In Uzhgorod, people will be calling spring (Announcement)

Calling of spring is one of the most interesting customs of Ukrainian people. After all, the arrival of spring warmth would mark the beginning of the new tillage cycle and pour a powerful stream of inspiration to the farmer’s soul. Folk imagination created a poetic image of spring as a girl with a wreath of flowers that "somewhere in the garden is sewing a shirt" and sometimes as a young woman, who already has or is expecting a daughter.

The calling rituals essentially consist of performances to call birds from warm countries and actually the calling of spring. Birds are harbingers of spring, that, according to our ancestors’ beliefs. brought it on their wings from warm lands:     

Migrating birds would always be fed in early spring, and people feed them now too. Birds have always been loved by our ancestors. Girls and boys participate in the ritual of bird welcoming. People would bake cakes in the form of spring birds – larks, doves – and give them to children. 

Ceremonial cakes in the form of birds would be made for children who would walk the streets, calling the birds from warm countries. Children would run with these cakes in the village, toss them up, imitating bird flight and chant spring calls for birds. Children believed that after such calls birds and spring would come soon. Children would leave for birds crumbs of their cakes, and sometimes even whole "larks" by hanging them on the branches of trees.

            We invite you to a master class on baking of ritual birdies on Sunday, March 8, 2015, at 13.00, at the museum cafe "Pid Zamkom" to call the spring together.