“To lead circles”, “to shoot an arrow”, “to walk as a feast”: the variability of women’s round dances of Russian old-time residents in Southern Siberia and Transbaikalia

The article addresses the topic of variability of spring women’s round dances in groups of Russian old-time residents (Old Believers) of the Southern Altai and Transbaikalia, mainly based on the author’sfield materials of the East Slavic Ethnographic Expedition of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography SB RAS, collected in the 1970-2010s. The productive meaning of the movement of round dances as part of the calendar-agrarian rites of Slavic farmers, known under different names ("to lead circles", "to shoot an arrow", "to walk a feast", "to walk a rope", etc.), is obvious from the oral reports of interviewees. Non-stop smooth movement was accompanied by circular songs, the content of which varied and did not always shed light on the magical function of the round ritual. The author identified three types of spring women’s round dances, as well as a circular song with a plot, the origin ofwhich is probably associated with the ritual of"driving, seeing off the arrow" in Polesie, the funeral of the "cuckoo" (doll) among the southern Russians, including the migrant from the Kursk province to Siberia. It is no coincidence that the circular song of the Old Believer "Polish woman" A.S. Zavyalova (born in 1916), a resident of the village of Topolnoye, Soloneshensky district, Altai region, is associated with the unexpected death and equally unexpected resurrection of her deceased husband. New field materials reveal another facet of the community of the Old Believers of Altai ("Poles") and Transbaikalia ("Semeyskie") and indicate the presence of components from the ethnocultural environment of the Bryansk, Gomel, Oryol Polesie. It is also obvious that, since the time of the famous work of M.V. Shvetsova (1899), the situation has been overestimating the isolation of the group of Old Believers- "Poles" and underestimating the factor of influence from local Siberians, service population, and Cossacks.