Folkways Culture of Bilokurakynshchyna: A Local Variation of the Slobozhanshchyna Culture

Author

Vikhrova Tetiana – a head of Ethnography Department of the Luhansk Regional Local History Museum (2000 to 2014)

Folkways Culture of Bilokurakynshchyna: A Local Variation of the Slobozhanshchyna Culture

Abstract

Bilokurakyne District is located in the northern part of Luhansk Region and appertains to the historical-ethnographic region of Sloboganshyna being its south-eastern variation. The area has attracted attention of scholars only in recent time, therefore the recording of the Bilokurakynshchyna folkways culture continues to be of scientific significance.

The settlement of Bilokurakynshchyna started in the XVIIIth century. The major part of population was constituted by Ukrainians accompanied with a small portion of neighbouring Russian peasants. Nowadays, the area’s ethnic structure is the same.

The folk architecture of Bilokurakynshchyna is characterized by the use of various materials (clay, marl, timber: oaks, pines, and willows). The situation was determined by natural peculiarities of the area.

Among the elements of traditional costumes present on the lands, the most numerous in museum collections are chemises. They are designed in a traditional way, being diversely ornamented due to specificity of immigration inflows. Kersetkas (female sleeveless jackets) of Bilokurakynshchyna also have their design features. Traditional garment finally went out of use in the 1950s. Interesting findings of Bilokurakynshchyna are dukachi-khrestovyky (female coin-shaped adornments), modelled after silver roubles and fifty-copeck pieces of the XVIIIth century, as well as a dukach with the image of St. Paraskeva Friday.

Towels of Bilokurakynshchyna available from the collections of Luhansk Regional and Bilokurakyne District Local History Museums are mostly ornamented with album floristic patterns within bichromatic red-black gamut, with lacy stripes and laces, which is typical of towels of Slobozhanshchyna and Middle Dnipro Lands in the early XXth century. The ritual function of towels had persisted by the 1950s.

In the course of the early to mid-XXth century, the evolution of familial and calendar rituals became more intensive towards both the simpification of structure and the lowering of semiotic status of ritual actions and their attributes.

A traditional form was mostly retained by bridal rites related to a significant change in the social status of a person and a considerable psychological weight. By the mid-XXth century, on the territory of the area under consideration preserved were the main components of calendar rituals. The most steady were the rites, corresponded to contemparary communicational forms, namely regale, giving presents to children, and collective amusements.

Keywords

Slobozhanshchyna, Bilokurakynshchyna, traditions, architecture of buildings, chemises, towels, embroidery, rituals.

References

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