļāva.

Is that the bellowing of oxen behind the hill in the valley?

Yonder young boys were mowing rye weeping.

Mock threat, (aplīgošana):

Sieru, sieru, Jāņa māte tev ir govis laidarā;

Ja nedosi sieru, pienu dzīšu govis kāpostos.

Cheese, cheese, Yaņi-Mother (Mistress of Midsummer); You have cows in the byre.

If you won’t give cheese, milk, I’ll drive the cows into the cabbage.

Erotic tease/ symbolism (“I” is female)

Jānīts manu vainadziņu koku galā vicināja;

Es Jānīša kumeliņu ērkšķu krūmu dancināju.

Yanis my wreath waved on top of a pole/tree;

I Yani’s steed danced on a thorn bush.

Tit for Tat

Vēzis ņēma līgaviņu Asarim saderētu.

Es vēzim atspītēšu Es tam upi izlaidīšu

Ja tu upi izlaidīsi Es tev svārkus sagriezīšu.

Ja tu svārkus sagriezīsi/ Es tev šķēres salauzīšu.

Ja tu šķēres salauzīs Es kungam apsūdzēšu.

Ja kungam apsūdzēsi Cienmātei pārsūdzēšu.

Crawfish took a bride betrothed to the perch.

I’ll get even with crawfish, I’ll drain (his) river.

If you drain the river, I’ll cut up (your) coat.

If you cut up the coat, I will break your scissors,

If you break the scissors, I’ll accuse (you) before the lord,

If you accuse before the lord, I’ll counter-charge before the lady.

Boasting hyperboles

Es dižana tautu meita, Dziedādama vien staigāju;

Piedziedāju Kurzemīti, Nu dziedāšu Vidzemē.

Es bij’ meita, man bij vara, Brakšķēj zeme staigājot;

Nedrīkst puiši klāt man nākt, Ne maukt manu gredzentiņu. (13177)

Es bij’ meita, man bij vara, Es varēju lielīties:

Es nopirku kroņa muižu Ar visiem zaldātiem.

Es bij’ puika, man bij vara, Es varēju lielīties:

Rīgu nesu saujiņā, Jelgaviņu padusē,

Un tās citas kroņa muižas Aiz cepures aizsprauduši. (13186, var.)

A mighty girl am I, singing I went about;

I sang Kurzeme all full; now I’ll sing in Vidzeme. (57,1)

I am a girl, I have power (vara), the earth shook as I walked;

The boys dared not approach me, nor take my ring (by force).

I’m a girl, I have force (vara), I can boast

I could buy a whole crown's manor with all the soldiers inside. (13179)

compared to a “heroic male flyting”:

I am a boy, I have force, I could boast

I carried Riga in my palm, Jelgava in my armpit.

Kas to teica, tas meloja, Ka Dundagā lieli puiši:

Citam mute kā vilkam, Citam kājas kā lāčam. (57315)

He who said it, lied that Dundaga has mighty lads:

One has the mouth of a wolf, another the feet of a bear.

Kuŗas elles tu iznāci,Tik dižems tēva dēls?

Vēders šķūņa lielumiņu,Mute vārtu platumiņu. (57368)

From what Hell did you come, such a splendid father’s son?

Stomach the size of a barn; mouth the width of a gate.

Tev, meitiņa, (puisīti) tādas acis, Kā tai peļu vanadzei (tam peļu vanagam):

Kuŗu puisi (meitu) ieraudzīji, to par savu daudzināji. (57823)

You, girl (boy) have such eyes, as the windhower hawk:

Whatever boy (girl) you saw, you proclaimed as yours.

Sen dzirdēju, nu redzeēju To diženu tēva dēlu:

Suņi bikses noplēsuši, Ciema sētas lēkājot;

Cūkas matus izsukājšas, Gulot krogus paslieksnē. (20644)

Long I’d heard, now I saw this splendid father’s son:

The dogs have torn up his trousers, scrambling over village fences;

The pigs have combed his hair, sleeping behind the tavern door.

Trūkst jums dziesmu, panāksnieces, Es jums varu tapināt;

Citu gadu atdodiet, Dodiet peicas piedevām. (59802)

Another year return them, add five You are lacking in songs, bride chasers, I can lend you (some).

as interest.

Sarcasm

Urā velns, urā velns, Kādas šitās tautu meitas!

Par pagalmu pārskriedamas, Ar zobiem guni šķēla.

Hurrah, devil, hurrah, devil, what kind of girls are these!

Running across the yard, they spark fire with their teeth.

Tu puisīt, putras kuņģi, Nenāc meitu pulciņā!

Tev kuņģītis skalojās Kā putriņas vērpelīte. (59848)

You, boy, gruel stomach, don’t come to the girl’s group!

Your stomach swills around as a gruel vortex.

Ērgļu muiža iznīkusi, Visi puiši izsprāguši:

Trīs nomira, trīs nosprāga, Trīs kā mēri vazājās.

Ar tiem trim mežā brauca, Ko tos sešus svilināt. (60075)

The Ergli manor has declined. The lads have fallen like cattle:

Three dropped dead, three croaked, three dragged about like the plague.

With those three (they) drove to the forest to burn the other six.

Sveši ļauži gribējās, Lai sader, lai sader.

Nederēšu, nederēšu, Jūs to dumpi uzcēlāt;

Jūs to dumpi uzcēlāt, Jūs brālīis sievu grib. (59591)

The stranger people wanted to make peace.

I won’t make peace, I won’t make peace; you started the fight;

You started the fight, your brother wants a wife.

Should apdziedāšanās be viewed as genre? Its instances could be viewed in terms of “distinctive features which are operative on cognitive, pragmatic, and expressive levels...indicative of the cultural concepts of folklore forms…(which) underscore their symbolic meaning…” (Ben-Amos, 1975: 32) The concept of genre stresses stability and continuity. Hopkins, writing on Norwegian traditional music speaks of mental templates as aural concepts in the restructuring process of perception: “this abstraction of cognitive elements is influenced by concepts of appropriateness that are themselves determined by previous knowledge...Any time we hear a piece of unfamiliar music we perceive it automatically through comparisons with familiar music.” (Hopkins, 208) An ordered set of constraints is involved in transforming possible behavior into a particular performance.

In phenomena stressing repetition, such mantra or ritual phatic information is prioritized over informative language (Jakobson 1987:69) “to induce trance, or...altered states of consciousness, or heightened awareness.”(Ibid: 37) Different components of ritual induce dissociation from the ordinary. Nevertheless, it appears that some imagery recurs historically. Thus, cult drama seeks to bring about the god’s presence from the eternal Otherworld through ritual representations of him (Jacobsen 1976:15) and apdziedāšanās involves ritual magic that on one level does that.

Creativity occurs at the fluid boundary of order and disorder. Recurrent, ritual behavior is a stable ground, analogous to the drone, which allows a play of creative choice from a large, fluid, and expandable repertoire to be used in the actual construction of the event. The schema, scripts, and formulae ensure a sharing of experience, but they are flexible allowing for creative innovation. There is also a sense of continuity from the recurrent use of the same sacred space that the forbears of the participants used. The outcomes are both predictable and open-ended with a number of expected closures.

The most active proponents of archaic Latvian traditions today are members of the Folklore Movement that is equivalent to the Second Awakening and the successor of the Choir Period, the choirs continuing to coexist with young people’s folklore and other dance groups. In some ways similar to the Society for Creative Anachronism widespread in the United States, these groups not only re-enact performance for special occasions, but also incorporate the old customs into their daily lifestyle. The native religion movement, started by the dievturi, is another force for incorporating ancestral traditions into modern life. A Baltica Folklore Festival first took place in 1987, and in 1989 the different folklore ensembles and groups of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania formed a folklore organization in common with the primary purpose of organizing folklore festivals drawing participants from the region and increasingly from countries and regions elsewhere in Europe and beyond.

B. Ritual Insulting Performance

Stand together, stranger people (sveši ļaudis), at both halves of the room.

So in song we can mock, all the bride chasers. (apdziedāšanās opening)

Ko vārdos nedrīkstēja, to dziesmās izdziedāja.

What couldn’t be said was sung. (I.Grauzdiņa, A. Poruks, 1990)

This study is historical, excavating social, psychological, and political aspects dominant in the daina world, an artificially constructed world that is pre-industrial, but used and interpreted for over a century by societies increasingly literate, industrialized, and subject to new political and economic contexts. While the study recognizes there is no meaning apart from the meaning given to it by the participants of the performances and the users of the tradition, it also claims that the huge song text corpus allows for some coarse-grain observations about some large-scale, broad-spectrum, long-term, stable structural patterns, functions, and mentalities or meanings that are of interest to fundamental processes of interaction, negotiation, and dialogue. On the one hand it falls into the area of Latvian studies or what is called in Latvia letonika. But more broadly it is interested in historical ritual attempts to transform aggression into co-operation.

The question was asked, should a historical approach to apdziedāšanās be studied as artistic performances of joking, comedy, invective, game, play, carnival, or ritual drama? How much is ludic and how much is agonistic contest, as while on the one hand it is fun and an emotional experience, there are also usually serious issues and functions. In all of them there is liminal space set aside to different degree in which, as Victor Turner (1974) observed, structure and anti-structure are dialectically interplayed, and accepted codes and models of the mundane world are questioned and renegotiated or alternatives generated, an emotionally intense artistic performance that has the effect of at the very least, renewing one’s energies in the same way as spring following winter. The world of comedy is culture-specific. What is derided and made fun of depends on the norms of societies, and one of the functions of apdziedāšanās is adjustment, realignment, and renegotiation of norm. This is dynamic regulation of social order. Bule, in agreement with previous researchers notes the high level of improvisation of apdziedāšanās: “These songs were expressly created for the given situation.” (Bula, 1992: 128). Even though agonistic, during the course of interchange, there is permeability on the edges of fluid boarders as both sides are, perhaps imperceptibly, changed.

Even complexity theory from the field of biology (cf Ruthen on John Holland's group) suggests that the optimum generative state of a nonlinear dynamic self-organizing system, such as human society, is that of tension between order and chaos. There is ample evidence from the world of the daina as well as contemporary Latvians that peoples are always involved in a balance or tension of change and stability. I remember a favorite Latvian summer camp intensive teacher, Mirdza Paudrups, in 1986 paraphrasing a Flemish poet in a graduation ceremony concluding the study of archaic Latvian traditions, “If you can't fly, then run. If you can't run, then walk, but don't stay in one place ever, ever, but always move! If you can't laugh, smile...” (p. 4) This accords with adaptive evolution that finds neither stagnation nor demolition to be optimum for survival. But without historical understanding of magical thinking significant aspects of the daina world are incomprehensible. Additionally sociological pre-industrial concepts of reciprocity and exchange, tit for tat and what goes around comes around (dots devējam atdodas or dots pret dotu), play out as expressed in Marcel Mauss’s classic The Gift, where relationship and implied obligations are tied to material exchange, is informative in terms of ritual contest.

Much of the phenomenon considered in this study could be called ritual performance or community performance in contrast to normative ritual and to open-ended festival. What I am calling ritual performance has two aspects, the normative and the negotiative or even the subversive, in different measures according to circumstances. Victor Turner considers performance to be underlain by the subjunctive mood of play, just as Rappaport emphasizes regularity. The different ritual performances in the Latvian tradition all have some interplay of structure and anti-structure, of the normative and its parody or challenge. Play, humor, irony, and clowning are means of reinvigorating and transforming structure and negotiating categories.

The more historical the orientation, the more one concentrates on roots, the more apdziedāšanās may be seen as ritual tied to long-term, stable calendric, personal life-cycle, or recurrent pre-industrial agricultural work cycles. In contrast modern performances, often staged, fall within a greater range of complexity as to how different participants understand what is happening, even within the same performance, and how much nonverbal cues frame the performance as different from what is expected by the participants as there are more possibilities of framing. One can still find the function of social control as important in deep country performances described by Benedikta Mežale in Latgale. The pseudo-contest, clowning, licentiousness, and play are anti-structural means of affirming as well as negotiating structure and order in society and the cosmos. However, increasingly, the performances are more in the realm of recreational play and theater, allowing a much greater reflexivity of cultural exploration of meaning, and thus moving into the category of festival rather than ritual performance.

Nevertheless, there are stable or ritual performance aspects even in the modern festival performances because they still tend to be tied to the regularities of the calendar or to the individual rites of the lifecycle. There is still strong resistance to appropriating them without linkage to earlier contexts. In the past, the church, especially after the 16^th century with the Reformation, made strong efforts to suppress native religious ritual and to co-opt its normative function into church service. During the Catholic period from the 13^th – 16^th centuries paganism from the viewpoint of church reporters remained strong, but after the Reformation and Protestant efforts, it is reasonable to assume that ritual festivals became increasingly more festival and less ritual performance as vernacular culture was increasingly assimilated to Christianity. Nevertheless, apdziedāšanās was still recorded in recent years serving the function of normative ritual, framed as compatible with the Catholic religion, and compared with Confession. It is not unreasonable to consider apdziedāšanās as ritual even today, assimilated to Catholic popular values, in addition to being festival. Likewise, the phenomenon can be viewed as pseudo-contest where social tensions and conflicts are aired, resolved, and realigned. As Stoeltje summarizes: “They can confirm the social order, introduce change, foster revolution, or express alternative viewpoints or resistance to oppression, depending on what forces are in control of social reality and in charge of performance.” (Stoeltje, 1992: 265) Finally the stubborn resistance to retain certain archaic elements in spite of pressure and sanctions against it by dominant Church and Western cultural values attests to the tenacity of a type of ritual performance almost certainly linked to similar ritual performances in archaic societies throughout the world.

Of the types of performance, which can be studied through texts as being contexts for each other, ritual is particularly promising because of its stated historical connection to the recurrent, stable, long-term, cosmological, archetypal, stereotypical, or perceived “eternal”. Thus, Rappaport considers it may be seen as a fixed order behavior mode of communication that makes other types of communication possible. Ritual is in part connected with “the enduring aspects of the social and cosmological order,” with “changeless messages” and “invariant order.” (Rappaport 250) It is “a form or structure” with ”a number of features or characteristics in a more or less fixed relationship to one another” and “stereotypical display.” (Rappaport, 249) Ethologists speak of repeated, stereotypical, and fixed order animal behavior as ritual and ritual has been compared to compulsive behavior in humans. However, ritual, as all forms of performance, has the variable, changing, interpretive, reflexive, and self-referential interpretation of the ongoing and enduring order. It is polyvocal in the full sense of the term, including meaning, purpose, and individual experience. But apdziedāšanās does indeed follow a certain sequential order that crosses contexts, and encoded indexical messages can be inferred intrinsic to all of its traditional performances. Certainly there is enough of a structure and formulaic order, that deviation from it would be either parody, or a departure from the canonical messages, understandings, conventions, norms, and rules that structure that society. Rappaport states that ritual invests its represented conventions with obligations, morality, and sometimes sanctity: “…ritual embodies social contract. As such, it is the fundamental social act upon which human society is founded.” (Rappaport, 254)

One does not have to be a socio-biologist to appreciate the significance of someone of the stature of Richard Schechner in perfomance studies to refer to ethologists, such as V. and F. Reynolds, who describe what is called “carnival” among chimpanzees. If such gatherings of bands, neither familiars nor strangers, at a marked location that is not the home territory of any band, but at common food sources, accompanied by prolonged “calling and drumming” are not prototypes of gatherings where feasting and exchange takes place between different human groups, then at least it lends support to those ethnographers who considered such human carnivals to have inestimably ancient roots. While the study of particular phenomenon in a particular time and place as experienced by individual subjects is the acknowledged goal, an understanding of the carnival phenomenon in its particularity is enriched by awareness of connections in time and space to other individuals and cultures in space and time, of how common and possibly universal it may be.

Archetypically apdziedāšanās occurs where there are different social groups with different interests, but who have some reason to feel a sense of commonality. Apdziedāšanās is a formal aesthetic historical way of expressing this alignment, cooperation, or harmonization of the discrete, a unity not based on assimilative fusion, but a maintenance of the discrete entities.

Ethnopoetics or ethnoaesthetics as concerned with the aesthetic genre patterning of and artfulness in social everyday life that emerges into marked performance of a group has been practically an attitude taken by many Latvian researchers even when they are unaware of the researchers usually quoted in American literature.

By its invariant inclusion in the calendar and in regular and predictable placement in the course of human life, ritual apdziedāšanās singing has more obviously repeating and enduring elements than other celebratory nonritual occasions lack. Furthermore, the cosmic and the human orders mirror each other, the sun being at its apex in Midsummer and the wedding being the most elaborate and public human event.

There is no evidence that the Latvian tribes had a strongly developed or separate priest class, though they had sacred practitioners. In any case, there are no ultimate sacred postulates stated in narrative terms equivalent to the Commandments, though one may infer sacred discourse on which social life is based and the sense of communitas characteristic of liminal experience in ritual performance. However, since Barons, researchers have concurred on the full development of one invariant, the relationship of cosmic and finite human: “Remarkable is the parallelism between a full cycle of human life and the calendar cycle of a year with its big festivities linked to the major stations of the sun - the summer and winter solstices and the spring and fall equinoxes.” (Muktupāvels, section 2.2, prepublication)

Apdziedāšanās is a particularly important feature of cultural performances, the major occasions for public gathering of people from different, usually neighboring, households. They are highly formalized events, symbolically marked off as liminal from the ordinary both in time and space. They allow the participants as a larger community to display, elaborate, and negotiate the communicative and aesthetic genres. Apdziedāšanās is a form of ritual interaction that embodies and expresses artistically communicating between two groups. “Performance is formally reflexive...involves self-conscious manipulation of the formal features of the communicative system.” (Bauman, 1992: 47) Certain performances are foreground to become emblematic of the culture. Thus both outsiders and the performers of classical Latvian folklore considered the wedding to be the most dramatic and distinctive gods (family ritual) and Midsummer the most emblematic calendar festival (svētki). The first is compared to the zenith of the sun as the most elaborate and festive period of one’s life, and the second is the most popular festival and the zenith of the sun’s power. Social tensions are released, confronted, and resolved between two groups, male and female or two clans. The opening formula may use the more distant term ļaudis (people, as in a market), instead of tautas (potential marriage alliance friends, in-laws): FFi, sveši ļaudis, abejs pušu istabā (Stand together, strangers, both sides divided in the room.) In the wedding ritual there are two sides, the panaksnieki (bride chasers, lit. “overtakers”, ie bride's party) and vedēji (bridenappers, lit.”takers,” ie groom’s party)

Ultimately, these performances are such emotionally powerful discourse modes, involving all of the senses, that they can only be expressed as experience, rather than as articulated belief. Regardless of “meaning”, they involve heightened awareness, an altered and liminal state. There is sufficient evidence in the daina world to indicate that in the past the drinking of intoxicants (beer, mead) was originally ceremonial and not everyday. Everything about the performance – the space, the time, the special dress, cleaning up – setting in order- and decorating with greenery, the suspension of ordinary work, precaution taken against supernatural forces that are felt to be especially strong – all suggest the event is more than recreational. References to the deities, witches, and sacred powers and physical precautions taken against the threatening supernatural, such as turning sharp tools upward indicate that the participants feel the relevant cosmos has reached an unstable state. Ultimately such heightened emotion is highly enjoyable for its own sake without explanation and one can not recreate the sounds of songs starting with the herders as they usher in the day of Midsummer evening and going through the night as everyone in turn joins in, the smells of gathered herbs and oak leaves on the participants, the sight of fires burning on all the surrounding hills where other people are also celebrating, the feel of one’s pounding heart and light head as the deepest emotions overcome transforming one into another timeless world. There are no words equivalent to experience, but the great classic researchers of festival such as Victor Turner, Richard Schechner, Erving Goffman, Clifford Geertz, and Arnold van Gennep relate experience to belief, value, and cognition, which heuristically can be treated as if they were analyzable. In any case, the experience does associate with reflexivity, the songs sung are not random, but have content that expresses beliefs and values of the group, and the collected texts can be analyzed together for consistent patterns. Stating beliefs or values counter to the everyday normative is related in a nascent way to reflexive role-playing. Although the singer may not actually be playing a character of someone else, she is giving voice to something that is different and other. Taking an exaggerated stance by doing or expressing something inappropriate is to set it up as ridiculous and as easy to knock down as a straw man. This is particularly obvious with the nerātnās dainas. The voice of an exaggerated other is assumed and shown to be lacking and inferior to accepted norms. What makes performance exciting rather than predictable is negotiation, the possibility of change recognized even by the participants.

The question if ritual is more of a reaffirmation of social order or its subversion is in the Latvian case also situational. However, researcher such as Rozenbergs have demonstrated how pre-industrial concerns of an earlier time, which were more of intra- or inter-clan nature, came to be recontextualized and used subversively against the hegemony of the day. But the examples we have to study are performed for family, neighbor, and clan purposes.

The wedding performance is framed as a rite of passage from unmarried to married, and in the case of the bride, if patrilocal, movement into a foreign family. Midsummer is framed as a solstice calendar holiday. The work party talka is framed as a gathering of neighbors for common work. In all cases the apdziedāšana is put on display, foregrounded, and marked by heightened awareness and a sense of communicative accountability. The formal key to the event is the assembling of groups opposite each other and the attunement of opposite tensions in a bounded space by means of a singing “war” ritual.

The attempt to adjust two different entities fits into a basic characteristic of comedy itself as incongruity created by collision of two incompatible situations, views, or realities. During that moment of perception of seeing both together but incongruous, there is also psychological and physical discharge of tension. Maintaining separateness is fundamental to comic association, the opposite classically of tragedy. A connection or association is made, but separateness is maintained.

Insult Themes

One would expect to find a key to normative values in what is ridiculed and held up for insult. This is only complexly or partially true. Many of the attributes mocked and ridiculed are predictable in that they have to do with allocation of resources and status/work assignments: laziness, stupidity, greediness, stinginess, boastfulness. The person contributing more is valued; the person who drains from others is not. Their opposites - industriousness, cleverness, generosity, and dignity are values. The person contributing more is valued; the person who drains from others is not.

There is not that much gender differentiation as to undesirable and desirable qualities, though women are more singled out for traits that disrupt the smooth, cooperative functioning of society - gossiping, quarrelsomeness, and stubbornness, while men are singled out for boastfulness and drunkenness. What is absent from the contest is genuine invective or direct personal attack. Conspicuously, the truly criminal or genuinely despicable is not a subject of joking, such as treachery, murder, rape, or robbery. Also with little or no representation in the daina tradition, though common in many cultures, is the praising/ shaming function of females exhorting men to courage in the hunt or in battle, threatening to take up the cause themselves should they fail. It also cannot simply be stated that in this unusual case, the women have done exactly that. Rather apdziedāšanās is consistent with the lack of an epic or heroic tradition among the Finnic and Baltic peoples. While individuals are censured for real and specific violations of norms, censure is coded in indirect and formalized language, understatement, false praise, and irony being favorite devices. Some of the exaggerations may be almost totally formulaic and not even refer specifically to any individual’s character.

The virtues of the daina world relate to practical daily life rather than abstract ideals. The daina term tikums is the result of the fusion of two homonyms, one pertaining to diligence and quickness in work, and the other to wealth and well-being. (LEV II: 405-The song formula Bitītei, māsiņai/ Abām viens tikumiņš (The bee, the sister, both have the same virtue) likens the ideal woman to a bee who with her business is a valuable resource to the household. It is consistent with the work ethic for both genders expressed in the proverb “Work has bitter roots, but sweet fruit.” (Darbam rūgtas saknes bet saldi augļi.) Only at the end of the 19^th century did the term tikums acquire the Western moral sense of generalized female virtue as modesty and purity. (LEV II, 405). Tikums was applied to a number of concrete desirable practices, abstracted in modern language as tikumība (an observance of values, ethical living). The adjective tikls changed earlier meaning of “useful, quick, and industrious” to specialize as “sexually modest,” while tikums came to be used for the abstract concept of ethics or morals. (LEV II, 401-2) Similarly, the word kauns (shame) often appears concretely in connection with work incompetence or laziness, rather than in a more abstract ethical sense. The change in etymological meaning from practical, work-related to the more abstract moral concepts of Christianity can be followed in a number of words and concepts. The word that often is used today to translate “folklore” is dzīves ziņa (knowledge of living).

The term gods (honor) has a double meaning, one referring to a person’s bearing, and the other to the celebration of the important passages of a person’s life.

The primary etymological meaning of gods is connected with speaking as a way of honoring and celebrating something. (LEV I, 304-5) The most important lifecycle godi passages are birth, wedding/passage into the status of man or woman, and death.

Kādu godu i godāja, Tādu dziesmu i dziedāja:

Kad bij kāzu, kāzu dziesmu. Kad krustabu – krustabiņu. (36338)

Whatever we celebrate, such a song we sing:

At wedding, a wedding song; at Christening, a Christening song.

The three great godi of life are clearly spelled out in the dainas:

Three times in life I brew the beer: When I’m born, when I die, Taking home my bride. (1419.2)

In different variants, the term “drinking” (dzert) is used as an equivalent for “celebrate.”

The secondary use of the term gods to mean “character” or “honor” apparently has to do with reputation and status, that is worthy of celebration, rather than a more generalized sense. In the daina world, gods, is seen as expressed in behavior, a display of worthiness. The word gods/ godi thus includes the meanings: 1) honor 2) reputation (also slava), 3) celebration (broadly), and 4) rites of passage (narrowly). One may choose to live a godi way, to live with honor, which includes participation in the celebrations of life as well as respect for ones body. Dainas specifically state that honor is not something only a high-born person has, but can be had by anyone.

Godam dzimu, godam augu, godam gribu padzīvot:

Godam mans augumiņš, vai ir liels, vai ir mazs. (5324)

Born with honor, raised with honor, I want to live in honor:

I carry myself with honor, no matter if I’m great or small.

Male display is expressed predictably in the archetypal image appearing on a fine horse in his best clothes, the horse going through display routines to show the worthiness of both horse and rider. The young woman’s symbol of honor is her wreath or crown, primarily a sign of vital young womanhood and marriageable status and secondarily, most likely with Christian influence, of her purity and virginity. Parallel to the young woman’s wreath is the young man’s hat as expression and symbol of gods. That the male also has to show some reserve in relation to the opposite sex is indicated by songs where he feels kauns (shame) when his horse goes out of control and his hat falls off in the midst of a group of young girls. The image is even more powerful when one realizes that the horse has a double meaning, also a symbol or euphemism of the male organ. (See for example Ancītis, 1994: 100-101) The symbolism of wreath and cap as young female and young male honor in the sense of reserve is consistent with the life-style where there is a strong sense of gender parallelism, but under conditions where men and women have to often work together in the same space. Attraction is not expressed openly or sentimentally, but roughly, often in terms of mock aggression. As Freibergs was wont to wryly point out in Garezers summer camp intensive lectures, from the folk songs one might get the idea that the girl’s primary emotional attachment is to her mother or to her brothers, while the boy’s attachment is to his horse!

Daina rituals are in particular associated with svētki (calendar holidays) and godi (rites of passage). Ernests Brastiņš associates the word pušķot (to ornament esp. with tassels, feathers, fringes) with ritual/custom (ieražas).

The living of life is…ornamented with ceremonious (svinīgs) ritual customs during its most important moments…Many of the practices are also magical, for with them an attempt is made to influence the welfare of human life. During the godi one puts on godi clothes, speaks the language of godi, and the godi are completed with godi ritual customs. (Brastiņš, 1975:1237)

There isn’t an abstract term equivalent to virtue, but what elicits praise is experienced as beautiful and clean (balts – white) like shining light. The outer and inner are not differentiated, so that it is felt that the good person has appealing language and form, that they create harmony and order around them, which is manifest in a well-kept house, yard, fields, and barns. Thus, the wood table and dishes are scrubbed “white” in preparation for festivities, just as the body is scrubbed “white” in the sauna. Focusing and accentuating the positive are some of the virtues. One is compelled to “trample sorrow underfoot” or “place sorrow under a rock” or “drown sorrow in the water” rather than allowing it full expression, typical of northern stoicism. One recurring image is that of struggling uphill in modern versions as in different versions often quoted and written in graduation wishes:

Dod, Dieviņi, kalnā kāpti, Ne no kalna lejiņā.

Dod, Dieviņi, otram doti, Ne no otra mīļi lūgt. (1448)

God, give it to climb the hill, not from the hill down.

Give it, God, to give to another, not to beg from others.

There are occasions in which certain qualities are more likely to come to the fore. When the mistress/ “mother” is the subject of song, she is either praised or ridiculed for generosity or stinginess, in that her role in relation to the work party or celebrants/ “children” is that of hostess. In the “war between the sexes” at Midsummer, the men are taunted with desiring young girls, but the women are also taunted for desiring young boys, acknowledging socially desirable pairing to be approximately even, with an older partner as less desirable but not uncommon an alternative in practical marriages where compensatory wealth and resources lacking among the younger is a factor. During a wedding, each side taunts the other for being of limited means. The bridenappers for instance, are said to have come in rags and so ravenous for food that anything that moves is in danger. In the ceremonies at the bride’s natal home, her kin maintain that the dowry chest is so heavy that the men or horses of the bridenappers can’t move it. Outrageous sexual behavior that isn’t taken seriously, and gluttony of mythic proportions is a favorite topic, as well as coming improperly attired. Insulting someone’s horse is another recurring topic. It appears the underlying theme is acting properly, as a person should, instead of as an uncouth savage or even animal with uncontrolled appetites. Having proper ceremonial attire, horses, and bearing is also important or the person will be mocked. One may note that there is a high degree of parallelism as to criticized behavior in men and women.

The bride-chasers have driven here in mottled clothes.

Last night I saw them skinning a mottled bitch.

The bride-chasers have gapped teeth like an old rake.

In the stomachs of the bride-chaser girls a colt is neighing.

Awaiting the wedding day they have eaten the colt.

Eat meat, eat, bride-chasers, pour soup into your boots:

On the road you can feed all the village dogs.

Rawson has noted, what is invective to strangers may be used affectionately among friends, and offensiveness is a matter of context, circumstance, and attitude. In the context of apdziedāšanās whose purpose is friendly, true invective is inappropriate. Rawson also points out that what is serious insult and invective differs from culture to culture:

Where the most taboo words in Roman Catholic countries tend to be the blasphemous ones - oaths in the name of the Father, Son, or Virgin Mary - the truly offensive terms for Protestants are those that refer to intimate parts of the body and its functions.” (Rawson: 6)

A study of differences in insult topics according to region would be enlightening. Looking at the corpus in general, one notices there are some insults that include allusions to the devil in a nonthreatening, joking fashion. The naughty songs, of course, all refer to intimate parts and functions of the body, and while the terms are not a part of mundane speech, they are known, but in the past were not characteristically used as invective.

The song wars include what may be war songs - men's songs integrated into the womens' tradition, but as primary creators (rakstītājas) and performers of dainas, females are the primary aggressors in the ritual. Performance by females through the song medium in general allowed them to display their health, intelligence, and desirability. A girl of marriageable age with sharp wit and ready word (veikla valodina) is esteemed: “Be smart, sister. Speak a clear language.” [Esi gudra, man māsena. Runā dzedru valodin’] (Vītoliņš 1968, nr. 1010) Unmarried girls characteristically sing collectively in the spring and individually while herding. There are also summer evening songs and various working songs during which participants sing and where having a clear, far-carrying voice and improvisatory ability is highly esteemed.

Strangers, do you lack songs (sveši ļaudis)?

I will make up five for you.

Next year return them, add another five (for interest). (937)

Since singing in the daina world is seen to be a special competence of women, the boasting has some truth to it:

The maple leaf was boasting

To carry a man across the River Daugava;

The boy was boasting to best a girl in song.

Are you crazy, maple leaf? Can you carry a man?

How can you, a mere boy, beat a girl in song? (868)

The males might reply, perhaps suggestively, something like:

Sing, girl, sing, girl, I will go help you;

You ran out, I have songs left over, I can lend you. (917)

The females could counter:

What are you singing, hub-neck? It's not coming out too well.

My song is already finished, you are only champing your lips. (877)

Many of the songs involve accusations that the other side is lacking in songs or their proper delivery technique:

Koši dzied jaunas meitas Apaļā kalniņā;

Žēli raud veci puiši, Staģenē gulēdami. (T.dz. 36422)

Vidzemnieku vecas meitas Zviedzin zviedza ravēdamas;

Kurzemnieku zeltenītes Ik rudeni ritināja. (Tdz 36466)

Dziedi, dziedi, tu meitiņa, Tu jau mani nevinnēsi;

Es deviņas izdziedāju, Tu vēl vienu tuntulē. (LD 856)

Kur tie rūca, dundurīši, Vai tie rūca dadzīšos?

Tie nebija dundurīši, tie bij sveši puisēnīši. (LD 879)

Uzvinnēju, uzvinnēju Viņpus upes dziedātājus:

Ne ar darbiem līdzi tika, Ne ar skaistu dziedāšanu. (LD 893)

Bright and clear the young girls sing on a round hill;

The old bachelors are weeping sorely sleeping by the fence.

The old maids from Vidzeme were neighing while weeding;

The fair maids of Kurzeme rolled the fall away.

Sing, sing, girl; you’re not going to beat me;

I sang out nine, you were still working on one.

Where are those gadflies rumbling? Are they rumbling in the thistles?

Those weren’t gadflies; they were foreign boys.

I won over, I won over, the singers beyond the river:

They couldn’t keep up with us in work, nor in fair singing.

After the singing has raged back and forth, sometimes all night, one side offers peace. If the other side is unwilling to settle as yet, they refuse by singing something like "I will not make peace, you brought up the feud (Jūs ienaida cēlājiņi)". Eventually, however, the closing ritual song is sung together as in the wedding closure:

Let us make peace, good people, we were singing, not feuding.

For the sake of a song, foreign people, let us not hold enmity!

I sing the song as it is; it was not created by me;

The old people created it; it was sung anew by me. (957,1)

365

↑ Contents

X. ASPECTS OF FOLK PSYCHOLOGY ON MAGIC AND AGGRESSION

A. On Magic Roots of Invective, Insult, Satire, Curse, and Ritual Laughter

The purpose of satire in old times was to destroy whatever was overblown, faded and dull, and clear the soil for a new sowing. (Kurlents: 53)

The main distinguishing feature of the magical analogy is its highly emotional basis. The motions involved, greed for something desirable and fear of something undesirable, are very basic, and powerful ones. The reactions they induce would, therefore, tend to be relatively diffuse and undiscriminating. This is in accordance with Hebb’s theoy, according to which the capacity of sensory stimulation to guide behavior (its cue function) is poor when arousal is either very low or very high [Hebb 1966:236]. (Freibergs, 1971:26)

The nonGerman peasants have grown up without religion or the service of God, and they have only what the devil have given their forefathers with idolatry in groves and forests and other magic.

[Bulov, 1565 church visitation proclamation (Straubergs:47)]

Proactive Magic

Of the many types of agonistic activities and verbal aggression, for which the key terms “invective” and “insult” are generally used, some speech acts are involved in more strongly marked and framed performance events and recognized as important genres within the community. They are set off as opposed to the mundane and standard and belong to the realm of poetry, art, and the out-of-the-ordinary. Genres variously known as ritual clowning, flyting/ scolding contests, song wars, burlesque, and the like are found throughout the world, including Europe. Without any claim to a unilinear model of cultural evolution, the Latvian case suggests quite directly, openly, unambiguously, and even archetypically that the institutionalizing of humor as play war genre types developed as effective and flexible strategy to ritually ally groups that alternatively could be hostile while simultaneously controlling, defusing, or channeling tensions along major structural fault-lines of a society internally. In the Baltic there is a marked absence of mothers and sisters as butts of humor as in African tradition. Rather there is direct confrontation of male and female, clan and clan, relative and in-law, which indicates some differences in the functions of rituals from different societies. The ritual invective is an entry into study of social values, and stability through close textual examination of themes. It also allows some of the more creative members of the society to exercise their gifts. By playing with the conventions, even slight shifts in tone or the way a word is used can act as a catalyst for shifting and realigning in a process of self-organization of the social system. It provides a mechanism of self-renewal by usually imperceptibly and unobtrusively shedding old elements that are no longer useful and incorporating new ones in a selective process, a continuously renewing process of social norms. What straightforwardly appears to be praise may in fact be criticism with the function of social control, couched in the accepted safety of comedy. Even as the form appears to be somewhat of an invariant, in different social structures it is going to have a different effect and function.

That is not to say that the Latvian events in question do not have other dimensions, but the more conservative, ritual aspects, as opposed to the more theatrical, are more the focus of this research that is oriented to a study of historical roots. The material I have examined also can be interpreted to lend support to Vladimir Propp’s view stated in the Historic Roots of the Magic Tale (1946) that historic evolution may to some degree be inferred as it relates to the historic roots of other European material. The aggression is justified as giving dues to old customs (veca tiesa) and not to be taken seriously, but in the past functioned in terms of magic and psychology, social cohesion, and putting down threat. The roots of verbal aggression can be seen in magic, related to the incantations and curses, which are used as supernatural tools or weapons with the practical aim of achieving real-life results. While aggression is an aspect of humor, especially noticeable in archaic humor, invective and curse are not mirthful. An extended discussion is intended to situate apdziedāšanās within the general spectrum of Latvian humor and the various types of joking relationships.

One way to look at apdziedāšanās is as a type of ritual dialogue, involving proactive magical thinking. Olupe explains healing incantations involving anthropomorphization of the malady, which is addressed and encouraged to leave, as one such type of magical ritual dialogue (p. 31). Similarly, going through the apdziedāšanās ritual is a way to ensure the desired outcome of conflict identification, confrontation, and resolution between two groups wanting to cooperate, both grounded in psychological common sense and seen in magic terms. Instead of burying and suppressing, the tensions are acknowledged and an attempt is made to at the least defuse, if not actually resolve. It is, of course, another matter if the ritual is successful in accomplishing its goal. Benedikta Mežāle’s ideal account of apdziedāšanās as a form of public cleansing and absolution for violations of norms, probably gossiped about beforehand and judged as meriting public chastisement and ritual forgiving by song leaders entrusted with that role, would have to be tested “in the field.” Which of the participants would fully share the same values, who would feel that they were fairly singled out, and how many would take the ceremony equally seriously would be factors for consideration.

Latvian joking examples include both internal and external examples. There are joking relations between structural unequals as well as peers in the household or in work parties, and highly marked play contests between two groups known as apdziedāšanās. Usually insult of the other is opposed to boast and praise of ones own group, but there is some self-irony. Curses, incantations, and serious insult in their active attack and intent to harm go beyond what is framed as desirable in a song war whose intent is framed as positive, to smooth over differences through a ritual performance. Consistent with the level of social organization, which is not highly hierarchical, evidence is lacking of a highly specialized class of bards, nidpoets, skolds, or scops as singers of praise and blame. Specialists, such as burtnieki (sign-makers) are know, especially in Lithuanian tradition, but if they actually had additional knowledge to that of reading bee-tree identification signs, or if they functioned as musicians, is not known, even though that is the image developed by the romantics in the Awakening. There is also no information as to what insult songs might have been used by archaic warriors challenging each other to public combat, assuming the Baltic tribes shared in this tradition. Latvian ritual insulting is heavily weighed as female, although the female song leaders use language that appears adapted from a combat model. It is explicit in wedding abduction drama, with a high probability that some actual combat songs were recontextualized, especially since there are parallels among neighboring peoples of such war songs. There are even songs that acknowledge that male repertoire was indeed one source for women’s songs. In most a traveling brother is cited, but also:

The girls sing their song; my song they don’t sing.

I shot my song among them, straight into the girls' songs.

Singing their songs the girls sang mine along. (595)

(case ending identifies singer as male)

Help me, boy, to sing, help me to make a song,

I will go help you work in the barley field. (LTD, 1011)

(The male here is the helpmate in song making.)

Roger Abrahams notes that agonistic genres are most highly developed in “speaking systems that value formality and eloquence...(they) serve as powerful expressive acts.” (Abrahams: 145) A whole range of attitudes is framed as humor, play, abuse, and license ranging from light banter and playful tones to invective that approaches serious satire. It is also sexually charged, leading to the use of a special category of erotic, ribald, or licentious songs – the nerātnās dainas (lit. naughty songs), especially as emotions run high. A study of apdziedāšanās is, of course, concerned with ritual insults rather than on genuine personal insults. There is an audience expectation to evaluate the skillful use of formulae and devices known to all. While the degree of improvisation is maximum in terms of speech events, it is less than in personal insult. Exaggeration is one of the recognized conventions of the ritual abuse event, which Labov (1972) has identified as a key characteristic in playing the insult frame. Exaggeration is the primary device to ensure it stays a contest and does not degenerate to personal insult. Both exaggeration and understatement with an ironic effect are also means of insulting in the dainas. Objective descriptions, calling someone who actually is a cripple such is usually considered inappropriate in apdziedāšanās (B. Mežāle:10) and as in Labov’s observations would be personal invective rather than ritual insult. Some element of testing the butt of the insult is involved. B. Mežāle notes that there was close observation as to how the person being sung about reacted to the song. If taken with humor and without offense, as is the ideal, everyone felt happy. If the person takes offense, it can be considered an admission of guilt, or would cause the singer to re-examine her judgement. (B. Mežāle: 10; Vija Skrule, personal communication) There are instances where an attack would be considered too aggressive and inappropriate: “Earlier it would be a pretty powerful insult. To say it straight, in our days as well...” (Ansis Bērziņš, personal communication)

The event performance is expected to be a lengthy contest or “song war” (dziesmu kaŗš), a play of wits, with the nonstop exchange of insults. Ideally a retort builds on the previous by noting a key word or phrase and reversing or playing with it. The goal is to come up with more clever retorts and not to run out of them, all the while retaining good musical form. A part of the appeal is that when it is done artfully, the audience in addition to being a witness to the airing of tensions derives aesthetic satisfaction. Often, after the contest goes on perhaps for hours, no one concedes defeat and a truce is declared. Actually utterly defeating and making the other side truly loose face would be breaking the ritual frame and going into the equivalent of a heroic flyting. It would be counterproductive to the deepest purpose of the contest, which is to make peace after hostilities are vented, clear the air of tension, and to absolve those deemed socially guilty once they have paid with their public humiliation. This function appears to be international. Thus a description of Japanese tsumi confirms with Mary Douglas’s 1966 classic identification of pollution of purity as a violation of normative categories, which differentiate humans from animals, living from dead, or incest from appropriate marriage:

(Tsumi is) in the Shinto religion of Japan, a state of defilement or impurity resulting from the commission of unnatural or criminal acts. Incest, contact with the pollution of blood or death, and agricultural vandalism are prominent examples of tsumi. The term also covered sickness, disaster, and error, all beyond the control of man. Tsumi were thought to hinder the proper growth of the life force and result in a state of ritual impurity. Both ancient and modern Shinto are in agreement that defilement can be erased by some form of purification, through which man returns to his normal state of purity. <http://www.britannica.com/seo/t/tsumi>

The classic work on joking relationships by functionalist Radcliffe-Brown (1952) defines obligatory ludic abuse, often licentious and more playful than contesting, as between relatives structured in dependent but conflict-causing positions. The butt of the joke is supposed to take no offense. If it is unidirectional and the butt may not retaliate, it is a passive acceptance of abuse from a person of superior status. It is a way of underscoring hierarchical power relationships within a household or clan. Such relationships are inherently asymmetric and deal with unequals or people who structurally are placed in emotionally vulnerable relation. Most of the joking relationships within the daina world, however, have responsorial capability. The obvious exception is one where a party of singers comes to bring blessings to a farm, as during mumming or the rounds the Midsummer children make of the farms before assembling to light the common fires. In that case, their evaluation of the state of a visited farm as in good order, or out of order, is largely one-sided.

In contrast if it is among people placed structurally in nonhierarchical but sensitive relations, it is a way to defuse tension. Ritual abuse is a way of defusing conflict among people who both have to cooperate, but who would structurally be expected to have occasions of conflict with each other, a form of licensed abuse. The underlying assumption is that the ritual abuse is between groups that are considered equal in contrast to unidirectional insults from superior to inferior.

The classic work done on ritual insults among peers is richest on urban black adolescents (Abrahams 1962, Kochman 1972, Mitchell-Kernan 1971, Labov 1972). Ritual insult, as differentiated from personal insult, is a public game or contest where the wits of the combatants are tried and sharpened as training for success in an aggressive and hostile environment. Labov has outlined some of the rules, techniques, means of evaluation, and artistic devices such as rhyming. A successful response is one that builds or plays on the previous statement rather than repetition but stock formulas are recognizable in addition to stronger improvisation.

As the game progresses, there may be escalation in vulgarity in urban black culture. Mother insults are particularly common, but other relatives of the butt are also insulted. Incest, passive homosexuality, masculinity, skin color, and poverty are also common topics indicating areas of stress in the society of urban black adolescents. But the overt function of dozens or soundings is to test the “coolness” of the male combatants as judged by a female audience. The person who looses his cool and becomes offended at the exaggerated and explicit attacks on his female relatives has lost the contest. It is an ultimate test of emotional control within a street culture where if the insults become realistic or are taken as such, actual physical combat is inevitable.

The dozens as a more intense, graphic, and aggressive ludic contest performed by street culture males who could in fact end up fighting for real, informs historical Latvian apdziedāšanās. Nonnormative vulgarity and obscenity may also come up as the performance heats up in apdziedāšanās in contrast to these being denied or condemned outside the performance context. They are justified as veca tiesa (the old dues), but the sexual improprieties concentrate on uncontrolled excess, while homosexuality and incest are conspicuously absent as topics. One difference is that the Latvian material is more strongly clan-to-clan or group-to-group than the more markedly individual performances of the urban black American performers. In that sense it seems closer to what has been described in the South Sea Islands, and it has rather different topics of insult, indicating different tensions and stress. Also, rhyme is not a stylistic device employed in the dainas in contrast to the rhymed retorts in black North American subcultures. Perhaps one function in common with black subcultures is that the ritual insult arena is a chance to exhibit what one learns in the more everyday personal insult situation. Insult exchange sharpens one’s wits and repartee skills, conditions the participants against verbal aggression, and prepares them for a life where being a step ahead of the dominant, often harsh authority is a survival skill. The insult tradition, personal or ritual, flourished when the peasant was under a German manorial rule sometimes somewhat comparable in harshness to that of the American black slave at the same period of history. But under manorial conditions, the Baltic German ruling class would not have tolerated public aggressive male display.

The performance through the means of ridicule and scorn identifies the butt with what is improper, unclean or polluted, as pointed out by Daly’s work, and does not fit into the system of rules by which the community lives. A primary function of humor is ongoing exploring and testing of the limits of cultural norms. Their exaggeration or misapplication is a source of mirth. The key concept in Latvian is saderēt (to fit together in harmonious relation, also to make a contract), appearing throughout the daina corpus in various contexts. The content of insults identifies what a culture considers anomalous and impure. Thus, Catholic countries that take their religion seriously are also obsessed with religion and religious blasphemy is involved in their invective. This is one of the differences of Latvian from Lithuanian material as Christian blasphemy is conspicuously absent in Latvian insults. As a nod to their recent pagan past, there are invectives and curses involving pagan deities and forces (wolf, dark god). However, there are many insults that equate the butt with an animal, suggesting that the accused has a lower uncultured nature. Unlike the insults centered on the relatives and specifically the mother of American urban blacks, the insults are totally directed outside the family and upon the other clan all of whose members are accused of being intemperate in food and sex, lacking in proper social display and bearing, inept in their work, and otherwise uncivilized. An examination of the classic apdziedāšanās as well as the nerātnās dainas may suggest that failings in work ability and wit were perhaps greater sources of stress and censure than sexual impropriety. The latter seem to be sources of derision, but failing in work ability is something emotionally equivalent to blasphemy.

Humor as well as song accompany all aspects of life in the daina world and is consistent with an essentially stoical attitude toward the inescapable basic fortunes of life (laime). In good times, the laughter is light, in bad times dark humor is necessary to keep up courage, and irony is a way to maintain inconsistencies and injustice in bearable distanced perspective. Finally scorn, taunts, mocks, and ridicule are primary devices of social control in a world with a strongly developed sense of kauns (shame) and gods (honor). Izsmiekls (ridicule) is a powerful technology of combating the socially unacceptable.” (Drīzule: 11) It is also consistent with the practical pro-active, largely positive approach to life’s problems characteristic of the daina world. A sense of taking control (varība) resounds throughout folk jokes, double meanings, and humor. Dainas seem to dwell less on disaster and plague as focus on survivors and surviving. Some get through crises as they dzen velnus (lit. “drive devils”, shoot the breeze). The ability to distance, to ridicule almost takes on what we might call existential tones. Black humor, but not extremely black, is sprinkled throughout even funeral songs, such as the one about all the insects awaiting one’s death (49412).

Humor as a primary form of communication, ambiguous in ranging from extremely hostile to its rough opposite of camaraderie, from incidental playfulness to serious diatribe in formal settings, is a complex physiosociocultural phenomenon (cf Apte, 1985, 1994:69). Very often it acts to bond insiders while directing hostilities at outsiders. Associated with a physiological state that produces the mechanical action of laughing or smiling, it also appears when something absurd or incongruent is presented quickly which, the mind does not translate as threatening. However, threat and the laughter reflex are so close that laughter does occur at socially inappropriate, highly stressful situations, such as the nervous laugh. As an aspect of camaraderie there is also the shared laughter of guilt when injury or something generally viewed as wrong has been done. Cognitively, humor, like art, is sensitive to new situations, relationships, ambiguities, or strangeness. It is therefore involved in dual oppositions and their shifting relationships already on a physiological and cognitive level. Much of the older anthropological material deals with aggressive, sadistic humor, and disturbing laughing at misfortunes and deformities as well as shortcomings and foibles.

Kurlents suggests that Plato was disdainful of humor because laughter in the ancient world, as seen in heroic epics of different cultures, was predominantly crude, brutal, scornful, and cruel, the suddenly released outburst laughter of the triumphant victor over the fallen enemy, not at all mirthful or good-natured. In those instances it is not freehearted play or the pleasure of a child exploring the curious, or the wit of the adolescent flexing his mental boundaries that we see as positive in humor. (p. 22) Kurlents goes on to show that much of medieval humor was a “glorification of rascality” (p. 25)

Directing hostilities at outsiders is also grounded in the infantile, primitive, and unenlightened view that evil comes from outside, rather from inside or through pure chance. “This belief that evil comes from foreign, hostile tribes, while everyone in one’s own tribe is in harmony is also involved in believing magicians and persons who are jealous and evil-wishing to be outsiders.” (Olupe, PSPAF: 62) Related to this thinking is the personification of illnesses as visiting outsiders, and, of course, viewing the dead with fear and dread as now distanced, malevolent beings. (Ibid)

However, Latvian apdziedāšanās as collected in the archives and as created today overall lacks the really sharp edge of cruelty and brutality readily observable in Scandinavian flytings and Russian bylinas. One possible explanation is transformation consistent with more modern sensibilities. However, I maintain the difference to have old standing in that apdziedāšanās as pseudo-contest or pseudo-war was dominated by women, the traditional peace-makers. The overall absence of true virulence is consistent and deliberate, alternative to the heroic mode, which deliberately excludes women or relegates them to observers or ululating cheerleaders.

Apdziedāšanās can also be seen as a type of ritual dialogue, involving proactive positive magical thinking that has other aspects than aggression, though aggression is certainly a basic aspect. Similarly, Olupe explains healing incantations involving anthropomorphization of the malady, which is respectfully addressed and encouraged to leave, as one such type of magical ritual dialogue where something feared is confronted and neutralized through the very power of civilized behavior. (p. 31)

Humor specialist Mahadev L. Apte states that notions of decorum constrain women from participating or at least initiating teasing, obscene joking, and horseplay especially in mixed-group situations, though they gossip, joke, banter, and tease among themselves:

In many societies women seem to be under greater constraints than men in their use or enjoyment of humor as part of social communication. In such societies notions of modesty and passivity associated with what is considered appropriate behavior for women may lead to their exclusion from public social events at which only men may engage in humor. As women get beyond the reproductive age, however, these restrictions are often relaxed. (Apte, 1994: 73)

However, Latvian apdziedāšanās doesn’t seem to support the universality of Apte’s observation. It is true, for instance, that in the past unmarried girls did not publicly lead bawdy songs. However, the bawdy songs were not restricted to women no longer sexually dangerous as past the reproductive stage (cf Mežāle, 14). In fact, the ideal song leader would be a mature woman with a powerful voice and good judgement, likely in the child-bearing period. Past the classical period when traditions based on the old pre-industrial way of life was becoming memory; songs were often collected from very old people. But earlier the primary distinction appears to be between unmarried and married, potential and actualized fertility. From a female perspective, in a magic ritual a woman of proven fertility, having given successful birth, is a more obvious vehicle of fertility and fertility songs than an inexperienced girl or postmenopausal woman. That Christian concepts of sexual shame may have transformed earlier concepts of fertility is suggested by the transformation of the wreath symbol, an old pagan sign of fertility and readiness for marriage, to one of Christian innocence and virginity. The difference in perspective seems to be sex related. The male perspective, which becomes dominant as archaic regional cultural diversity normalizes to fewer, more intercultural patterns, involves primarily sexual interest, tension, and anxiety. The female perspective relates sex to concerns of fertility, finding a protective mate, and establishing a family. The male perspective is more interested in controlling what is sexually dangerous, while the female perspective is more concerned with displaying fertility vigor and desirability. As cultures are normalized to be consistent with Great Religion values, they would tend to find displays of female fertility vigor to be sexually threatening, a source of potential inter-male conflict, and reason to exert pressure to discourage their public display. In strongly undifferentiated archaic agricultural societies the male perspective has not solidified as dominant ideology, enforced by more developed social male-dominant structures.

The different theoretical approaches to archaic style of humor do seem to agree that in the archaic cosmos joking is taken seriously. Accomplished jokesters are respected and feared. In the ludic ceremonies and festivities involving archaic joking and insulting, basic emotions are involved with contained aggression and obscenity of different shades of harshness or gentleness. In the daina world the tilt is more to the gentle. Frequently jokesters, specialists of humor, insult, and praise are also seen as among those who confront the strange, unknown, otherworldly, or sacred. In many cultures such singers are feared as tricksters in a class of those who move within the in-between or liminal, so that the literature on clowning and ritual studies has relevance to apdziedāšanās. Liminal phases, while set up to affirm social structure, may also sow rebellion. All of these appear to be of relevance to apdziedāšanās. Olupe points out that magic is especially resorted to where uncertainty and random effects dominate. (PSPAF: 66) She also mentions the compensatory function of magic and ritual, where “there is attempt to substitute or compensate for inadequate or incomplete action of a person, his actual helplessness, with illusory concepts.” (Ibid: 70) However, it would seem an etic evaluation of magic as being purely illusory is to fail to take into effect the placebo or psychological effect it has on the persons who believe.

Tragedy and comedy differ in attitude even when the comic is used seriously and aggressively as a weapon. Tragedy is direct, solemn, sometimes naively or pedantically, and darkly emotionally involved. The comic even as it confronts death and that which can’t be understood requires a step back or distancing. Tragedy expresses either a direct sense expression or makes a metaphorical or parallel connection. The second, having accepted such a connection or reality sees something amiss or stresses the difference rather than the similarity. The first has dignity as well as its negative - stuffiness; the second plays, clowns, disrupts, and makes fun of things. Dainas are a good illustration of humor being largely situational. The same text, or perhaps a text barely altered, can be interpreted straightforwardly or ironically or even both simultaneously. Many dainas may be read alternatively as realistic, ribbing, or swaggering depending on the attitude, although some have acquired a more fixed setting: “Bumpy, scraggy, the room of this folk (tauta). My feet will smooth it well enough.” (Melngailis, p. 13)

Some texts as a group have been documented as having changed overall meaning. Some that are now likely to be read ludically, ironically or even self-ironically, such as boasts or outrageously exaggerated insults, in a more archaic frame of reference were likely related to straightforward incantations, curses, and blessings (cf Vīķe-Freibergs, 1997: 125-142, 149-50). They appear to be verbal examples of the kind of boasts, obscene gestures, and other ritual displays of defiance that have the force of magic when two groups prepare to engage in serious aggressive confrontation.While apdziedāšanās does not generally include actual curses flung at the enemy and outright boasts are interpreted ironically, praise for one’s own group largely remains with less self-irony. One would suppose in the past at least boasting, if not blaming, might be stronger and taken more at face value rather than ironically. The daina world is a good place to explore how irony shades into magical thinking and historically derives from it, and how the flyting type of aggressive model is exploited as an alternative with less deadly outcome.

A quick survey of Latvian etymology suggests the close relationship of aggression and play (Karulis, II, 31-34, 47):

“Kaimiņu meitas…pīkās un pukojās par tādu nekaunīgu izturēšanos.” (“The neighbor girls…were angry and grumbling about such outrageous behavior.” (Janševskis, Dzimtene, I: 274).

pekoties, knakstīties - (dialect) – to play fight, shove around

peķuoties. pešīties, pesies – (dialect) to struggle, to verbally attack, related to *pek- words about pulling wool

peslis – querelsome person; pestis – bird of prey, such as in hawk family

pekstiņi, paiki – silliness, jokes

pikts – angry, pikt (to be angry) from the Indo-European *peik-/ *peig- to be angry or negatively predisposed actively or negatively with the possible sense of showing stupidity.

Pikuls, Pīkals, Piķis - Baltic dark and angry deity functionally related to jods, jupis (dark sky, storm demon) and velns (devil) as in curses.

The above cluster of words is apparently related to the Indo-European term for pulling wool *pek- (Karulis, 31), and significantly the term viloties (to pull wool) was used on the Sveiks listserve as a synonym for ludic verbal dueling or apdziedāšanās. When someone is joking with benign intent it is described as pulling wool or plucking feathers. What the etymology suggests is that the idea of serious and ludic have been associated from archaic times and are cognitively derived from an action that would have been commonly observed in early agriculture as both aggressive and useful.

Cartoon illustrations are a good source to understand modern Latvian humor. Synchronic changes can be noted going back to early sources, starting with the satirical newspaper supplements of the Awakening period in which Barons visibly participated, and going through, for instance, Alberts Kronenbergs (1887-1958) and Reinis Birzgalis (1907-1990). The last two have made many humorous illustrations of dainas, which give insights into that aspect of dialogue of past and present humor.

In his comparison of verbal aggression and humor in Estonian Kalevipoeg and Russian bylina, Alfred Kurlents draws on the work of A.M. Astakhova to show how a bylina functions to arouse hate, disgust, and contempt towards the enemy and neutralizes his power verbally. The enemy is described as a giant or monster. He is shown to be gluttonous and greedy. The hero who exposes his idle boastings, and either puts him to flight or defeats him, also mocks him. (Kurlents: 12-13) Many of the same themes are repeated in the apdziedāšanās, notably put-downs of gluttony and greed, animal savagery, and lack of control. It was a common phenomenon in the archaic Scandinavian, Irish, Greek, Arabian, and other societies that heroes engaged in verbal battle before physical battle, and words are seen as weapons in the concrete sense of malevolent magic. (cf Elliot) The intent to injure or kill an enemy of this type of verbal aggression is also relatable to the subject of invective and curse (lāsti), which occur in a broader context than heroic combat. Apdziedāšanās refrains from overly strong invective or curse. But as in heroic invective and curse, in apdziedāšanās it is important to call out the name of the “enemy,” and a specific person on the other side, particularly the leader, is specially targeted. (Straubergs, 1939, 18) Verbal combat as a part of heroic combat, though archaic, seems to be a specialized instance of a still broader model.

Public ridicule is also a very common form of social control, regulation, and punishment of what is considered individually excessive or inappropriate among face-to-face traditional societies, and many have clowns who are sanctioned to mock and shame people to restrict social behavior within normative standards. While there are no public clowns as such in Latvian traditional society, mummers exhibit some clown characteristics, and the song leaders are entrusted with the responsibility as to whom to target with insults, to what degree, and how. Shaming is very effective in controlling anti-social behavior in a society where each person is dependent on others. Such sanctions as shunning might be used to add isolation as punishment, and there are many dainas about the unfairness of gossip (aprunāšana), especially from the viewpoint of an unfairly accused girl. Laumas as the spirits of drowned girls, some of who committed suicide because of gossip, attest to the power of shame and gossip as social control.

The most serious form of deadly supernatural force - sorcery, invectives, curses - thought to have real physical consequences, were not to be used in apdziedāšanās. In the past poets and satirists were often seen as akin to sorcerers, capable of causing great harm to those targeted. (cf Worcester). While Finno-Ugric folklore has no heroic flytings sung between champions before combat, there are accounts of song battles between magicians. The magic nature and power of the word is also emphasized in the daina world, and in the Baltic material powerful magic is associated with females as witches, magicians, werewolves, and other magic users. Combat on the level of weapons is less realistically sustained with female combatants than combat on the level of magic, especially as warfare becomes technologically advanced and professionalized. Troops led by a tribal chieftain, such as the British queen Boadicea, are no match for Roman professional armies. But the Finnish witch Louhi continues as a worthy opponent to the Kalevala heroes into modern times.

Some researchers have prioritized the heroic flyting as the prototype of the ritual verbal duel. Thus, Parks, referring to the “reality of sex roles in the literature of ages past” (12) argues for “association of heroic contesting with intermale combat in the animal world...proving of one’s ‘manhood’ is central to the whole heroic project.” (Parks: 11) He cites Walter Ong as to the heroic flyting’s “psychosocial basis: argument as focal in male sexual identity, interiorization of conflict and displacement of overtly polemical displays in recent Western tradition” (Ong, 1981: 5). But linking the verbal duel and the song war to the heroic as prototype has the effect of marginalizing female participation even when it is documented as dominantly present in the Latvian case:

Men have historically exerted an overwhelming dominance in this speech and dialogic activity...males, both human and animal, engage in high-display threat interactions with much greater frequency than females…in these macho exchanges, sexual identity is very much to the point...In heroic narrative generally, men seem to have tried to exclude women from the category of potential ‘heroic adversaries,’(with) all the connotations of projected physical assault, posited comparability in mode of combat and admissible measures of heroic self-worth...(Parks, 179)

The Latvian and Finnic cases do not seem to support the prioritization of the heroic flyting. The absence of heroic flyting among the Baltic peoples, but the presence of song contests, both serious and ludic, suggests that the heroic flyting is not necessarily the universal or archetypal prototype, but rather a specialized art form of male aggressive display. Male display may be universal, but that does not exclude other forms of contesting that are either less gender polarized, or are female displays of vigor and desirability, some of which are quite aggressive. In fact, one would expect a heroic genre as a highly specialized art form to have developed in association with military princedoms, such as were developing in Kiev and Novgorod rather than among people socially less organized in clans. The Latvian kaŗa draudze may have been a more incipient version of what the Russian druzhina (local military alliance) developed into.

Parks identifies dialogic warfare too strongly with verbal dueling even as he acknowledges that it “springs up in every kind of context, leaping across historical, geographical, sociological, and linguistic boundaries.” (Parks, 4) He is not particularly interested in ludic contesting, and seems to dismiss this as a secondary phenomenon, which has the effect of prioritizing heroic flyting as the prototype.

I believe the Latvian material poses a challenge. Apdziedāšanās, I contend, cannot be dismissed as purely ludic or as a derived secondary phenomenon. It has roots in genuine tension and aggression when relating to the other, and the performers are women. While there is no dispute that flytings are grounded in animal aggression and males exhibit much higher levels of testosterone induced violence, women do engage in verbal and physical aggression. In Latvia women dominate the rhetorical genre of the singing duel in a mixed setting, and it does not appear to be a recent phenomenon. Magic users also included females, and in the Baltic not only are witches prominent adversaries in magic belief, but also there are female werewolves. Archaic female power is socially grounded in economics and ideology. For example, official records of Zemgale and Kurzeme from past centuries indicate a significant number of older landowning female marriages to younger males, either through the iegātnis system where a daughter inherited land because of lack of a brother, or because of widowhood. (Elizabete Rutens, personal communication)

I believe that the intent of ludic contests has been worked out recurrently and over time overwhelmingly as to not lead to actual fighting, I propose that female participation, or even control, makes sense and is in fact a solution in volatile situations where men may become too combative and loose control. Thus song leaders are generally trusted, mature women who have reputations of sound judgment within the overall purpose of either ritual magical abusing or social censuring thought the vehicle of ludic performance.

Labov observed that ludic street flyting among black American street gangs when marked by ambiguity frequently leads to actual fighting, Parks comes close to a solution for his uneasy classification in marginalizing ludic contests and female participation while setting the heroic flyting as prototypical. He tries to salvage the theory by classifying ludic performances as “mixed” (p. 168). However, I believe the solution actually lies in recognizing as central the intent of a rhetoric exchange. Labov notes that black culture street soundings may or may not lead to actual fights and suggests predictable variables as to outcome. Parks himself notes than one does not flyt with monsters like Grendel who observe no rules but, only with a human who can be engaged in conversation and can understand contest rules. (Parks:22)

Latvian singing duels are close to the original ambiguous confrontation of “them and us” where aggression and the ludic have not completely separated. Ludic intent is thus taken seriously. I propose the Baltic case deliberately uses as resource those who are the specialists in peace-making and singing: the women. Latvian tradition does not have the heroic flyting, just as it does not have the epic, but it is no exception in having magic and verbal contests. Among indicators that the contests were often more than a teasing and courting game between the sexes, there are strong indications that song leaders felt strongly their group honor was at stake in the contest and that they were entrusted with preserving its reputation. There are reports of these female leaders becoming so involved that fights of sorts broke out between the singers, a reminder of how close even ludic flyting by women can be to fighting when group honor is at stake:

In the course of waring (karojot) and abusing (gānoties) the bride’s side and the groom’s side singers take turns verse against verse until final victory. Neither side wanted to remain the debtor. The waring often ended with real scuffling (plūkšanos) until the wedding guests separated the overheated singers. (Dziesminiece Veronika Porziņģe: 100)

Pēteris Jaunzems in an interview <http://www.media.lv> with Zenta Bērtiņa, the leader of the ethnographic singing ensemble known as the otaņinieki, notes that this group is known as one that “doesn’t let anyone step on their nose” (kas nevienam neatļauj sev uz deguna kāpt). There appears to be an entire type of story about how the suitu women were defeated by the teller’s group, which only underscores how respected they are and how they have become emblematic of the ethnographic singing group:“When our group had a concert, our women had gotten into a singing war with the suitenieces. Everyone sang so long that no one got any supper. But the next day the suitu women didn’t even respond to the good-morning of the otaņinieces. They were so angry at their defeat, they were red as poppy flowers, and that’s how they were walking around all day.” Līne Šlampe, a member of the Sakne singing group offered this āpdziedāšanās song about the otaņinieces:

Otaniņinieces kuili jāja,/ Goda svārkus meklēdamas;

Dodied ļaudis, neliedziet,/ Jele kuili žēlojiet.

Otaņinieces were riding a boar looking for ceremonial cloaks; Give the cloaks, people, don’t deny them. Take pity on the boar.

And about women of Liepāja:

Liepājnieces sasēdušas Tā kā bekas kalniņā.

Dod, Dieviņi, stipru vēju, Lai tās bekas kustināja.

The Liepāja women have sat down/ like mushrooms on the hill.

Give, God, a strong wind, to move those shrooms.

<http://www.media.lv/kv199908/990809/07.htm>

The word tantuki (simultaneously suggesting both “aunties” – tantes and “tank”) is seen as rude enough a designation that a query about it to the folklore listserve went unanswered. Mixed in with disdain and dismissal of “old women” is a grudging admiration from some of the young male leaders of ethnographic singing groups. Older women are supposed to be treated with respect, but when they are seen as actual adversaries, more aggressive emotions may be triggered. A story about how his regional group “beat” the suiti women was related in an electronic interview by Ansis Ataols Bērziņš, the sysop of the “folkloristi” listserve and the ensemble leader of the Riga-based folklore ensemble Maskačas spēlmaņi who told about how the ensemble from his region had beaten them. (May 19, 1999)

In 1996 (?) the Gudenieki suitu “young people’s” ensemble had come to Rīga. A few of the old ones (večas) were with them. Rīga Latvian Association concert in the Gold Hall. All of a sudden these women (šamās) start singing their suitu apdziedāšanās song and a few verses about “Rīga boys” also. That, of course, didn’t leave us indifferent, and we with Armands Kociņš (leader of the now dispersed Dziedru ensemble) began to give back. That is not what they had expected. Apparently they thought they could just sing their concert program in peace. They went out of that hall with sour faces.:)

In 1997 during the second regional day of Baltica Festival there were two major concerts, one in Turaida, Vidzeme and the other in Tukums, Kurzeme. Half of all the Baltica participants participated in each concert. We were in Tukums. Afterwards we drove to the Šlokenbergs Manor to eat, drink beer, dance, and party. The Skandinieku sievas (the most famous of the suitu women’s groups) somehow had broken a bench and had decided to palm it off on someone. We were sitting at the same table with the Budēļi (ensemble) and at the next table were Vydsmuiža (ensemble). They go to Vydsmuiža, try to exchange the bench, and even sing insult songs about them (apdzied). The čangalietes (idiomatic somewhat rude term used for eastern Latvians in contrast to western Latvians slātavieši) became slightly confused, so along with Budēļi we got involved, gave aid to our neighbors. The čangaļi regained their wits and so it started. The Skandinieces can’t be taken easily with a bare hand (nav ar pliku roku ņemamas), so for 2o minutes there was such a performance as no other. The “neutral” ensembles later rhapsodized about it (jūsmoja). But in the end those women (šām) fell short a verse and had to retreat in shame (negodu) with the broken bench.

I maintain that a strong claim, such as apparently put out by Parks, that contest duels are the monopoly of men after the fighting model can not be applied out of hand in the face of evidence that there are women involved in singing contests that are entered seriously and fought with pride. Parks would also have to dismiss the existence of women athletes, and at the extreme, historical cases of women warriors or other powerful and aggressive females. What makes the Latvian case particularly interesting is that this is not an individual, extraordinary, or upper class privileged women phenomenon, but an observable part of the historical heritage of ordinary people.

Remembering that the most common occasions for apdziedāšanās are weddings or Midsummer it may be relevant to note that in both the heroic tradition and the magic combat tradition many of the oldest materials have to do with the hero obtaining a beautiful wife of high status as the result of his heroic exploits, defeating monsters or enemies, and after triumph in tribal feuds. The most coherent narrative elements of Baltic daina myth also point to a celestial wedding where the bride is the incredibly beautiful Sun maiden, probably structurally connectable to the Indo-European dawn maiden (cf the latest efforts in McGrath, 1997), but which of the sky gods is the successful suitor varies depending on version. The plot is elaborated with conflicts, including the breaking of marriage taboos, and her apparent death or capture and either rescue efforts or rebirth, but these are difficult to make out with the conflicting elements from relatively short lyro-narrative versions from different regions. What is certain is that there is a celestial betrothal or wedding of cosmic importance to humans and their weddings on earth. Similarly, the Kalevala is largely made up of wedding songs, and the oldest bylinas are also quests, rivalry, and tribal feuds that end with the success of the hero in obtaining a bride, often from a supernatural Otherworld. The bride in the Kalevala is the beautiful daughter of the Northworld witch Louhi who has cosmic powers. The oldest bylina heroes (Kurlents: 65), like heroes from many European marchen, descend to the netherworld to obtain a bride, in the Russian versions shining like the sun. (Zheleznova).

My point is not to rehash old 19^th century preoccupations in attempts to reconstruct the grand Eurasian (or Indo-European) myths. But as one is looking at this old material, it is striking that themes and motifs of sex and violence often seem to be linked to attempts in obtaining a woman from another clan or people. This seems relevant, since apdziedāšanās always involves two groups, neighbors or parties who have come in contact with each other for some kind of exchange or cooperation with marriage alliance (wedding) or betrothal (Midsummer myth) as paramount examples, but with straightforward group to group contesting always a background possibility, as in the Chinese model, as at work parties.

Dieviņ, tavu likumiņu, Laimiņ, tavu lēmumiņu!

Svešs ar svešu satikās, Mīļi mūžu nodzīvoja. (LD 17772)

Dievs, your law, Laima your decree!

Stranger met with stranger, Loving lived together.

(wedding song)

They meet on the border, on no-man’s land, or one party has entered the territory of the other. In very old times the other may be enemy or friend. If enemy, there is fighting. If the second, there is play fighting. Unlike in some Mesolithic past where two parties might come upon each other by accident, or in early feudal times when two war parties or armies would meet in a ceremonial battle, most of the meetings are arranged for the purpose of cooperation in some effort. But looking at the occasions for such meetings 150 years ago in Latvia, one notes that ritual hostilities are muted compared to those described in Oceania or Northwest Native American ceremonies dealing with generalized trade relations and the exchange of ritual gifts. The song wars are either among neighbors who form work alliances (talkas) or among peoples who may form a marriage alliance. The song wars are not between men, who exchange serious hostilities, but between two mixed sex groups, or between women representing those mixed groups who are neighbors. These are occasions when young people of opposite sex come into contact and erotic verbal play increasingly becomes an integral part of the performance of reconciliation. Enjoyment of mock battle together with teasing is enhanced and fused.

Nevertheless, in spite of its predominance, and in spite of the fact that obscenity is common in abuse songs, the erotic model version is but a subset of a larger one that is felt throughout the society. This model seems similar to what is going on with aggressive female singing in the southern Europe in the Balkans. It is an aggressive, competitive display of female vigor and desirability as perhaps the parallel to the male display, which is more likely to lead to actual physical combat with the winner taking the spoils from the loser. However, I maintain the overarching structure, as in Chinese village contests, is that of a group performing a reconciliation ritual, and this can be seen even to this day when different folk music ensembles meet at a festival and engage in competitive apdziedāšanās where erotic teasing is not the primary function. In this version of the more encompassing model, musicians or musician groups contest in a friendly or neutral setting and gender is not the primary issue, though of course the musicians may be only of one sex.

Ritual Laughter

To modern sensibilities, it may appear unsettling that much of the humor seems to be a crude ridiculing of the other’s physical appearance with the implication that therefore the person is unable to properly function in his or her expected social role. To our sensibility archaic ritual laughter is simply not understandable without recourse to those, such as Propp, who interpret, for instance, the laughter that accompanies the ancient spring agricultural effigy. To our sensibility it appears as an equivalent to the mad laughter of the sinister cartoon villain about to do his dastardly deal.

On the physiological level, one reacts to the strange with stronger emotion than to the familiar, which is likely taken for granted. With the unfamiliar the body is in readiness to confront or deal with danger. If the foreign is not so strange as to cause immediate fight or flight, then it often provokes laughter. Laughter can also be used as a defensive and aggressive weapon, to bolster ones confidence or to convince oneself that mortal danger can be overcome. But in the archaic world ritual laughter is purposive or functional in addition to having spontaneous aspects.

Recurrent historical conventional of encountering unknown, potentially dangerous forces include: 1) making loud noises, 2) boisterous merrymaking, 3) laughing, and 4) obscene joking. This is related to oppositions of life and death where the means employed are ties to life. In the past Baltic festivals were either characterized by boisterous merrymaking, or as in the quiet observance of Veļu vakars (Night of Ancestor Shades) framed by noisy fall and winter mumming activities. Likewise, Midsummer songs are to be sung loudly. Even funerals originally had celebratory aspects. As ritual abuse heated up, bawdy songs and the exchange of obscenities were forefronted.

While it may seem obvious also in our time that limited use of obscenities may be a way of reducing aggressive tension, or of erotic joking as a way of reducing libidinal tension in a controlled and accepted performance, in archaic societies there is the additional connection of the erotic to magic and ritual joking as a way to combat death, illness, and negative forces. V. Propp’s work on the tale type “Nesmejana” links laughter to magical thinking, a special kind of ritual existing in game forms, as well as to sexual themes in historical archaic belief systems. Laughter is a magic antidote or weapon against death, despair, and destruction. Laughter is perhaps even a more powerful form of magic than incantation and directly relates to beliefs about cosmological structure. Ritual laughter is also linked to sexuality as the life force in opposition to death and a fundamental means of regeneration. Laughter and sexuality are important components of Midsummer, mumming, weddings, and even work parties where young people meet. (cf Kursīte’s applications to Latvian materials of Propp and the Tartu semioticians). Propp’s finding is compatible with psychological approaches to laughter and suggests reasons for ritual laughter in general at cosmically and personally significant periods of life. Apparently Russian scholars, such as L.M. Ivleva, a student of Propp, have carried on to work out the typology and game theory of what they call “pre-theatrical” or “ethno-dramatic” game language as a fundamental and archaic structure , see <http://www.virginia.edu/~slavic/seefa/INDEX.HTM>.

Dying and reborn gods and sacrifice

There even appears to be a cognitive connection between the concept of sacrifice and of ritual abuse. Vladimir Propp’s classical work on comic laughter shows that laughter is connected with sympathetic efforts to induce or aid life and rebirth when confronted with death.^¹

Carnival, preceding Lent and following Yuletide, according to Propp and others, is a modern descendant of rites central to a widespread antique religion of the dying and reborn god. Boisterous, noisy, replete with inversions, and characterized by obscene songs and licentious merrymaking in the Russian version of the ritual:

The central ritual consisted of welcoming and saying farewell to the deity Maslenica, who was portrayed as an effigy made of straw or rags. It was led with laughter, jokes, and merry songs on a barrow or wagon, or in a sleigh to the village; toward the end of Carnival week the effigy was led out beyond the village; and, with merry jokes, torn apart, burned, and thrown into the field. Accompanying the slaying of the god with laughter had a particular significance: it was assumed that such a death led toward life. Very few Carnival songs have been preserved. Their subject matter concerns the humorous banishment of Carnival.^²

The simultaneous presence of highly contradictory binary oppositions in high levels of irresolvable tension and emotion, such as comic and tragic, creative and destructive, pleasurable and terrible, attractive and disgusting are, as Bakhtin characterized it, fantastic, grotesque, and unstable. Latvian Midsummer does have carnival aspects, seen as an intrusion of the Otherworld as potent magic simultaneously in a positive (gathering of healing herbs, washing away illness in Midsummer dew) and threatening way (witches harming livestock or fields). It is characteristic of the Latvian festival as historically recorded that the playful, joyful, and exuberant is clearly emphasized over the demonic or grotesque. It is a time of merrymaking, singing, dancing, and lovers searching for the magical blooming fern. However, in this cosmic wedding drama of Midsummer, what is lacking but often present in European Carnival is gender switching role playing, or other role switching. Role playing is known in Latvian tradition as part of mumming where apdziedāšanās also occurs. This is another indicator that women’s role in Latvian rituals is not just something that is allowed them on a few exceptional venting occasions, but an ongoing part of cultural tradition.

There have been some literary attempts to relate the Latvian material to the dying god schema, along the lines of the Cambridge group in anthropology, which located the origins of Western comedy in agricultural fertility rituals. Antons Benjamiņš cites James Frazer’s classic, The Golden Bough directly, rather than Propp, and appears to use it as a template in which to insert relevant Latvian songs about the Midsummer deity Jānis (Yanis) as a sacrificial reborn god.^³ There are a few examples of the Midsummer god Jānis associated with the hanged god motif, with the deity who is returned to water or “drowned,” with the deity who for some reason is tied to a tree with magic means, and with one who is shot with an arrow or hit in the back with a stone in the context of carnival revelry and mirth. But Bejamiņš’s work doesn’t confront the fact that in the pertinent Latvian corpus it is dominantly not Jānis, but the sun goddess Saule who is involved in birth, death, and rebirth. Biezais equates Jānis’s wife with the Sun as Daughter/Maiden – Saules meita. She meets the sky god Jānis, sometimes identified with Pērkons or Dievs. There is a cosmic betrothal or wedding, and the wife of Jānis disappears and Jānis searches for her, and in some cases another god (Christianized Pēteris) won’t return the stolen or wayward bride, or she drowns. Sometimes Midsummer mother as played in the ritual by a human is identified with the cycle. The sex of a god can, of course, jump from region to region or even performance as the central concept of motif is what is stable. However, the comprehensive scholarly study of death and rebirth in Latvian mythology, particularly as it pertains to Midsummer, is still to be written. In any case, the fact of ritual laughter, as proposed by Propp and occurring in connection with apdziedāšanās at Midsummers seems particularly salient to an understanding of the Midsummer rituals and of apdziedāšanās in general as a generalized principle observable in a number of celebrations and festivals: the triumph of the life force (associated with sex) over death and the refusal to accept suffering and death as ultimate and final.

Magical thinking by analogy

The world of dainas is permeated by potential magical thinking, tied to the analogic structure of each two-part unit that sympathetically associates two things as a pair in magical, metaphoric, and joking thinking. It is not practical to differentiate this older form of utilitarian magic thinking from a later sense of the more arbitrary metaphoric, poetic, artistic, or creative. In the older way of thinking there is a natural association of the larger cosmos as represented by something in nature and something in the more personal human realm. They are seen to be associated magically – more closely and necessarily than in later metaphoric interpretation, similar to New Age synchronicity. The orphan girl in great emotional need of comfort or counsel performs a magic act to call up her mother from the land of the setting sun, which in modern interpretation is seen as purely metaphorical. The difference may be in the intensity of the experience if the mother’s appearance is felt to be symbolical or actualizes as a presence:

Situ koku pie kociņa, Lai tek saule vakarā:

Teicu vārdu pie vārdiņa, Celies, mana māmuliņa. (4256)

I strike stick on stick; may the sun step quickly in the evening:

I say word after word: rise, mother, from the dead!

Thus the folk songs speak of putting on set of clothes, white, for sunny days, and another, gray, for rainy days. The sun and moon in their course are invoked as models for things being in their place and happening in accordance with universal laws. Actions that imitate their alternation with day and night are magical. Vycinas alludes to symbolic horse-racing among the Balts as taking place in an egg-shaped racing arena, symbolizing the womb of the Goddess, with twin racing brothers, one dark and the other light. (Vycinas: 145-6, 215)

Kārlis Straubergs did the classic work on magic and incantations with his compendium of Latviešu buŗamie vārdi (Latvian Incantations) in two volumes, and Pēteris Šmits with his Latviešu tautas ticējumi (Latvian Folk Beliefs) in 4 vols. Jānis Jansons’s 1937 monograph related Latvian incantations to the universal idea of cosmology as the source of sympathetic magic consistent with Mircea Eliade and his concept of the eternal return of the cosmic beginning in subsequent activity, emulated by humans. For the dainas this reference is most often that of the sun or the sun and the moon. Vaira Vīķe-Freibergs has written several articles on magic and incantations (1993, 1997). Vīķe-Freibergs sees the primary characteristic of magical thinking to be a lack of prioritizing primary and secondary causality, or distinguishing causality from contingency. Thinking is therefore synchronic; everything is potentially tied into a network relating to everything else. Magic practitioners believe they can evoke changes elsewhere in the cosmos through purposeful activity, evoking a sense of control and empowerment.

Vīķe-Freibergs believes that Latvian incantations were chanted in a characteristically rhythmical language, either whispering or monotonously, and as with the southern Slavs very rapidly (Vīķe-Freibergs, 1997: 142) It is not known if there were restrictions as to who might chant incantations. Among the south Slavs certain old women practiced incantation. The powerful female magic users raganas (witches) also chant incantations in the Baltic.

Thus the dual analogy structure of the daina has a potentially sympathetic magic aspect to it in associating two concepts or worlds. Vīķe-Freiberg’s study of associative magic in Latvian traditions resonates with Schrempp’s statement that in Oceania “ritual performances and political strategies emerge as attempts to recapture a lost unity.”(Schrempp 1992:97) The basic pattern or model is found throughout the modalities of culture.

In the chapter “Birth in the sun as beginning magic” (1997: 168 – 172) Vīķe-Freibergs discusses semantic connections of several dual categories: summer/ winter, sun/ north wind, red-white/ blue-black, our people or blood relatives/ strangers or in-laws as they relate to each other. In the wedding ritual, each side tries to equate their side with the positive aspects of the sun and life (red-white) in contrast to and at the expense of images and colors of winter and death (blue-black). Thus, the bride’s side sings, “Red-white our sister, born in the summer in the sun; Blue-black the suitor’s son, born in winter in a north wind. (21347). The groom’s side sings just the opposite, “Black, blue the bride-to-be, born in the winter in a north wind; my kinsman red and white, born in the sun in summer in the sun.” (21347) What is positive and what is negative shifts with perception and occasion, rather than being associated and fixed permanently with one side. Such an attitude may also help prevent a permanent negative association with female, which is common throughout the world, as having been swept by a number of paradigmatic thought revolutions, such as that of the Great Religions.

That the semantic color fields are concentrated in certain rituals, don’t hold true consistently, but appear as contradictions throughout the daina world is indicated in that in other contexts blue is a positive color, such as in flax flowers, the sky, or the dominant eye color of the Baltic. Blue is also a dominant color in regional art, as in the dark blue mitten patterns, and is a color associated with Finnish peoples, including the Latvian Livs and as mēļš is a color of choice in regional female ceremonial shawls and skirts. The basic associations are flexible.

Extensive discussion of colors in Latvian myth shows that all colors are ambivalent, especially white and black (Rūķe-Draviņš; Kokāre, 1974; Vīķe-Freibergs, 1980, JBS, xi/3; Gimbutas, 1989: 209-211; Greble, 1992: 159-173, Kursīte, 1996: 49-95). Black in the larger context includes wide spectra, including blue. Black is “connected with feminine beginnings (earth, water, their spirits and deities), black as both positive (fertility, plenitude generating), and negative (chaos destroying forces). (Ibid: 55) The black female cosmic sea serpent grinding everything eventually into flour-like powder primarily evokes the destructive process, but one also may think of the sampo-mill especially prominent in Finnish folklore as the source of plenitude. Similarly, the Daugava as River of Souls when described as black is likened to the cosmic sea also black. Even though rebirth exists potentially, black foregrounds and focuses on the destructive aspect. The offering of black animals as sacrifice is supposed to have a positive purpose of returning life from the chthonic forces in exchange. But white is also the color of not being, of rebirth, and death. The Shade Mother appears wrapped in a white shawl with sand feet or sitting on a white clover hill, the souls of warriors appear as snowstorms, reminding one of white ghosts even in English tradition. Conversely the black snake that is found in the bee “garden” is identified as Bee Mother, similarly as the cow patroness Govju Māršaviņa, or even as the mistress of Midsummer celebration personified by the mistress of a farm. Black is especially associated with both Earth Mother and Māra, though white is also associated with them. While in modern sensibility a pig may be negative, in historical Baltic consciousness a black pig is associated with the fertility of the Great Goddess. But since white is a sky color, associated with divinity and celebration, there is a significant tilt to the rebirth aspect, while black tilts more to the destructive aspect of the cyclical process.

Typical of Baltic dynamic dualism, there is an interaction of white and black as alternating and in contest. Usually the contest is seen from the viewpoint of the opponent being of the dark force, though this is more to accentuate the danger than to emphasize evil. From the 17^th – 19^th century Christianity increasingly reduces ambiguity in colors, tilting black to increasingly evil and white to increasingly good.

Bula also shows that simple logical binary opposition in the sense of Levi Strauss, V. Ivanov, V. Toporov, and J. Meletinsk does not hold throughout as an exhaustive valence or category in the case of Laima (Fate, Fortune) who appears singly, dually (Laima/ Nelaime), as one of three Laimas, as one of multiple Laimas each being having their own, as a part of collective lower deities associated with such other collectives as laumas, velni, zemes dieves, or raganas. (Bula, PSPAF: 52) While the case of Laima is most obvious and dramatic, a similar case can be made for other mythological oppositions, associations, and dualities. Again, it appears that Western and Great Religion normalizes by sharpening the dualities and decreasing structural richness that appears in older, original vernacular expression.

The transformative aspect of ritual has some analogy to the idea of transforming nature into culture. It is taking one structural order and by rearranging the elements transforming it into another unit. Thus, analogy chanted in incantations where one image is identified with another has some deep structure similarity to the magic process taking place in archaic apdziedāšanās magic. In words of iron designed to protect a warrior from the blows of iron weapons, there is a chant equating unyielding iron with the resistance of different threads of flax: “I was born to iron, I grew to iron, I shod my feet with iron, my body, my bones twist into flax tow where no lead bullet, no steel sword. Axe given by Dievs I hewed into the gray stone. From the stone I took grease to smear over my body. I fired an iron sauna with steel chips, an iron broom softened to beat a lad with the steel coat. I don’t have a coat, I don’t have a coat, I don’t have a coat.” (FS 302,3948)

That belief in magic was common even at the end of the 18^th century is indicated by, for instance, Hupel in 1774. Speaking of the Livs around Salaca where their numbers had dwindled significantly, he notes that because of their different language and the retention of some old customs peculiar to them, they are considered to be magicians by others even though for the most part they no longer act differently from non-Liv Latvians. (Cimermanis, 1996: 82). This information is affirmed by O. Huhn in 1815 who mentions occasional offerings of bread and cloth even in his time (Ibid: 82-3) and in 1846 A.J. Sjogren says that the Livs tenaciously hold on to their language, traditional culture, and mythology.

One and the Many

Dual formulations in the daina world could also be viewed as part of a One and the Many cosmology that conceptualizes relationships between the discrete and the flux. Models of cosmology in the dainas include a dominant dynamic dual model with at least an incipient third area of dialogic negotiation, and another based on nine. Nine or its multiple three times nine is involved in the image of the breaking of a cosmological container by a god with a goddess gathering up and putting together the pieces to recreate the world jug anew. This seems to be mostly involved with the calendar and has to do with the way the Latvian solar-lunar calendar is divided. Since the shattered vessel also has the double entendre meaning of coitus in the nerātnās dainas, the nine gestation months also seem relevant.

That the now divided and scattered parts are related, as in the shattered cosmic container image, is also expressed by the still apparent semantic relationship of many word clusters. Thus, after the primary colors of white, black, and red, the next group of colors are all etymologically related to the same Indo-European root *ghel- (shine, sparkle): dzeltens (yellow), zelts (gold), zaļš (green), zils (blue). (Karulis, I: 247; II: 548, 553, 561)

Another Latvian solution includes the concept of dividing, differentiating, or associating into halves. Pairs seen as contrasting halves or twins, struggling opponents, and the two-generation association of mother/ daughter or father/ son are the most obvious models. Gregory Schrempp observes that many creative acts use an alternation of two opposing forces, as in the Vedic alternative churning creative act. These cosmologies “accept disparity and opposition as part of the cosmos rather than...do away with its generative source.” (p. 63) Sexual generation is often taken as “the main productive principle” (p. 64, 70) Unlike the Oceanic peoples, dainas do not concern themselves with geneology, though the marriage alliance at the human (wedding) and cosmic (Midsummer) level is emblematic of alliances of them and us. There is also the androgynous double grain sheaf Jumis/ Jumala of Latvian mythology. However, ritual and magic enact the primordial, and concepts reinforce the basic cosmology: “Coexisting forms of ‘the one and the two...are historically practiced in various patterns of salience, alternation, and combination. Logically distinct yet not existentially incompatible...organized at various levels and in different domains by a synthesis of ‘symmetrical’ and ‘complementary’ relationships.” (Sahlins in Schrempp, Foreward: x). Double or alternating formulation seems to also be a part of much of the daina world social thought.” (for Maori, Schrempp: 66)

Guntis Pakalns who has done the most recent study on traditional Latvian models of space, singles out the model of two worlds classified as in binary opposition with a concentric boundary around them, and divided as well as united by a road between them. (Pakalns, 1988: esp. 99, 91-114; also 1986)

Some basic dual formulations that appear to have universal equivalents include: kin/ affine (radi/ tautas) divided as “pursuers” – bride’s people/ “takers” – groom’s people panāksnieki/ vedēji in the wedding ritual, us/ them (mēs/ sveši ļaudis), brother/ suitor (brālis/ tautietis), sister/ brother (māsiņas/ bāliņi), male/ female (puiši/ meitas or vīri/ sievas), of culture/ of nature or field/ forest (ārisks/ mežonīgs, āre/ mežs), as well as temporal and spatial dualities, cyclically alternating periods, light and dark, and deities appearing as complementary or antagonistic pairs (mother/ daughter being of special note). Sun (saule) and moon (mēness) are a discordant marital pair who alternately course the day and night. The seasons are primarily divided into summer and winter with spring as a transitional third season, and the day-night (diennakts) seen as a dual association. (Arāja: 24-25) The werewolf and witch trials, notably that of Old Tīss, suggest two separate struggling organizations that alternatively prevailed in terms of wins/losses, thereby determining the success of crops.

The primary metaphor for dissolution back into one, as well as the source, is water (sea, lake, spring, river – and secondarily a river in the sky). Included among broad cross-cultural analogies is also fire as a means of dissolving back into the one through smoke. Mežale lists stone, water, fire, and earth as alternate means of entry to the Otherworld. (Mežale, PASPAF: 28-9). Jaan Puhvel applies Dumezil’s theories to the Baltic, including tripartite Indo-European sacrifice (death by drowning or burial, hanging, and burning). Even though apdziedāšanās is a liminal activity happening in an in-between area, the songs are not intended on destruction, except for the temporary effect of the insulting. Certainly the ultimate means of destruction through stone, water, fire, and earth are not invoked. Apdziedāšanās does not acknowledge that any destruction is going on, even though in a liminal context the amount of change taking place is variable and ultimately unpredictable. Instead the sight or focus is on the constructive outcome, which is being accomplished by the back-and-forth alternating creative singing exchange among the participating groups in the song war. The back-and-forth weaving, sewing, or plaiting image is equated to responsorial singing and used to create a new magical unity. It is as if the boundary between the singers is now being rapidly criss-crossed over and over to create new connections by tiny accumulative acts. Some threads are unraveled and others are woven in.

A characteristic daina way of resolving tension between diversity and unity in the short run is through imagery of temporary containment. These images see tradition as knowledge capital that emanates from a timeless source and returns to it, but has dynamic aspects to it and is potentially endless in the forms it takes.

One image of tradition as knowledge capital is the storehouse (klēts), which beside the bathhouse pirts (the dwelling of the goddesses Laima or Māra) is the most sacred building on the farm. Not only is seed grain stored there, but also the wealth of the family - ornaments, ceremonial clothes, and weapons. It is also the summerhouse of unmarried girls, a place of creative possibility, and the most decorated building on the homestead. A nostalgic, romantic aura surrounds it for modern Latvians. In contrast, the Latvian artist Kalmīte immortalized the rija (threshing barn) as the abode of household devils. He painted hundreds of them in stark dark black and blood red because it was in the German master's threshing barn that the serf put in long hours "working without sun" shortening his natural life. Sometimes the serf was not given sufficient time to provide for his or her own family, sometimes crippled from overwork or beaten by the overseer. Inside the klēts are stored the pūri (dowry chests) of the girls and women. This includes not only the best textile work of a girl, but also heirlooms from her natal family, which she will pass on to her daughters or daughters-in-law. It is where she will get dressed for her wedding and where boys paid visits to the girls when they were courting.

The most intriguing container, however, is the song vācele. It was generally assumed that the song vāceles of the dainas were only metaphorical images. But some have tried to make a case (Grasis, 1992, personal communication) that knotted yarn balls existed as physical entities. If so, they functioned as mnemonic devices (similar to the Peruvian quipu) or even as an alphabet.

Song Creation Process

The image of "rolling yarn up into a ball" suggests a potentially unlimited source of generation. This is underscored in the dainas that locate the song box in an osier bush, willow or linden tree, orchard, or hop garden - all areas sacred to Laima (Fate). Storage in a container may be analogous to placing a body in a coffin and placing it in the cemetery, forest, or sea - made sacred by the souls there. Additionally, an infant is placed in a cradle hung at the edge of the forest so the child will "learn singing from the nightingale" and other birds. In short, placing a creation of culture back into the larger domain of wilder nature is to ensure its rebirth or recreation in the future, or to draw strength from her. Performance or use of a song is to take something discrete from the flux of living tradition or nature, and then return the performed song back to her. Songs ultimately derive from nature, concretized as birds or trees, the Forest Mother, or the goddess Laima (sometimes Mara - a syncretic Christian – pagan deity).

Other people asked me where I got such songs?

Laima (or Dear Mara) told me, the nightingale sang it. (236)

All of my ornamented songs ran together in the willow;

The willow began to sway; all the branches began to sing. (1050,7)

(The willow is one of the special trees of Laima, sometimes Māra.)

The song creation process is seen as a complex of both inherited and individual sources. The concrete individual sources are multiple. The brother or male kinsman who returns from far away lands introduces some songs. Usually the teacher of songs is the mother or grandmother. One daina speaks of a song chest made by grandmothers which five men and six horses could not move (35824). The emphasis is on an endless source of songs, seen in different dainas as either preexisting or as potential and transferable as if they were entities:

My mother gave for my dowry chest a small bast-basket of song;

Three days I sang; I didn't even move the lid. (30, var.)

When I sing, whenever I sing, I never lacked for song:

One has not been sung when a hundred new I created. (36,1)

I lacked not for song, even if I would sing all my life:

I had not finished singing one; already nine were in my head. (Ltdz, 28)

A boasting hyperbole:

I am mighty girl, singing I went about;

I sang Kurzeme all full; now I will sing in Vidzeme. (57)

One could visualize the Midsummer celebration as seizing or marking a moment in time that is in flux. As one immerses in the daina world, one can sense the tension between order and chaos, also suggested by complexity theory of nonlinear dynamics. Nature is conceptualized as dynamically divided into interrelated generative forces or deities. What these forces or deities are called and what the actual division of their provenance doesn't really matter. The various possibilities are expressions of the interrelationship of the One and the Many that has evolved and persisted through time.

While attending Gregory Schrempp’s classes in which he structurally contrasted some Oceanic and some Native American societies, I was repeatedly struck how much of what is in the daina world seemed to fit better with the latter. This is not that remarkable because I was considering that level of society in which the ruling German or other foreign hegemony was largely surface intrusion, rather than what was fully integrated on the state level. Cut off from the possibility Kai byus bojarkas of their own native leaders exercising a state hegemony, Latvian agriculturalists, increasingly becoming a peasant class by the 16^th century at the level of family and cultural exchange with their immediate neighbors may have approximated conditions for the acephalous or loose and conditional leadership of earlier cultivators. In contrast, the Oceanic societies Schrempp considered were highly integrated, organized, hierarchical, and complex on a sociopolitical level. Valdis Zeps before his death (personal communication) once summarized that daina world had many characteristics of a pioneering society, the result of anomalous history and geography in the Baltic.

B. Passive-Aggressive Humor, Historical Background

There is no other way they can take revenge on the Germans, their masters, except through songs.

(J. G. Kohl, Die deutsch-russischen Ostseeprovinzen, II, 1841, on the topic of apdziedāšanās)

The character and temperament of an age, as well as its common sense, are always reflected in its laughter. Changes in the manner of expressing humour are frequently an index of the course of a civilization.” (Kurlents:1)

In comic associations the differences must remain greater than the similarities. (Natsume Sōseki, quoted in Cohn: 9)

In 1934 Edward Sapir(408-415) in his call to the discipline of social psychology was concerned how to “bring every cultural pattern back to the living context from which it has been abstracted in the first place and, in parallel fashion, to bring every fact of personality formation back to its social matrix” (p.410). A study of Latvian historical materials either from documents written by those outside the culture and hostile to it, or from the artistic creations of the subjects can not really confront idiosyncratic personality, but it can isolate behavior patterns of a social grouping.

Many German sources from the 17^th – 19^th century emphasize the tendency of Latvian peasants to ironize and satirize through song, especially in the context of song rituals. All of language takes on an ever-present ironic possibility, a double meaning in a group that is oppressed, suppressed, or marginalized. It becomes a way of looking, a worldview. A Bakhtinian analysis of Latin American marginalization could just as well be applied to the history of the Baltic:

The repressive context generates an array of double-voiced, allegorical, and parodic strategies...a peculiar realm of irony where words and images are seldom taken at face value, whence the paradigmatic importance of parody and carnivalization as ‘ambivalent’ solutions within a situation of cultural asymmetry. (Stam: 123)

Bakhtin’s dialogics eschews unities and the canonization of ideology. It sees polyglossia, dialect, the simultaneous competition and contest of different dialects and speeches as the ground of socio-political and cultural reality. Apdziedāšanās can be seen as a simplified artistic expression of heteroglossia or the recognition of simultaneous alternatives in varying degrees of conflict, or at least opposition. Two representative conflicting spheres are brought together in liminal space and carnival atmosphere. The very fact of bringing together two different points of view in conflict creates the potential for irony and parody. But apdziedāšanās is also only the tip of an iceberg. While it is extra-ordinary, it is also part of historical Latvian comic vision that extends to the everyday while imbued with celebration and carnival. In some way it precedes what has now emerged as a dominant way of seeing, the ironical world view.

Much of the vitality of an underclass-marginalized group can be a rejection of the norms, values, and thinking categories imposed by their “superiors.” In Latvia and Estonia because of apartheid policies by the Baltic Germans, concepts of class and ethnicity were identified. Latvians were seen as uncultured peasant folk and Baltic Germans as those of higher culture. Such a state may open up assumptions held by the dominant class to alternative possibilities. A sense of irony, ambiguity, contradiction, and paradox developed out of historical marginalized and underclass conditions. Comedy is a strategy for survival when suffering, death, and tragedy are not or cannot be confronted directly. It can act as “holding power,” a way to step back and achieve respite or relief, distancing from what is sometimes unbearable. It is to some degree the dissociation of a victim from aggression that cannot be avoided, but not completely. The counter aggression is not direct and may stand in analogous relationship of a play war to a real war, but is real all the same in its attempt to sabotage and counter. As in Portrait of Whiteman (Basso, 1979) joking is exciting because it is not an immediate or real threat, but it can be potentially dangerous. It is invective that could be curse, or pseudo-invective or play-invective that might result in meaningful change.

There is a still deeper irony as to the history of passive aggression, counter-cultural resistance, and the sabotage of normative meaning of dominating culture. Almost geological layering suggests long-standing historical relationships of hierarchy and gender among members of the farmstead to be transferred to songs about the relationship of manor master and serfs (dzimtsļaudis) in the 17^th – 19^th centuries. It is during this period that the very large and nationally emblematic corpus of orphan songs take on the dominant modern meaning of someone who has lost the protection of their family, while in earlier strata, a woman moving to her husband’s homestead was temporarily placed in the status of an unprotected outsider, equivalent to an orphan. During the Awakening of the 19^th century these archaic women’s protest songs became national resistance songs, defiant as well as mournful cries of “orphans”

Finally ironic representation of the Baltic German manor lord in different genres of folklore, but especially in humor, has similarities to what has been done with the portrait of a Whiteman by Native Americans. Making fun of the White man or of the German lordling puts down a powerful, potentially dangerous class of people with whom one cannot engage in outright confrontation.

It is also noteworthy that a primary political weapon of the New Latvian activists was satire, first in the supplements to the Pēterburgas avīze newspaper, called Dzirkstele (Spark) and Zobugals (lit. “Long-tooth”=Jester), taken up by the almanac Dunduri (Gadflies) 1875 – 1878. The great socialist writer Jānis Rainis specifically linked the apdziedāšanās tradition of folk songs to later literary activity, including his own.^⁴

In all cases throughout Latvian documented history, outright physical aggression was either impossible or a doomed strategy, but verbal aggression could either be disguised or had tolerated outlets:

Rhetorical devices allow invective to be more effective than direct name-calling or rude gestures. The indirect approach through parody, irony, mock-heroic, passion controlled by skill, a simulation of coolness and detachment rather than out of control rage. It makes the audience feel “that the author has risen above his subject.” (Worcester, 20)

Perhaps because humor as a way of life is taken as self-explanatory may be one reason why there are few academic publications specifically addressing the issue of Latvian traditional humor except for J. Rozenbergs’s doctoral dissertation and two seminal articles on the subject in Valodas un literatūras institūta Raksti XI (1959). Additionally, during the Communist period a study of traditions was not encouraged, except as an instance of class conflict. Before that, during the Awakening period and the First Independence period the focus was on ethical and esthetic values because above all, Latvians wanted to be taken seriously as a “cultured people,” proving wrong the assessment of the German landowning class that they were a peasant people unworthy of the higher sensibilities. This is currently reflected in the discussions of the Sveiks listserve, many of which involve negotiations of identity.However, the serious and ludic or the tragic and comic are bound together in creative tension with understanding of one depending on the other.

The neutral word smiet (to laugh), smīnēt (to grin, smile ironically, sneer – also vīpsnāt) becomes “to make fun of” (apsmiet, izsmiet, pārsmiet) and has a somewhat more sinister sound than in English, being even used as a synonym for izvarot (to rape). This is parallel to words for humor using metaphors of biting – iekost (to bite), zobot (to joke), izzobot (to cut into with ones teeth). The words for tooth (zobs) and sword (zobens) are related as sharp cutting things vilkt/ pavilkt/ paņemt uz zoba (to draw across a tooth) and izzobot, piezobot (to make fun of). But one also “cuts into” (iekost) something like a riddle as indicated by Ernest Dīnsberģis’ publication of Latvian riddles Še rieksti – kož! (Here are nuts – bite into them!). The most common word for teaser, joker (zobgalis – lterally with the double or pun meaning of “the one who is at the end of the tooth” or “ender/ killer of teeth”) has both a light (scoffer, banterer) and sinister (sneerer, mocker – ņirga, irgoņa) meaning. A less common alternative for “jokester” is mēlgalis, garmēlis, zāģmēle (end of tongue, long tongue, saw tongue). The underlying concept that underlies the joking etymology is an image of drawing something across a sharp tooth or biting with the incisors. “So zobgalis may have meant zobdzelis – one who strikes/ incises/ inflicts injury with teeth.” (Karulis, II, 567).

However, the term most generally used today for joke joks evolved from the *iek, iōk related to a special type of measured talking (Karulis, I: 357) This term, then, appears to stress the marked, special artistic aspect. Another term smieklis – laugh, originally meant “joke” as well as “smile”, but is now used more generally as in smieklīgs – something funny or something to be made fun of (Karulis, II: 243), stressing the physical action of laughing.

Rozenbergs makes a compelling argument for apdziedāšanās as a source of historical information on the changing nature of class conflicts. Through an analysis of humorous and satirical dainas about indigenous nobles (bajāri, labieši), which is a relatively small corpus, he shows that as differentiation of class progressed, derision between groups seen more as structural equals was passed on to an asymmetrical joking situation. The jokes were increasingly applied unidirectionally to the class of wealthy saimnieki (prosperous landowner farmers). More significantly and forcefully, they were applied as a huge corpus of derisive songs about Baltic German estate barons. Rozenbergs studies are an excellent introduction into a study of the comic and its uses in Latvian traditions.

The relatively small corpus of songs that have survived about the native aristocracy, labieši or bajāri, significantly express a different set of values than the dominant ones found in the daina world. They are true survivors of a period that has become memory in the daina world, the time when there was no permanent outside hegemony and the native could aspire to “better” or “aristocratic” status. These “better folk” songs express values of pride, strength, and conspicuous display of status as befitting a noble understandable in terms of an archaic warrior code. The boasting is a straightforward beating of shield with sword challenge, rather than ironical. It is consistent with a time when Latvians would still have had their own nobles before their conquest, a period of early feudalism with an emerging petty aristocracy. It is similar to the boasts and aggressive displays of neighboring peoples who retained their native aristocracy. Synonyms used for labieši include silvered folk (sudrabaini ļaudis – reminescent of the English phrase about being born with a silver spoon), folk with noble bearing (diženi ļaudis), productive folk (raženi ļaudis), and rich folk (bagāti ļaudis). The usage of such terms as labs (of high standing =>good) in opposition to mazi ļaudis (small folk) or even vāji, vārgi ļaudis (weak people) which is related to the term for vārgi, vergi who are not ļaudis (free people) but slaves (originally war captives), clearly shows an older layer of meaning that is social and only later acquires an ethical meaning. A slave, very poor person, or outlaw is one who does not have the protection of his clan radi, and his only kinfolk are the elements of wild nature:

Ļaudis bija ļaudīm rada, Es nabags kokam rada:

Oši, kļavi, ozoliņi, Tie bij mani bāleliņi.(LD 4104)

Freemen were to freeman clan, I, poor man, have a tree as kin.

Ash, maple, oak tree; they are my kinsmen.

But already even this corpus about the native noble class has a negative tinge in that it is often unfavorably compared with the common people. Even more symbolically, there is a current of sympathy with people who lack household protection in a historical time when slaves were no longer taken in raids, but other socially unprotected people were termed orphans. Latvian folklorists have found especially significant the corpus about beautiful but lazy nobleman’s daughters. Satire and irony are born in the unfavorable comparison of a nobleman whose display and bearing are shown to be empty and lacking in terms of what is valued most by the peasant: diligence and genuine worth.

Diža slava, mazs tikums Bajāriņa meitiņām:

Dižas lādes kaldināja, Tukšas veda tautiņās. (LD 31189)

Bajāriņa brūti veda, Kuņa tek pakaļā.

Kā kuņiņa netecēs, Kucēns pūra dibenā. (LD 16730)

Mazs sunītis, kuplu asti, Dižu mežu skandināja;

Dažs bajāra tēva dēlis, Tukšu maku šķindināja. (Tdz 52483)

Bij mana pādīte bajāru rokās; Atdeva tik pliku kā pagalīti. (LD 1594)

Labs ar labu sasatika, Steidza mani aprunāt;

Būt maizītes gabaliņš, Būtu mani apēduši. (LD 8584)

Metat laipas bajāram, Man laipiņu nevajaga,

Es bij’ viegla bez sudraba, Pa niedrīti pārtecēju. (18778).

Great the fame, small the worth of the nobleman’s daughters:

A great chest was hammered, empty brought to the wedding.

A nobleman brought his bride home. A bitch was following them.

Why wouldn’t the bitch follow? Her puppy is in the dowry chest.

A small dog, thick tail, resounded through the great forest;

Not just one nobleman’s son was rattling an empty wallet.

The nobleman’s holding my godchild. But I’m getting it back split-log naked.

The better folk meet each other, hastened to gossip on me;

Had I been a piece of bread, they’d devoured it.

Throw a plank before the nobleman; I don’t need a plank.

I was light without silver; I could cross on a reed.

In contrast there are only a few prideful songs remaining from the viewpoint of the better folk who spurn the commoner:

Kā tu nāci, sīkaļiņa, Lielajosi dieveros?

Sīki tavi soļi bija, Liels dieveru pagalmiņš. (LD 21220)

How is it you are coming, small one (=bride), among the great groom’s brothers?

Your steps are small, the yard of the groom’s brothers large.

Rozenbergs notes that in Latgale the wedding guests were sometimes called by the term given to the nobility, so that the satirical songs about the native nobility intersect with the huge corpus of wedding songs (Rozenbergs, “Bajāri…”131-132)

Kai byus bojarkas Ismīdēt? Pakōrsim muškeņu Daguna golā. Muškeņa ļip ļip ļip, Bojarkas ķi ķi ķi. (LD 20819)

How can we make fun of the nobleman? Let us hang a fly On the tip of his nose The fly goes lyp lyp lyp The nobleman ky ky ky.

In most songs, the attitude toward the “better” folk is irreverent. The speaker of the song snaps fingers under the nobleman’s nose, and the commoner girl flees from, rejects, or even physically repels a nobleman’s advances. The commoner reverses the disdainful attitude of the better off people by snubbing them, pointing out that these better folk do not belong in their despised world. Rozenbergs firmly establishes conspicuous display and boasting (dižošanās) as trope, which in a relatively small corpus of “relict” songs is still viewed as heroic and awesome, but in most dainas is seen ironically as false and empty. Heroic boasting of one’s worth is asymmetrically compared to actual contributions to the household through solid work and diligent character. While it is only an emerging trope in the songs that express an older attitude characteristic of a time when Latvians had their own “better” class, the tradition of mocking display in contrast to deed is fully developed as apdziedāšanās songs in the wedding rituals. Even the outward beauty of the nobleman’s daughters is not sufficient to make up for their lack in work skills, and therefore they are labeled as netikušas (lacking in worth, the term evolving to its modern more ethical meaning “lacking in inner worth =>profligate”). The stance is more than a sour grapes attitude that the fragile beauty of the princess is unavailable; it proceeds to an acceptance of enduring, or at least attainable, beauty as a meaningful goal.

In his research on satire about the manor lord, who is not of native aristocracy, but a German, Rozenbergs shows how the earlier resentment and envy against those better off, turns from irony into satire and on to vicious satire, inseparable from invective and curse as it becomes politically directed at foreign beneficiaries of apartheid. Satirical songs emerged that fix the master with tin eyes and lead feet so he cannot see or catch the workers. Some dainas invoke ancient curses of destruction. The German overlords are ground into ashes and dust and dispersed by the winds, most often with millstones.

Ai, vācieti, velna bērns, Dzimt tev bija, neuzaugt!

Dadžam augt(i) tai vietā, Vējam pelnus putināt. (LD 31856)

Oh, German, devil child, may you be born, but never grow up!

May thorns grow where you were born, may the wind blow your ashes.

There are other songs, which imagine severe physical abuse, such as tying the manor lord on an anthill, or making him “dance” on hot bricks, or hanging him in an oak tree. However, within the daina world really vicious songs are conspicuously in the minority. By far the largest corpus of humorous, ironic, satiric, and invective songs about German estate lords has a playful, almost mischievous tone:

Jājam, jājam kunga zirgu Līdz pat Rīgas robežai:

Iejājam Rīdziņā, Kunga zirgu pārdevām. (LTdz II, 2025)

We rode, we rode the master’s horse up to the edge of Riga:

We rode into Riga, we sold the master’s horse.

Other, often children’s songs about the master riding his horse, relies on slapstick by having the prig fall off into a ditch. Or the singer gets a chuckle imagining serving him inappropriate food: “Meow, meow, I caught a mouse, for the masters tasty meat, tender steaks. From the mouse-skins coats for the ladies.” (Tdz 52575)

Still others make the point that intrusions into their lives and homes by the masters is not welcome: “Where, German, will you sit? Rain in the fields, smoke in the room. Sit in the depths of Hell: no rain there, no smoke.” (LD 20900) Others make fun of the tribute that is demanded: “The master asked for bee wax, where was I to get bee wax? Fly, master, through the air, there your wax carriers (bees) are flying.” (LD 31317) Singing and laughing are the primary ways of dealing with the harshness of life with severe constraints. It is necessary to be able to laugh at the oppressor because open defiance is not a realistic option and cutting him down is only possible through trope. Even tragic themes are treated with understatement that has the effect of gallows humor when one realizes the subject. Thus when the German lord pursues peasant women on his estate, the songs laugh that the pigs ate the lord’s pants, or reversing the interpretation of the tragic power inequality situation:

Ai, vācieti plikadīda, Nu tu būsi neziņā:

Vieni paši brūni svārki, Tie meitiņa rociņā. (LD 20392)

Oh, German, you pauper, now you won’t know what to do:

Only one brown suit; that in a girl’s hands.

In such a historical context, apdziedāšanās is less ludic play and more humor as a disguised weapon in a real class and ethnic conflict. Similarly, dark and bitter humor has been used as a real weapon during the great political conflicts involving the Latvian people and their struggles for the right to define themselves rather than be defined by outsiders. It was a way to provide an alternative consciousness to the dominant and hegemonic social order over which they had no control. The latest significant instance of subversion through music was the Singing Revolution of the late 1980’s (see Smidchens).

One must also recognize that anger and fear are the two most fundamental emotions of the reptilian brain, which humans also possess as part of their primitive functioning. In the neural net different strong emotions can be activated and associated as the primary concepts have many connections. It is therefore not surprising that linking anger, fear, and sexual aggression to the important aspects of culture seems to be universal with deep archaic roots, Additionally the concept of humor as awareness of discordance or something being out of synch or the ordinary can easily coexist with Freudian aggression theory of humor. Thus humor has similarities to and is linked to the sacred, ritual, and the arts, which are also defined in contrast to the mundane or ordinary.

The scop or his equivalent (possibly burtnieks in Latvian) was one who could inscribe magic signs and whose specialties were satirical and slanderous songs, which were seen to have magic effect, as the literature on the roots of Eurasian and classic comedy suggest:

As its magical functions declined, satire drew more and more nourishment from its secondary tap-root leading back into the origins of comedy. The rustic festival, the village procession fairly crackling with caustic repartee, the traditional license – verbal and otherwise – of the orgy, were fixtures of Greek life. In Italy contests of abuse carried on in Fescennine verses, contributed to the festival spirit and were a feature of the recurrent phallic ceremonies. The tradition of verbal license lived long among the folk of Italy and France. It crystallized once in the Roman satura, later in the Italian medley, or burlesque satire, of Pulci, Boiardo, Ariosto, Golengo, and Casti. No less than by these, Byron’s later satiric manner was influenced by the still-surviving art of the improvisatore. In France, Feasts of Asses, Feasts of Fools, and boy-popes burlesqued the Mass – sermon, Host, and all – and profaned cathedrals in the most extraordinary ways until they were finally suppressed in the sixteenth century.” (Worcester: 150)

Studies on classical rhetoric show that classical litigation was a form of persuasion that used praise and blame, character assassination of the opponent and the establishment of the worth of one’s own, instead of focusing on the issue. Thus invective and abuse were used as legal weapons:

Character denigration was an essential weapon in the hand of any Athenian orator. Because of the limitations imposed on the Athenian litigant by the regulations of the court and by the general lack of scientific techniques…a part of modern jurisprudence, the individual who appeared before an Athenian court of law was ultimately left with two devices: his ability to argue forcefully and coherently and his ability to establish in the jury’s mind the propriety of his own character and the impropriety of his antagonist’s. (Burke, p. 7-8

Rhetoric as a means to resolve personal disputes seems to have been widely present in many societies before the advent of modern law. Thus, Eskimo nith songs are another genre of song contest with the primary function being litigational.

While there is no evidence to my knowledge that apdziedāšanās functioned as outright litigation, the literature where it dovetails into the Latvian data only serves to underscore that contesting was not simple ludic entertainment. As Mežāle has shown in the Latvian case, social censure on a somewhat lower key was an essential component of the performance, and while aggression was not intended to be outright blood-letting, it was also not simply random or merely playful fun:

To sing about the loss of a (particular girl’s) wreath or innocence was almost like absolving sins…the shame was made public, which usually was known to everyone anyway and at the wedding everyone (otherwise) would feel as hiding something unclean and in the presence of polluting falsehood. (Mežāle: 46)

There is censure, but not beyond absolution. If it is brought into public, it is to clear the air and to be thereafter laid aside as forgiven. Thus apdziedāšanās can act as a cleansing or renewing ritual and preparing the way for a fresh start.

Humor is also a way to fight aggression, a survival tactic, relieving tension and providing alternatives and flexibility in the face of adversarial change. If humor is born of suffering and adversity in a Nietzchean sense, Worcester suggests that people who are threatened with suffering, or forced to watch others suffer, are more likely to take satire upon themselves. But women, according to Worcester, have not been greater satirists because they are broken in spirit by extreme suffering. (p. 13) Be that as it may, the daina world does react to deep suffering, and women do so with humor not on the individual stand-up comedian level, but through a slower process of generation after generation grinding out an ethos. At the very least the endorphin and enkephalin level of the brain is kept up and the chemicals associated with depression are reduced.

Satire is tragedy plus time.
Lenny Bruce, 20th-century American comedian (Josephson Institute of Ethics)

Even though there are some examples of the genuinely vitriolic invective, overall daina world humor is a gentler version, consistent with Estonian and Lithuanian traditions. In contrast the cruel and violent humor found in Russian epics appears presumably more characteristic of a more macho masculine worldview. Overall, the humor, even when dealing with serious subjects, is lighthearted, even merry, with ironic detachment clearly not sentimental, romantic, or weak. Cleverness rather than brute force dominate the invective. What is particularly conspicuous is the absence of a strong form of sexism. Butts and targets are equally male and female. It may be too strong a position that these characteristics are typical of gender, but surely the daina world has a feminine cast, and it abounds in humor in contrast to the common English attitude that women lack a sense of humor. Sometimes it isn’t even particularly gentle:

Es to daudzi nebēdāju, Kad man agri malti cēla;

Es norāvu gaiļam kakklu, Salauzīju dzirnaviņas. (788)

I didn’t waste time feeling bad when woken early for grinding flour;

I just snapped off the rooster’s neck, and broke the mill-stones.

The other side of aggression is that it unites those who share in the joke and helps create camaraderie. This function of humor can also range from the playful to the sharing of guilt. There was a small aside on humor on the Sveiks listserve (1/6/00):

Aija:

There is both the aggressive and purposeful aspect of humor and also the opposite more playful aspect. My participation in early computer BBSs involved what the participants called “jabbertalky”, a creative, bantering, mock abusing, in-language relying on in-group metaphors, which to the outsider appeared to be nonsense. Karulis points out that the word joks has to do with laughter, which can be good-natured or malicious, polite, nervous, uncontrolled, and so on.

Humor is valued in its performative context as an art language, and is valued as to success in drawing out reactions from others, such as merriment and a sense of camaraderie but also shock and insult. It can be a tactic in saying things indirectly, strangely, or ambiguously. The non-normative or unclear can be expressed through joking, partially escaping consequences and responsibility because it is supposed to be a joke and if the butt becomes offended, he displays weakness and the ability to be wounded. That allows one to propose what they may ordinarily not be able to do. One can conclude quite a bit from the choice of jokes, especially if one considers the context.

Valdis:

Since I belong to one of those who enjoy using the goal-oriented aspect of humor, I would like to add there are a few other things, which make this expressive form useful. A joke is laconic. Because it usually has a deeper undertone, it allows one to say a lot in a few words as well as quickly evaluate if those involved in the joking have a similar perception and compatible thinking speed. In groups where these are compatible, sometimes fairly complex problems may be solved in a half-serious tone, saying laconically, but understanding in half-words while retaining a brisk state of mind. If there isn’t such a common perception, joking and teasing is bothersome and doesn’t happen a lot. I’m sorry to say that in our otherwise interesting Sveiks society there is a very different sense of humor, reaction to irony, and a scale of values with which to evaluate a joke. That is why jokes and teasing here are variously received and are rare. Too bad… There’s another characteristic: that a good joke, aphorism, or especially anecdote “doesn’t have an author” – is cited without reference. It usually is more important that it says the right thing rather than who said it first…why not carry a nice turn of thought further? Besides if a person really has a sense of humor, they would only be happy that their witticism lives on. If he doesn’t have a sense of humor and asks for recognition or payment, then the joke came to him accidentally and as a person with no sense of humor, he doesn’t even have the right to recognition.;-)

Aija:

That is how I interpreted the daina: “Lūkosim dziedājušas Ar bāliņa līgaviņu: Ja dziesmiņa saderēja, Tad sader dzīvojot. Gana man saderēja Ar bāliņa līgaviņu: Sader ziemu maltu iet, I vasaru druviņā. (LD 306). (Let us try out singing with brother’s bride: If the song fit together, living together will fit. It fits together well enough with brother’s wife: in the winter grinding corn, in the summer working in the field.) In the daina world a sharp mind was valued as manifest in singing and speech. Witticisms emphasize understanding and misunderstanding and therefore mark those who will be able to work together and undersand each other. So joking is largely among those who have commonality of language and attitude. The butt of a joke is therefore usually an outsider, but the joking is within one’s own group.

In a culture where shame is a means of social control, being made fun of is not all-mirthful fun. The pleasure and exuberance of festival is also a way of sugarcoating the medicine of criticism among people who ultimately must work together. In the broadest sense, the comic vision, a worldview or ethos grounded in incongruity, as well as the comic spirit, a dynamic that chooses festival rather than catastrophic war for real, is being approached as an addressable subject or object. The subject on this level resists confinement and oscillates between play or fun associated with a high level of excitement and game, which involves some purpose even as it is in the realm of the ludicrous and absurd. It is also a ludic world that has roots sufficiently archaic that while it speaks to Western cultural tradition, it appears at times to have more commonality with the Eastern traditions. Certainly it involves a sense of contradiction: normative and non-normative, of proper and absurd, of beautiful and ugly, of mirth and suffering, discord and balance, of recognizing two concepts or events as non-synthesizable, noncompatible, or irresolvable. There is thus never-ceasing tension, a permanent “war,” revolution, or states of conflict because neither side can win to permanently subjugate the other. It is life going on in spite of death in the spirit of the Japanese saying, Fall seven times, stand up eight,” (Josephson Institute of Ethics) knowing that eventually one will not be able to get up, but others will continue the game because self-renewing nature (Viņsaule), not the finite human world (Šī saule) is the ultimate reference.

C. Contesting Halves

The ‘insult’ hurled must not represent an accurate statement of reality, or a battle...will result. (Viv Edwards, Thomas J. Sienkewicz, p.130)

The Other

A characteristic of Baltic cognition seems to be to asymmetrically tilted toward marking, strengthening, or even constructing the positive or light aspect of a dialogic relationship when in a positive - negative dyad. Thus, Karulis notes that the Indo-European term that today means “friend” (draugs) originally was an ambivalent or even threatening term meaning “other” or “stranger” (*dhroughos), also known as sveši ļaudis (other people, strangers) (Karulis I: 226-227). He notes that orphans and children not one’s own were known as drauga bērni and that unrelated companions-in-arms were known as draugi while related men were called bāliņi. The term was extended to mean “brother-in-law” because military alliance was one of the results of a wedding alliance. In modern genteel Latvian spouses are also known as “married friends” (laulātais draugs, draudzene). In Baltic the term moved generally from ambivalence to the positive sense of “friend,” while in other languages the root gravitated to the opposite pole (Avestan demon, German terms for cheating or trickery – Ibid: 226). The etymological tendency informs the process of apdziedāšanās, which moves from a state of suspicion, aggression, and hostility to reconciliation, co-operation, and friendship.

Co-operation is, of course, a successful, adaptive strategy for increasing survival chances. Even in terms of sociobiology and games theoFry, there are such concepts as inclusive fitness, which explain individual sacrifice for the survival of the group with whom he most closely shares genetic information. Reciprocal altruism also increases survival or fitness of groups that are not formed on the basis of genetics.

The Contest

While apdziedāšanās can be broadly classified as a ludic musical responsorial performance, in the past it had more serious ritual and contest aspects, and there is no evidence to suggest the participation of women to be a recent phenomenon, but to the contrary, that their participation was essential rather than incidental or marginal. The essential nature has to do with recognition and identity with a fundamental cognitive unit, as stated in the song:

Pulciņā, pulciņā, Bāleliņi, pulciņā!

I bitītes medu nes, Pulciņā strādādamas.

In a band, in a band, brothers, in a band!

Even the bees carried honey, working in a band.

<http://ai1.mii.lu.lv/tautasdz>

Two kinds of bands are contrasted in the song, the male military unit and the female work band. What is interesting is that the military band compares itself to the female working band without feeling the comparison to be derogatory. The equation of the two is so complete, that there is no reason to prefer one to the other as prototype. The categories are so fundamental that they cannot be reduced into the other. The song also relates to archaic Baltic kinship using the bee as a model for connecting brother to brother-in-law through the bee sister/wife, a subject discussed later in this study. Bee-sisters do, in fact, disperse for a honey hunt and return with the spoils to the hive similar to a male hunting or raiding band. Additionally, the dual concept of “sides” is highly stressed in terms of location, kuŗu pusi – lit. what side = where. The cognitive weight is on a focus of two rather than indefinite numbers. Performances are keyed as “giving old dues”: sava tiesa, veca tiesa (right, old right).

As classical historians reported of singing and dance before battles, so also there are reports of singing before battle and lamenting afterwards among the Baltic pagans, although the songs were not recorded. Apdziedāšanās may have had some distinct connection to ritualized war songs in that the songs use military language (pulks, karogs -band, military unit, flag) and posture (bragging, praise and insult) and the performance is termed “song wars” (dziesmu kaŗi). Even though there are songs about battle and marching songs, there is no information about what songs were sung before battle or mourning the dead afterwards. However, male songs were appropriated in the women’s repertoire, including most obviously “visiting girls” (meitās iešana), raiding, and hunting. Apdziedāšanās as a contest involves a battle enactment, the weapons being words.

The line cannot always be drawn clearly between goal-oriented game/ contest and activities/ play (paidia) without such goal. Games and contests range in significance from diversion and what is mostly exploratory play with little stake in the outcome to determining life and future for the participants in deadly earnest. (See Huizinga’s 1955 classic study for the relationship of play to comedy, Callois for game classifications.) In archaic societies champions representing their group have fought to the death to settle serious conflicts, such as territory rights. In the world of magic, wizards may battle with the power of word or song. In the mythic worlds and in their re-enactments a loosing side may forfeit some important privilege, though the sides will meet periodically to again decide an outcome.

Ethologically oriented anthropologists, such as Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson (1997) argue on the basis of chimpanzee aggression that hominid group solidarity is based on male aggression against other groups, including murder and rape, and these male bands cooperate realpolitik style to be more efficient at aggression. In this view, humans also ritualize aggression and rechannel it to be less dangerous and socially disruptive. Additionally, Kurlents and others have shown that what is framed as humor or play can actually be sadistic, cruel, and mean-spirited, found abundantly in archaic examples of animal tales and bylinas.

We also consider the play of young children for whom the activity is preparation for the “real thing.” Contests take place in a liminal space representing a temporary shift from normal to abnormal order of social relations. The significance of a game depends upon the social value assigned by the participants. While values tend to be exceedingly stable, the values assigned to a particular activity can and do change.

Terms of cultural engagement, whether antagonistic or affiliative, are produced performatively. The representation of difference must not be hastily read as the reflection of the pre-given ethnic or cultural traits set in the fixed tablet of tradition. The social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective, is a complex, on-going negotiation...The recognition that tradition bestows is a partial form of identification. In restaging the past it introduces other, incommensurable cultural temporalities into the invention of tradition. This process estranges any immediate access to an originary identity or a ‘received’ tradition. The borderline engagements of cultural difference may as often be consensual as conflicted; they may confound our definitions of tradition and modernity; realign the customary boundaries between the private and the public, high and low, and challenge normative expectations of development and progress. (Bhabha)

It is situational if a ritual affirms order or sows seeds or rebellion. The contexts, especially in modern society are multiple just as the symbolism is multi-layered. Therefore a simple static dualistic categorization of symbol inversion is not taking place. However, in pre-industrial agricultural Latvian society, since the rituals are tied to recurring calendar and personal lifecycles, some dominant long-standing oppositions do emerge.

Significantly the place of engagement is also often an in-between or third space, a border where each side becomes aware of the other and senses the other’s presence as having become significant. The strange becomes familiar and the familiar unfamiliar. At Midsummer the neighbors gather at a common hill, or at a riverside if there is no hill. The ritual greeting of intruder-guest at both ends of the wedding starts at the gate. E. Olupe mentions objects that mark the in-between to include “stone (which can act as the equivalent of earth), threshold, fence, boundary marker, crossroads, a place between two stones.” (1989: 29) They are marked and marked off places where incantations to destroy (zūdināšana) are said to be effective, the space where destruction occurs, and there is an isomorphism between this and the other supernatural world so that activity in one affects the other. But if an area is cleared, this opens up new possibilities, which are then created in the action of dialogue, continuously “sewing” or “swinging” back and forth. Under normal conditions the borders, roads, fence, gates, or other markers between territories, including mental maps or concepts, are clearly marked and demarcated. (See Pakalns on roads, 1998: 91-114) Under liminal conditions the contesters take their positions as if on a bridge and push back and forth as to who will give way, just as in the dainas Laime (Fortune) and her opposite Nelaime (Disfortune) struggle as to who will advance and who will fall into the water.

The participants may not see the outcome as skill or be conscious of their strategies because they believe that the outcome is determined by a higher power (Laime lemj – Laima decrees) or chance so that a game is a matter of good luck (personified as Laime) or bad luck (personified as Nelaime).

Even if a contest is on the end of diversion, significant aspects of the culture may be involved. In his classic work on Festivals and Songs of Ancient China, Marcel Granet argues that, “In both (spring and fall festivals), competitions and tourneys depict the system upon which the community is organized.” In these festivals involving a ritual contest of songs in some ways similar to Latvian song contests, the performance of individuals matters because they represent their clans or villages, and in the bigger scheme But no total is made of the winning throws of any single player. (Firth). The sides are the enduring aspect. In a ritual contest in a traditional society individual players drop out and die, but the sides remain as institutional entities. An individual can’t choose sides as membership in the kin group determines the side; they are born into a gender or clan or village. The maintenance of equilibrium, rather than reversal of the usual order of existence, is the greater purpose and, in any case, as the Borg say, “resistance is futile.”

Ethnomusicologist Hopkins describes competitive insult singing by individuals representing peoples of different Norwegian mountain valleys:

Two singers alternately improvise insults to one another much in the manner of the Spanish-American decima. Each singer uses a short, pre-existent melody as a vehicle for the improvised text in this song competition. Sometimes the participants vie with one another as male and female; but often, they represent two mountain valleys, each regarding the opponent as a personification of the foreign community. In the past, anger engendered by this musical rivalry has led to more physically violent forms of combat, particularly during the explosive atmosphere of an after-wedding party.” (Hopkins: 218)

In the Latvian examples display on the individual level is also expected to be secondary to social cohesion, harmony, and maintenance, though a good performer is valued for her competence. There is, however, no question about the spirit of competition with attendant pride on the part of the winners and anger on part of the losers.

I am unaware of any men’s only groups in a Latvian or Lithuanian singing contest. The singing contests were generally women against women, mixed, or men against women. One obvious reason is that women dominated the vocal musical genres, while most instrumental music was the provenance of men. That special problems could arise in a contest that would not be strictly constrained, and where males and females are pitted against each other, was practically illustrated by a virtual gender contest that emerged on a Latvian electronic listserve. Under ordinary apdziedāšanās conditions, there would be instant response and a leader in charge of each side would be entrusted with responsibility for the tone maintained in the contest. In a virtual contest done on an electronic list, the response is not instantaneous and because this list is unmoderated and any member can post what and when they pleased, such focus and control is lacking. This, in fact, caused a premature abortion of the contest when the aggression level got too rough and therefore uncomfortable for the tastes of most contestants against the female group. It only underscores the fact that ritual and symbolic warfare requires constraining rules and an understanding of clear codes, in contrast to an all-out, no holds-barred type of melee. In contrast (Sept. 2000) another contest in the area of political disagreement did emerge on the same listserve, eliciting strong irony, insult, and somewhat rougher language. However, since the sides were not drawn according to gender, the dispute ran its course, as there was tolerance for a higher level of aggression between males, or mixed sides. During the course of the two years I have participated in Latvian listserves, the change seems to be from a more formal and polite tone toward greater tolerance for greater experimenation and utilization of different styles. The use of informal “you” (tu, Tu) is now fairly common.

That contest does not necessarily have to be structurally between equal sides, including “wars between the sexes” is suggested by comic dueling in Japanese literature:

Japanese writers typically prefers an imbalanced structure, making the weaker figure both a narrating voice and protagonist and shifting the locus of the comic agon from external conflicts to the workings of the weaker figure’s psyche. When the stronger figure embodies flaws that are to be objects of unmaking, the speaking protagonist reveals theme directly to the audience while the putative victim remains oblivious to the process. (Cohn: 194)

In the Latvian apdziedāšanās there is no attempt to avoid inequality by indirect presentation. The conflict, though ludic, retains the direct and parallel model even when it is between the sexes. Knowing the songs gives the women an advantage, and also artistic competence rather than pure aggression determines the winner. But should the aggression exceed a comfortable level, predictably the contest would be terminated as one side would have won and the model is based on two roughly equal opponents. As folk ensemble leader Ansis Bērziņš indicated, if the opponents are not worthy, there isn’t much of a contest.

Differences and similarities between Latgalian singers from eastern Latvia and Alsunga singers from western Latvia are interesting to explore. Two books each represent the two traditions, Benedikta Mežale’s book, Apdzīduoshona kuozuos vai patīsa grāku atlaisšona and the book about suitu singer Dziesminiece Veronika Porziņģe.

A war of songs is a war of wit. A sharp wit is one of the characteristics recurrently singled out by foreign observers of the Baltic, and wit is found throughout the daina world, but wit is only a part of what is happening in the song wars of the daina world. How does an entrant into the daina world read the wit and the humor? Is a particularly aggressive daina invective or part of ritual drama? The answer is situational, but the general purpose of apdziedāšanās is ludic, the resolution of conflict through peaceful means in contrast to flyting, where combat frequently follows. Māra Grīns summarizes apdziedāšanās in a neo-pagan publication Labietis article, “It is this contest’s unwritten law, that assumes the exaggerated insults to be accepted as a joke and merry performance, ending with the making of peace.” (p. 2341) The agonistic rhetoric cannot be reduced down to the specific charges of lack and impropriety of which the other side is accused. As dramatic theorists, such as Kenneth Burke (1945), have pointed out, the great metaphor for living is dramatic and more phatic than on the level of conveying specific information. The overall purpose of ritual is subconscious, therapeutic, seeking and seeming to bridge logically unbridgeable differences. As in traditional liminality there is a constant current of joking, as a shared experience among equals or friends, the sense of comitas that increases cooperation and releases tensions, or as in the case of joking relationships if among unequals ensures that the inequality not be subverted. The festivities lead to a heightened and altered state culminating in euphoria. It is an enjoyable experience. Nevertheless, informative information is in fact also exchanged. Good lead singers do not target randomly, and butts do take to heart charges of misconduct, impropriety, and other failings. Specific use of verbal forms is renegotiated. As Burke saw, motivations and drama have grammar, which can be analyzed, even if the experience itself cannot be reduced to something else.

Carnival aspects

It has been maintained from Aristotle’s Poetics on in the classic sources of the West based on the study of archaic Greek drama that the comic stance and comic literature are not open forms of committed antagonistic aggression, but at best are passive-regressive at a distance potshots whose purpose is not revolution, but conciliation or resolution of discord, the opposite of tragedy. It is a “subversive pleasure” to use the title of one book about Bakhtin, (Robert Stam, Subversive Pleasures. Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film). Furthermore, it often consists of crude and cruel mockery of physical appearance or defect seen as indicative of low character and status as well.

Ethologists have pointed to ritual-like behavior or “carnival” of chimpanzees in the gathering of bands at plentiful common food sources. (Reynolds and Reynolds: 408), Some studies of ritual and drama have associated the festive sense historically with marked sites such as river crossings, hills, or caves and with sacrifice (cf Girard; Schechner 1994: 618, 632-638) where the focus is on the benefits to the assembled celebrants and on the rebirth of the victim, rather than upon the tragic death of the victim. Ritual is in this view a way to cathartically redirect violent and erotic tensions, often taking the form of violence where a victim is actually or theatrically killed, thereby removing tension and restoring “dissolution of distinctions” (Schechner: 634). Death is denied because it is not seen as final, or the victim can’t retaliate, and the suffering is not confronted because it is seen as a justifiable means to a desired end. Sacrifice is also seen as sacred, not framed as profane murder. The form of mirthful detachment is a form of dealing with misfortune, adversary, and death through psychological states that affirm the opposite. Festivals create altered, euphoric states, and the emotional highs may last long enough to get through everyday adversity afterwards until the next festival. Festivals are not, of course, simple reenactments of recurrent dying king sacrificial ritual in the Frazer sense, or any other archaic ritual, but the underlying psychology is recognizable: an altered state of euphoric revelry, distancing from the reality of suffering, and the suspension of everyday norms.

There is, in fact, no evidence of human sacrifice in the Latvian materials, and conspicuously, there is no recorded ritual slaying enactment at Midsummer or during mumming, or any other festival, even though there are aggressive and erotic tensions and focus on fertility. In any case, the classic position has been that ritual affirms, rather than questions, basic social structures and institutions, and is therefore sanctioned or allowed by the authorities as a pleasurable form of venting tensions along the basic divisions of society, such as class and gender. (cf Rappoport on the enduring, recurring, and stereotypical aspects of ritual.) Thus, temporary inversion is not only tolerated but also encouraged.

However, this position has been developed further as the ongoing regulative function of ritual has been emphasized and noting the interplay and “balance between improvisation and rule-governed behavior” (Schechner: 621). Turner develops the idea of social drama as a way of addressing a breach of social relations that has progressed to crisis by redressive action and the reintegration of the schism (1974: 23-59). The very nature of anti-structural liminality opens up alternatives for consideration. Joel Cohn in his study of Japanese comic narratives notes (narrative rather than drama being a vehicle of the Japanese comic spirit):

Even in cases where the social order is restored, as in the boy-gets-girl ending of the typical romantic comedy, it takes the form of a reconciliation of conflicting elements, with both of the hitherto contesting parties sharing in the new order; there is no return to the status quo ante of the sort that marks the termination of carnival…the narrative moves beyond inversion (and its relegitimizing of hierarchical structures) to a condition of leveling in which the former antagonists can be integrated and all hierarchy is abolished. (Cohn: 176)

In Greimas’s remodeling of Propp’s schema a wedding is seen in terms of its resolving a conflict and restoring a contract.” (Soviet Structural Folkloristics: 34) Thus, in a song war one can observe in a direct, concrete, and physical form something analogous to what has been expressed about the intermediary role of the folktale ”…it resolves the contradictions between structure and historical development, and society and the individual.” (Soviet Structural Folkloristics: 36)

Comedy has also served the double function of making survival emotionally and spiritually possible when actual external conditions could not be changed, while simultaneously sowing and harboring subversive seeds whose germination, though long-term, led to more active forms of consciousness and even revolution. The development of the Singing Festivals of the First Awakening as transformations of pre-industrial agricultural festivals led to the first national independence. And the Singing Revolution (Third Awakening) was a culmination of the Folklore ensemble movement (Second Awakening) led to a reestablishment of national independence. The protest songs of orphans and mistreated daughters-in-law had been recontextualized as national protest songs with which broad segments of modern Latvian society identified.

Halves, sides, and their presencing

One common theme throughout Latvian folklore, suggesting deep structure, is that of contesting opposing natural forces, often perceived as sides – halves (puses), striving, struggling, contesting, or engaged in argument strīds. This agonistic dialogue, strīds is related to IE *ster- (stiff), suggesting an unyielding established position, rather than an openness to exchange. The use of the concept puses (halves) suggests a parallel alignment. The antagonistic positions remain constant, but who fills the slots varies from daina to daina and performance to performance:

Dievs ar Laimi manis dēļ Stāv lielā ienaidā:

Dievs man deva maizes zemi, Laime liedza arājiņu. (LD 9459)

God and Laima on my behalf are in a state of feud:

God gave me land for bread, Laima denied me a ploughman.

The sky god as he becomes God usurps the functions of casting fortune, which is the provenance of Laima who sometimes contests with her negation Nelaime or in matters of life with the death goddess Veļu māte. In this daina God occupies the slot by association of preferred inheritance of land by a male who can work it with a plough. But the girl, though she apparently has inherited the land because she doesn’t have a brother, is not being granted a husband to plough it.

There is also another, hierarchical alignment basic to Latvian concepts, which is center (vidus) and edges (malas), though the concept has a dual aspect in that the center usually focuses on “one” edge-mala at a time. The sea, a symbol for primal creative and dissolving unity, is said to have edges (malas) not sides. It washes a newborn to the edge and takes in someone in death. (cf Kursīte, 1996: 13, 1999: 499-507) A song contest is aligned in parallel sides. The song leader invokes in song for her side to “hold fast” (turaties), if need be “bracing oneself within the doorframe”. A door, of course, is an in-between marker and the doorframe represents what keeps a space intact. Strength, steadfastness, unyieldingness, holding the line against onslaught and advancing to vanquish is the imagery, language, rhetoric, and public stance. Kursīte points out that the dark and threatening opponent a hero must overcome may simply be called a pretinieks (lit. one who stands against another, opponent) as well as identified as Velns, Mother Jods, dragon, or snake. (Kursīte, 1996: 13)

Of course, the unyielding stance and warlike drumming is largely bluff and ludic in most performances with real destruction an undesired alternative. However, alliances can be of short duration. Among the ancient Greeks, warring city-states could engage in athletic games during a temporary truce held to honor the gods they held in common, but the contests did not necessarily bring peace. The state could revert to war as soon as the truce was over. This kind of physical, athletic contest held during a truce appears to be closer in psychology to the heroic flyting and the games a less deadly substitute for war.

The area of performance is a “safe space” in Vygotsky’s sense where ritual drama of conflict and primal rivalry can be enacted with archetypal or prototypical imagery. However, the etymology is not really a commentary on the nature of the dialogue as the performance is only playing at war. Everyone knows the purpose is different and even opposite to war, that the “enemies” will make peace. In such a world a slain contestant will return or be replaced and the contest goes on repeatedly and indefinitely. Taking sides means acknowledging contrasting views, anticipating and responding to the other side. Classically there are no observers as all belong to one or the other side. Although dialogue in fact goes on, and conversation unavoidably modifies one’s position, it is viewed in agonistic terms with an acknowledged winner, the cleverer one who does not run out of appropriate retorts, and so has the final word. The performer reacts to the previous message by utilizing traditional formulas invested with meaning appropriate to the new circumstances. As the performance proceeds, the power of the ritual and music, the repetition and incremental tension, not only give back something of what appears to have been heard before many times and by extension is perceived as eternal, but also releases tensions, refreshes, and gives new strength, purpose, and meaning.

Run, children, to see: Summer (dim.) is slaying Winter;

Close the gates on Winter, open them on Summer.

Or alternatively:

Winter went weeping, Summer went singing.

The gates closed on Winter, opened on Summer.

In addition to the alternation depicted, life is a balance of competition and cooperation. Cooperation is also a fundamental strategy in competition. Symbols and rituals can reconcile differences and patch contradictions on a coarse grain. From earliest times, given considerable pressures for subsistence survival in an area where farming is marginal and intensive, the response was to develop ways to bridge over differences in the overwhelming need for alliances and mutual help as needed. Subsequent oppression by outsiders, wars, disease, and famine further increased dependency on "ones own people". The "halo effect" biases perception to ignore the undesirable in people who need to be judged favorably. Alliance against a common predatory foe is facilitated and cemented by ritual.

Levi-Strauss and other structuralists saw dualism as a fundamental organizing principle of societies, though they largely failed to work it out as an ongoing, dynamic adjusting principle. When applied to actual social structures, dualism is even more problematic as Levi-Strauss himself realizes in his “Do Dual Organizations Exist?” Dualism is inseparable from triadism if based on moiety systems that are asymmetrical and incipiently unequal as bride givers and takers. However, it is almost certainly impossible to reconstruct any past hypothetical moiety dual social organization from Baltic materials in any case, even though the concepts of center and periphery (the concentric perspective) as well as diametric parallel and triadic structures are well represented in the cognitive structures. What is being considered is the use of dualism as a fundamental conceptual organization, though not the only one, and without claim to dual social organization, though the term dual gender organization appears to be appropriate. Contrasting dualism does not have to be reduced to a popular form of Cartesian or even Zoroastrian philosophy, but is fundamental to the mind, for example going back to Gestalt research on figure and ground relationships where perception is mutually dependent and alternating. The classic face/vase or bunny/face relations show that perception of one at a single instant excludes the other, but not the possibility of other such alterations. Also, the mind tries to parse or cut out discrete categories with clear attributes from the flux that is presented in the world. There are endless examples in Latvian tradition of the complementariness of opposites, things being seen simultaneously with the opposite or non-aspect. The two sides can be understood only in terms of each other: laime (fortune) and nelaime (misfortune), light and dark. Even things that do not obviously alternate, but grade into each other, such as observable day and night or things that observationally are alternatives only in some sense, such as the sun and moon, are projected to do so to fit the model. In the proverb, “Laima soon shows her other side,” is reminiscent to the English concept of “two sides of the coin.” Irony often uses apposition such as, “honey in the mouth, ice in the heart” or “the forest with ears, the field with eyes.” This is an aspect of universal cognition, seeing in such fundamental simultaneous pairs as X and not-X.

Some pairs are more obviously responsorial, and the prototype of sound echo is used: balss (voice, call)/ atbalss (echo, response, literally “return voice”), skaņa (sound)/ atskaņa (reverberation). Proverbs illustrate the principle: “As the call, so the response” ((kāda balss, tāda atbalss). “Tit for tat (dots pret dotu).

Latvian textile art often uses the principle of alternating positive and negative imagery, as on a particular Kurzeme woman’s regional sash. (Karlsone: 83)

The deepest conceptual structures, not surprisingly, are universal since they are based on the fundamental early rhythmic discoveries of human children about the physical universe: (up/down, right/left, sunwise/countersunwise [ap sauli/ pret sauli], away/toward, dark/light, black/white, stressed/ unstresseded). Traditional opposition has a cognitive base. Latvian is no exception in contrasting between I and not-I, savs, paša (ones own, the familiar) and svešs (other, strange, foreign): “Other people, other land, strange sound speech; I carried my land’s poppy flower folded in my hand.” (Sveši ļaudis, sveša zeme, sveša skaņa valodiņa; Savas zemes magonīti saujā nesu salocītu.) One reacts to the strange with stronger emotion than to the familiar, which is likely taken for granted, in readiness to confront or deal with danger. But if the strange is not so great as to cause fight or flight, then it often provokes laughter. Any parent has observed their child’s nervous giggle when unsure, and mirthful giggling when the child recognizes something as “inappropriate” or “out of place.” Among older children jostling and semi-aggressive kidding can also be used to bolster ones confidence or to convince oneself that the danger can be overcome, as a defensive and finally an aggressive weapon.

“Us and them” is most often expressed in the terms of halves: mūsu pusē (our side) and viņpuse (the other side), which follows the fundamental cosmological division of Šī saule (This sun) and Viņsaule (Othersun). The sun, then, is the central reference point as the sun shines in this world during the day, but is in the Otherworld at night. (Zicāns: 850) Otherworld is also Eastland (Vāczeme), Otherland, Jūrmala (Seashore), Underworld, the sacred forest, and with Christian influence differentiated as Heaven or Paradise Garden and Hell. (Zicāns: 850). Originally Otherworld was not dually differentiated as Heaven and Hell, though it had different possible locations. (Zicāns: 851) Cognitively these are asymmetrical parallels in the sense of the experientially concrete Us projected or abstracted to a supernatural Other that inversely is seen as the source of the first. Life, fertility, and well being emanate from the Other Sun realm which encompasses everything that is extraordinary to this sun, such as the dead, the supernatural, and the divine.

As two-part structure in the daina distich suggests, dualism seems to construct analogically in the daina world, taking a prototypical basic experience or observation as the concrete source and projecting it on a less known or even unknown and therefore more abstract target domain. It is at this level, rather than the tripartite one, that structural focus seems to be clearest. One could also say that the Latvian worldview is something of a fractal one. By observing some small detail, an insect or a blade of grass, an inference is made about the larger cosmos. Finally, although in one sense dualism is a contrast of equivalent opposites, there is dialogic as there is focus on one.

In addition to dual organization of the cosmos, there is also a tripartite one. “The life cycle repeats the tripartite nature of the cosmic tree. Krišjānis Barons saw a great division of the daina world into three. That can also be seen in Latvian spēles and rotaļas…the rotaļa is a way to the oak of ancestors.” (Muktupāvels, 1989:8) Arturs Goba (1990) argues for spatially organized relationships between neighboring Baltic peoples. Even more broadly, Norbertas Velius argues for divisions of Baltic peoples into two (three including intermediate or mediating) dual or polar orientations (north and east representing young and sky and male, west and south representing old and earth and female). (1989) He observes that in historic times the western territories shrank to be the smallest, while the east was the largest. If the theory is taken at face value, the orientation could have been an early expression of the simplified expansion of the pre- or pro-Balts northward and eastward from their original homeland. The first group to reach the Baltic was the pre-Old Prussians. Those in the land pioneering forefront moving north and east could have been typed as having more expansionist, individualist, aggressive, “male” personalities, that of the third son who has to go a-Viking because he doesn’t stay home to inherit the land. Those who stayed behind in the south, or had lived in the same place the longest in the west, could have been characterized as the more cautionary, stable, conservative, and equilibrium-sustaining “female” societies.

Emily Lyle (Archaic Cosmos, 1990) suggests a relationship between the two systems with two categories combining to form a third and a duality underlying tripartition. The two primary entities of time/space in the daina world seem to be the mythological Other - Viņsaule (or the possibly more metaleveled Aizsaule) and the world of the immediate concrete experience of today centered around ones homestead, Šī Saule (This Sun) or Pasaule (World, lit. Undersun). Today past and present may be verbalized as senču/ dainu pasaule (world of ancestors) in contrast to šie laiki (these times). Seasons (summer/ winter vs summer/ winter/ spring) are related to the seasonal holidays and to human life-time (birth: death or birth, marriage, death). Eternal life (saules mūžs – suntime also shared by water and stone) is contrasted to temporal human life span and to wood. These, of course, have broad cross-cultural correspondences in that they are universal experiences elaborated specifically and culturally. In some sense the daina world is seen as timeless and immortal in that it is a world in which all, including past generations, participate and from which the present draws inspiration as a wellspring of accumulated wisdom, which some have compared to the Australian aborigine's dreamingtime (cf Muktupāvels).

The image that best symbolizes the cosmos in tripartite is the world tree with the world hill as an alternative. Other concepts have a dual and tripartite aspect also.

The most obvious is the dienanakts (daynight) concept as one unit but divided in two and having in-between periods of dawn (austra) primarily and dusk, evening (vakars, krēsla) secondarily. Another consideration is the alternation of the two primary archaic seasons, summer and winter, with their alternation of hot and cold, light and dark, life and (temporary) death/ dormancy. In the tradition common to other Indo-European peoples, the rebirth period of spring is specially marked off as a third period, perhaps not so much a transition as a pregnant period in which night gives birth to its alternate opposite, day. The dawn goddess, Austra, or Sun daughter is also given a special place as the goddess of spring and rebirth. But autumn apparently was marked off as a season only recently, and dusk or evening is not given the same attention as dawn. The festivals of that period are seen as either the end of summer or the beginning of winter, thereby retaining the idea of a third, after the initial dual, as the in-between in contrast to creating a fully third discreet category (spring). Spring in the daina world perhaps is not so much a transition as a pregnant period in which night/winter gives birth to its alternate opposite, day/summer.

The dynamics of the in-between and how a well-defined concept can fuse or fit with another, however, is problematic, to say nothing of concepts of intersection or blending. Nondual forms of organization are additionally known, of course, such as continuums, Escheresque forms morphing one into the other, gradients, and Russian stacking or nesting matrushka dolls suggesting infinite regress. But their lesser representation, or the fusing of gradients with metaphors of the fluid (waters) identical with metaphors for the creating and destroying Ur-world, may suggest a less obvious universal working perception. Alternation of shared concepts has already built in it the sense of fluid or dynamic even as these concepts may also be essentialized or reified.

Worcester in his study of satire and irony notes that absolutes are destroyed by irony: “Irony is the flash given off when two contradictory absolutes collide.” (Worcester: 165) It “acts as a counterpoise to either tragedy or comedy” (141) and is the “meeting-place of jest and earnest.” (143) Humor in its flash pan moment of recognition and ritual, thus, both inhabit the in-between or margin, the third space, where dualities are ever renegotiated and not allowed to essentialize completely.

Places of engagement at in-between spaces, crossroads, gates, thresholds, sunset or sunrise, midnight or midday, or borders where opposite sides becomes aware of the other’s presence are of course exciting as well as dangerous. Boundaries are also the most interesting space in fractal and chaos theory. In a Mandelbrot diagram the edges appear complete in their contrasting characteristic variation, but never fade or obliterate.

Kokāre (1992: 43) calls attention to Laima appearing with her opposite and differentiation Nelaime only where either they are in an in-between area, such as a bridge or road, or they appear in contrasting positions with Laima on a hill and Nelaime in a valley or in the water: “Laime is walking with Nelaime on a plank-way. Turn around, Laime, throw Nelaime into the water.” (LD 9212) One can conceive of a third moment during the sparring of Laime and Nelaime on the bridge when who will win remains a suspended possibility. The third or undecided state, however, has no anthropomorphization. One or the other predominates, or else undifferentiated laime of both fortune and misfortune accompanies the person.

The opposing and contesting sides of Latvian song contests fall into the dual opposition of male/ female (Midsummer), kin/in-law (wedding), and our side (mūsu gals)/ yonder side (viņu gals). At work parties, talkas of neighbor groups, the division can be either by gender or by local group, depending on the situation. The term pulks (or even karogs – also a term for “flag”) is used to identify a unit with a common purpose and identity with a range from singing groups to military units. The underlying principle is a contrast between the familiar and the strange, us and them, our people (mūsu ļaudis) and strangers (sveši ļaudis). At the instance of the meeting of the two “sides” a temporary, liminal, third time-space is created, though it may not be identified as such.

Two different lines of thought emerge from the gender and the clan divisions respectively. Gender division seems to be fundamental and exclusive in the daina world, and lacking in intergender categories, though a study in regard to magic users from this perspective might result in a third or at least ambiguous category. But in the case of kin it is more complicated [bāliņi, māsiņas (blood relatives) vs tautas (potential affines)] because potential affines form a third category to the opposites of kin and stranger. Thus there are really three groups associated with the dual opposition: ingroup (īstā, paša), strangers (sveši ļaudis), and potential affine group (tautas). In the courtship and early marriage period the couple call each other in terms of the friendly other (tautu dēls=suitor, new husband, tautu meita=courted girl, new wife). The bride, while forever a representative of her natal group, not only also becomes a member of her in-law group, but paradoxically, if and when she becomes the mistress of that household, is the stranger who may gradually become its central member, the mother of that household. Along those lines I find it significant that in some regions and times Lithuanian and Latvian brides took coals from their natal hearth with them to their new home. Also most interesting is the widespread custom of the bride trying to surreptitiously be the first to step on the groom’s foot so that she (or perhaps her clan) has the upper hand. To the casual modern observer of the custom it is an amusing, playful, game, a source of amusement as everyone is watching if the bride or groom will predominate. But in a larger context of other dainas, it may have deeper structural significance as an expression of friendly clan rivalry. Song wars, then, were an archaic solution to the problem of the in-between of the traditional opposition. Since of three contexts of apdziedāšanās two concern weddings (human and cosmic – Midsummer festival), the question of gender appears, though I believe in a secondary capacity. The question of gender is not what is being negotiated, that being a given, but rather clan membership. That is clearly the case in the third context that of talka or work party apdziedāšanās, which is most clearly mixed working party-to-working party, neighbor group to neighbor group, village to village.

Rosemary Joyce in an article on the construction of gender in classic Maya monuments (pp. 167-195) notes that complimentary or interdependent gender is common in cosmologies, and that duality in particular is critical in ritual (p. 180):

The Classic Maya…represent sequences of ritual action consistent with an emphasis on cosmological gender complementarity in spatial and symbolic elements of the compositions. As media for the construction of gender, these images are ideological propositions. They provide a beginning point for a consideration of practice, particularly as it relates to gender relations in ritual, and extending by implication to questions of diversity of practice by individuals in different social positions. (p. 185)

This appears to be true in the Latvian case, even if the patriarchal social world might be more asymmetrical than the cognitive. The classical daina world is, in fact, matricentric in that texts dominantly express women’s worldviews, and the songs are dominantly performed and composed by women. In Balkan countries women also dominate religion, ritual, and singing with strong female display, but Balkan societies are classified as strongly patriarchal. (Shehan: 46-7) The daina world is more egalitarian. It is a social world that has not allowed extreme asymmetrical specialization, and the contribution of women in productive labor is valued as complementary. Women inherit movable property, including livestock, and there is an alternative arrangement, where a daughter may inherit land and her husband is a stand-in (iegātnis). The master and mistress have parallel ceremonial and work responsibilities, and their names take on the name of the farm and differ only in gender ending (say, Ežmalis, Ežmaliene). In the daina world patronymics are not used; rather a daughter is a “mother’s daughter in parallel to a son being a “father’s son.” Recent Russian influence may have introduced the patronymic where it is used. In many dainas the suitor must contend with the mother of a girl, not the father, to obtain marriage agreement. Most Baltic scholars of the past have considered the difference in gender asymmetry between Baltic and Slavic to be marked, with Baltic tending toward greater egalitarianism. (cf Gimbutas and Spekke). Additionally there have been gross generalizations linked to population density and time differences in the development of urban cultures between north and south Europe. This underscores that even similar cultural expressions inherited from a common Indo-European past, may take on significantly different values in different cultural geographies.

Koskoff offers four categories of musical performance that typify inter-gender relations: “(1) performance that confirms and maintains the established social/ sexual arrangement; (2) performance that appears to maintain established norms in order to protect other, more relevant values; (3) performance that protests, yet maintains, the order (often through symbolic behavior); and (4) performance that challenges and threatens established order.” (p. 10) I believe there is enough resonance within the daina world of a high degree of parallel egalitarianism that apdziedāšanās, while open to all four possibilities, in the enduring default sense typified Koskoff’s first category. The gender balance is widely felt to be sufficiently such, that gender sabotage is not generally felt a pressing need. Rozenbergs has shown that Latvian satirical and insult singing was more likely in recent history used as class rather than gender protest. Perhaps one area where contesting is not necessary in contrast to possibly Western feminism is the area of strength and competence, as the feminine in the daina world includes such attributes as a given fact.

One area where differences in national or ethnic temperament can be easily and objectively observed is in the area of dance. Latvian dance is essentially egalitarian with males and females going through the same basic routines and a relatively low level of sexual dimorphism. There are no older motif recordings of females being lifted or supported. The expectation is that female bearing is a gentler version of the more powerful male one in the stamping of feet or clapping of hands. But there is little similar to Wasbaugh’s essays on such Spanish culture dances as the tango where gender is essentially a code of male power and women are defined only in terms of their bonding ability:

Sexuality for men is a negotiation of power and prestige among men. Men dance for other men, often through sexual imagery. (Washabaugh: 48 in Washabaugh commenting on the Tobin article)

Such male display dances have not been recorded in Latvia. Additionally, others, such as George Meredith, have pointed out a positive correlation between relative social freedom and the participation of women in comedy. (Meredith: 357)

Gregory Schrempp researched how several cultures confront and solve the universal philosophical problem of “the one and the two” and “one and the many.” Many cosmologies start out with a unified entity, which splits and fragments. Thereafter, human ritual is needed for separated parts to come together. This is consistent with Propp, and accepted by such Latvian researchers as Kursīte. Likewise, concepts are created as discrete entities out of experiential flux and then have to be related to each other. Finally within society separated groups have to come up with stratagems to cooperate. Understanding the concept saderēt (to fit, align, join, come together, be in harmony, make contract) is critical here. Is the mental image that of discrete units being fit together rather than blends? Does unity come about by fitting together pieces that can be imagined as solid and cut apart in some beginning, like an apple, a primeval hermaphrodite, or a Yumis/Yumala double sheaf? What does a linguistic analysis of saderēt yield? A formulaic saderam (“make peace,” “adjust,” “fit together”) concludes the apdziedāšanās ritual, even if there isn’t an equivalent formal beginning song. The offer has to be accepted or rejected; if really rejected, with the formulaic nederam, jūs ienaida cēlājiņi (we don’t make peace – you started the feud) instead of it being just another formulaic protest, the contest would have to go on, but all know the contest must terminate with some measure of peace:

For the sake of a song, good (stranger) people, let us not hold enmity!I sing the song as it is, It was not created by me; The old people created it, It was sung anew by me. (957)

The sense is that of discrete units in unavoidable tension, confrontation, or conflict trying to adjust their borders without loosing their identity so they will grate less harshly against each other, kin vs. in-law, male vs. female. There is no concept of fusing, synthesizing, or essentially resolving the irresolvable insofar as they are locked in the basic “eternal” categories of us and not-us, but there is adjustment, co-evolution, co-adaptation, and some will say co-dependency in continuous dialogic in that the sides may be alternatingly asymmetrical, the side winning this time not necessarily winning the next time. (see Durham, 1991 for co-evolution of culture and universals) However, things are not exactly as they were before. No matter how small, some change has taken place, that of adjustment:

Together sing one song, we who are in the room.

If the song fits together (saderēt),we'll live in harmony.

With God we came together, with God we part,

With God may it remain this song-filled room.

Let us try out singing with brother’s (cousin's) bride:

If the song fits together, living we will fit.

The fit is good enough with brother's (cousin's) bride:

In the winter grinding flour working in the summer field. (306)

One dialogic function of song wars seems to be the venting of social tensions in a socially controlled and acceptable way. Its sanctioned goal, however, is eventual reconciliation. Differences, incongruity, ambiguity, and loss of control are all too painfully evident. Linkages are alliances and attempts to make sense of disparity. Thus, singing together is either a test of compatibility or a ritual to unite what is known to be different:

Dual organization

Taking a sociological approach in his classic work on Festivals and Songs of Ancient China, Marcel Granet argues that Chinese contest songs are expressive of the organization of their societies. The Chinese, living in small, homogenuous, bounded family groups are isolated from their neighbors with whom they may make marriage alliances:

The reason why the seasonal festivals of the mountains and rivers are entirely devoted to contests and competitions seems to lie in the fact that they are festivals of Harmony…Strengthened daily, and without effort, as it were, the ties of kinship, seemed to exist in fact and of themselves. Between relatives there were no ties, which remained to be invented. On the other hand, between those who were fundamentally strangers, none could possibly be invented. But completely exclusive though these family groups might be, they did not remain always entirely isolated. Adjacent groups used to meet at intervals in the festivals.” P. 192

According to Granet the spring mountain and river festival in its most archaic form was a group betrothal and sexual initiation festival where the young women of one group sang against the young men of another group, the contest resulting in pairing of couples:

At their first contact it was inevitable that they should come into collision and confront one another. Unlike the family feelings, which were nourished by a constant flow of tranquil and habitual emotions, the exceptional feeling of general harmony came into being suddenly as the result of a violent process. The customary opposition, the solemn drawing together, the rivalry, the unity of neighbouring villages, expressed themselves in competitions and contest, in polite and peaceful emulation…” (P. 193)

The similarities of the Chinese festivals to the Latvian Midsummer are almost strange. In the Latvian case the myth, recounted in the dainas, is that of betrothal of the sun maiden to a sky god. During the festival young people do make betrothal engagements in a night of general license, which is tolerated in a way unlike any other time, except that it is suggestive of a wedding celebration on the cosmic level. However in comparing the Chinese and the Latvian, there is also much that is more, less, or different. Midsummer is not just a betrothal festival transposed to summer – betrothals also take place elsewhere and at other times. The commentators on Latvian Midsummer, supported by dainas, stress its solstice significance while Granet downplays celestial mythology as a factor. However, the salient points Granet makes are common in archaic social structures as to gender and group identity: two peoples, two sides and a ritual or pseudo-singing contest as the overall model, but an emphasis of male vs female at Midsummers, unlike other times, such as weddings, where the groups may be mixed, women vs women, or semi-professional women vs mixed. Common Midsummer greeting formula emphasizes the gathering of the dispersed:

Lai sanāca Jāņu bērni no maliņu maliņām.

May the children of Yanis come from one end to the other.

The festival is the meeting place between two spatial ends (gali). Human activity occurs in concert with alternation of seasons, and Midsummer seems to combine elements of the spring (betrothal, awakening) and summer (height of vitality, wedding – though practically human weddings took place in the fall when food was most abundant).

Chinese singing contests appear in broad social situations, including festivals, weddings, inter-village situations, and intra-village situations, which suggests an underlying model. As in the Latvian case, there are contests between men’s and women’s groups, as well as between villages and other occasions. The movie Liu San Jie is about such singing contests. (Lihui Yang, personal communication) Sue Tuohy has written a number of papers on Hua'er, a genre of northwest Chinese folk song. In lunar June there is a Hua'er Festival in Gansu Province with singers contesting with each other. In both the Chinese and Latvian case there appears to be a similar singing contest model with a broad social base.

Granet also calls attention to the use of parallel structure in the Chinese contest songs. Daina poetic structure has also been well researched and much commented on as having dual structure on several levels, though the studies on principles of musical symmetry and lyric structure have not been integrated into a unified theory. Structurally the daina is a four-line strophe divided into distich, further divided by a caesura. It is a self-contained unit created with strict rules of composition, but can be strung/ chained/ fit together with other strophes if sung nonresponsorially, or as call and response with each side alternating distich units. The dainas about singing state that the distich is a half in need of the other in that the distichs have some independence of each other, even as their reason for being associated is a metaphorical restatement of the concrete to the projected. The short daina structure is well-suited to antiphonal singing, a call requiring a response. George Kurman’s article, “Parallelism and Deep Structure Meaning in Estonian Folksong” (Fall, 1989) shows how a common archaic, perhaps universal structure, is capable of generating continuous creative variation through the principles of substitution and analogy. There are examples of Kurman’s structure in the dainas, but differing from the Finnish, a special metaphorical parallelism direction rather than a more direct substitution is the default mechanism of creation.

No sociological analysis of Baltic archaic society has been attempted to my knowledge and the information to do so is scattered requiring the co-operation of a team of experts from different fields. However, values in the daina world are clearly based on reciprocity and co-operation, which falls into the type of thinking and structure described in Mauss’s classic work:

A system in which exchange of goods was not a mechanical but a moral transaction, brining about and maintaining human, personal, relationships between individuals and groups.” (Mauss, ix)

The information, even using etymology and archaeology, may not exist to excavate to a description of what might have been the social structures of simple cultivators, when such a state existed in Europe. Certainly it is difficult to compare with a state where there were alliances of pairs of phratries in a “system of total prestations” as found in Australian, First American, or Oceanic tribal systems. But that does not seem necessary to see some broadly analogous patterns, which to a modern mind may appear strange, such as a “spirit of rivalry and antagonism which dominates all their activities” (Mauss, 4) when it comes to the need for co-operation among neighbors. Antagonism and cooperation, tension and release, safe or normative joking at different levels of aggression along social tension-lines makes sense in any pre-market thought where kin-orientation is primary, regardless of specific social structure, when all contact with the outside presupposes a contractual relationship that lasts beyond the simple momentary exchange.

How strong this sense that a bond created by things is a bond between persons is still present among some educated Latvians was dramatically illustrated during a private e-mail exchange when my mild joke that I would “repay” someone by sending some music information for insights I had gained from our conversation was actually met with anger, in fact a flame that amounted to invective. To be sure, this email was soon followed by an apology, but it led to another exchange about the “modern” concept of karma and “settling scores.” One area that might be promising to specifically explore as to the sense of reciprocal obligation might be the system of fosterage in European societies, though again, I am unaware if there has been any attempt to do so for the Baltic. Another promising area would be to examine the motif or type in folklore where refusing to give, or failing to invite, is –“like refusing to accept-the equivalence of a declaration of war; it is a refusal of friendship and intercourse.” (Mauss, 11) The popular European example of the snubbed fairy godmother, magic user, spirit, or deity at a wedding or christening comes to mind. In some regional traditional Latvian weddings, everyone could come, even if not specifically invited.

Another area of promising inquiry as reciprocity in the Baltic would be a study of gift exchange. Gift exchange starts with betrothal pledges, an exchange of rings by the betrothed and initial gifts as representatives of the two families make contact with each other. Betrothal pledges appear to be sufficiently binding that before the era of enforced Christian church weddings, they may have had something of the force of an exchange of wows at the church. Preparations for, display of, and distribution of the pūrs or bride’s dowry is one of the key elements of a wedding. The high point of gift exchange is the conspicuous pūra dalīšana, distribution of gifts by the bride, and the wedding feast itself. It is tempting to frame the Latvian wedding in terms of something distantly related to the potlach/ gift exchange obligations as described in the classic work by Marcel Mauss, as it certainly represents conspicuous public redistribution of wealth and has much impact on the economic prestige of both the bride and her family.

D. Were Werewolves and Witches Contesting Magic User Societies?

An arrested werewolf admitted he had seen a witch flying in the shape of a butterfly pursued by werewolves who may have the power to control them, but she hid behind a horse in the pasture, and he split the horse in half with the sickle he had grabbed instead by mistake.

K. Peuker, 1550 (publ. 1560) on battles of werewolves and witches (Straubergs, 1939: 44)

In 1075 Adam of Bremen writing about the people of what is now Latvia, states that the Kurs people were worshippers of idols, their houses full of necromancers and magicians, and their reputation for knowledge in magic throughout the ancient world such that people came even from Spain and Greece. Before him the people known as the Neuri, believed to be Eastern Balts, were said by Herodotus to turn to wolves for several days a year. While it is typical that travelers single out distant, exotic, other places as locations of magic, there is also some probable truth to the statement. Ieva Pīgozne, after living in Ireland and Norway, notes that Christianity for real came to the Baltic 500 years later than to other areas of Europe, and that indeed there are pre-Christian practices, such as Midsummer celebrations that have retained their archaic character to an astonishing degree even today. (personal communication)

The reputed enmity of werewolves and witches, or the relationship of sorcerers to them, has not been particularly examined even though they could be examined in terms of possible magic user societies, where the membership of werewolves seems to tilt to male membership, but not exclusively, while witches seem dominantly but not exclusively female (see Latkovskis on ragaiņi). The basic reference on historical sources of incantations, my primary source unless otherwise noted, is the original archive publication of Kārlis Straubergs Latviešu buramie vārdi (Latvian Incantations) I ,II and on beliefs Latviešu tautas ticējumi (Latvian Folk Belief), I – IV. While generally the tone in dainas is negative toward magic users, a not surprising situation considering the historical witch trials, there are enough dainas that suggest that magic users were also and earlier viewed as ambiguous. In a few dainas the deities Laima (LD 27842) and Sun daughter are called witches.

The 16^th century sources on werewolves and witches (pp. 41-63) are most illuminating, but the most detailed case is that of the trial of 87-year-old Tīss in 1691-2. He describes how werewolves travel to Hell, which is at Purva ezers (Swamp Lake) by Mālpils, looking like ordinary wolves. There are storage barns for grain there and guards at the door. He had gotten his wolf skin from someone in Alūksne who in turn had gotten it in Rīga. Tīss tries to mitigate his case by claiming he didn’t tear up horses and cattle, but only sheep, goats, and pigs because Velns only gives some werewolves enough strength to tear up the bigger animals. A werewolf from Sigulda had torn up the cattle they had cooked in pots taken along from home. Werewolves aren’t allowed to partake of the food in Hell, but must wait outside while the magicians finish eating there. But just before Christmas the werewolves had succeeded in running into Hell and re-stealing the grain stolen by the magicians, which means there would be good crops the coming season. There is an alternation of magicians taking the crops to Hell and the werewolves trying to steal it back. This affects not only field crops, but also fruit tree production. The visit to Hell takes place three times a year: spring festival, Midsummer, and before Christmas. Tīss’s says that women also go a-werewolfing, but girls are sent instead as pūķi to steal milk and butter while flying through the air as fiery snake dragonettes. The devils beat the werewolves as if they were dogs, and they indeed are God’s dogs. Tīss concludes his defense by saying that this year his group had beaten out the Russian werewolves who had made a raid to take away the fertility of the land, so a good year for flax and crops would be ensured. He would like to pass on his craft by blowing into a beer mug with the words “Lai tev notiek kā man” (May it happen to you as to me) and if the person accepts it, he would become a werewolf. Not only does he not serve the devil, but fights against him. In spite of his inspired defense, Tīss was executed. Other less detailed accounts confirm the state of feud between werewolves and either magicians or witches, as in a 1683 trial where Hell is identified as being at the local swamp, Zeķu purvs. (Straubergs II: 524-6) The early 1550 account by Peuker notes that the feud is between witches and werewolves, and in a 1683 trial a werewolf named Igunds also notes that witches steal crop fertility, but werewolves steal it back and return it to the owners. A ritual feud between male and female magic users in the death and rebirth enactment of crop and calendar cycle is a possible conjecture that could be explored with a thorough study. Straubergs associates the rye wolf with the werewolf and notes that witches sometimes took away crop fertility in the form of insects, such as flies, while fertility came back to the home in the form of small house spirits rudzu luņģi. (Straubergs II: 526). There are both fantastic beliefs about magic users, and sociological grounding. Thus, almost certainly some werewolves were probably associated with outlaws, and witches were associated with healing and birthing. However, negative aspects of knowledge in herbal medicine could also link these wise women with knowledge of poisoning, abortion, and contraception. In the ability to use knowledge either to help or to harm a magic user in addition to partaking of marginal status by virtue of special knowledge also becomes an ambiguous being, dangerous and yet necessary.

Some pertinent historical highlights to suggest relevant areas that could be researched:

Seb. Munster in his Kosmografija (1550), among other sources on werewolves, states that Livland has many witches and sorcerers. Having been submitted to inquisition, they admit being able to turn into wolves and back again. Olav Magnusson, 1555 considers werewolf activity to be characteristic of Prussia, Livonia, and Lithuania and writes the most detailed descriptions of their activity. Werewolves, breaking into a manor, and emptying out the beer barrels stored in the basement raises the possibility of a men’s group, especially since it appears to be operating in a hinterland where paganism and/or rebellious counterculture seem plausible. According to Magnusson on the border of Žemaitija, Kurland, and Lithuania there is a grand meeting place for thousands of werewolves, including those from high families, who gather and compete in jumping contests over the wall of an abandoned castle. The person who fails to clear the wall is whipped, whipping being punishment but also an empowering magic act. Magnusson argues for the reality of werewolves. A person becomes a werewolf after accepting a beaker of beer together with certain words, and thereafter can turn into a wolf at will. He includes a “witness account” of a farmer who turned into a wolf to bring back a sheep for a group who were forced to spend a winter night in the woods. Vilken-Lerchmeier tells about a werewolf who flew out of the prison window to visit his village before returning. Peuker mentions a Christmas gathering of werewolves that is called together by a lame boy who beats stragglers with an iron whip. The werewolf band goes on a twelve-day raid (sirojums) where they tear up livestock. J.J. Godelmann, after interviews with Livonians in 1587, notes that werewolves were thought to cause much damage and pose danger, but proposes the theory that the werewolves only believed they were traveling. Johann Fishart says that herbal creams were used to turn someone into a werewolf, and adds that werewolves had sex with female wolves. Georg Sabin in his commentary on Herodotus mentions that the Prussians of his time were examples of active werewolf activity. He tells about one werewolf who admitted to turning into a wolf usually at Christmas and at Midsummer. The guards decided to do an experiment, observing to see if he would turn into a wolf, but under those conditions, the man did not do so. This is similar to others of his experiments, this time on a condemned witch. He concludes that since she sank in cold water as had happened in other cases, there might be something amiss to the theory.

There is sufficient specialized literature on the relationship of Indo-European concept of wolf, the outlaw, and the werewolf (Ridley 1976, Beldavs, 1984) that suggests there were groups outside of normal society, taking refuge or living in the forest. The wild is, of course, associated on different deep levels with the Otherworld supernatural as well as any humans outside normal society, such as magic users or outlaws. Both werewolves and witches could be of either sex, and many of the descriptions and activities are identical, such as the motif of discarding clothes, hide, or skin and being unable to return to original form if these are taken. But as a witch is overwhelmingly more likely to be female, werewolves are more often identified as male, possibly suggesting a stronger association of werewolf with the outlaw aspect in contrast to associations of witches as magic users rather than outlaws:

...(the) wolf-man enters into collective unconscious as a “monstrous hybrid of human and animal, divided between the forest and the city-the werewolf-is, therefore, in its origin the figure of the man who has been banned from the city…the werewolf, who is precisely neither man nor beast, and who dwells paradoxically within both while belonging to neither.” (Agambden, 105)

There is more evidence on Latvian witches than werewolves, thus strongly associating magic use with females. In 1578 Gauaninni writes that almost all Latvian women are witches or sorcerers and prone to magic activity. The list goes on with Joh. D. Vunderer in 1589 that Latvians have a tendency to magic (mehestheils zum Zeubeen abgerichtet) turning into wolves or cats, or driving through the night with billy goats, holding meetings in the forest, and, causing hail, and dancing and having sex with devils. Solomon Henning, 1589, speaks of great idolatry among the undeutsche (Latvian peasants) who worship the sun, stars, moon, fire, water, streams and almost all of creation, considered snakes and toads as their gods...” The distinction between raganas (witches), laumas (fairies), and spīganas (fiery beings) is not consistently made; Straubergs considers the last to be equivalent to the vilces who are also flying witches who may appear as fiery streaks in the sky. (Straubergs II: 562) All of them seem predominantly female.

The 16^th century documents on witches in many ways seems to parallel that about werewolves. A person seals a contract to become a witch or werewolf by drinking beer with the person who introduces her to it, with words, such as kas man, tas tev (what is to me, is to you). Usually they are the same sex, but not always and there are instances of women initiating males into the craft. Alternatively, the magic user may crawl through a saka – something with crossed lines like gnarled roots or a yoke, or through a shirt turned inside out. In one case change to a werewolf is accomplished by rolling over knives, and a female band of werewolves made the change by rolling over sticks. (Straubergs II: 518) Stepping over a special log is also mentioned. (Ibid: 519) The devil may or may not be involved; if he is, often he is invoked through whistling.

Witches often fly through the air as wind disturbances (viesulis); the devil also may appear as a viesulis. If a knife is thrown into the air disturbance, it may kill the witch or devil and blood will appear. In the spring magic users and devils are about hunting for booty as viesuļi. (Straubergs II: 541) Witches are thought to have control over the weather, but oddly enough a devil also may appear with lightning, even though in most stories the devil-god is opposed to the thunder-god. The witch however is more usually airborn, flies through the air in body or in spirit, in her human form or as an insect or fiery snake pūķis. The primary activity seems to be to steal milk or grain from others, or attacking and killing animals, particularly cattle. Witches usually specialize more in the first, and werewolves in the second, but that is not mutually exclusive. In the great witch trial of 1584 in Rīga, one woman said she had been able to kill only a calf, so the witches had to eat frogs at the feast. (Ibid, 60) Sometimes instead of bringing the animals to the gathering to eat, the magic users take them to the Netherworld (elle), and when witches steal grain they may also take it to the devil in Hell. One may conjecture a sacrifice of grain, milk, or animals to the earth deities is involved, with the returned offering being returned with interest later in the year.

The witch Miezītene (1584 trial) says the senior witches have the ability to influence time, and that the male in their group Piģītis is their drummer and piper at witch gatherings, but knows only a few magic words, and must ask for advice from the older witches. (pg. 60-61). There are other males who collaborate. Miezītene tells the inquisitor that their “devil” has no name because it isn’t christened and their “devil” wasn’t strong enough to retaliate the stealing of one cow by another witch, so they had to seek the help of other velni. Miezītene apparently initiates a male Kļaviņš in that they drink together and fly to the same hilltop feast where there is dancing and another drummer. She had given the craft through the drinking ritual also to Long Ann and Katrīna. This witch trial results in the often quoted first incantation words, “Dzelzeniek, trumulniek, atslēdz dzezu vārtus, nosikliedzi vandziņi, Dzelzu vārti dārdēdami,” (Iron man, drummer, unlock the iron gates; hawk screaming, iron gates sounding.) which is similar to what was collected in the 19^th century. These words are said over salt (appūst sāli), which ensures protection against weapons. Christmas as the time of meeting of sorcerers and witches is also mentioned. Spirits that are involved are called by such names as “No Thought” (Nedoms) or Oterdoms (sic, Second Thought?). One spirit is said to live in a lake.

Without the benefit of a thorough investigation, it appears that there may be two groups of magic-users, which could be divided into werewolves and witches. Sorcerers are also mentioned, apparently more often associated with witches in the 16^th century sources, but identified with werewolves in others. When a witch or werewolf group is of mixed gender, the relationship seems completely egalitarian with no distinction of gender or in the case of witches, an emphasis on female. There are several instances where an accused werewolf tries to mitigate his case by claiming that he has succeeded in fighting against witches. One can only speculate if they might not be two different organizations of magic users with the werewolves also associated with a secret or outlaw men’s society, since they seem to be implicated in harassing the Baltic gentry. Witches seem to be a primarily women’s organization and perhaps the older institution, considering that more fear is expressed as to their activities during Midsummer and other potentially dangerous occasions.

One interesting testimony is from Zirgu Miķelis (Horse Michael) who is said to be a sorcerer who flew to Christmas meetings with other sorcerers and is accused of working spells on the servant’s wife of the prosecutor. In defense he recounts that he met a woman Melniene who twice had flown toward him across the Daugava, but once he succeeded in binding her with the words “Nine fence sections, nine pairs of switches, the whore will be bound one by one.” But he released her with the words, “throw the hands open, clap them together, the whore will be released.” (LTT, 62) Others in the same accused group claim to the prosecutor to have saved the woman Zirgu Miķelis had “taken captive,” as evinced by her fainting. They had managed to release her from his spell with the words “Nine thunders and nine arrows tear the devil in nine pieces from that person” (Ibid, 62)

At the very least in the 16^th century there seem to be rival groups who believe in magic and try to use it one against the other. The rivalries probably mirror squabbles, and jealousies of neighbors who sometimes became angry enough to denounce each other to the authorities. Specifically there is an accusation in 1587 about two groups of farmers involved in cursing each other. In those days cursing was more serious than bad manners and crude language. One of the groups is reported to say, “You will yet be burned, as your mother was burned.” The retort from the other group was, “You and your lord (kungs) yourself will be burned.” (Ibid, 62). In the 16^th century witch hunting had already reached Livonia and an accusation of being a witch, sorcerer, or werewolf could have civil consequences. The first witches to be burned in Latvia were a mother and daughter in 1559 in Grobiņa. They attracted suspicion because their livestock was unusually healthy, not attacked by wolves, and the women were reported as ugly. (Ibid, 58) The first curse recorded is from a woman Katrīna in 1574. “May it become as naked as your finger and as dry as a staff,” which caused the man on whom she was casting a spell to become very ill. (Ibid, 58)

Werewolves understand the language of wolves and of dogs. (Straubergs II: 518). An initiated person may become a werewolf if cold water is thrown on them. The forest father (meža tēvs) is sometimes a werewolf band leader instead of the devil, but there are also human leaders. The primary function of the leader is to direct werewolves where they should look for their prey. Sometimes the craft is passed on in the family from mother or father to daughter or son, sometimes crossing gender. (Straubergs II: 542-3) A 1614 trial is about a mother teaching her daughter to fly. (Ibid: 543) Witches are often characterized variously as 1) old, evil-spirited women, 2) women with defects, lame, crippled, ugly, or 3) women who had unbound hair, blood-shot eyes, and swollen eyelids (which leads to conjecture about use of drugs). Magicians in general wouldn’t laugh, sing or attend church, sat with their back to the light, had something tied to their hair, and didn’t like to have visitors. (Straubergs II: 544) Magic users are also identified with another supernatural being, vadātājs (misleader), who is also otherwise identified with “devil” or with the dead who have died by misfortune. In a 1687 trial the being identified as responsible for a person getting lost in the forest is a “white” (ghostly) woman. In 1637 it is an ordinary woman Kušķu Madaļa who curses a male family member to be mislead in the forest by a devil. (Straubergs II: 533) Another trial identifies as vadātājas, those responsible for people getting lost in the forest, “witches” (raganas) who have a gathering place in a particular valley by the Ziemerieši farm. (Ibid: 534) At another gathering place witches are said to swing in the branches of three evergreens. (Ibid) Witches even appear as lietuvēni or nightrider spirits. (Ibid: 537) Generally, in these early historical trial sources up through the 17^th century human magic users are often confused with supernatural beings. Thus in a 1697 trial it turns out that “devils” who initiated someone in magic were “neighboring farmers with two “devil dogs” who tore up livestock.” (Ibid: 545) Finally, in contrast to the Christian view that a voluntary contract has to be signed with the devil, a magic user may be powerful enough to compel someone. Thus in 1647 the devil took a manor lady to Hell because a magician had given her to him. (Straubergs: 545) This is in line with the thinking that knowing certain words or magic allows one to exercise nonconsensual power. Knowing and calling out a supernatural being’s name forces it to come forth: “I was not afraid of velns I knew velns’s name. Father velns is Indriķītis, mother velns Margrietiņa. LD 31119).” (Straubergs II: 546) Similarly, flying lakes are compelled to descend whentheir real name is called out.

Mirdza Muižniece hypothesizes that there is no evidence that any daina singer saw herself as a hostile magic user (burvis, skauģis), or her group as evil. Evil is not from one’s own group, but comes in by chance from the outside. Perhaps they don’t know how to sing dainas (dainot) properly (Muižniece, p. 25). With Christianity what was rivalry among magic users could become dangerous codifiable, heresy.

Visi ļautiņ’ I sacīja, Ka es augu raganiņa:

Ūdens neši, zāļu nasta, Tā bij mana raganiņa. (28964)

All the people are saying I am growing up to be a witch.

Water carrier, herb load - that’s the extent of my witching.

Of course, there is also the possibility of psychopathology and dysfunctionality. The topic needs to be evaluated, as there are reports of witchcraft even in the last century. Arturs Goba in publishing folklore collections by Ojārs Ozoliņš, Ceļš uz Bitarīnu, 1990 in the region of the ancient historical kingdom of Tālava makes detailed claims for the practice of numerous vernacular religious beliefs. Thus, he writes about a local witch Melnā Ella against whom in 1926 a woman who had sought her help started legal proceedings. Black Ella came from a family of witches and when practicing called herself Kraukļu Marta (Crow Marta) in that crows were her helpers and she expected to learn their language with time. (p. 279-80).

While it is beyond the scope of this paper elaborate on religious power struggles with the attendant demonizing of older religion rivals, there is considerable literature on the subject, including feminist interpretations of patriarchal myth versions. The theme of witch against hero is illustrated by the powerful demoness Louhi who opposes Finnish heroes. Russian Marina defies Dobrynia and is put down by another female, Anna, friendly to and associated with the epic hero. Latvian materials have retained enough of an older ambiguity associated with magic users to be of interest, but is not generally known. Vernacular belief different from dominant schemas and paradigms persists. As Stikāne has pointed out, Velns/ velni (Devil/ devils) appears even in modern Latvian literature to accentuate ambivalence rather than portray evil.

In the work of M. Zālīte, J. Peters, Ā. Elksne, O. Vācietis, M. Losberga, M. Čaklais and other poets the portrayal of velns includes different aspects, but significantly the positive, life-affirming force. Velns is a particular craziness, madness, a depression and moroseness overcoming joy, playfulness, naughtiness, vitality. In modern Latvian poetry the colorfulness and completeness of life is accentuated with the image of the velns. (Stikāne: 184)

Velns as a patron of cattle and herders, and of a pasture-like Otherworld where he becomes a lord of the dead, velns as a giant or stupid troll, or Velns as a Loki-like companion to an Odin-like Dievs or as a neighboring farmer to him, among many different types heavily outweighs the relatively thin Christian layer of Satan. When Hell is depicted more in the Christian view of a place of punishment, Satan appears in the form of a German manor lord and he punishes not Latvian serfs, but German lords.

Similarly snakes continue to have positive associations from historical times when house snakes were fed milk in modern poetic imagery of development, renewal, and everlasting life. (Stikāne: 185). Spring and young girlhood in the form of the Sun Maiden is linked to the Otherworld. The Sun maiden possesses the key to the grave, a form of Otherworld. An exclusively dualistic mind might expect the holder to be Earth Mother, Shade Mother, or Grave Mother. But the Sun Daughter has more variants of the motif of holding the keys to the grave than all the others combined. (Bula, 1988: 54)

1 Propp, V., “Rituasl’nyi smex v fol’klore” (Ritual Laughter in Folklore), Učenye zapiski Leningradskogo universiteta (Scholarly Notes, Leningrad University), no. 46 (Leningrad, 1939). It appears in translation: Propp, Vladimir, “Ritual Laughter in Folklore (A Propos of the Tale of the Princess Who Would Not Laugh [Nesmejana]), in Theory and History of Folklore. Translated by Ariadna Y. Martin and Richard P. Martin. Edited, with an Introduction and notes by Anatoly Liberman. Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 5. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993 (1984).

2 Propp, V., “The Russian Folk Lyric,” in Russian Folk Lyrics. Translated and edited by Roberta Reeder, with an introductory essay by V. Ja. Propp. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1993, p. 4.

Another translation version appears in the older edition: Down Along the Mother Volga. An Anthology of Folk Lyrics With an Introductory Essay by V. Ja. Propp. Translated and edited by Roberta Reeder. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975, p. 5.

3 Benjamiņš, Antons, Dieva Ēnā. Rīga: Jumava, 1977. For example he cites the following Midsummer songs, p. 157.: “We tied Yanis (dim.)/ To the green oak/ Nine measures/ Red ribbon.” “We hung Yanis (dim.)/ In the oak branches,/ May he hang there/ Until next Midsummer.” “Yanis (dim.) shouted, Yanis (dim.) screamed/ At the bottom of the deep river;/ Go quickly young ones,/ Go quickly old ones,/ Pull Yanis ashore.” “Yanis sits in the oak tree, The Yani children in the branches.” “Climb, Yanis (dim.) from the oak,/ Lead the children into the room.”

4 Rainis, Jānis, Kopoti raksti. XIV, Rīga, 1951, 659. Cited in Rozenbergs, J., “Humors un satira latviešu klasiskajās tautasdziesmās par muižu un feodālo kungu,” in Valodas un literaturas instituta Raksti, XI, 1959, fn.

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XI. CONCLUDING APDZIEDĀŠANĀS (RITUAL INSULT) WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF APDZIEDĀŠANA (CELEBRATION)

Neviens mani aizdziedāja, Neviensmani aizrunāja.

Es jau biju to ļautiņu, Dziedātāju, runātāju.

No one could outsing me; no one could outspeak me.

I was of those people: singers, speakers. (often quoted daina)

In fact, though musical sounds derive from the most precise and scientific mathematical relationships, ultimately they defy analysis, and their value varies with the hearer. (Skira, in his work on surrealism in painting: 176)

The word for talking runa, as other terms for sound “belongs to a sacred lexic” (Kursīte 1996: 223) in that it is seen as a magic act with concrete effect, and an aspect of ritual.

Adaptation at the edge of order and chaos

Periods of liminality are not only times of readjusting, but also times when adaptation to change may be more favorable. A complex system consists of many highly interconnected and interactive parts. According to nonlinear dynamic complexity theory, the system adapts and changes through a number of dynamic, mathematically probable solutions. It is a non-conscious process, which like poured sand achieves a stable critical state. It is self-organized criticality, a natural process that attains a suitable level. When interaction between interconnected agents is increased, the system moves from order to randomness or chaos. The maximum fitness of the system is achieved at the border of order and disorder. (cf summary in Ruthen: 130-140).

Because high levels of improvisation define the contest exchange situation, there is also the highest level of adaptation of the material to specifics. This includes the individual person being sung about, concerns of the group, and perhaps allusions to broader cultural and political concerns of the time.

Nevertheless, the classical collections already archived exhibit certain conventional and conservative elements with strong formulaic aspects.

An acknowledged function of apdziedāšanās is to avert social breakdown and ultimately, in a cosmological sense, the crises of total chaos. Kursīte observes that the songs expressing anger at the deity of fortune Laime, are always in the counterfactual mode keyed by “if” words (kaut, kad). She suggests these songs demonstrate a similar attitude as the apdziedāšanās ritual with its attempt to avert disaster through the ritual with its attempt to avert disaster through ritual with controlled use of aggression, negative characterizations, and accusations followed by placation, invocation, and offering to the goddess Laima:

It served as a type of lightning rod. The cursing of Non-luck (Nelaime) was surely followed by prayers to Luck (Laime) and sacrifice. With only the negative...the Latvian would have been eliminated long ago as unrelieved invective, complaining about one’s fate destroys one’s ability to work and to survive. The creative spirit transforms the negative as expressed in such songs as ‘I put sorrow under a rock, I went over it singing.’ (Kursīte, 1996: 244)

Folk psychology, cognition, and philosophy

In addition to confronting issues during a time designated as both liminal and temporary as well as a safe and delimited space, the issues raised in apdziedāšanās are simplified almost on an archetypal level. The formulaic phrases and imagery are stereotypical, simple, and clear. There is no attempt at sophisticated ambiguity; the other side is accused of gross failings and the response is counter-aggression. Subtle realignment, shading, and adjustment occur without consciousness on a deep system level as the pieces are moved around to redefine basic orientations and patterns.

The purpose, then, is to identify gross patterns for rapid, gross behavior reactions. Fine-tuning, finer grain, low-probability, or extremes of the continuum are not the concerns of the cultural information that is held in common, though, of course, that does not man that the folk are of inferior sensibility. Just the opposite, I believe they solve the same basic philosophical problems as formal philosophy. However, it appears “the Latvian folk” are less concerned with philosophical and absolute “truth” than with living pragmatic usefulness of the basic assumptions. The common sense allows people to conduct much of their lives without covering all the possibilities. In a sense it is a heuristic, but its weakness and difference from the more learned heuristic is that it is slower and resistant to change, if for no other reason, because it has a certain lowest common denominator to it. Thus, wisdom accumulates over a much longer period of time, truly comparable to the washing and smoothing of the pebble. The evaluation of the unusual is left for a few specialists, including the wise women who are entrusted with directing cultural performances, as well as those who are on the fringe as magic users. In times of need and crisis, even those bound to the mundane and usual may turn to the less usual and predictable for solutions.

Andy Clark in his work on folk psychology as “the use of belief/ desire talk to explain action (or better movement)” (Clark: 1) concludes that folk psychology:

...is designed to be insensitive to any differences in states of the head which do not issue in differences to quite coarse grained behavior. It papers over the differences between individuals, even over differences between species, and it does so because it is there in order to provide a general framework in which gross patterns in the behavior of many other well-adapted beings may be identified and exploited. The failure of folk-psychology to fix on, say, neurophysiologically well defined states of human beings is thus a virtue, not a vice. (Clark: 11)

Clark’s statement is, of course unacceptable if interpreted as ethnocentric chauvinism, with claims of Western cultures as standards or ideals. However, acknowledgement of basic cross-cultural cognitive prototypes is not in conflict with rich cultural diversity with each culture confronting the deep philosophical issues in its own way. What is stressed by Clark is Wittgensteinian flexibility in the boundaries of concepts as opposed to rigid borders of well-defined categories.

Apdziedāšanās type of confrontation is marked as special, and the openness of aggression, either with direct attempt to shame or openly erotic, is all the more effective in being a contrast to the everyday that has considerable aloofness, indirectness, and politeness to maintain distance and civility. The formulaic phrase about keeping honor and/or shame except for the celebration is found not just at weddings and Midsummers, but at other celebrations, such as Christmas, which celebrated pagan-style is boisterous merrymaking rather than quiet Christian contemplation, clearly set apart as to what is appropriate behavior:

Ar kauniņu vakar biju, Ar kauniņu rītā būšu,

Bez kauniņa vien tik biju Ziemas svētku vakarā. (LD 33473)

With shame I was yesterday, with shame I’ll be tomorrow,

Without shame only I was on Christmas eve.

But even as it is now rapidly becoming Westernized, traditional Latvian society is not yet in-your-face brash and aggressive in the Western sense, even today, though it may appear direct and brusque. That is because it is stereotypically a type of northern European society with little tolerance for what it considers fake displays of friendliness, since it is overtly open only to those who become known and trusted.

The spirit of comic engagement, however, has aspects that can be characterized by Cohn’s description of one type of Japanese comic protagonist “a comic hero who responds to vanity and duplicity by challenging them with brashness and bravado rather than with evasive subterfuge.” (Cohn: 23) While the specific insult may in fact be indirect or devious, the confrontation by the women engaged in apdziedšānās is with the bravado of pragmatic conviction. These insult exchanges are felt to be useful in the scheme of things.

Apdziedāšanās, like Midsummer, stubbornly survived in face of all manner of attempts from outside the society to suppress or eliminate the practice. This attests to its importance to its practitioners as a ritual for spiritual and psychological survival.

Apdziedāšanās themes and topics

If one takes the most famous ethnographic singing ensemble, the Suitu sieves (Women of Suiti), as a model, there is much play and delight in the craft. These women enjoyed displaying their verbal competence , their ability to think fast on their feet, and their ability to enhance the reputation of their singing group. There is pride in thinking fast on one’s feet, and knowing the tradition well enough to come up with appropriate, new, witty retort that picks up and addresses what the other side has sung. The Suitu sieves are from a western Latvian region unusual in its history, isolated from neighbors by deep forests and bogs and by retaining Catholicism as an island among Protestants. In 1623 the manor lord had married a Polish countess who brought a Jesuit retinue with her, and her influence became legendary. (Suitu pūrs: 8) They are singled out even by other western Latvians for their high level of energy, team spirit, and pride in their region.

The ‘Kāpnieku’ women have never performed for outsiders. Their songs flow as if from the hoary past. They have not been learned; they were absorbed while still being in their mother’s bodies. It has been a part of living. One can still feel how these songs have survived as a part of ancient rituals, if sung at Easter, Midsummer, or Christmas. We feel it now also this time listening to the voices of these worthy women. The brooches glistened as the singers’ hands are thrown up all together over their heads and their voices in an abrupt, sharp, shrill screech climb with them and fly off across the tree tops, warning, and who knows, maybe also frightening those who might stand to cross the path of song and life...That is a sign that the song is now finished and a new one can be started. The old mistress doesn’t wait but in spite of her years going into a hundred, takes up a dance step, then suddenly moves up to the bee garden fence, freezes…and again the high voice resounds and even more turbulently (trauksmaināk) is drawn: “Ē-ē-ē! The bees are swarming! And she’s away! (Suitu pūrs: 74).

The folklorists writing about the Suitu women add: “Our modern day ethnographic ensemblists in the region of Suiti no longer master this technique” (of signaling the end of a song.) (p. 74) They also note the hypnotic psychological effect of repeating the monotonous melodies.

The ensemble leaders from eastern Latvia, however, point out that the less aggressive and gentler, but no less strong singers from eastern Latvia possess a different type of genuine spirit or “soul”.

The subject matter of apdziedāšanās is broadly all of the social experience of the community and of the individual’s relation to it:

In the apdziedāšanās songs all of life was brought forward. The women sang about everything – what is on someone’s back, what kind of body they had, what they had at home, what was in the world in general. You felt as if you were being looked through. As if they were regional bookkeepers, but in much more detail, they knew you, what was being talked about and what was being said about you. For children this was quite an experience, and also to grown-ups not to scatter words inappropriately. They knew who was what, who was stingy, who proud, who narrow-minded. (Mežāle: 9)

According to Mežāle’s perspective, each song was taken so seriously that the individual to whom it was addressed thought and meditated on its significance afterwards. The song “had to be earned.” (Mežāle: 6) Likewise, a singer who had made a mistake and sung a “bad or inappropriate song” would take it to heart even years later. (p. 9) Mežāle as a highly religious Catholic compares the apdziedāšanās ritual to receiving communion and absolution in church; the ritual is seen as a means of cleansing and purification. (p. 8) “It was possible to overcome each failing and correct it.” (p. 34) “In all cases there is an attempt to look for some kind of hope and the wish for this to happen was expressed.” (Mežāle: 40) “Everyone usually knew of a transgression insofar as it was brought out in public. Everyone felt the pollution of the presence of hiding or lying about those things that were poisonous. If something unpleasant was brought out, then to balance that, at the end something to soften it was added or even something positive was found.” (Mežāle: 46 - 47) Mežāle also makes the point that having a song addressed to one is something of an honor. Thus special attention is made to address good-natured insults to the mistress or hostess of a celebration, the mothers of the bridal couple in a wedding, the Mother of Jāņi on Midsummers, and the “mother of the work party” during a work bee. (p.114) In terms of folk characterizations it would be interesting to consider if Mežāle’s view represents what is often seen as that of gentler eastern Latvia in contrast to what is seen as the more confrontational western Latvia. This essentially playful antagonism or joking relationship between čangaļi and slātavieši has been going on since the brothers Kaudzītis made the distincition in their famous novel Mērnieku Laiki.

But on an abstract level many values are understandable from a cross-cultural perspective outside of Latvia. There is an attempt to relate status/work assignments and the allocation of common resources in terms of perceived and acknowledged individual contribution to the group. Many of the attributes mocked and ridiculed have to do with the opposite of what makes cooperation and cooperative work possible. Laziness, ineptitude, greed, and stinginess are all social failings. Individual excess puts a strain on the community. Making fun of failings is a way to discourage them and to force a person to try harder to live up to group expectations:

Guli, guli, miega cūka, Tavi darbi nedarīti:

Govis guļ laidarā, Istabiņa neslaucīta. (Tdz 54450)

Sleep, sleep, sleeping pig; your work is not done.

The cows are sleeping in the byre; the room is not swept.

False praise and exaggeration are favorite devices. As Rosenbergs pointed out, parody and the ironic spirit, characteristic of an underclass, pervades the entire daina world. In contrast to a heroic age or more militant approach, boasts are seen as pretentious in the majority of the daina corpus, though the significant exception attests to an alternative orientation historically. An introductory formula claiming or conferring honor is almost certainly ironical. The skeptical, ironical view of the peasant almost obliterates another one that can be found in the boasting dainas, suggesting a more heroic and flyting mode where the swaggering is taken somewhat at face value. It also contrasts to those displaying one’s worth through display of manners, clothes, ones horse, and other possessions both straightforwardly and ironically. One outrageous nerātna daina begins with the ironic introduction “I was one honorable girl; I held to my honor” and continues with her outrageously pulling up her skirt and offering the lad her “lake for the stallion to swim in”. (34625) While here the allusion may be a double meaning, one way to really insult a man was to insult his horse literally, and there are many examples among the insulting songs:

Slinki slinki kaimiņpuiši, - Nav sedliņu zirdziņam;

Pašiem glāzes, pašiem kannas, Zirgiem tukšas redelītes.

Ujā, velli, Ventinieki, Kur jūs tādi gadījās?

Šķībi rati, greizas ķēves, Noplīsuši braucējiņi. (LD 21114)

Lazy, lazy neighbor lads – no saddles for their horses;

Glasses for themselves, mugs for themselves, no hay for their horses. (387, 3451)

Hold on, devils, Ventin-folk, where have you come from?

Crooked wagons, sorry nags, travelers in rags.

Kur tā talkas māmulīte, Visu dienu neredzēta

Vai tā bija iemūrēta pašā cepļa dibinā? ( LD 28444)

Where is the work party mother, unseen all day?

Had she been cemented to the bottom of the kiln?

At christenings the godparents and honored guests are taunted for lack of generosity or stupidity, and at Midsummer the mother and father receive special attention.

Lai tur naidu, kas tur naidu, Kūmi, naidu neturiet!

Tur kūmiņi naidu tur, Tur zemīte pušu plīst. (Tdz 36805)

Krusta māte man solīja Līdz kājāmi linu kreklu;

Gara mēle pasolot, Īsas rokas iedodot. (LD 1810)

Krusttēvam, nabagam, Naudas kule aizsalusi.

Kurat pirti, krusta mātes, Kausējat naudas kuli! (Tdz 36847)

Whoever wants feud, let him have feud; godparents - don’t feud between you.

Where godparents are feuding, the land breaks in half.

Godmother promised a long linen shirt

Long tongue in promise, short hands in delivery.

Godfather, poor man, money bag has frozen.

Heat the sauna, godmothers, melt out the money bag.

In “wars between the sexes,” where there is much aggressive teasing, the objects of scorn are traits undesirable in an ideal mate. Thus, the bachelors are taunted with desiring young girls, but carrying the parallel out fully, the old maids are also taunted for desiring young boys. As expected, in this group of songs, which fundamentally negotiate a desirable mate, what is scorned is lack of health, youth, and vigor in addition to indicating that a socially desirable pairing should be an appropriate age match. Along with physical and psychological qualities, each side also taunts the other for being of limited means. This group of songs, then, suggests there are some areas, such as that of courting and mating, that negotiate universal and therefore essentially unchanging values, which reduce to the old formula “if not young, then rich.” Each side jokes about its superiority, while putting down the other, knowing this is a joke since boastfulness is not a normative value. The pursuers, for instance, are said to have come in rags and so ravenous for food that anything that moves is in danger of being seized and eaten. Similarly, when the obscenities begin, the other side is accused of indiscriminate licentiousness. In the ceremonies at the bride’s natal home, her kin maintain that the dowry chest is so heavy that it can’t be moved by either the men or the horses of the groom’s party, while the groom’s side disparages the bride and her retinue as lame, blind, lazy, stupid, and so on.

The age-old universal gross issues remain the same, but the specific situations and contexts are endless renegotiations, rearrangements, and reapplications. As the New Mexico potter in Henry Glassie’s The Spirit of Folk Art gathers clay, rock, and plant from the vicinity and old potsherds that are ground for temper: “Their pots contain the pots of their ancestors, whose pots, in turn, contained the pots of theirs. Sherds are recycled, consumed into an artifactual sequence that parallels the coursing of blood through the generations. The new pot also joins old ones.” (Glassie, 1989: 35)

The lead singer and her repertoire

As is common in traditional societies, the lead singer does not primarily speak as an individual, but in the name of the group she represents. The lead singer is acknowledged to not only possess musical ability, including a sounding voice and improvisatory skills, but also leadership is equated with honored and skillful representation. Thus, a lead singer is expected to also have political skills, high intelligence, common sense, and the ability to assess and react situationally. The modulators – one, two, or more in number not only take up her voice, but are also her assistants who if needed will assume the role of first voice when the lead singer hesitates or is in need of help or rest. The drones round out the group as having solid collective identity, and also assist in the whole process of composition and performance.

The cybernetic relationship of individual and group is a universal, but: “In a traditional community, small acts are enough to secure a sense of individuality. Old ideas perfectly repeated or gently reshaped speak clearly to others of one’s excellence.” (Glassie, 1989: 214)

There is only one monograph to my knowledge of a daina singer, that of Suitu lead singer Veronika Porziņģe, which mostly consists of her notebook in which she wrote down her repertoire and other items of folklore, minus the non-normative songs she knew. As typical, Porziņģe learned her craft from her mother, who had been used as a source by the Archives, and she also took over the repertoire of singer Zēbērģu Trīnīš. She learned from her mother’s brothers, the neighbors, and the best singers of the village, and started practicing the craft as a herder-girl calling out to other herders. As a thirteen-year old she was included in the singing group at the Alšvanga song festival. She also sang with the girls in the evening gatherings of young people. She began to have a public life after being a performer for the 1957 folklore expedition, and the formation of the Suitu sieva ensemble, which was invited to various performances throughout the years. Porziņģe did not have one of the most powerful voices, but she was an excellent composer, and worked with another lead singer, Spēkmane Katrīna (Lielā Trīne), who did have a very powerful voice. The high point of Porziņģe’s public life was to be recorded as a lead singer of one of two ensembles in the movie Pūt Vējiņi in 1973, and in 1978 to have a record made in Moscow.

Porziņģe’s musical delivery characterizes the nature of the highly improvisatory style of apdziedāšanās with an unstable melody that adapts to mood, situation, and text: “The expression of the singing can be any of different moods – cool, informative, mischievous, roguish, derisive, boastful, rebuking, deceptive, or sorrowful – it can’t really be fixed in notation...Veronika had no unsingable texts; she skillfully ‘bent’ the melody of any text for any needed purpose.” (Dziesminiece Veronika Porziņģe: 22-23) Her metrical solutions were also quite varied, and rhythm was connected with the text delivery. Trochaic, dactylic, and mixed songs were sung.

Her performance on all levels was absolutely relative (to context)...including the relationship of lead and second voice...The pitch level was also determined by the caller’s activity, the importance of the event and its intensity, the tension level of the situation, and the tempo of the singing, as well as the individual peculiarities of the singer’s voice. Usually in larger events, such as weddings, christenings, or funerals the singing manner was ‘one wave,’ practically on one height, without considering how many callers replaced each other. Conscious modulation was not usually utilized. (Ibid: 22)

Porziņģe’s greatest strength was in her improvisatory ability as a lead singer, though, as needed, she also sang the modulator voice. From her repertoire:

Jūs labi ļautiņi, Mēs ari labi,

Nu mēs viens otru Gānisam. (1110)

Izskaitam mēs, māsiņas, Vai ir visas dziedātājas:

Ira Ķērsta, ira Billa, Vecā Lūža vien nevaid. (1112)

Blintenieku veci puiši Sausej eglej sakāpuši;

Egle lūza, puiši krita, Zobi bira grabēdami. (1106)

Gribēj’ mani sveši ļaudis Dziesmiņām ūzvarēt.

Tu kā krupis, es kā liepa, Kur tu mani uzvarēs. (1116)

Māte man pavēlēja Šij zemej karju vest.

No šīs zemes neiziešu, Līdz es skādi padarīšu:

Visus vadžus aplauzīšu, Galdam kājas nolauzīšu,

Medus podu izēdīšu, Puišam bērnu piegulēšu. (1247)

Bāleliņi, bāleliņi, Trinies asu zobentiņu:

Šodien tautas karju cels Par māsiņas vaiņadziņu. (1183)

Ko tie kraukļi krankšķenāja, Ko žagata žadzenājas?

Blintenieku veci puiši Rāvienej sastriguši. (1107)

Gaidi, gaidi, dēlu māte, Kad es tev sagšu segšu:

Es ūzsegšu buļļa ādu, Skries pa lauku baurjādama. (1207)

Dēlu māte, zilzobīte, Tik tā mani nenorēja:

Es ielecu kaņupēs, Viņa zobus klabināja. (850)

Nesēdēju zem ozola, Ar puisīti runājot –

Ozolam zīles bira, Puišam viltus valodiņa. (184)

Nāciet, ļaudis skatīties, Kādi ērmi tīrumej:

Piecas kaķes ārklu vilka, Tauties ara raudādams. (200)

Es izgāju māj no mājas, Labu puisi neredzēju:

Tādi vien sēņu sulas, Sila peku grauzējiņi. (199)

Dziedi, dzidi tu, puisīti, Tav jau maza dvēselīte;

Tava maza dvēselīte Putras spanne noslīkusi. (205)

Ko tie puiši laba dara Tai balte saulīte?

Ziemu beņķus nogulēja, Pa vasaru atmatiņas. (209)

Kas tur sauc, kas tur brēca Aiz kalniņa lejiņe?

Vārnas plēsa vienu puisi, Āz ausem turēdam’s. (219)

Kādu vellu vārna brēca, Kādu vellu puiši kliedz?

Vārnas brēca sliktu laiku, Puiši meitas aprunāja. (227)

Briežam ragi nodiluši, Krūmus, mežus bradājot;

Tā nodila puišu mēles, Gar meitām runājot. (228)

Ai, meitiņas, ai,meitiņas, Kur mēs liksim mūsu puišus?

Lādēsim laiviņe, Sūtīsim Vāczemē. (250)

Ko mēs, meitas, darīsim Ar Alšvangas puisišim?

Diedziņe savērsim, Sakārsim skorstene.

Aiz dorem klausijos: Ļaudis mani aprunā.

Veru dores, speru kāju, Trūkst ļaudim valodiņas.

You are good people, we are good also,

Now we’ll be fighting one against the other.

Let us count, sisters; are we all the singers here:

Here’s Kersta, here’s Billa. Only Old Luza is missing.

The Blinteniek old boys climbed a dry evergreen tree.

The tree broke, the boys fell, their teeth fell down rattling.

Stranger people wanted to beat me in songs.

You’re a toad, I’m a linden. How are you going to beat me?

Mother ordered me, bring war to this land.

I won’t leave this land until I’ve laid it waste:

I’ll break off all the pegs, I’ll break the legs from the table,

I’ll clean out the honey pots, I’ll make the lad a child.

Brother, brother, sharpen a good sword:

Today the suitors are starting a war for the sake of our sister’s wreath.

What sounds are the crows making, what noise are the ravens making?

The old boys of Blintenieki are stuck in the bog again.

Wait, wait, mother of sons until I give you the blanket:

I’ll give you a bull’s hide; you can run the field bellowing.

Mother of sons, blue-tooth, is barking at me.

I jumped into the hemp field while she was gnashing her teeth.

I didn’t sit under the oak speaking with the lad.

Acorns are falling, lying words from the lad.

Come, people, see weird things in the field.

Five she-cats pulling the plough, the suitor ploughing while weeping.

I searched house to house not seeing a good lad.

Just mushroom juice, pine shroom munchers.

Sing, sing, lad, you have a small spirit;

Your small spirit is drowned in the gruel bucket.

What good were lads in this bright sun?

In winter sleeping on benches, in summer on the fallow fields.

Who was calling, who was screaming behind the hill in the vale?

Ravens were tearing at one lad holding him by the ears.

What devil were the ravens cawing, what devil were the lads croaking?

Ravens were cawing bad weather; boys were gossiping about girls.

Stag’s antlers were worn down pushing through brush and wood;

That’s how boy’s tongues wore down talking about girls.

Girls, oh, girls, what do we do with these boys?

We pack them into boats and send them off to Germany.

What do we do, girls, with the Alšvanga boys?

Lets thread them in a string and hang them in the chimney. (255)

Behind the doors I heard people talking about me.

I kicked the door open; those folks were at loss for words.

Songs concluding the ritual:

Nederēšu, nederēšu, Jūs ienaidu iesākāt:

Jūs’ māsiņa vīru grib, Jūs ienaidu iesākat. (1252)

Gana man žēl palika Sav’ māsiņu apdziedāt:

Kam tu nāci tai vietej, Kur man tevi jāapdzied? (1250)

Saderam mēs māsiņas, Neturam ienaidiņu:

Krievi, leiši savas bruņas Lemešos izkaluši. (1251)

I won’t make peace, I won’t make peace; you started the hostilities.

Your sister wants a husband; you started the war.

I felt sorry insult singing at my sister.

Why did you come to this place where I must sing at you.

Let us make peace, sisters. Let’s forget hostilities.

Russians, Lithuanians have beaten their armor into ploughshares.

Porziņģe’s formulaic closings are similar to others published and archived:

Pazasmēju smiekliņam,- Kas smieklam nezasmēja?

Kas smieklam nezasmēja, Tas pats lieti nederēja. (LD 21010)

Visu nakti sadziedāju Tautu galdu galiņā;

Sviežat, brāļi, dālderīti, Lai dod tautas nodzerties. (LD 21146)

Ai, lūdzmai, sveši ļauži, dusmas vien neturat!

Es ar savu dzērumiņ’ Daždažādi izdziedāj’. (Tdz 58640)

Dziesmas dēļ, labi (sveši) ļaudis, Ienaidiņa neceliet!

Dziesmu dziedu, kāda bija, Ne tā mana padarīta. (LD 957)

Dziesmu dēļ, labi ļaudis, Mani jel nepeļat!

Pieder pieši pie zābaka, Pie meitām dziedāšana. (LD 960)

Saderami mēs māsiņas, Viena otrai muti dos’;

Visu mūžu dzīvojot, Ienaidiņa neturēs! (Tdz 59490)

Saderam(i), mēs, tautiņas, Saderam(i), saderam,

Neba mēs visu mūžu, Ienaidiņu turēsim. (LD 21033)

We had a few good laughs; who didn’t laugh?

Whoever didn’t laugh, isn’t worth much.

All night I sang at the end of the guest table;

Throw, brothers, a a coin; let the guests have a drink.

If you please, stranger people, don’t hold a grudge!

With my drinking I sang this and that.

For the sake of song, good people, let’s not hold enmity.

I sing the song as it was; it wasn’t made by me.

For the sake of song, good people, don’t take it out on me!

Stirrups belong with boots; singing with girls.

Let us make peace, sisters, give each other a kiss;

Let’s not hold enmity all through life.

Let’s make peace, folks, come together, fit together.

We can’t be at war, all through life.

The great folklorist Krišjāns Barons wrote about apdziedāšanās:

In the past in larger assemblies not only women and girls sang, but also men and boys. They sang together, or again and preferably, group against group, as if engaged in a song war. In the latter case the women and girls were likely to divide up into parties (pulkos), into two contesting sides. Such contesting halves were appropriate at assemblies, at work bees, at the celebrations of life’s passages, especially at weddings, as usually the participants or guests were from different villages, different counties, or even provinces. Among the villagers themselves there was no lack of opponents, fighters. Both parties stood one against the other and began to sing at each other. They sang strictly in turn: when one side finished its song, then the other side sang, replying back its own, and so both sides exchanged back and forth. (Barons, I: xxiv)

The Barons collection includes many examples of male versus female contest songs, which are characteristic of the courtship period, such as:

Nāc māsiņa, paklausies, Kas kauc meža maliņā.

Tie nebija vilku bari, Tur dziedāja ciema puiši.(1665, 181)

Citas meitas auda, meta, Ko ši ciema meitas dara? Šīs meitiņas mušas ķēra, Gar sienām staigādamas. (1599, 762)

Sīca, rūca, dundurīši, Ko tie sīca, ko nesīca?

Tie nebija dundurīsi – Tie bij mūsu ciema puiši.(17ll, 3355)

Menckas tēvam piecas meitas, Visas piecas amatnieces:

Divas bures, divas zagles, Piektā ķērnes laizītāja. (T.dz. 42400)

Puiši lēca meitu dēļ Pār degošu jumtu pāri;

Mēs, meitiņas, puišu dēļ – Ne pār bērza žagariņu.(1850, 6277)

Kurzemnieces zemas, resnas, Skābas putras strēbējiņas;

Vidzemnieces tievas, garas, Jaunu puišu – nomīlētas.(Tdz 42368)

Nāc pie manis tu, puisīti, Mūžam bada neredzēsi!

Man ir viena ratu rumba Varžu kāju piesālīta.(1850,6261)

Kurzemnieki savas meitas Zem tiltiņa pabāzuši;

Vidzemenieki izvilkuši, Par vardēm domādami. (LD 12863)

Ai meitiņas, ai meitiņas, Puisēniņus glabājiet:

Aizvedušas piesieniet Pie lielā skudru pūļa. (49, 966)

Čīkstēt čīkst mežābele, Lielu vēju salocīta;

Tā čīkstēja vecas meitas Pēc jauniem puisēniem.(1660,6569)

Aiz upītes jēri brēca, Veci puiši gavilēja;

Jēri brēca smalka siena, Veci puiši jaunu meitu.(LD 13017)

Precieties, jauni puiši, Šogad mietas lētumā:

Vesel’ duci jaunu meitu Pērk par sieku rācentiņu.(1215,15)

Cirv’s bez kāta, puis’s bez prāta Guļ celiņa maliņā;

Cirvim kātu gan ielika, Puisim prātu neielika. (1850,4262)

Kur palika tās meitiņas, Kas mūs daiļi apdziedāja?

Cita šurp, cita turp, Cita siena gubenī. (LD 20896,1)

Klausījos, brīnijos, Kas tur kauc siliņā?

Tur kauc mūsu ciema Jēcis Par zaudētu līgaviņu. (Tdz 58981)

Kas tu tāda dziedātāja, Kad tu labi nemācēji!

Nāc pie mana raibā buļļa, Tas tev’ labi pamācīs. (LD 865)

Zaķīts puisi nospārdīja Ar pakaļa kājiņām;

Es gribēju glābti iet – Aiz smiekliem nevarēju. (1599, 1361)

Ai Dieviņ, ai Dieviņ, Liela skāde notikuse:

Cūka dziesmas apgāzuse, Apenīšu rakādama. (Tdz 36397)

Čakli, čakli mūsu puiši, Tālu tautās daudzināja;:

Gultā viņiem saule lēca, Gultā saule norietēja. (Tdz 42256)

Veca meita gauži raud, Saulē pupi sakaltuši;

Tavas pašas vaina bija, Kam nelīdi kaņepēs. (LD 13138)

Es redzēju vecu puisi Sēžam elles maliņā;

Garām gāju, spēr’ ar kāju, Lai krīt elles dibinā. (LD 13035)

Dūmi kūp, dūmi kūp – Kas tos dūmus kūpināja?

Vecas meitas žurkas cepa, Pie lipiņas turēdamas. (Tdz 42605)

Mūsu puiši stiprinieki – Pieci vienu odu sita;

Vēl nebūtu nosituši, Ja pie mieta nepiesietu. (1835, 1335)

Kas tā tāda dziedātāja Izgruvušu pakaļiņu?

Tur vajdzēja zilu mālu, - Piecu Leisšu mūrenieku. (LD 34821)

Redzu, redzu, protu, protu Mūsu puiša tikumiņu:

Viss puisīša tikumiņš Alus kausa dibenā. (1860, 4312)

or:

Metat, meitas, sīku naudu Pa vienam dalderam,

Lai varam Vāczemē Puišiem pirkt tikumiņu. (Tdz42401)

Come, sisters, listen, who is howling at the edge of the woods.

Those weren’t wolf packs; those were village boys singing.

Some girls wove and spun; what are the girls doing in this village?

These girls are catching flies, walking past walls.

Gadflies hummed and buzzed. What were they humming or buzzing? Those weren’t gadflies. They were our village lads.

Father Mencka had five daughters, all five craftswomen.

Two witches, two thieves, the fifth a churn licker.

Boys were jumping over burning roofs for the sake of girls;

We, girls, for the sake of boys, not even over birch twigs.

Kurland women, low and wide, drinkers of soured milk gruel;

Vidzeme women, thin and spindly, used up by young men.

Come to me, boy, you’ll never see famine!

I have a wagon hub full of salted frog legs.

Kurlanders had hidden their daughters under the bridge.

Vidzemers pulled them out, thinking they were frogs.

Oh, girls, oh, girls, be gentle with the boys.

Take them and tie them up to the big ant hill.

Creaking creaks the wild apple tree bent in a great wind;

So the old girls were creaking after young lads

Yon river lambs were baaing, old boys were singing full voice;

Lambs were baaing fine hay, old boys for young girls.

Marry, young lads; this year girls are cheap.

A whole dozen young girls for just a measure of potatoes.

Axe without shaft, boy without mind, they sleep by the road.

The axe got its shaft; no mind would fit the boy.

Where are the girls who sang fair songs about us?

One is here, another there, still another in the hayloft.

I listened, I wondered: who was howling in the wood?

Our village Jecis was howling about his lost bride.

Who is that singer who didn’t know how?

Come to my spotted bull; he’ll teach you how to do it.

Rabbit kicked down the boy with his rear feet;

I wanted to rescue him - couldn’t from all the laughing.

Dear God, dear God, a terrible calamity:

The pig knocked over the songs, digging among the hops.

Diligent, diligent, our boys known far and wide;

The sun rose in their bed, the sun set in their bed.

The old girl is weeping bitterly, her tits dried out in the sun;

It’s your own fault; why didn’t you sneak to the hemp field.

I saw an old boy sitting at the edge of hell;

Going by I kicked him. Let him fall to the bottom of hell.

Smoke rising, smoke rising, who is making smoke? Old girls are cooking rats, holding on to their ears.

Our lads, strongmen, trying to swat a mosquito.

They wouldn’t have killed it, if they hadn’t tied it to a pole.

Who is that singer with a caved-in rear-end?

We need blue clay, five Lithuanian masons.

I can see, I understand the virtue of our boys:

All of a boy’s virtue is at the bottom of the beer mug.

Let’s throw together, girls, small change one piece at a time.

So we can buy the boys in Germany some virtue

There are a few in-your-face rude examples, or tho

se that are designed to cut more for real, perhaps closer to American soundings, but they are a the minority in a generally playful atmosphere that is aware of limits:

Turi muti, puišu lempi, Daudz tu mani nekaitini;

Tu kā krupis vazājies, Es kā liepa līgojos. (Tdz 43873)

Kur liksiet, jauni puiši, Vecu meitu dvēselītes? Liekat dzelzes kastītē, Metat jūras dibinā, Lai tur rūca, lai tur kauca, Lai mūžam neceļās. (LD 13068)

Shut your mouth, bumpkin yokel boy, don’t annoy me too much.

You were dragging around like a toad. I was swaying like a linden.

Where, young lads, do we put the souls of old girls? Let’s put them in an iron chest, throw in the bottom of the sea.

Let them roar, let them howl; may they never arise.

The aggression and pain inflicted on the target is supposed to be limited. In some ways it resounds with the philosophy of the contemporary punk mosh pit in which the elbow jostling and slamming is supposed to be an affirmation of trust and fellowship, a statement that I can hurt you, but I won’t. It is also trust as when a participant leaps off the stage with the expectation he will be caught unharmed and not allowed to fall to break his neck.

Barons writes of the endless supply of apdziedāšanās songs within the tradition from which a skilled performer could pick to adapt to her needs:

The primary singers in each group, the sācējas, were totally competent: a song fit against another song, as if it were specially composed in answer to it. Whichever side had the better sācēja, that side had the advantage and became the winner. But often also both sides had excellent sācējas and then they contended for fun until they had to quit. Two singing groups contesting, purposefully offend each other, sing about (apdzied); especially they attack the teicēja (lead singer), but the contesting didn’t lie only in the singing itself. The richness of each group’s repertoire, the esthetics of the song, the sounds, the good-soundingness of the voice, and manner of attractive singing were of importance. It was easier for the singers to collectively sing about the guests individually, though sometimes the guest might retaliate in song. Girls in particular singled out boys during apdziedāšanās. They attacked fiercely, no matter if reprimand was merited or not, perhaps who loves also teases. (Barons, I: xxiv-xxv)

However, while the teasing songs most relevant to courting young people are a very important part of apdziedāšanās, and perhaps the most common function today, the phenomenon is not restricted to it and the model and its field is broader. Apdziedāšanās concerns itself with the broad spectrum of relationships people have to each other and to the world. Thus, there are songs with much more realistic hostility along the fault lines of society, between in-laws. In the courting stage, the tension and hostility is between suitor and the mother of the girl he wants to court. The longer-term and central problematic relationship in a patrilocal marriage is of the young wife and her husband’s mother, as the two women who are central to the household and potentially in a power situation conflict. There is also secondary tension between sisters-in-law (māršas). Barons states:

Where do we place the songs about the mother of the son and the daughter-in-law? Few of these songs speak of good, friendly relationship; most of them are mean, spiteful, and swaggering. Each side puts down and disdains the other to the fullest. Those are the apdziedāšanās songs at weddings, sung by both antagonistic sides, of bride chasers (panāksnieki) and bride nappers (kāzinieki). In these songs harsh reality is hidden. By depicting in sharp, bold language what mean life is like and its disastrous consequences, the intent is actually to prevent such disaster. Similarly the opposing side puts down the bride and bridegroom mercilessly. Are we to judge from these songs that our boys and girls are really so lacking in honor? Even those about whom the songs are being sung know well and understand this and therefore do not take even the most hurtful censure at face value, and don’t misinterpret it askance. (Barons, I: xx).

Many of the songs in the Barons’s collection about negative relationships between members of a household, especially if exaggerated, may have been used in an apdziedāšanās context:

Māte savu dēlu teica, Kas to sliņķi nezināja?

Miega pūznis, krogus žūpa, Ne maizītes arājiņš. (LD 15602)

Šķitu lāci lampājot Pa lielo tīrumiņu:

Tas pats mūsu jaunais znots Leinajām kājiņām. (LD 16270)

Paraugies, man’ māsiņa, Kas tev sēd ieblakam:

Tautas dēls sarkanacs, Gauž’ asaru dzērājiņš. (LD 21 464)

Tā tā īstā brūtes māsa, Ar tām kuiļa nadzenēm;

Ar tām kuiļa nadzenēm, Kašķainām lūpiņām. (Tdz 58525)

Ai, māsiņa, ai, māsiņa, Kādi tavi vīra radi:

Kā piestiņas, kā rumbiņas, Kā lielie laivas gali. (LD 20106)

Bij tam mūsu svainīšam Šādas tādas pudlītes,

Citāi bija brandviņš, Citāi ķēves mīzaliņi. (LD 34503)

Kas tā tāda melna vista Kaņepēs kladzināja?

Tā nebija melna vista, Tā bij mana vīra māte. (LD 23299)

Asa, asa purva zāle, Vajag asas izkaptiņas;

Barga, barga dēlu māte, Vajag bargas vedekliņas. (LD 23188)

Aiz purviņa ābelē Sēdēj’ viena velna māte;

Tā nebija velna māte, Tā bij mana vīra māte. (LD 23183)

Traka, mana vīra māte, Bukam lēca mugurā.

Vai tu lēci, vai nelēci, Dēls jau manā kabatā. (Tdz 46724)

Vīra māte priecājās, Kad vedekla krēslu sniedz.

Šī pacēla ērkšķu krūmu, Lai sēd gurnus grozīdama. (Tdz 46736)

Dēlu mātei stāvi ragi, Kupla aste pakaļā.

Tavus ragus nolauzīšu, Tavu asti svilināšu. (LD 23237)

Gana bija meitu māte Savu meitu pušķojuse:

Deguntiņu izdrāzuse, Lūpas biezas atstājuse. (LD 20163)

Meitas māte vēdājāsi, Kur būs likti vīra māt’.

Plauktā lika, žurkas ēda, Pagrabāi – circenīš’.

Augat, mani balti lini, Augstajāi kalniņā!

Lai es varu virvi vīti, Vīra maāti slīcināt.

That mother was pushing forth her son. Who didn’t know this looser?

Sleepyhead, pub boozer, not a ploughman for bread.

I thought I saw a bear toddle across the great field:

That’s our own new son-in-law, slow on his feet.

Look, here, sister, who’s sitting next to you:

The future husband, red-eye, a drinker of bitter tears.

That’s some bride’s sister with boar’s hooves;

With boar’s hooves, with scabbed lips.

Oh, sister, oh, sister, what in-laws you have:

Like mortars, like hubs, like the ends of a boat.

Our brother-in-law has bottles here and there;

In some there is whiskey, in others mare’s piss.

Who is that black hen, clucking in the hemp field?

That wasn’t a black hen; that was my husband’s mother.

Sharp, sharp the marsh grass in need of a sharp scythe.

Harsh, stern the son’s mother, in need of a stern daughter-in-law.

Behind the bog in an apple tree, sitting a devil mother;

That wasn’t a devil mother; she was my husband’s mother.

Crazy, my mother-in-law, Jumped on the back of a ram.

Jump or don’t jump, mother-in-law, your son is in my pocket.

Mother-in-law was honored, daughter-in-law gave her a chair.

She picked up a thorn bush, sit there wiggling your hips.

Son’s mother has pointed horns, a thick tail in the rear.

I’ll break off your horns, burn off your tail.

Girl’s mother had dressed her daughter enough:

Whittled down her nose; left thick lips, though.

Daughter’s mother didn’t know what to do with husband’s mother.

On the shelf the rats were eating, in the basement the crickets.

Grow white, my flax on the high hill

So I can make a rope to drown my husband’s mother.

The last song becomes vicious with no playful elements, and though it isn’t taken seriously, is atypical in that it better fits with the type of cruel pre-combat male humor analyzed by Kurlents in Russian bylinas. Overall, even when they become explicit, Latvian daina humor has a dominant lightness and playfulness (rotaļājoš) about it when compared to male dominated heroic flytings of neighboring peoples.

Nonresponsorial singing humor

Apdziedāšanās humor can be also situated if compared to humor that takes place in nonresponsorial singing as well as everyday banter that is not sung. Thus there are examples of songs formed of chained distichs, which individually could be used in an apdziedāšanās improvisatory responsorial situation, but the two separate voices are sung by the same singer as a frozen quatrain or chained song. Thus in one Latvian summer intensive camp the participants were handed out examples of call and response that were sung monophonally by the group, even though the first part could be sung by males and the second part a response by females:

Dzied gailīti, vai nedziedi Nebuūs gaismas vakarāi,

Nebūs gaismas vakarā.

Raud, meitiņa, vai neraudi, Nebūs mana līgaviņa.

Es par tevi tēva dēlsi Visai daudzi nebēdāju.

Es pie tava deguntiņa Zelta trepes nenesīšu.

Ellē dziedi melni gaiļi Vaskaināmi kājiņāmi.

Tā dziedāsi tie puisīši Kas peļ meitas tikumiņu.

(Xeroxed handout, unknown date or seminar, Garezers summer workshop.)

Sing rooster, or don’t sing. There won’t be light in the evening. There won’t be light in the evening.

Weep, girl, or don’t weep. You won’t be my bride. (Repeat as above)

For you, father’s son, I don’t sorrow much at all.

I’m not bringing to your nose any gold ladder.

Black roosters were singing in Hell with waxen feet.

That’s how the boys were singing who were putting down the honor of girls.

There are many examples of humorous bantering between the young men and women in the cycle of courting songs (precību dziesmas, such as 1378-1417, but especially 1394-1399 from Kurzeme, in Precību dziesmas (Vītoliņš, 1986) in the spirit of “I can drink and live it up until the morning light arose.” (p. 25). There is also a large corpus of songs where girls defend their reputations against the gossip of the elders and that of the boys (cf 1620-1626) (p. 29). The songs are sung at different formal courting periods:

They are not analogous to wedding apdziedāšanās songs, which are collective two side songs and are sung in recitative melody and burdone polyphony with caller, folder, and drawer voices. Courting songs are individual boy or girl songs in a developed singing style...Very common is the type of boy’s song that starts with the introductory formula, “Come to me, girl, you won’t ever see famine,” followed by a humorous negation, “In winter I’ll let you crunch ice, in spring you can munch green grass.” Especially many melodies of this type have been recorded from Vidzeme, almost none in Latgale; all were written down in the 1850s. The quick accents of the melody - major, Phrygian or Mixolydic, most often in two part simple meter completely conforms to a frantic text declamation. (Vītoliņš, 1986: 28)

Courting songs is one area where male voices are well represented, including songs about rejected suitors and their fantasies of revenge, dialogue with the mother of the daughter who guards and can deny access to courting privileges, and of the hoped-for girl becoming someone else’s bride. Significantly, the jilted or lost lover is not at all a woman’s genre. In the songs, it is the girl who causes the boy grief because she or her mother has rejected him, or she has broken the pledge. (Vītoliņš: 30)

An example of a contemporary genre in Latvia inspired by dainas is nežēlīgās (merciless) dainas. They are humorous satires loosely based on daina structure and often irreverent or bawdy. Usually they circulate something like broadsides on pieces of paper, and are sent in to a radio program b.b. brokastis (BB Breakfast) hosted by Andris Freidenfelds and Kaspars Upacieris (Fred and Ufo) who have a program similar to “Bob and Tom” in the Bloomington area. They put out several cassettes around Midsummer:

Vai tur riesto dinozauri? Nē - tas kaiminjš: viņjš pūš tauri!

Mēs šīs skaņas spēcinājām, Kaķi vannā brēcinājām.

Is that the mating of dinosaurs? No it’s neighbors playing horn!

We amplified the sounds a bit. Giving the cat a bath.

On Dec. 30, 2000 Māris Jānis Vasiļevskis submitted from memory an example of a modern folk song he called ziņģe, a parody of a popular classic folk song:

Man ar rozēm pilna grīda, lai nāk tautu dēls un mīda,

Vai kāds nelabais šo dīda, ka vispirms pie senčiem līda?

Tēvs grib tikt no manis vaļā, sola mani balsī skaļā.

Māte liedz un puisi paļā, kāda gan nu šai tur daļa?

Neizdosies vis tik lēti mammu saskaņot ar tēti.

Būtu atnācis uz klēti, sen jau būtu noformēti.

The floor with roses I have strewn; suitor, come and trample.

Is some devil driving him; he’s crawling to the old ones.

Father’s getting rid of me; promises in booming voice.

Mother faults him, and denies; what concern is it of hers?

It will take some major steps, bringing mom and dad to terms.

All he had to do was come - to the barn and it’d been settled.

The original classic folk song is somewhat humorous but mostly it expresses youthful rebellion against authority, “Rozēm kaisu istabiņu” (With roses I strew the floor, waiting for the suitor) the girl upon seeing the male kinsmen of the suitor who have come in his stead, brooms the petals under the bed and jumps out the window to avoid them. In the new ziņģe – parody the motif of the disputing parents is retained, but instead of taking evasive action, in the modern parody the enterprising modern girl is ready to force the issue on her terms.

What, then, is involved in apdziedāšanās on a deeper structural level? Is it a music-centered forum for discourse and performance? My approach was to explore the phenomenon from different perspectives, exploring its relationship to fundamental concepts within the culture, including those of time and space, using the resources developed in different disciplines.

The performer reacts to the previous message by utilizing traditional formulas invested with meaning appropriate to the new circumstances. As the performance proceeds, the power of the ritual and music, the repetition and incremental tension, not only give back something of what appears to have been heard before many times and by extension is perceived as eternal, but invests the performance with new meanings that first of all releases tensions, but also refreshes and gives new strength, purpose and insight.

487

↑ Contents

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Fundamental Daina-Text Collections Used by Daina Researchers

Krišjānis Barons & H. Vissendorfs, ed., Latvju dainas (6 vols. in 8), vol. I, Jelgava: Dravinieks, 1882), vols. II‑VI, St. Petersburg: Akad. Nauk, 1893‑14.

Šmits, Pēteris, ed., Tautas dziesmas: Papildinajums Kr. Barona "Latvju Dainam" (Latviešu folkloras krātuves materiāli, A1‑4 in 4 vols, Riga: Latviešu folkloras

krātuves izdevums, 1936‑39.

Švabe, A., Straubergs, K., and Hauzenberga‑Sturma, E. (ed.), Latviešu tautasdziesmas. Vol I – XII, Copenhagen: Imanta, 1952‑1956. Combine Barons and Šmits at expense of variants, with articles.

Endzelīns, J. and Klaustiņš, ed., Latvju tautas dainas. I-XII. Riga, 1928-32. Uses an alternative numbering system to Barons/ Šmits.

Latviešu tautasdziesmas. I-III. Rīga, 1955-57.

Latviešu tautasdziesmas. I-IV. Rīga, 1979-82.

Latviešu tautasdziesmas. Edited J. Kalniņš and editorial board, vol. I of 15. Rīga: LPSR ZA A.Upiša Val. un lit. inst., 1979.

Latviešu tautasdziesmas. Edited J. Kalniņš and editorial board, vol. II of 15. Rīga: LPSR ZA A.Upīša Val. un lit. inst., 1980.

Latviešu tautasdziesmas. Edited J. Kalniņš and editorial board, vol. III of 15. Rīga: LPSR ZA A.Upiša Val. un lit. inst., 1981.

Latviešu tautasdziesmas. Edited J. Kalniņš and editorial board, vol. IV of 15. Rīga: LPSR ZA A.Upiša Val. un lit. inst., 1982.

Latviešu tautasdziesmas. Ed. Berzinska, M. and editorial board, vol. V, part 1, of 15. Rīga: LPSR ZA A.Upīša Val. un lit. inst., 1983.

Latviešu tautasdziesmas. Edited by R. Drīzule and editorial board, vol. V, part 2, of 15. Rīga: LPSR ZA A.Upīša Val. un lit. inst., 1984.

Latviešu tautasdziesmas. Ed. V.Hausmanis, A. Ancelāne, and editorial board, vol VI of 15. sej. Rīga: Zinātne, 1993.

<http://ai1.mii.lu.lv/tautasdz> - a selection of folk songs from the archive collections, no identifying numbers.

Dainas unidentified by number in this work have either been quoted from memory, or have been taken from the archive web site.

Collection of Rare Books and Manuscripts – site lists many rare materials <http://www.acadlib.lv/e/fondi>

Fundamental Music Collections:

Jurjāns, Andrejs, Latviju tautas mūzikas materiāli (Materials of Latvian Folk Music), vols. 1-6. Rīga: Grothuss, 1894- 1926.

Melngailis, Emīlis, Latviešu mūzikas folkloras materiāli (Materials of Latvian Musical Folklore), vols. 1 –3 (Rīga: Latv. Valsts izd. 1951-53).

Rinks, Johanna and Jānis Osis. 1934-6. Latvju tautas dejas (Latvian Folk Dances). 4 vols. Rīga: Valters un Rapa, 1934-6.

Siliņa, Elza. 1939. Latviešu deja (Latvian Dance.) Rīga: Latviešu folkloras krātuve, 1939.

Sneibe, Zaiga, "Godubalss latviešu folklorā: struktūra un funkcijas (Ceremonial Voice in Latvian Folklore: Structure and Functions)," Latvijas PSR Zinātņu Akadēmijas Vēstis 10 (1989), 60--67.

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Vītoliņš, Jēkabs, Bērnu dziesmu cikls. Bēru dziesmas (Children’s Song Cycle. Funeral Songs). Rīga: Zinātne, 1971.

_____.Darba dziesmas (Work Songs). Riga: Latvijas Valsts izdevniecība, 1958.

_____.Gadskārtu ieražu dziesmas (Calendar Ritual Songs). Rīga: Zinātne, 1973.

_____.Kāzu dziesmas (Wedding Songs). Rīga: Zinaātne 1968.

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_____.Precību dziesmas (Matchmaking Songs). Rīga: Zinātne, 1986.

Vītoliņš, J. and Lija Krasinska, Latviešu mūzikas vēsture (History of Latvian Music). RĪga: Liesma, 1972

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_____. “Šī pasaule un viņas saule,” Trimdas Skola, No. 22 (1962). Solna, Sweden.

Zinkevičs, Zigms, “Par latviešu valodas cilmi,” Latvijas Zinātņu Akadēmijas Vēstis A 4/5 (1996): 29-32. Discusses formation of Latvian literary language from archaic Latgalian quite different from modern Latgalian, with archaic Zemgalian substratum.

Personal (Electronic) Communication:

Ābele, Ausma – Madona, Latvia, (folklore)

Anonymous male – outside Latvia

Bērziņš, Ansis Ataols, Latvia, “folkloristi” sysop

Bērziņš, Zigis – Canada (general)

Etter, Dan (deceased 2000) – U.S.A.

Grasis, Austris (1992) – Germany, ethnomusicologist

Keišs, Oskars – Latvia, ecobiology student

Lācis, Indulis – U.S.A. (general)

Jurika, Daina Dr. – Latvia, folklorist

Liepkalns, Uldis – Latvia, artist

Mežulis, Pēteris – Latvia, journalist

Muktupāvels, Valdis Dr. – Latvia, ethnomusicologist

Pīgozne, Ieva – Latvia, folklorist

Ragze, Viesturs – Latvia, (technical, general)

Rutens, Elizabete – U.S.A., (business)

Skrule, Vija – Latvia, folklorist

Valdmanis, Ilze – U.S.A., (poetry)

Vasiļevskis, Māris Jānis – Latvia (linguistics)

Vizbulis, Oskars – Latvia, journalist

Yang, Lihui – China, graduate student

Žagariņš, Juris Dr. – U.S.A. (physics, poetry)

Zariņš, Aivars – Madona, Latvia, folklorist

Zvaigznīte, Vents – Latvia, (religion)

Audiovisual resources

Bolta eimu. Biruta Ozoliņa singer. Upe Recording Co., 1999.

Dūdas Latvijā (Bagpipes in Latvia). Produced by Valdis and Māris Muktupāvels. Upe Recording Co., 2000.

Latviešu danči. (Latvian Dances). Produced by Māris Muktupāvels. Upe Recording Co., 1999.

Lettonie. Musiques des rites solaires. INEDIT, Maison des Cultures du Monde, Valdis Muktupāvels. 1993. Micrec W260062.

Pagānu gadagrāmata (Pagan calendar). Uģis Prauliņš. AKKA/LAA. Upe Recording Co., 1999.

Saules meita (Daughter of the Sun). Produced by Ilģi and Gatis Gaujnieks. Upe Recording Co., 1998.

Seasonal Songs of Latvia. Beyond the River. Compilation. Emi Records, 1998.

Sēju vēju (Sowing in the Wind). Iļģi ensemble. Upe Recording Co., 2000.

Suitu sievas Lejaskurzeme (Women of the Suiti Region). Produced by Aivars Hermanis. Annemarie Classics, 1997.

Unblocked. Music of Eastern Europe. Ellipsis Arts. Roslyn, New York, 1997

Voix des Pays Baltes. Chants traditionnels de Lettonie, Lituanie, Estonie. Documents d'archives. INEDIT, Maison des Cultures du Monde, Gita Lancere. 1994. W 260055.

520

HISTORICAL LATVIAN RITUAL INSULT SONG WARRING

“APDZIEDĀŠANĀS”

Aija Veldre Beldavs

Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial

Rhythms of Nature, Humans and the Cosmos

B. Social organization

Jāņu nakti negulēju, Sav’ telīti sargādama: Jāņu nakti raganiņas Pulcēties pulcējās.

On Midsummer night I did not sleep, guarding my calf:

That Midsummer songs continue to be generated is illustrated by entries in 2001on Bērziņš’s folklore site <http://www.svetki.lv/jaanji/ligodz.htm>:

Jāņu māte sieru sēja Jāņu tēvs to izbrāķēja

Midsummer mother made the cheese wheel.

The song can be interpreted as a double entendre.

B. Wedding as the Great Human Holiday

Unlike apdziedāt, which is not really negative since the desired outcome is positive, the term aprunāt (lit. to talk about) seems to be entirely negative, meaning to put down or gossip about. It is a primary complaint of girls against boys,

I will poke out the nostrils of the lads

Characterization of Daina-world Mythology

Mother cult

Katra kalna galiņā. Zied ābele pret ābeli

Dzied māsiņa pret māsiņu Katra kunga novadā. (LD 251)

Recruitment of Regional Music for National Identity

B. Bee-Women Making Ritual Connections

Bite, bite, mērga, mērga Ar dunduru strīdējās;

Iekam sila sirsenīts Brūnus svārkus šūdināja.

The hornet of the pines was sewing a brown coat.

Kur, bitītes, jūs ietit, Liela drūzma dziedādam'?

We are going to pour a path of wax. The beekeeper’s daughter is being taken (on her wedding journey).

C. Incantations as Weaving and Anti-Weaving

If there is anything other than a display of virtuosity between two verbally gifted role players, the net audience doesn’t know it. There is no communal culture to infer other than that of limerick lovers using an old art form with contemporary sensibility to enjoy erotic flyting.

Purpose

With a bee

Dialogue with history

Self-irony

Mock aggression

Tit for Tat

Sarcasm

B. Ritual Insulting Performance

Many of the songs involve accusations that the other side is lacking in songs or their proper delivery technique:

Proactive Magic

Dying and reborn gods and sacrifice

Magical thinking by analogy

One and the Many

Song Creation Process

B. Passive-Aggressive Humor, Historical Background

The Other

The Contest

Carnival aspects

Halves, sides, and their presencing

Dievs ar Laimi manis dēļ Stāv lielā ienaidā:

Dievs man deva maizes zemi, Laime liedza arājiņu. (LD 9459)

God gave me land for bread, Laima denied me a ploughman.

Dual organization

D. Were Werewolves and Witches Contesting Magic User Societies?

Puhvel, Jaan, "The Baltic Pantheon," in A. Ziedonis & others, eds., Baltic Literature and Linguistics (Publications of the AABS, 4). Columbus, 1973, 99‑108.

Jāņu nakti negulēju, Sav’ telīti sargādama:
Jāņu nakti raganiņas Pulcēties pulcējās.

Jāņu māte sieru sēja
Jāņu tēvs to izbrāķēja