There are not many ways to spend free time that have survived from antiquity to the present day. As the ancient Romans went to their baths not only for cleanliness, but also for communication, so modern residents of cities and villages go there not only for a good steam, but also for a good conversation. The bathhouse, one might say, is not so much aristocratic as a democratic pastime. That is why all the traditions have been preserved in folklore - in sayings and proverbs about the bathhouse. Through folklore, accurate and accurate observations related to the bathhouse have been transmitted through the centuries.
A bit of history
If now the bathhouse in most cases is perceived as a kind of "leisure center" in which you can spend your free evening with friends, talk "for life", have a drink, then not too long ago a trip to the bathhouse was not so much a festive event as an everyday one. When the inhabitants of megacities were not yet spoiled by the housing issue and had in the communal apartments one bath for several families, a trip to the city bathhouse was forced. In any weather, with children and with brooms, Leningraders and Muscovites sent from their densely populated apartments to the baths: this was already becoming a kind of ritual that many retained, having moved to separate apartments with all amenities. Residents of communal apartments, which are still in Moscow and St. Petersburg, continue to go to baths.
Quite a lot of fantastic ideas among contemporaries exist about baths in villages in which Russian men steamed even before the revolution. In fact, only prosperous peasants had their own baths; for many, the bathhouse was only a “transshipment point” that they used twice in their lives to enter and leave this world. According to popular belief, the bathhouse was an unclean place, the woman was considered the same while waiting for the child, therefore, having removed the cross from the woman in labor, she was sent to give birth to the bathhouse. The funeral ritual was also held in the bathhouse: the deceased was taken there in preparation for a trip to another world. In order to just wash, the premises were regularly used by units. Most peasants washed themselves in their spacious stoves in the house where they lived.
The Varangians, who brought the tradition to wash in baths to Russia, did not see the desire of the locals to continue it. Later, baths in the villages became a sign of wealth of the family, it became even prestigious to have it. Before the revolution, workers in cities washed themselves in production baths, all the rest in public baths, which for the most part did not have a very good reputation.
Why baths are needed: sayings meet
Sayings about the bathhouse convey all its possibilities: from a hobby club to performing mystical fortune-telling, from a sanatorium where one goes for health, to a place of romantic meetings. These sayings can be divided into two groups - serious and cool. First, the people consolidated those ideas about the bathhouse, which are associated with sacred moments in a person’s life - with his birth, marriage and death.
Serious sayings about the bath even showed a tendency to perceive the place where the ritual takes place, as a living and very close being who cares about the person, heals his body and soul.
The bathhouse is the second mother: it will open the bones, it will correct the whole thing!
Of course, no one associated the bathhouse with the church, but salvation of the soul, deliverance from sins, judging by the sayings that have reached us, is an important consequence of visiting it.
Sayings and proverbs about the bathhouse, which makes a person not only cleaner, but also better, have also reached our time in large numbers.
The twin spirit is the holy spirit.
The bath will wash away all sins.
Fragrant steam not only the body, but also heals the soul.
The subordination that has always existed in society in the bathhouse has traditionally been rejected in favor of universal equality.
There are no generals in the bathhouse.
The only power that was recognized in the bathhouse was the broom.
Broom in the bath all over the head.
Sayings about the bath devoted to the attributes of bathing pastime occupy an important part of the folklore heritage. They are met in both a gang and a tub, but still the broom takes the first place in the number of references.
Broom in the bath mister.
Broom in the bathhouse to the boss.
A bath without a broom is like a flower bed without flowers.
Without a broom, the bath does not soar, and the steam does not fry.
In the bath, a broom is more expensive than money.
A bath without a broom, that a samovar without a pipe.
Bath broom and king over, since the king is steamed.
The broom is in the bathhouse, and the poker is in the stove.
A small percentage of all are sayings about the bath, which refer to the negative consequences of bath procedures, as well as the futility of using the bath to solve problems that need to be solved in another way.
Wash yourself, even if you wipe your skin, but you won’t get whiter water.
And in the bath the sore sits down.
Bring a scratch from the bath.
You cannot crack from the mud; you cannot rise from the purity.
He took out of the bath (about a disease of unknown origin).
He walked to the bathhouse on his feet, and from the bathhouse to logs.
You won’t be full of ferry.
You often take a steam bath in the bathhouse - you’ll rather grow old.
From all ailment
Many proverbs are connected with the topic of health, which miraculously appears even among the frail and infirm in the bath. If you need to overcome a cold or just cheer up, they also pick up a broom. To achieve a therapeutic effect, you need to observe a number of taboos in the bath: do not speak loudly, do not swear, so as not to anger the banner. You need to steam only with your broom, so as not to take on someone else's illness. And to get rid of your own, pronounce the right words, for example:
Water is water, you are my queen!
You, water, praise from me, but to me - health!
Unlike proverbs, which are complete complete statements with a certain morality that going to the bathhouse is good and useful, sayings are separate stable phrases that make sense only in the bathing context. Cool sayings about the bathhouse were originally part of the rituals, but now they are used as a tribute to tradition, as a game element of the bathhouse show. "Like water from a goose, so is thinness from you," they say when they pour water from a tub in a bathhouse. Initially, it was a healer spell, but now it is a saying.
Bath attributes in Russian phraseological units
Many persistent phrases are based on bath attributes. Despite the fact that these phraseological units are used to comment on other situations that are not related to the bathhouse, initially in the direct sense their components were used in the bathhouse discourse. For example, they are not going to soar with a broom when they threaten to “ask for a bath” - this well-known expression matters to make someone a serious spree. Even in the well-known gloomy proverb “Lucky as a drowned man”, the bathing element was originally present: “Lucky as a Saturday drowned man - there is no need to heat the bath”. Saturday - it was traditionally a bathing day: only death could save the stoker from his duties - this was the original culturological meaning of the saying.
The absurd situation on the topic of visiting the bath formed the basis of another phraseology: "After the bath, wash the knees again." Of course, it is not a question of a clean person: they say that who, by virtue of habit, does something that makes no sense. Another saying used to be related to the bathhouse, but then it gained universal meaning for all situations in which witnesses of the same event tell different things about it: “From the same bathhouse, let alone news”.
In the works of Russian classics, there are also situations in which characters use sayings about the bathhouse. So, in the story of N. Uspensky “In his own business” by Prokhor Ilyich, who is returning from the bath, merchants at each shop congratulate them on a light steam. Of bathing phraseologisms, this is the most famous today, thanks to the cult Soviet film E. Ryazanov.