Svodbinė rėda: mainų mazgas
ENThe article investigates the theme and problematics of exchange as revealed in texts about the peasant community in Lithuania from the 16th to the first half of the 20th century, which describe traditional peasant weddings. It also looks at ethnographer and historian research on this topic, as well as older testimonies about Prussian and Latvian traditional weddings. This is the first part of the article, with the continuation in the next issue of the journal.The essence of marriage consists in the change of a womans place and status in the polycentric social field, the transition from one family to another, and the transformation from daughter to wife. The article attempts to place the traditional Lithuanian peasant wedding ritual in the context of the three types of exchanges that establish and protect sociality: gift-giving, sale-purchase, and abduction-ransom. The problematic “knot” is that the “real” basis of marriage is a rational and pragmatic agreement between the families of the young man and the young woman, achieved through scrupulous negotiation. In contrast, the rich corpus of songs based on which the wedding is reconstructed playfully and voyeuristically presents it as a struggle between two “regiments” the brides kidnapping, the theft, the ransoming, and reconciliation. The cross-gifting of gifts anchors all this to all participants in the wedding and the excessive feasting at every stage of the wedding. At the same time, the specific characteristic of the wedding game-play, the “wedding rėda,” becomes apparent: the fictional actions and words are accompanied by a real circulation of goods and feasts, which consolidates the status of each participant in the wedding, and their relationship to the other persons in this community.
