Carnival in the old village
The social life of the old village was strongly connected with the ritual year. Carnival was an important period of fun and rest from work in the fields. The entertainment marking the beginning of a time of fun and carefree living was the ritual robberies. On the night of December 31 to January 1, costumed youths would go around the village and steal various things. Girls would run to neighbors in the evenings and take a boy's clothes and shoes. When they failed to snatch their prey, they would ask his mother for the delinquent's belongings. The boys would then buy up the clothing pieces, throwing a dance party for the girls. They brought vodka, while the girls brought snacks.
A game was also arranged whereby the boys took the hosts' harrows, plows, wagon parts and gates and dragged them to the roofs of the cottages, much to the outrage and anger of the owners. Chimneys were also plugged to make the stoves smoke.
During the carnival there was a lot of dancing and singing, weddings, feasts and gatherings with music. Particularly celebrated were the last days of carnival called ostatki, which began with Fat Thursday. On this day housewives cooked fatter and more abundant dishes. In the evening, cross-dressers walked around the village. They would stop by the neighbors to cheer them up and play tricks on them. Usually they were young boys who dressed up as Jews, gypsies, grandfathers, bears or storks, putting on appropriate masks.
A characteristic attribute of the masqueraders was a straw "gypsy" doll. The masqueraders collected donations just for them - quite often these were eggs. Perhaps it was once related to fertility, to the magical nature of the ritual.
Most interesting was dressing up as a hunchbacked grandfather. The boys wore sheepskins turned wool upside down and girded with a straw belt, and had torn conical hats on their heads. The grandfather was led around the cottages to eventually end up where the girls gathered for the soirees. This caused great panic as the grandfather attempted to insert a bone in the spines, which was believed to cause old age.
Zygmunt Gloger, in the "Old Polish Encyclopedia," wrote about zapusty in the following way: "The so-called carnival masquerades, or carnivalesque, and dressing up in various costumes, as since the Middle Ages in Western Europe, gave rise in Poland to the custom of folk dressing up on Zapust as Jews, gypsies, bears, horses, goats, storks. Dances and revelry were held after all the inns. Unmarried girls and unmarried farmhands dragged a block of wood to an inn, where water was poured over it until the host ransomed himself with a lavish meal. Then the women jumped over the log "for flax" and the hosts "for oats", saying that as high as they jumped, so high would be the flax or oats this year".
A number of customary dishes were prepared for the "crazy days". For example, in Gorlicko these included boiled or fried eggs, the consumption of which ensured good luck in gathering mushrooms. It was common for wealthy farmers to slaughter pigs and invite their neighbors for hospitality. These feasted until they had eaten everything, and then moved on to the next house. The magic of an abundance of food, intended to provoke fertility and abundance, was expressed in various sayings, for example, that on the ushering in of the harvest one should eat seven times or as many times as a dog shakes its tail.
People enjoyed themselves in taverns and in homes. During these days it was mainly "baciar" men who practically never left the inn, while women brought them food. If any woman wanted to take her "peasant" home, she had to buy him off with vodka.
During the carnival games, perhaps most prominently in all the annual rituals, the magical character of the dance was marked. They danced for flax and hemp and also for millet or oats.
As with all holidays heralding a breakthrough, the rituals of Carnival included elements of chaos, which was to be followed by a return to a state of normality. This chaos was expressed, among other things, by a vision of a different world, a vision based on the poetics of absurdity and a soviet humor.
The mood of general revelry was further enhanced by weddings, which were held as if at the last moment before Lent. Perhaps this coincidence was not accidental. Weddings, especially back in the 19th century, were imbued with elements of fertility magic. And in Lent, after all, those who did not have offspring, and therefore did not use their biological potential, were punished. For maidens on the verge of release, carnivals meant the end of their hopes for marriage, since the next wedding period came after the harvest.
The evening of carnival ended at twelve o'clock at night, and from that moment the season of Lent began. The music quieted down, and everyone dispersed to their homes, because, as was commonly said , the devil would come and write down on the ox hide those who, disregarding the fast, were still enjoying themselves.
Carnival among the nobility and the bourgeoisie
Performed by the upper classes (bourgeoisie, nobility), carnival games consisted of masked balls and sleigh rides. The older generation would tour all the houses in the neighborhood by sleigh and persuade people to join the sleigh ride company. The company thus gathered would ride to the last house for dancing, games and feasting.
The task of the youth, on the other hand, was to plan the entire sleigh ride: the route, the games, the houses to visit. The basis of the youngsters' fun was to drop suddenly into a manor house and kidnap its residents. Anyone could fall victim to such a raid at any time of the night. The most vulnerable to unexpected visits were the manors where maidens at birth lived.
Over time, sleigh rides turned into lavish cavalcades reminiscent of a moving masked ball. In sleighs speeding through the snow rode participants dressed as Jews, Gypsies, peasants, grandfathers, village women and girls.
Elaborated. Aleksandra Szymanska
Photo public domain - wikipedia.pl, "Dances in an Inn" by Włodzimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer
Sources:
-Janicka-Krzywda U., Zwyczaje, tradycje, obrzędy, Kraków 2011
-Kaczmarzewski A., Ludowe obrzędy doroczne w Polsce południowo-wschodniej, Rzeszów 2011
-Kamocki J., Kubiena J., Polski rok obrzędowy, Kraków 2008
-Plucińska A., Polskie świętowanie: adwent, gody, zapusty, Łódź 2009
-Stańczuk E., Karnawał dawniej i dziś, [in:] "Wiadomości Rolnicze", 2015 no. 1
