Songlore of the Muhu islanders in the early 20^th century

The CD contains examples of the song repertoire of the Muhu islanders in the early 20^th century. I recorded them during the folklore expeditions of the Literary Museum to Muhu in 1974 and 1975 together with Ottilie Kõiva, Kristi Salve, Erna Tampere and the sound engineer Olav Kiis.

Ene Mihkelson, Ingrid Rüütel, Olli Kõiva, Jekaterine and Madis Lahke. Muhu, Soonda village. Photo by E. Kivaste 1974. ERA, Foto 10787.

The older alliterative songs and songs of transitional form are represented by lullabies, the chain songs performed to children and also some men’s songs. In the alliterative songs, realistic details are mixed with fantastic images, metaphors and word games based on alliteration.

In Muhu the tradition of men’s songs was very strong. Presumably, the tradition of men’s alliterative songs here was larger than elsewhere in Estonia and they were performed for a longer period of time. The newer songs of rhymed stanzas also contain features of alliterative songs, for instance the verses, or sometimes pairs of verses, are repeated, which allows the listeners to sing along. The alliterative and newer men’s songs also have some common tunes.

The archaic, one or two verses long tunes with the ambit of a third or a fourth were not even considered to be proper tunes by the Muhu islanders. They were called mõlgid, eetamised, leugutamised, äiu-äiu-tunes, etc. The latest tunes have 4 phrases and a large ambit of more than an octave like the tunes of the rhymed songs. In Estonian the main stress is always on the first word syllable. In the alliterative songs the word stresses are retained when performing, which causes verses with three-syllable words to have variable rhythm patterns. The melody too, varies more freely than in the rhymed songs. Often the length of the syllables, characteristic to spoken language, is retained.

Men’s rhymed village songs are mostly humorous and tell of marriage proposals, communal work efforts or other events in the village or elsewhere, like the building of a mill, a causeway or some unusual house and the big sailboat (uisk) which connected Muhu with the mainland, etc. Men’s songs often contain erotic elements. The songs are very critical towards the girls who are friendly with strangers: the laborers of the manor, the day laborers, town boys and especially Russian soldiers of the World War I.

Men used to sing a lot during Christmas, when they went around the village and gathered at the farms to pass the time together and drink beer. The girls presented the male guests with nuts, which is also reflected in the songs. People sang together during Midsummer night, at wedding parties and other get-togethers. Some songs were about serious matters like the change of faith, remembering the hard times of serfdom, lyrical reflections about the home island and the life of fishermen and seamen. There are songs that tell about the small Muhu island which cannot feed its inhabitants and makes people leave and work on foreign ships and on the mainland.

A separate topic in the songs is the wars and the hateful military service in the czarist army that took young men away from home and family for extended periods of time. Some songs also present a critical attitude towards the events of the early 20^th century in the Republic of Estonia. Because the men’s songs are very long, some of them have been shortened for the CD edition. The entire texts can be found in the book “The Songs and Tales of Muhu Island” (Rüütel 2016).

Erna Tampere and Kristi Salve during Muhu expedition. Photo by O. Kiisi 1975. ERA, Foto 11176.

The topic of love is very frequent in dance songs, that served as the accompaniment for polka, waltz or rheinländer performed during the ring games inside the circle after each main stanza. Dance songs were performed both by men and women. The ballads were mostly part of the women’s repertoire and were also sung during ring games. During World War I, when many men were serving in the army, the women and girls used to remember them when passing time together and playing ring games. It was the time of the ring games in which the main stanzas were followed by various long dance songs. In the company of women the change of partners was not important (no. 17). Earlier the same short dance song used to be performed after every stanza just like in the mainland of Estonia.

Some literary texts also became popular as songs acquiring tunes while spreading orally (no. 27, 30 etc).

The CD contains examples of solo singing as well as duets. The most remarkable are the recordings of male choirs with up to 10 singers. The songs are powerful and commanding. The recording of such men’s songs was a rare possibility in the whole history of the collection of Estonian folklore.

Men remembered songs that they had formerly performed together and we did not present any special wishes or prohibitions. The local older men’s songs were sung in unison with heterophonic divergences which occurred during simultaneous sounding of different variants. In the newer tunes, mostly acquired from the mainland or from other counties that are based on functional harmony, some deliberately improvised polyphony may be detected. For instance, in the song “At the Maritsa river bank” popular throughout Estonia, the main voice (tenor) is doubled by a soprano (a woman who sang with the men) sounding an octave higher, a base, sounding an octave lower, and a baritone, sounding mainly a third lower. This way a sort of 4-part song came into existence (no. 30). Because we have almost no recordings of choral singing, we do not know what other forms of singing might have been used. It was quite a miracle to be able to record such traditional men’s songs in the 1970-s and I am very pleased to present them here.

Ingrid Rüütel