PAGANISM OF LITHUANIANS AND PRUSSIANS: RITUAL LAUGHTER
Abstract
Ritual laughter is considered an integral part of the rituals used to make sacrifice to the ancient gods. This article analyzes instances of ritual humor in written sources from the 16th to 17th century and echoes of the joke in calendars, family traditions and folklore in the 19th and 20th centuries. The aim is to investigate how jokes and fun were understood in the religion and mythology of the ancient Balts; what influenced the expression of this sort of joke and how; and what forms and manners for eliciting jokes and fun are recorded in written sources, customs, traditions and folklore. Information in the written sources from the 16th and 17th centuries (even if it is fragmentary) shows Lithuanians and Prussians knew of ritual laughter which is a component part of rituals for making sacrifices to the ancient gods. The aim of ritual laughter was to succeed in making the gods happy (especially gods protecting agriculture and its different branches). From the examples presented, although there might not be many of them, we can nonetheless determine that the ritual laughter of the Lithuanians and the Prussians was divided into two categories: a) the happy god (with the request and wish the god would be happy) and b) the ritual laughter and fun of participants in rituals. After Christianity came to dominate in the late 17th century, ritual humor became an important part of calendrical, family and other customs, recorded in folklore and echoed in everyday speech and phraseology.
