MARRIAGE AMONG THE EARLY SLAVS[1]
THE earliest evidence which we possess as to the social relations of the Eastern Slavs, whose confederacy was the beginning of the Russian State, is contained in the so-called Chronicle of Nestor. Nestor is supposed to have been a Russian monk of the eleventh century.
Contrasting the mode of life of the most civilised Slavonic nations, the Polians, who were established on the banks of the Dnieper, with that of the more barbarous tribes of Russia, Nestor, or perhaps it is better to say, the unknown author of the Chronicle which bears this name, states as follows (I translate literally): “Each tribe had its own customs, and the laws of its forefathers and its own traditions, each its own manner of life (nrav). The Polians had the customs of their fathers, customs mild and peaceful (tichi); they showed a kind of reserve (stidenie) towards the daughters of their sons and towards their sisters, towards their mothers and their parents, towards the mothers of their wives, and towards the brothers of their husbands; to all of the persons named they showed great reserve. Amongst them the bridegroom did not go to seek his bride; she was taken to him in the evening, and the following morning they brought what was given for her.”
“Another Slavonic tribe, the Drevlians,” according to the same chronicler, “lived like beasts; they killed one another, they fed on things unclean; no marriage took place amongst them, but they captured young girls on the banks of rivers.”
- ↑ One of the Ilchester Lectures delivered before the University of Oxford.
