Lada or Lado is the names of a putative Slavic pagan deity of harmony, merriment, youth, love and beauty .
The word 'Lado' does indeed appear in many Slavic and Baltic wedding and folk songs, particularly those sung during Ivan Kupala and other summer festivals. Its meaning, if indeed it has any, is unclear; it appears to be a mere exclamation. While many of the folk songs containing such an exclamation actually do have some elements from the pre-Christian celebrations of summer solstice, they are not addressed to any god or goddess Lado.
This was explained in detail by Croatian ethnologist Vitomir Belaj, who studied a great number of songs of summer festivities from various Slavic nations. While not all of them contain Lado-exclamations, all of them do include a central character named Ivan or Ivo, meaning John, which is loosely associated with St. John the Baptist, whose feast day occurs in summer. However, the Ivan of these songs has almost no resemblance to the Christian saint: he is described as a young and handsome man, courting with young girls, and in one particular song he even explicitly refuses to baptise a young child presented before him, explaining he cannot do so because he himself is not a Christian. Belaj concluded that in these songs the name of Ivan stands in place of the name of an older Slavic god who was venerated at summer festival which later, after the arrival of Christianity, became the festival of St. John the Baptist. Belaj identified this lost god as Jarilo, a major Slavic deity of vegetation, harvest and fertility. Thus, in the above Bedekovic's record of Lado-song, the "holy god" mentioned in the verses indeed does refer to a forgotten pagan deity, though not to Lado, but rather to Ive or Ivan, who is actually Jarilo.
The same can be said for the following Serbian Lado-song recorded in Nikola Begović's Srpske narodne pjesme iz Like i Banije, which was likewise sung by young girls standing in circles.
Here Lado does not appear to be the name of any deity, but is merely an exclamation. However, the main character of this song does not bear the name Ivan, but rather Vid, in which one can easily recognise the name of Svetovid, a major Slavic god of war, prophecies and harvest. According to the contemporary sources of Christian missionaries of the early Middle Ages, particularly of Saxo Grammaticus who gave a detailed account of Svetovid's great temple on the island of Rügen, the pagan Slavs held a great festival each summer in honor of Svetovid. Some customs or songs from such pagan ceremonies survived well into Christian times under the guise of folklore, but their original meaning was completely forgotten over the centuries. The names of old gods were mixed with names of new Christian saints, the verses were corrupted, parts were lost, and a lot of nonsense or meaningless words entered the texts, Lado apparently being one of them.
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