Babjak 3

1 (VZh)       [Did you celebrate St. George’s Day?]

2 (b) [0:02]      We used to celebrate St. George's day here in the village.

3 (b) [0:05]      [When] I [was] a young man, we bachelors [together with] the local unmarried girls

4 (b) [0:07]      celebrated it. All the young people celebrated it. They gathered together.

5 (b) [0:10]      So what was St. George's day like here? On the day after St. George's day –

6 (b) [0:14]      St. George's day is on the 6th [of May], isn't it? So on the evening of the 5th,

7 (b) [0:18]      the girls gather flowers – geraniums and primroses, [things that grow

8 (b) [0:22]      locally outdoors in the fields – and then they make bouquets of them.

9 (b) [0:26]      They used to make these [and put them] into a large pot. All the girls in each

10 (b) [0:29]      neighborhood do this, each neighborhood makes its own flower pot.

11 (b) [0:32]      And when they put the flowers in the pot, in the evening they sing [and]

12 (b) [0:38]      sing [and] sing over [each pot] and then at night they carry them outdoors

13 (b) [0:40]      to bathe them in the moonlight. We bachelors, meanwhile,

14 (b) [0:43]      go out during the night to spy it out, [to find out] where they have –

15 (b) [0:45]      where they have left the flower pot, and we go and steal it.

16 (b) [0:48]      We steal it from them; when we steal the flower pot from that neighborhood,

17 (b) [0:52]      the girls in the other (= our) neighborhood cheer [us] that their [pot] got stolen.

18 (b) [0:55]      The bachelors have robbed the girls in the other neighborhood of their

19 (b) [0:57]      flower pot, and now there's nothing left to sing over. So [then] they,

20 (b) [0:59]      [that is] we (the bachelors), find some way to give in,

21 (b) [1:01]      and we give it (= the flowerpot) back [to them], and then they sing and dance,

22 (b) [1:03]      and we sing together with them. We dance the horo together, and sing.

23 (b) [1:05]      After that, when they take [it] apart – the flowerpot sits there three days –

24 (b) [1:08]      when they take it apart – after the third day in the evening

25 (b) [1:12]      when they take the flowerpot apart, [everyone] there gets sprinkled [with

26 (b) [1:15]      water] – young people and women who listen and sing – they gather around

27 (b) [1:18]      and everyone gets sprinkled with water – young people, unmarried girls,

28 (b) [1:21]      and married women, people who are watching and listening.

29 (b) [1:24]      And that's how they took it apart, how they celebrated St. George's Day in

30 (b) [1:28]      the old days. They'd dance, sing, and make merry for three, four, five days.