Unlived Life: The Death and Funeral of a Child in Slavic Traditional Culture

Abstract

This ethnolinguistic study based on the analysis of the archival and field data from various Slavic traditions gives an account of the reasons, meaning, and folk comprehension of untimely death – that of a child. Such a tragic event is seen as a result of intricate reasons: God’s will, the fate, the verdict of the Fates, parents’ ban on the rules, and lack of veneration of the saints, black magic, the evil eye, curse, etc. The amalgamation of Christian views and the pre-Christian perception of early death brings about a combination of notions that seem to be impossible, even more since fatalism comes along with the simultaneous assurance that an early death can be averted with the help of rites and magic acts performed on a newborn baby. Magic programming of a baby’s longevity, which starts with the conception and goes through the delivery and postpartum period, various signs, omens, fortune-telling, and prophetic dreams are scrutinized in the first part of the article. Further on the specifics of the funeral of a baby are analysed, with special attention paid to the magic means to separate the baby from the mother and to prevent the death of other children. The types of commemoration and the obstacles of a baby’s fate in the other world are also investigated in terms of reflecting the behaviour of the deceased child’s relatives. To conclude, the author depicts the stability of some archaic beliefs which one can observe at a child’s funeral, and commemorative practices nowadays.