Bread and salt

No early record we could check

We did not find an early dated text, object or picture of the bread-and-salt welcome in Ukraine that we could open and check, so we give the custom no date of our own. If you know of an early dated account, we would like to hear of it.

To verify: An early dated account of the bread-and-salt welcome in Ukraine. Wikipedia quotes the Polish poet Wespazjan Kochowski, writing in 1674 of bread given to guests with salt; we have not seen his poem, and it speaks of Poland, not Ukraine.

For guests of honour

The Encyclopedia of Ukraine says that, as a sign of hospitality, guests of honour at celebrations and public functions are greeted with a ceremonial offering of bread and salt. It describes the korovai, the main wedding loaf, as round and finely decorated with dough. Its entry on the wedding lists the steps of the traditional wedding: among them the baking and decorating of the korovai from flour given by all who took part, and later the cutting of the loaf and its sharing among the guests. Its entry on the clan counts this sharing of the korovai, and the taking of the bread to members of the family who were absent, among the customs that show the old ties of kin. Wikipedia’s article on the custom adds that among East Slavs the loaf, usually a korovai, is set on an embroidered cloth, the rushnyk, with a salt holder on top.

A welcome, not a charm

The Encyclopedia of Ukraine says that the old rites of making and baking bread have lost their meaning but are kept in folk tradition, and that in independent Ukraine many wedding rites are no longer followed, while those still kept, the wedding loaf among them, are much simplified. A photograph in Wikipedia’s article shows Joe Biden, then US vice-president, dipping bread in salt at a welcoming ceremony on his arrival in Kyiv on 20 July 2009. Bread and salt is food and a custom of welcome, not a charm: we tell the story and make no jewellery of it. The cloth in our drawing is plain apart from red stripes at its ends, not a copy of any family’s rushnyk.