Linden Tree. Trees in the Polish (Slavic) folklore and culture: part 1

An old linden tree in the Zawieprzyce Park, archival photo by Stanisław Pastusiak via lubelskie.regiopedia.pl

Linden trees were among the most sacred trees in the Slavic tradition, just as in many other cultures where these trees can be naturally found in the climate. In the old days in Poland a linden tree was believed to have strong protective properties and was commonly associated with ‘female’ aspects of the nature (paired with an oak tree representing the nature’s ‘masculine’ side in the rural traditions). Its natural ability to a quick recovery was praised and symbolized rebirth and fertility, extremely important for example in the spring and summer rituals.

3 ‘specializations’ of spiritual leaders in Slavic Native Faith

There are various, we might call them, ‘specializations’ or ‘professions’ of the Slavic spiritual leaders in the sphere of Rodnovery (Slavic Native Faith), determined on the basis of old resources and continuous folklore traditions. Below I described shortly some essential informations that, hopefully, will show you clearly the main differences between the most well-known of such specializations: wołchw, guślarz and żerca.

Important side note: these are the names of those specializations in the Polish language, and they are spelled differently in the other Slavic languages in which they also exist.

Slavic bridal flower crowns from Polish folklore (warning: picture heavy)

Wreaths and other hair ornaments made of flowers and herbs are an essential part of many of the Polish rural customs. Athough most of the customs became almost extinct on the course of the 20th-century modernization of the society, and are preserved mostly in local ethnography museums, there are still certain festivals bearing remnants to the pre-Christian Slavic rites still alive within the Polish culture nowadays. The bridal flower crowns are among the customs that faded away – but can be still spotted around, for example on reenactments of the traditional weddings by various ethnography organizations, in art and culture (including e.g. theatre or cinema), or on some rather rare occasions of weddings when the bride decides to wear a traditional Polish garment instead of the modern white dress.

This post is going to be more of a gallery with examples of the traditional flower crowns of the brides wearing the traditional Polish folk costumes, but of course I’m not leaving it here without at least a bit of the essential informations about this custom for you. Before I start, keep also in mind that the custom shared a lot of common elements coming from the same old Slavic roots – these are the elements I’ll try to describe – but naturally had a lot of regional flavours and differences.

Straw as a ‘magickal barrier’, and other Christmas decorations from Polish folklore

In the old times there were no Christmas trees in the Polish houses. They became widespread only in the first half of the 20th century, but were not in use in most of the rural households of the central, southern or eastern Poland as late as before the World War 2. At first, the decorated Christmas trees started coming to the Polish houses around the late 18th century, first appearing in the houses of protestants, and then being adopted by the Polish townspeople and the upper classes. Eventually, the Christmas Trees came with so-called ‘commercialization’ of Christmas in the 20th century – just like in the other countries celebrating the holidays around the world. What did the Polish people prepare to decorate their houses before that?

Star symbolism and Christmas gift-bringers from Polish folklore

Gwiazdor and Gwiazdka on an illustration published by weneda.net

Today I’d like to introduce you to two mysterious characters from Polish folklore, and to a few other elements related to pre-Christian Slavic celebrations of the winter solstice and the later season of carnival. Informations about them survived in local folk customs, to be precise in Christmas rites called in Polish kolędowanie or kolęda (known in English as Slavic caroling).

Quick overview of folk costumes from Poland (warning: picture-heavy)

The beauty of folk costume. Just like in other parts of the world, in the old days the folk clothing was one of the main elements of Polish rural culture inscribed into the rich patterns of festivities and rituals. These costumes were considered elegant, and were worn only for special occasions: religious celebrations, seasonal festivities, important life events like weddings. They were a cultural manifest of the origins in a small regional level. People could tell each other apart on the basis on small differences in the clothing. Clothing of some regions might be similar to an unskilled eye, but the tiny details like patterns of embroidery or colors and width of the striped fabrics were telling precisely from which town or village did the piece of clothing come. They differed in details important to the locals, and the details of patterns were often passed down from generation to generation. This way the locals in some regions were even able to tell a family from which a person wearing a costume came from.

Some of you who follow me for a long time might already know that I run a side project polishcostumes.tumblr.com. It’s an educational gallery where I collect modern photos and archival materials about traditional clothing from all regions of Poland found around the Internet. I invite you to visit the link later (it’s linked also at the bottom of this article) in case you want to browse through more images and discover more examples Polish folk clothing, or to see old photographs and drawings or details like closeups of embroidery. I prepared there also a list of regions where all the names of the places are organized in an alphabetical order. So far I gathered there photographs and drawings of over 80 regional types of Polish folk clothing.

Here in this article I want to present some of the regions as a simple list with photographs, in order to show you a great variety of the folk costumes in Poland. All the names are linked to proper tags in my gallery of Polish folk costumes where you can see more examples from the region.

Short side notes to keep in your mind: most of the types of costumes shown below have many subtypes, especially those that are defined by larger geographical regions. The pictures show only the most ‘typical’ examples. The regions have many also many types characteristic for different age groups or worn during different seasons of the year. I made myself a limit of maximum 2 pictures per type, and it’s often hard to show everything on them. The list doesn’t show also all the regions / types of the Polish costumes yet. I plan to keep updating it over time to add other regions and hopefully create a complete list of the clothing one day. I prepared the list below in an alphabetical order, the best way for me to check and update it in the future.

(picture-heavy gallery ahead!)

Pająki – protective decorations made of straw

Poland: protective ornament called ‘pająki’ (spiders). Source of the image: zywapracownia.pl

One of many traditional elements of interior decoration in the Polish villages of the past was an elaborate geometric ornament hanging down from the ceiling. It is called ‘pająk‘ (plural form: ‘pająki‘) and a literal translation of the name is a ‘spider‘. In some places of Poland it was also called a ‘kierec’ (name native to region of Kurpie in northeastern Poland), or – jokingly – a ‘żyrandol’ (chandelier). In the 19th century when ethnography as a systematic study arrived into the Polish lands and the Polish rural customs were first described in precise details, the presence of pająki was documented in all ethnically Polish lands.

Pająki are made with the use of dry straw collected from the fields during the harvest season. They were usually prepared during late autumn for Christmas, but they were also hanged in the room for the arrival of spring and for the celebrations of Easter. Originally, they were connected to old Slavic rituals performed for the winter solstice and the spring equinox and were meant to help in protecting the inhabitants of the cottage during the hard season of the year that is winter (more about it below).

Patterns of folk embroidery from Poland / Wzory polskich haftów krzyżykowych

[EN] What some of you might already know, I love to stitch in my free time. It feels amazingly relaxing to see the patterns coming to life. I collect various materials about traditional Polish folk embroidery; recently I decided to reorganize them and came upon an idea of creating a set of patterns which I could share with you.

Personally, I love the cross-stitch technique and therefore chose examples of Polish embroidery in this particular technique for the set of patterns, with a few examples which can be transcribed into the cross-stitch.

I’m adding a few patterns below for a start, and have much more just waiting to be reedited and prepared for publishing here. This is a growing collection and this article will be definitely updated many times. If you’d like to use some other Polish patterns in your projects, make sure to visit this article again in the future to check whether something new appeared at the bottom.

Those of you who want to learn more about Polish folk costumes I can invite to take a look at the educational gallery I run at polishcostumes.tumblr.com (with a growing list of regional Polish folk costumes). Each pattern below is described with a name of a place in Poland it comes from, and the name links to a proper tag in the gallery in order to show you the traditional costumes from the region and to give you an idea of how the embroidery is used in them.

If you’re going to share my patterns, all I’m asking for is to link it back to my blog. Please do not crop the images in any way! 

If you stitched something from my patterns, please leave a message below. I’d love to see your crafts! ♥

Enjoy :)

[PL] Poniżej przedstawiam Wam przygotowane przeze mnie wzory ludowych haftów krzyżykowych z terenu Polski. Są to zdobienia przerysowane oraz inspirowane przykładami autentycznych haftów ze strojów ludowych z różnych zakątków naszego kraju. Dla każdego wzoru załączyłam też źródło lub inspirację w postaci obrazka lub zdjęcia.

Jednym z zajęć, przy jakich lubię relaksować się w wolnym czasie jest hafciarstwo, ze szczególną słabością do haftów krzyżykowych właśnie. Poniższe wzory to próbki, które przygotowałam dla własnego użytku, i którymi postanowiłam podzielić się z Wami. W Polsce jest wiele pięknych lecz niedocenianych zdobień hafciarskich! Chciałabym przynajmniej w taki sposób przyczynić się do ich propagowania.

Chcecie udostępnić moje grafiki wzorów na swoim blogu? Wyhaftowaliście coś na bazie poniższych wzorów? Bardzo proszę o pozostawienie informacji w komentarzu poniżej, oraz o załączenie odnośnika do mojego bloga w przypadku udostępniania ♥

Oczywiście (o czym, mam nadzieję, nie muszę zbyt często przypominać) nie wyrażam zgody na edycję plików z moimi wzorami lub wycinanie z nich opisów zawierających adres mojego bloga.

Day of the Divine Mother of Herbs

Poland: Day of the Divine Mother of the Herbs. A lost painting by Witold Pruszkowski (1846-1896).

August 15th – the day of the Assumption of Mary – is commonly celebrated in Poland as a day dedicated to the Divine Mother of Herbs (Matka Boska Zielna). It’s one of the many holidays of the Christian Holy Mother which resulted in a process of syncretism with much older beliefs rooted in the old-Slavic Faith.

The name of that day and the Holy Mother’s title as the Goddess of Herbs comes entirely from the Polish folklore. It is one of old customs that never got erased but were adopted by the Polish Catholic Church and reinterpreted through the Christian doctrine (see also for example: Gromnica – Thunder Candle and the Divine Mother of the Thunder Candle / with the Wolves). The tradition of celebrating the Divine Mother of Herbs got eventually linked with the day of the Assumption of Mary. Nowadays, due to lack of a proper education about the pre-Christian beliefs in Poland, some of Polish people themselves would even argue about that day being rooted entirely in Christianity. Here in this article I will show you simply how this feast looks like, and how it is and was interpreted in the Polish countryside.

On the day of the Divine Mother of Herbs – an old postcard, via najednejnodze.wordpress.com

Old-Slavic symbolism of bread and harvest rituals in Poland

Harvest festival in Lublin, Poland. Photo © Małgorzata Genca.

Polish folk culture cultivates bread and grains in a special manner, rooted in old-Slavic beliefs and agrarian mythology syncretized with Christianity in Poland over the centuries.

The great importance is still noticeable even from a linguistic point of view. The Polish word zboża (also: zboże), describing all types of domesticated cereals, has the same root as the adjective boży meaning divine and of the God.