Zolovka is your husband 's sister . Long ago, our ancestors lived huge families. Some of them numbered more than fifty people with varying degrees of kinship. And now, if you come to a remote village, you can be surprised to learn that many of its residents have the same surnames. All of them, as a rule, are related to one degree or another of kinship.
If you sit down on a bench next to one of the old ladies, you can hear from an elderly companion many interesting facts from the life of the village. She will happily tell you about her fellow countrymen: the owner of the farm - her son-in-law, the saleswoman in the store - the daughter-in-law, and the two women in the house opposite - the mother-in-law and the sister-in-law, and ... After thinking for a minute, you may break the grandmother almost in mid-sentence. "Wait," you will say granny. "But who is this who you called with your mother-in-law?" And she, scolding you for severely tearing herself away from her roots, will answer that the sister-in-law is her husband's sister. If you ask the old lady where the word comes from, then she can say: "From the word evil" and will begin its lengthy explanations.
Think for yourself: the girl gets married - and from her father's house, in which she was a pet, she was cared for and cared by my mother and other relatives, the young bride immediately gets into the "alien monastery". In the new family, she not only becomes the wife of her son, but also a worker, who is immediately entrusted with many new duties - one must get up to light, help with housework and in no way contradict the members of the new family. So it turns out that the sister-in-law is evil, because she shifts some of her affairs onto the shoulders of the daughter-in-law. Sometimes a bridal couple has to listen to a lot of hard-hitting remarks.
Further, your companion will certainly bring many examples from the life of her sisters under the yoke of gills. And remember how her great-grandmother's sister's husbands were dragged by braids or how she herself was scolded for a poorly washed floor or salted borsch. Therefore, as a rule, the sister-in-law and daughter-in-law, to put it mildly, dislike each other. There are many proverbs and sayings about the relationship between them: "The Soul is very tricky on tricks", "Sisters-colt", "Soul-Sword". The coincidence of the word "sister-in-law" and "evil" is not accidental. The daughter-in-law had to wait for her husband's sisters, to please them, to cajole them, and practically in the literal sense. Saturday in the Shrovetide week is called "zolovkin gathering". According to tradition, sister-in-law invite her husband's sisters to her, treat her with pancakes and give gifts.
Finally, it was the right time to interrupt our elderly companion and find out from her about her relationship with this person. Strangely enough, the grandmother replies that her sister-in-law is gold. However, most likely, this is due to the fact that together with her husband, immediately after the wedding, they began to live separately, independently.
Many of us do not remember their roots, the family hierarchy is disappearing, the definitions of the names of relatives become anachronisms. The closest still meet at the same table on holidays, they are still trying to help each other. A little further relatives are sometimes not known. How important it is not to lose your family, relatives and to recognize kinship! Unfortunately, there are fewer large families, and such a word as a sister-in-law is practically not used, leaving in the field of legends.