The sister-in-law is your husband’s sister. Once upon a time, our ancestors lived in huge families. Some of them totaled more than fifty people with varying degrees of kinship. And now, if you come to a remote village, you may be surprised to learn that many of its inhabitants have the same surname. All of them, as a rule, are relatives in varying degrees of kinship.
If you sit down on a bench next to one of the old women, you can hear from an old interlocutor many interesting facts from the life of the village. She will be happy to tell you about her countrymen: the owner of the farm is her son-in-law, the saleswoman in the store is the daughter-in-law, and the two women in the house opposite are the mother-in-law and the sister-in-law, and … Thinking for a moment, you might interrupt your grandmother almost at a glance. “Wait a minute, ” you say to granny. “But who is that whom you named with your mother-in-law?” And she, having scolded you for having strongly torn from her roots, she will answer that the sister-in-law is the sister of her husband. If you ask the old woman where such a word came from, she can say: “From the word evil” and begin her lengthy explanations.
Think for yourself: the girl is married off - and from her father’s house, in which she was a favorite, mother and other relatives took care of her and took care of her, the young newlywed immediately falls into a “strange monastery”. In a new family, she not only becomes the wife of her son, but also a worker, who immediately has many new responsibilities - you need to get up to the light, help with the housework and in no case argue with the members of the new family. So it turns out that the sister-in-law is evil, because she transfers part of her affairs to the shoulders of the daughter-in-law. Sometimes a newlywed has to listen to a lot of unpleasant remarks.
Further, your interlocutor will certainly give many examples from the life of her sisters under oppression sister-in-law. And he will remember how else her husband’s great-grandmother was dragged by her husband’s braids or how she herself was scolded for a poorly washed floor or salted borsch. Therefore, as a rule, the sister-in-law and the daughter-in-law, to put it mildly, do not like each other. There are many proverbs and sayings about the relationship between them: "The sister-in-law is very tricky to tricks", "The sister-in-law is a trick, " the "sister-in-law". The coincidence of the words "sister-in-law" and "evil" is not accidental. Daughter-in-law had to serve her husband’s sisters, cater to them, cajole, and in a literal sense. Saturday in the Pancake week is called "Zolovkin gatherings." According to tradition, daughters-in-law invite sisters of the husband to themselves, treat them with pancakes and give gifts.
Finally, it was the right time to interrupt our elderly interlocutor and find out from her about her relationship with this person. Oddly enough, the grandmother replies that her sister-in-law is gold. However, most likely, this is due to the fact that they, together with her husband, immediately after the wedding began to live separately, independently.
Many of us do not remember our roots, the family hierarchy is becoming a thing of the past, the definitions of the names of relatives become anachronisms. The closest still meet at the same table on holidays, still try to help each other. A little further relatives are sometimes not known. How important it is not to lose one’s kindred, relatives and recognize kinship! Unfortunately, large families are becoming smaller, and such a word as a sister-in-law is practically not used, leaving in the field of legends.
