სიმღერის შესახებ
This is a gvrini¹ from Khevsureti.
To hear other gvrinis, visit the pages of Imeda Likokeli and Tekle Badrishvili.
¹The gvrini is a lament from Pshavi and Khevsureti, traditionally sung by men while haying to commemorate the souls of the dead. George Charachidze talks about the gvrini in his 1968 book, Le système religieux de la Géorgie païenne: analyse structurale d’une civilization, and the following explanation is based on his writing:
Traditionally during a funerary ceremony in Khevsureti or Pshavi a woman is possessed by the dead soul and becomes an oracle through which the soul communicates with the living. The ensuing lament that the soul communicates through the oracle is silently memorized by the men in attendance, who are not allowed to vocally mourn in any way during the ceremony. Before the men go out to the fields on the first haying day of the year, a feast is held in the name of the most recently deceased. Only after this ritual feast occurs and only under the supervision of the mountain priest are the men allowed to bring their scythe into contact with the grass. The Khevsurs and Pshavs believed that the afterlife was under the ground, and therefore that the motion of swinging the scythe close to the ground to cut grass was symbolically entwined with the Land of the Dead. As the men began to mow on the first haying day of the year, they sang the gvrini that the dead soul communicated to them at his funeral. Through this lament they paid homage to the souls of the dead.
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