The word guest in the history of the Russian literary language has always been ambiguous. According to historical dictionaries, a guest was a visitor, a merchant who traded in different cities and foreign countries, a member of the highest privileged corporation of merchants in the Moscow state. In the modern Russian literary language, the meaning of "merchant" is considered obsolete, and the word guest means someone who visits, visits someone, as well as an outsider who is invited or allowed to attend any meeting, meeting (MAC. T.1. P.339).
In folk songs and epics, the guest is a fairly common character. Who is called a guest in Russian folklore?
Both in the northern songs from the vaults of A. I. Sobolevsky and P. V. Kireevsky, and in the epics recorded by A. F. Hilferding, a guest is "a visitor, a person who came at the call or uninvited, to visit another, for the sake of a feast, leisure, conversation "(See: V. I. Dahl. Explanatory dictionary of the living Great Russian language).
Song guests are most often close relatives-father (tyatenka), mother, brother, "shurya-brothers":
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I will name my dear guests:
Dear guest Father,
Dear guest Mother
(Songs collected by P. V. Kireevsky. New series. Issue II. Part 1. Moscow, 1917. Further - Kireevsky).
Visitors also go mainly to their native home, if the lyrical heroine is a married woman and lives in her husband's family.:
Moryanin was invited to visit:
Moryanin, moryanin, let's go visit!
You go to your mother-in-law, and I'll go to my mother,
You go to the shuryam, and I go to my own brothers! (Kireevsky)
In an epic text, the guest is usually a stranger. Only in some cases this word refers to relatives:
A distant visitor is coming to see me-ka-wa,
Distant guest eating favorite father-in-law.
Still the same King Politovsky.
(Onega epics, recorded by A. F. Hilferding in the summer of 1871. Further Hilferding).
A guest can be compared, but not identified with a brother: You have a guest on a visit, but bydto is a na ...
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