Have you happened to go, or see, experience going mumming? What do you know about mummers, going mumming?
Categories: Eriks Zachs
Yes, about going mumming, that, of course, could be read about in various Latvian writers’ works – Jaunsudrabiņš’ or Birznieks-Upītis’, I won’t remember exactly, and I’ve participated in that myself. That happened during the awakening, I have especially vivid memories of one event. 15 people, young men and girls, we decided to go mumming. Thus we dressed up, I put on some skirt, covered my head with a scarf, everybody dressed up, somebody was as an Arab, some other changed into somebody else, a pirate, and then we went. That happened in Rēzekne. We started somewhere in the area of Sporta street, now it is 18 Novembra street. We went to our acquaintances, relatives, knocked at the doors of flats. We entered, sang, danced, for that we were treated to candies, to something else that people had at home. We also visited some unknown people, where we saw in the windows that they were celebrating Christmas, the New Year. And then we also decided to visit our friends in the northern part of the town. We got on a bus where now it is Atbrīvošanas drive and 18 Novembra street. We went by bus, a yellow Ikarus bus (they were popular at that time), to that northern area. One lad in our company played the guitar and he was singing songs in Latvian. And then, I remember, we got into trouble. Some of the passengers of about our age demanded and insisted that we sang in Russian. Since we refused, the conflict grew into fisticuffs. Well, we overpowered those our enemies. Other passengers got involved, too. That fight took place on the bus from what today is 18 Novembra street to the former bus stop of Milking equipment factory, now it is at the Statoil gas station. That happened exactly during the awakening, little before the independence of Latvia.
Images
Video
Researcher: Dr. philol. Valentīns Lukaševičs, Daugavpils Universitāte
