Old-time children's musical folklore: something interesting from the life of our distant ancestors

In order to understand the origin and meaning of children's musical folklore, one needs to know the peculiarities of the Slavic worldview.

At a time when this layer of oral folk art was actively formed, our ancestors adhered to pagan worship and led an agricultural way of life. These two features gave rise to a peculiar attitude to life and a keen view of nature, within which culture was formed.

Genres of this type of creativity

First you need to decide what makes children's music folklore. Firstly, lullabies: they were sung from the very first hours of the baby’s life. Further - pestles, they became relevant when the child was already beginning to respond to the speech of an adult and made the first attempts at reciprocal communication. The most famous: "Forty-crow", "Ladushki", "Three wells".

Later, the children began to sing small songs with funny content - the so-called rhymes. Close to them in meaning and melodious talesIn which everything was turned upside down, it was very much amusing the growing up baby. Why did our ancestors invent all this? What goals were pursued by creating Russian children's music folklore? Now and try to figure it out.

The sacred meaning of oral folk art for children

The Slavs who created this layer of folk culture were people of the pagan worldview. For them, everything in nature had a soul and was divided into good and bad. Good spirits helped, created coziness and happiness in the house, contributed to the growth of the household. Bad spirits, on the other hand, discarded and tried to reduce all efforts to zero. First of all, they had to be appeased, and the second - to deceive.

A child who has just come into the world was considered to be a frontier being: yes, he is here, next to his mother and father, but at any moment can go back. Evil spirits were constantly around him, wanting to drag the kid to their kingdom. The first thing was to protect the child, to consolidate in our world. Lullabies in this regard served to protect sleep, they were a kind of conspiracy against evil, from all the bad things that attempted to the newborn. Pestlets, folded in a special way and based on excellent knowledge of such points of the body that set the whole body in a healthy way, served to root the child in this world.

Nebylitsy and all sorts of jokes, built on absurdities, had to deceive impure forces, put it into a dead end. That is why in such works everything is awry, not like in reality. In a word, all the children's musical folklore was aimed at leaving the child here, not to allow evil spirits to take possession of them.

Educational and aesthetic value of folk culture for children

Naturally, all genres of oral folk art for the younger generation also had an educational meaning, and aesthetics were also not without. First of all, they have a very clear, melodious rhythm, which allows the child to develop a musical ear, and also adjusts it to harmonious relations with the outside world. In addition, children's musical folklore has an entertaining meaning: in a fun and amusing form, he systematizes the little man’s knowledge about the outside world, about people's relationships and their own place in it.

Thus, this huge layer of Russian folk art had not only sacral, but also pragmatic significance and was directed solely at the child. Our ancestors looked at the world a little differently than modern people and created their own unique culture, which no other nation has.

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