Bathhouse

The maintenance of personal hygiene for most peasants was carried out primarily through visits to the bathhouse. The baths were heated once a week, and for the whole peasant family it was a special day — almost a holiday, it was expected. The bath day was Saturday, there was no strict prohibition to heat the bathhouse on another day of the week, except Sundays and church holidays. The ban on visiting the bathhouse on Sundays was especially strictly observed by the Old Believers.

Baths were built on the outskirts of a peasant estate — on the banks of a river or lake, in a vegetable garden. This was explained by traditional ideas about the bathhouse as an unclean place and was dictated by fire safety.

In rural areas, the ancient custom of building baths along the banks of rivers and lakes was replaced at the end of the XIX century by the construction of baths in a single complex with a house, sheds and a stable.

The bath was considered an exceptional remedy for the treatment of colds not only among Russians, but also among the Tatar population. However, the bathhouse was used not only for hygienic purposes. Ethnographers have recorded many examples when baths were used for divination, "love spell", getting rid of "spoilage". Peasant women gave birth to children in the baths, and skin and colds were treated in them.

Black bathhouse. White Bathhouse

The black bathhouse and the white bathhouse were popular. Their main difference is that the bathhouse has a white chimney that removes soot and smoke outside. Such a bathhouse is heated from an iron stove.

There is no pipe in the black bathhouse. Smoke and heat do not escape into the pipe, but spread through the bath, warming the walls, floor and ceiling. In the steam room there is a stove (made of stones). When the steam room and the stones are thoroughly heated, the bath is ventilated through a reel or an open door. Soot from the walls in such a bath is washed off with water, although the boards turn black after several furnaces.

A dressing room is attached to the bathhouse, where they leave their clothes and rest after the bath, although they may not do a black dressing room to the bathhouse.

Beliefs and superstitions related to the bath

The peasants have long considered the bathhouse to be an unclean place, so that evil spirits settle in it, but everyone was obliged to go to the bathhouse. Those who did not go to the bathhouse were not considered kind people.

They did not go to the bathhouse with the cross; it was removed and left in houses. The women did the same before mopping the floors. Everything from which they wash is considered unclean: basins, tubs, tubs, gangs and buckets in baths.

It is customary to wash in three shifts in the bathhouse. You can not drink water prepared for washing in the bath, even if it is clean. The water from the washbasin is also considered unclean. You can’t cook or bake anything in the bathhouse.

You can not knock or speak loudly in the bathhouse, otherwise the bannik will get angry and scare you. After leaving the bathhouse, its owner had to be thanked.

They said about the disease, which came from nowhere, "I took it out of the bathhouse."

On Agrafena-kupalnitsa (July 6 / June 23), they steamed in baths with medicinal herbs. From that day on, they began to prepare brooms. Brooms were used by girls in fortune-telling — they were thrown from the bathhouse: where the commander points, the groom lives there.

The bathhouse is an unclean place, although it is associated with washing. A real owner will never put a house on the site of a burned-out bathhouse: then the bugs will overcome, then the mouse will gnaw all the belongings, and then wait for a new fire.

There are no icons broadcast in the bathhouse and they do not go there with a cross. To heat the bathhouse, they needed to ask the permission of the bannik. After washing, people should leave water, soap and a broom. Leaving the bathhouse, the bannik should be thanked.