The Dream. Notes

• The izbá , or hut, always has a dvor or courtyard, access to which is gained through double gates as well as through a postern. Often the hut is raised by a flight of steps from the level of the courtyard. The izbá may have a cooling room in which to rest, so as to avoid the sudden change of air from the heated inner room; it is also a living room in the summer. Outside the dvor against the fence there is a bench ( lávka ), on which the family sits in the summer. The hut is made of logs, the fence of boards. Between the rafters and the sloped roof is the loft ( cherdák ), into which a ladder leads. Inside the hut is that essential and central feature of Russian peasant life, the stove, which occupies one side of a wall. In front against it three long implements stand, the poker, broom and shovel. The oven rests on a brick or tile foundation, about eighteen inches high, with a semicircular hollow space below. The top of the stove is used for a sleeping bench ( poláty ) for the old folk or the honoured guest. In larger houses there may be a lezhán’ka or heating stove, used as a sleeping sofa. The bathhouse is separate from the hut, and contains a flight of steps for different degrees of heat, obtained from white-hot stones on which water is flung. This is only found in better-class houses.