In the Kirov region, a peculiar dialect of Vyatichi has been preserved. Some words are hard to understand without translation. Tired, a Kirov resident can joke: "I am only fit for dominos now." An uninitiated person, recognizing the root "home", may think of a comfortable home. But the joker will explain that the domino is a coffin. Made of wood, like a hut.
In addition to this value, there is another obsolete one. So-called ritual constructions installed on high props. They are found in the villages of the Finno-Ugric tribes.
Column - what is it?
"Golbets" is another word of the Kirovites. This is the name of the subfloor where winter supplies are stored. Entrance to the drum is usually done by carving a hole in the kitchen floor. Sometimes they make another hole in the room. It is already smaller and a person will not crawl into it. Vegetables (potatoes, carrots, beets) are poured into it. Under the hole there are wooden boxes, and the crop is immediately stored in place. Before filling apples, the sausage is whitened with lime so that the rot of the fruit does not spread. Therefore, the ceiling in it is white. It also keeps floorboards from rotting.
But this word has another meaning. So in Komi they call pre-Christian funeral posts installed on graves. Since the sixteenth century, Old Believers have been living in the village of Ust-Tsilma on Pechora. They carefully guard their traditions and especially do not extend about them. But tourists are not forbidden to visit the cemetery, although the locals will warn that you can’t go there.
In the cemetery there are modern crosses with gable roofs and ancient columns also with roofs. A window was hollowed out in a pillar where food was brought and laid to appease the dead.
At this cemetery there is a domino - this is a crypt made of logs where self-immolators lie. There was also such a fact in the life of the village - several families burned alive, protesting against the new orders of the Synod. They are revered as martyrs.
The ancient custom of the Finno-Ugric tribes
The Museum of Moscow has an unusual exhibit, very similar to a domino. This is the "house of the dead," as it was called. It was found during excavations near Moscow near Zvenigorod. The burial ground is dated 750 AD. At that time, the Finno-Ugric peoples lived here, the ancestors of the tribes of Meri and Vesi. Burnt remains of people of different ages were found in such log cabins. It is believed that the corpses were burned in a place remote from the settlement (cremation on the side) and transferred to a wooden crypt, which stood in a dense forest.
The crypt is a log house about two meters high, with no windows, but with a fireplace at the entrance. Apparently for ritual cooking. This custom - to bury in a wooden crypt - was common throughout Europe and partly in Asia. Such dominas were placed on poles and smoked with smoke, this prevented decay and scared off insects.
Slavic burial
Several types of Slavic burials were discovered - mostly deepened dominos. These are log cabins with a pit filled with coal, walls black from fire and the remains of the dead, who were cremated. Children's burials were never cremated and rested on elevated soil. They relate to the late Slavic period.
The appearance of dominoes varies. There are houses of the dead at ground level, into which a concave entrance leads. There are barrows standing on poles and having a rectangular base. In one of the graves found things dated 1150. This allows us to conclude that for the Slavs domovina was the usual way of burial.
Baba Yaga's Hut
From childhood, everyone remembers the description of Baba Yaga's dwelling: a hut without windows and doors, on chicken legs (fumigated with smoke, not chicken). This is a domino, a wooden coffin. There is little space in it - the nose has grown into the ceiling. When the Slavs came to the lands of the Finno-Ugric peoples, they saw such houses in the forests. It has become food for fairy tales and legends. In fact, there was nothing to fear - no one lived in the house. Finnish houses of the dead were placed on poles, but the more southern tribes did not. The essence of this does not change.
The presence of a hearth at the entrance suggested that all those buried in the house were led through the fire. Hence the tales of the desire of Baba Yaga to fry the living person who came.
A written source has survived - the story of the beginning of the settlement of Moscow. It contains a message about the prince hiding from the sons of the boyar Kuchka. In the thicket of the forest, he found a log house with the burial of a person and took refuge in it.
How did the meaning of the word
Translated from Ukrainian, "domino" means a coffin in its modern sense - a wooden box for the deceased. In Belarusian, the word is interpreted similarly. In Serbia, the homeland is called the homeland. In Bosnia too.
Previously, the domino was made from a deck. Hollowed out a place for the dead. Now the coffin is being hammered together from the boards. The burial method has also changed. If you had a log house before, now they don’t. Monuments are erected on the graves. Only in some places has the custom still been preserved of placing tall wooden crosses with a window for offerings. But even in the village of Old Believers, plates are used for this, which are left on the graves.
Time passes, people change, their customs undergo a transformation. Some completely disappear, leaving only a trace in fairy tales. Some are preserved to this day. All of this is history.
Conclusion
There are many words denoting a person in a coffin, most of them figurative. Numerous studies and excavations allow us to better understand the history of our native places.