Perhaps few of the younger generation will be able to explain, or at least guess, what a mare is. The word fell out of everyday language. Older people associate this term mainly with the concept of “bachelor”, but its meaning is much broader.
Ambiguous term
The word has many synonyms. This is a burrower and farm laborer, day laborer and sharecropper, worker and bachelor, as well as a loner, unmarried person, not settled, not a master, not even a monk and proletarian. Summarizing all the synonyms, one can answer the question of what a mare is. This is a man who has no stake or yard. Of course, there is no wife either. A bachelor is not an exact synonym. The term "bean" has a more tragic connotation. First of all, this is not just a lonely person, but rather a person who is not needed and not interesting, destitute and impoverished (the rich can often buy interest in themselves), deeply unhappy at an advanced age, when nothing can improve his fate.
Display themes in literature and art
Such a person was painted by V. G. Perov. A small picture is called “Bobyl Guitarist”. This destitute person has no illusions and hopes. A wretched man with a fixed gaze, a man pressed down by life, nobody needs him in this world. On it, even though worn, but boots and a casing, he can afford some wine, he plays music. And still, he is insanely sorry. And far from one work is dedicated to outcast people. Sergei Yesenin has a heart-rending story "Bobyl and Buddy." Fans of Sergey Lemeshev’s work are familiar with “Song of the Bobble” from his repertoire, which begins with the words “Neither a stake nor a yard”.
Estate
So what is a mare? A pathetic lonely man? And that too. But this term, rooted in the distant past (the first mention refers to 1500), refers to a certain variety of peasants. The housekeepers, bobbers, small-breasted children, and kutniks were called landless or low-land representatives of this estate. Due to absolute poverty, the beans had to be hired by the owner for food. These people were so poor that at one time they were not even taxed and were called so-called tax-free, tax-free. But already in 1631, wanders who had their own yard began to be attracted to certain monetary and labor duties. And from 1679, such beings began to be taxed and, thus, caught up with the peasants. In this case, the question of what a mare is can be answered as follows: that this is a person forced to engage in wage labor.
According to one version, the first legumes appeared at the end of the 15th century in Moscow. This term was called contracted servants. Their situation was much worse than that of people who were in a bonded dependence on the owner, because the Bobil served as a service to the owner, lost all rights, and besides, he was also obliged to pay some taxes (most often it was a tax on ransom, payment for one’s freedom). With a complete lack of money and the impossibility of making it worse, you can’t think of it.
Goal like a falcon
No matter how many interpretations of the word, the essence is the same: those who were called the bean were the poorest people in Russia. As noted above, for the first time this term appeared in the first half of the XVI century. Moscow scribes began to use this word along with "landlords" and "uncultivated people." All these names mean people who do not have their own lands. They were artisans and industrial people: blacksmiths and seamstresses, kalachniks, shoemakers, shepherds. Some censuses include zemstvo clerks and taverns. Poor widows are also counted among the nomads.
Everyone pays taxes
As already noted, those who were called bobbles were taxed, like the peasants, like everyone else in Russia. They paid both Jamaican and noticeable money (types of taxes), but taxes were levied on them differently. If taxes were taken from peasants for sokhams (a unit of taxation in Russia from the 13th to 17th centuries), then they were taken from farmers and unplaced people for stomachs, crafts and yards. So, according to the “Hundredth” (scribe, or account book) of 1627, taxes were taken from the peasants on arable land and land, and on a harvest - according to crafts and stomachs. In these books, the meaning of the word "bearer" is a legal term that defines which estate belongs to the person from whom taxes are levied.
Dark spots in history
And here, naturally, the question arises as to why the clear and understandable terms “landowners” or “uncowed people” in the 16th century began to be replaced by the obscure word “bobyl”. There is a lot of obscurity here, and nowhere in the documents does it indicate why this happened. For the most part, “uncowed people” were not loners, they had families, sometimes they were wealthier than peasants, which was never observed for mares. The city representatives of this group went to the service, but the peasant-peasants had nothing. If they took the land for rent, it was only for cultivation, but they never set up yards on it. Most often, peasant wanders lived at the monasteries, again they cultivated the land of others and still paid some taxes. It must be said that with the advent of corvee in the 17th century and the attachment of peasants, the latter are now fully equaled in powerlessness with the mare.
Far and forgotten
To become a mare, it was necessary to write a "mare's lap record", according to which a person lost his rights and received only duties for food and some clothes. Only very poor people agreed to such conditions, because in fact they were hired into slavery. And in this case, the meaning of the word "bean" completely coincides with the meaning of the word "proletarian": they both have nothing to lose but their chains.
Indeed, the mare is a term that has more than one meaning, if you delve into the essence of the matter. For the modern generation, striving for absolute freedom, even the word "bachelor" seems wild, what kind of a trip there is. This is if we consider the term in this meaning. And very few people will answer the question of how a peasant who does not have a land allotment is called in one word.
Interestingly, the etymology of the term is also not clear. There are many options, but the one that connects the origin of the word with “beans” - a symbol of deep poverty, seems more plausible. “Staying on the Beans” means losing everything.