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On 19th of March 2007, at 4 p.m will be opened ...
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 On 19th of March 2007, at 4 p.m will be opened an ethnographic exposition “The Birth of Bread and the Winter Evenings of Bulgarians”. The exposition is arranged in the “Strimon” hall of the Kyustendil Regional History Museum (across Velbuzhd hotel).
The exhibition interprets several agricultural stages of “the birth of bread”, labour and gaiety of Bulgarians during working-bee (sedianka). It comprises of rich rites, magic rituals, where “intimate unity pulsates” between labour and festivity. Some of the rites reveal the eternal human fight with nature, his scare of hailstorms, fires, long lasting drought, etc. That is why man makes his meteorological forecasts on the base of different signs: sun, rainbow, moon, stars, domestic animals and plants behavior, etc. In the exhibition this moment is shown by a nook where is represented a part of nature. The rite “Butterfly”, which is quite interesting and is implemented to provoke rain, is exposed.
There can be seen ritual actions during harvest - making a plait of the biggest wheat ears with a red thread, so called “wheat beard - and such ones during threshing: the pillar at the threshing floor is adorned with basil; a red plumage cook is butchered; water is forbidden to be drank to prevent wheat from going musty; in Kyustendil region the pillar is adorned with a white shirt in order flour to be white; a woman who is dirty is not allowed in the threshing-floor; in some places young men jump over the bowl and foretell it to be bigger in the next year.
Other interesting moment presented in the exhibition is the working-bee (sedianka), a place where maids and swains meet each other and the swain chooses his future wife. The maids sing songs while they are working some female activities and the swains are chatting and enjoying themselves. |
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© Regional Historical Museum “Academician Yordan Ivanov”, Kyustendil - 2004-2006
