The Dream. Notes
The izbá, or hut, always has a dvor or courtyard, access to which is gained through double gates as well as through a postern. Often the hut is raised by a flight of steps from the level of the courtyard.
The izbá may have a cooling room in which to rest, so as to avoid the sudden change of air from the heated inner room; it is also a living room in the summer. Outside the dvor against the fence there is a bench (lávka), on which the family sits in the summer. The hut is made of logs, the fence of boards.
Between the rafters and the sloped roof is the loft (cherdák), into which a ladder leads.
Inside the hut is that essential and central feature of Russian peasant life, the stove, which occupies one side of a wall. In front against it three long implements stand, the poker, broom and shovel. The oven rests on a brick or tile foundation, about eighteen inches high, with a semicircular hollow space below. The top of the stove is used for a sleeping bench (poláty) for the old folk or the honoured guest. In larger houses there may be a lezhán'ka or heating stove, used as a sleeping sofa.
The bath-house is separate from the hut, and contains a flight of steps for different degrees of heat, obtained from white-hot stones on which water is flung. This is only found in better-class houses. In villages there is a general bath-house to which the peasants go once a week.
Every corner in the izbá has its particular name. There is the great corner, where the Ikon stands, the upper corner near the door, and the stove corner opposite to the doors of the stove.
The fence is made of boards or sticks or stumps.
Long thin laths are stuck on to an iron spike, and lit; a pail of water is placed below into which the cinders fall; these lamps must be renewed as they burn down, and the charred ends swept up.
Up to very recent times, patriarchal usages obtained through Russia, and married sons resided in the father's house.
This particular story portrays some of the personifications and allegorizings of the common acts of life; all of which have their appropriate blessing or grace. There are a number of tales of
