POLISH PAGANISM

Mountain men disguised as devils, the Grim Reaper, horses and bears ring-in the New Year.

For centuries, men have crisscrossed snowy villages nestled in the foothills of Poland's southern Beskid range around the New Year to wish neighbours happiness and prosperity.

Devils, bears and Death ring in the New Year in Poland

Stanislaw WASZAK,
AFP•January 18, 2020

Colourful and loud, the festival, with its time-honoured traditions, brings together inhabitants of villages nestled in the foothills of Poland's southern Beskid mountain range (AFP Photo/Wojtek RADWANSKI)


Milowka (Poland) (AFP) - Mountain men disguised as devils, the Grim Reaper, horses and bears ring-in the New Year with a cacophony of drums, whistles, shouts and catchy melodies in a time-honoured tradition still popular in Poland's mountains.

For centuries, men have crisscrossed snowy villages nestled in the foothills of Poland's southern Beskid range around the New Year to wish neighbours happiness and prosperity in return for gifts of food or small sums of money.

Similar folk customs marking the winter solstice are practised in neighbouring countries and can be traced back to pagan times.

For the last half-century lively troupes of characters have flocked to the Beskidy village of Milowka for the colourful and loud "Dziady Zywieckie" festival that ranks as part of Poland's intangible cultural heritage

"All this uproar, characters dressed in very bright colours, the noises, bells and whistles, cracking whips are meant to chase away spirits who want to descend to Earth," festival organiser Andrzej Maciejowski told AFP.

"The characters represent people and imaginary entities known to rural folk in days gone by: otherworldly beings, devils and the Grim Reaper, as well as ethnic minorities like Jews or Roma and old professions like peddlers or healers," he added.

Bears and horses play a leading role in the custom signalling that spring and new life are on their way.

Men parading as lively horses symbolise vigour while others, posing as bears, bear the power to "fertilise the Earth so that it bears more fruit than last year," adds Maciejowski.

Cracking whips open the joyful if chaotic festivities before the Grim Reaper makes an appearance followed by troupes of horses and bears dancing wildly to symbolise new life.

- Circle of life -

"In popular tradition, death as represented by the Grim Reaper is never final, but rather marks the passage to a new and higher stage of life," explains ethnographer Barbara Rosiek.

During the noisy procession through the village and in the courtyards of cosy old log cabins, the groups hail the eternal circle of life marked by order or disorder in nature.

Horses run, devils bicker and taunt onlookers to whom peddlers also display their merchandise promising marvels, sometimes in a grumpy manner.

Amid the din, the Grim Reaper cuts a calm figure, waving his scythe at onlookers.

"Death wants to take people's lives but even the devils prevent it. Death only scares people," says Szymon Sikora, 28, a truck driver dressed up as the Grim Reaper in a terrifying mask and with a large scythe in hand.

Dressed up as a peddler, Robert Brzusnia, 45, has taken part in the festival for nearly all his life.

"I've participated... for 40 years. My father did too," he said.

"All December, the guys meet in their free time to prepare their masks and costumes, and to rehearse," says Maciejowski, who cannot contain his amusement.

"Bells tinkle and whips crack loudly. In short, the tradition is alive and well."

Images for Dziady Zywieckie

Dziady Żywiec, Jukaka, Jukoka - a folk custom celebrated in the Żywiec region. Territorially limited to Żywiec - Zabłocie . According to tradition, the bridge on the Sola River separating Żywiec from Zabłocie was the impassable border for yucca .

The rite lasts from the evening on New Year's Eve and ends on New Year's in the afternoon. During this rite, carolling is combined with New Year's greetings and pranks for passers-by.

Payment for a carol is sometimes a Christmas cake, refreshments with vodka, or most often a small amount of money, which in Zabłocie was used to organize 'dziadowska' games, especially in Zabłocie.

This custom is disappearing every year. It is maintained only at the cyclically organized Gody Żywieckie event at the turn of January and February.

Żywiec [ edit | edit code ]

Dziady Dziady, to distinguish it from Dziady from nearby villages near Podywiec , is often called yucca . However, this is not the only difference, because there are differences in costumes between them. Dziady Żywiec uses the most archaic type of masks. It is a mask, usually from a piece of sheep's fleece, with cut out holes for eyes and mouth. They wear a cap on the head in the form of a cone, finished with a pompom (usually made of tissue paper), on which the coming new year is written. Other attributes of yucca are bells pinned to the waist and a whip made of rope narrowing towards the end (formerly such ropes were made by Żywiec rope makerson order) approx. 3 m long, mounted on a wooden shaft approx. 30-40 mm in diameter, approx. 30-50 cm long and finished with so-called ciynioskiem and strzylock about 30-40 cm long, braided by linen thread by jukaca. It is this tip that gives the effect of "cracking with a whip", reminiscent of the bang of a gunshot.

The "band" yukacy consisted of a dozen to several dozen (sometimes up to 70 people). Jukac could only be a bachelor (today these rules are no longer observed, but in the past they were obligatory). Among the yuccathere is a kind of hierarchy and rules established by tradition. There is only one company and any competition is out of the question. The company is headed by a cashier. It differs from the others in red outfit. He has several herdsmen to help. You can recognize them by the stripes sewn on the pants. Their color also means the place they occupy in the group of drovers. Everyone who wants to be promoted in the hierarchy must already have an experience in walking on "grandfathers". Formerly one of the strictly observed rules was that in public places under no circumstances could be revealed. The grandfather had to remain anonymous for breaking this rule, threatening to divide the whip with a whip. Grandfather's clothing is made according to his own idea. The next in the grandfather's hierarchy are: grandfather (he had a hat like a drover, but with horns), a chimney sweep, devil and woman.

The order of grandfathers' carolling is also defined. The "chasing" of Dziady begins on New Year's Eve with a collection in the square in front of the Żywiec railway station , they are given instructions and they go to New Year's Eve games taking place in Zabłocie. At present, the tradition of not crossing the bridge over Sola has been broken and yucca also goes to the city center. After arriving at the party, they fall into the room and give New Year wishes to the participants. Then there is a dance for grandparents where selected ladies and married women ask. Then they leave the ball and go to the next one. That's how time passes almost until the morning.

At 5:00 a.m. on New Year's Day in the church of St. Floriana in Zabłocie is organized for yucca so-called grandfather's mass . After its completion, they run away in small groups to carol through the houses in Zabłocie and on the street (formerly Główna and now Dworcowa Street), wishing the residents returning from services.

Podżywieckie villages [ edit | edit code ]

Dziady Dzywiec, in relation to carol groups associated with this custom, found in Żywiec villages, differ from yucca from Zabłocie. There are quite large differences between them, visible even between individual villages. Only in Sienna , because this village belonged to the farm key in Żywiec and its parish was for many years the Żywiec parish, as well as the fact that it is located on the border with Zabłocie, the forms of dress and carolling behaved as they did in Żywiec.

The further away from Żywiec, this custom takes the form of a reviving life spectacle, the quintessence of which is the dance of horses over a dead-sleeping bear or macidula , who resurrects - wakes up from winter sleep. Characters also appear in groups of carol singers in favor of characters associated with nature:

• horses - the horse's outfit took the form of a cap set on a wooden frame finished from the front with a horse's head carved in wood and decorated with colorful fragments of ribbons or tissue paper;
• bear - dressed in a sheepskin coat, fleece outside.

and characters, probably observed at fairs, maybe in nearby Żywiec, that is:

• Soldier - with a cornea on his head, decorated with orders ; he often served as a commandant in the dziadowska company.
• A Jew - in an excessively long hat, in a mask carved in linden wood in a particularly unsightly manner with a hooked nose, in a worn patched coat, sometimes with a suitcase (money); he is often accompanied by a Jewish woman - a well-painted woman.
• A young couple - characters depicting (parodying) the city's smarts.

and characters who sometimes come to the countryside, i.e.

• Gypsy with a Gypsy - no mask where the face was painted mostly in red; the attribute of the Gypsy couple was a child attached to the back.
• " Dziechciorz " - they were most often Slovaks or Hungarians selling children and performing minor repairs in a farmyard (e.g. pot riveting, which was once popular); often this character becomes a Jew.
• Chimney sweep - without a mask, painted black mostly, in a cylinder with a ladder and especially recently with chimney sweep brushes and formerly with a broom.

The figures of the gypsies and the chimney sweep were assigned to adepts of the grandfather's trade, as it were during an internship. Only after completing this internship could you be promoted in the company and put on a mask.

There were also characters with difficult to determine origin or mythical:

• The devil - usually two one red the other black.
• Death - dressed in a white sheet with bones painted in black paint and with a scythe in her hands.
• Macidula - string, shredder, usually in a mask, but often without it.

Of course, there are also characters from the everyday life of the village:

• Priest - dressed up like a priest (priest how everyone sees).
• a policeman - often dressed as a policeman.
• Highlanders - the highlanders ' task was to play carolers; one played the button- heligonce , the other played the violin and the other on a vacancy .

All characters were played by men, it was never possible to participate in these women's rituals.

GOOGLE TRANSLATION FROM POLISH WIKIPEDIA