According to the folk calendar - Mauritius Day

March 7 (February 22, old style) is marked in the folk calendar as Mauritius Day It is dedicated to the martyrs of Saint Mauritius and his 70 soldiers, whose memory is honored on this date in the Orthodox calendar Mauritius served as a general in the early 4th century in Apamea in Syria He preached Christianity, among whose supporters were his son and 70 subordinate soldiers The commander was reported to the pagan emperor, after which he ordered the believers to be tortured The son of Mauritius Photinus was hacked to death with a sword, and Mauritius himself and 70 soldiers died from torture with fire, iron and insect bites In Mauritius, people noticed the return of the first migratory birds - wagtails, rooks, starlings, swallows, and larks Swallows were especially revered, because they arrived with real spring, for which they were nicknamed the symbol of spring You couldn’t kill them, otherwise you would bring trouble to your fate They also said that happiness would come to the house where the swallow made its nest The temperature rose higher and higher during the day, and frost dropped at night Such changes compacted the snow While the roads were hard and did not completely turn into a swamp, the peasants transported the manure collected during the year to the fields They thickly covered areas with it, hoping to increase productivity They tried to fertilize the fields in the fourth phase of the moon so that fewer weeds would grow In the southern regions, cabbage and pea seeds were sown on Mauritius day Early sowing ensured that while the cabbage heads were forming, the caterpillars would not have time to colonize them And during the first digging of the soil, the owners took a lump of earth and carried it into the house, believing that it would scare away bedbugs from entering the home The traditional dish of the day was black fish soup It was considered the food of the poor, since it was not cooked from elite varieties of fish - crucian carp, carp, bream, rudd The remaining roots and pickles were added to it Pies with fish filling were served as an appetizer for the black fish soup On the Mauritius day they watched birds: whoever is the first in the household to spot a rook will have greater happiness The arrival of a swallow meant a good year, and the singing of a lark heralded the coming of spring Mating courtship of pigeons and nesting titmice promised warm weather The falling fog predicted a summer with frequent rains, a clear sky - a change in the weather in the coming days, the beginning of snowfall - the coming cold