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Bill Rushin
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Post Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2012 6:31 pm      Post subject: Goral Life In a Polish Mountain Village 1908
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A couple of years ago I found this short story on Google books. Mr. W.T. Benda visited Zakopane several times after the turn of the century. He wrote and illustrated the following article and it was published in Century Magazine in 1908.

LIFE IN A POLISH MOUNTAIN VILLAGE
THE TATRA REGION BETWEEN GALICIA AND HUNGARY
BY WLADYSLAW T. BENDA
WITH PICTURES BY THE AUTHOR

(Published 1908 Century Magazine)

  AFTER an absence of several years in America, on a morning in early June we were on our way back to the Tatra Mountains by train from Vienna. With beating hearts we crossed the boundary of Poland. In the radiant glory of the rising sun the green plains spread wide in blue mists. On every side were emerald meadows coursed by slow streams, like silvery ribbons, over which hung rows of melancholy willows; there were1 fields of wheat red with poppies, sky-blue patches of flax, clusters of straw-thatched peasant houses and lime-trees, roads shaded with poplars, and here and there shallow ponds. Everywhere working in the fields were peasants clad in brilliant red and white garments. The pastures were alive with grazing herds of cattle and horses. Swallows were darting through the air, and storks waded in the swamps. It was a true Sarmatian landscape.

From Cracow a new line of railway brought us to Zakopane, a village in the foot-hills of the Tatra Mountains. Desiring to see the life of those interesting mountaineers at close range, I mounted one of the heavy, spring less vehicles that wait at the station, and let the flaxen haired boy drive me to the village of Koscielisko, deep in the mountains, where the country remains still largely unchanged by the influences of modern civilization. On the road we met groups of sheepskin-clad mountaineers driving their herds of small cattle into the upper valleys for summer grazing.

Arrived in Koscielisko, I ascended a hillside, and, after an hour's inquiry, found lodgings in one of the few houses scattered on the south slope of a mountain. From here we could look down into the Zakopane Valley at our feet, and across to the imposing chain of Tatra, with its tremendous granite walls, its many peaks veiled in clouds, and its foothills covered with black-spruce forests. As children we had looked on these mountains, believing that they marked the outer edge of the world to the south, and even now we doubted if Hungary could really lie beyond. Nearest of all the peaks, and facing my window, stood Giewont, with its shiny, precipitous granite cliffs in front of a long chain of summits that disappeared in the east in luminous haze. There was where the sun was wont to rise and force its rays through gaps in the clouds that never leave their perches on Tatra's peaks.

The house in which I decided to stay belonged to Jan Naziom Stopka. It was surrounded by ash-trees that in autumn protect it against the violent winds from the mountains, and, like all the houses of that region, was a simple, solid structure consisting of two very large rooms, each with a small window facing Tatra. It was built of heavy spruce logs, planed on the inside: the interior had become a dark, reddish-brown from the smoke of the family fire. A quaintly ornamented door led from the small porch into a hall that separated the two rooms and rose to the dark interior under the high roof. An enormous whitewashed oven of complicated construction occupied a large part of one of the rooms. On the carved wooden shelves were groups of earthen pots, pitchers, wooden spoons, and a big stone mortar, which, one would think, might have belonged to a prehistoric age.

The barn that formed a right angle with the dwelling-house, built with equal care and solidity, was a sort of Noah's Ark, giving shelter to horses, cows, pigs, geese, and chickens, each kind in separate compartments. In the middle was a wide threshing-floor; in a corner, on wooden blocks, was a very primitive apparatus for grinding grain, called a zarna, consisting of two heavy disks of stone, with cut faces, of which the upper one could be put in rotary motion by means of a long pole attached at one end to the stone, while the other turned loosely in a hole in the ceiling. The very high roofs of both buildings projected several feet over the board walk that ran around the walls. Under the ash-trees shone the white awnings of a heavy vehicle, while plows, wooden harrows, pitchforks of beech wood, and other primitive agricultural utensils leaned against the walls. Wooden vessels of various shapes and uses stood in row on the board walk, all cleanly scrubbed by the thrifty wife. Bleaching on the closely cropped lawn were pieces of home-made linen and wide-sleeved shirts. Small pigs, geese, and chickens swarmed in the muddy yard.

Pastures dotted with a profusion of flowers, and fields of oats, potatoes, clover, and flax, surrounded the homestead and covered the slope between two deep ravines, hidden under spruce forests, where two little streams in many cascades rushed down under the tangled roots of spruce-trees, large leaves of podbial, and blue myosotis, over slanting strata of slippery slate, then among whitish granite boulders. Lower down they joined in one torrent that at the sluice formed a deep pool where on hot days little boys and girls, like fauns and nymphs, splashed in the crystal water, causing dismay among the darting trout. Then the stream jumped over a rattling mill-wheel hidden among trees, and down the inclines, through woods, glens, and grassy slopes, until it reached the river winding in the spreading valley below, where followed in procession pale-green fields, marshy meadows, groups of trees, and houses with roofs shining like silver. Here and there smaller streams, coruscating in the sunlight, hurried to meet the river, rushing over boulders, and followed by the whitish road that connects village with village. Toward the south a black-spruce forest, with only an occasional clearing, stretched away for miles, and covered the foot-hills of the always mysterious Tatra.

At a moment when from the near-by ravine came the tinkle of cow-bells mingling with the rustling of the stream, a song would arise, sometimes with a melancholy note and again with primeval rapture. Soon black-and-white-patched cattle would emerge from the ravines, followed by orange-kerchiefed shepherdesses. Two of the girls with their small cattle passed my window every evening. One of them was Ulana, daughter of our neighbors. She was a slender girl of about fifteen years; her erect figure was enveloped in a coarse linen shirt, a reddish embroidered sheepskin serdak, or sleeveless jacket, and an indigo-blue skirt. An orange-yellow handkerchief was bound tight around her face, with its high cheek bones, full rosy shiny cheeks, and blue eyes truly Slavonic, which, from under a scarcely perceptible trace of eyebrows and thick flesh covering the lids, margined with dark eye lashes, shone like stars. She would run around the cows, and shouting "Tse, tse,tse!" and would jump to the right and left after some skittish calves that were wont to run into the oats and clover fields. Another was a plump, flaxen haired lass. Like most Podhalans girls, both were timid: when passing a strange man they would cast down their eyes; but they could not help blushing and smiling. Love, jealousy and hatred have full sway in the hearts of these simple daughters of Eve, not void of strange whims and odd coquetry; but for frivolities little time is left to them. They have to busy themselves with all kinds of farm labor, and I even saw them mending roads. When they are still very young, about the sixteen year, most of them marry. In comparison with the well built, handsome men of Podhale, the women are small, and the charm of youthful freshness soon passes from them. The wide difference in stature between the man and the women is characteristic of the Slavonic race, and it is even more than usually marked among these mountaineers.

Ulana's brother Jedrek is yuhas, or herdsman, in the "Valley of Five Lakes" in the heart of the Tatra range. There, in the great solitude of the valley, empty of all life, he stays all summer with his flock of sheep. With them he travels all day over precipitous rocky ridges full of threatening crevices, river wide areas of snowfields, through narrow gorges, to find the scanty grass that grows wherever a little earth has filled the cavities and fissures of stone. Half the time drenched with clouds of rain, he is always ready to fight off a bear or a liptak, his Hungarian neighbor on the southern slopes. He rarely comes to his house on Sobickowa to bring cheese and bryndza, or fermented crumbled cheese. He is a rugged fellow, rather big for a mountaineer, muscular and alert, and scant of words. His rough, weather beaten countenance, with two deep, parallel scars across his nose and high cheek bones, shines with deep-set wolfish eyes, squinting from under his mushroom shaped hat, shiny from frequent contact with milk and butter, and commonly surmounted with an eagle's feather. Over his course, wide-sleeved linen shirt, which does not reach his waist, a big ten inches-wide belt of 3 ply cowhide, ornamented, and weighing over fifteen pounds, encircles his body like an armor, and shines with four large brass buckles and many brass and silver gee-gaws, which jingle at his swaggering gait. A shaggy sheepskin serdak, with long, yellowish wool, covers his back. On his tight woolen trousers, patched and darned at the knees, there had once been blue and red embroidery, now mostly rubbed off.

Jedrek was a typical yuhas, and a yuhas is the nearest type to the now dispersed zbójnik, or Tatra brigands. His great vital power, and his intense passions, insufficiently controlled by reason, often bring him into fights that frequently end fatally, for he always carries a sharp ciupaga, or tomahawk-like axe. In Poland which is a typical flat country, with only one chain of mountains rising abruptly at its edge, the difference between the mountaineer and the lowland type is most striking. The gorals, or mountaineers, as little resemble the Polish peasants of the plains as do the lofty mountain regions the wide, level fields of Sarmatia.

The ravine of Sobickowa, which is a favorite rendezvous for lovers, has an eventful history, and there fierce tragedies sometimes break the monotony of cow-bells and melancholy songs. Goral fantasy and superstition readily turn natural happenings into myth and poetry.
One late afternoon, while resting under a juniper bush at the edge of the ravine, in the twilight that follows the glow of a red sunset, I saw a goral youth (judging from appearance, a yuhas), followed by a girl of our neighborhood, running stealthily down the ravine, pushing aside the branches of elder bushes, and throwing frightened glances behind. They had scarcely gone over the edge of the ravine, following one of the many parallel cattle trails, when a young fellow jumped from behind a spruce, and facing the yuhas, demanded, "Where to?" They stood for a while motionless, staring hard at each other. There was no parley, no dispute; neither could speak for anger, but they understood each other. Finally, when the yuhas pulled the lass by the sleeve, and attempted to pass, the other flung himself on his enemy with the fury of a panther. Two ciupagas flashed, but soon were dropped, and they then clung tightly to each other. For a while they struggled for equilibrium, then fell down on the broken slate, and continued to fight, silently, as they rolled down the slope from bush to bush. Mud covered their garments and filled their hair, and blood began to trickle over their faces. Some juniper bushes now covered the combatants, and I could hear only heavy breathings and groans. Since they had dropped their weapons in the first moment of the fight, I had not looked for serious consequences; but now I thought it necessary to interfere. Before I reached them, they released their hold. The yuhas with curses disappeared among the spruce-trees, leaving the other panting on the stones with a broken rib. With my help the latter got up, and, slipping and stumbling, limped home. Next morning I saw him lying in front of his parents' house. He never mentioned the cause of his illness, and when old Tereska, who knows the marvelous power of weeds, was called to cure him, she announced, with all certainty, that "Vilkolak" had had him in their arms. He admitted that it was so and soon all Sobickowa knew that he had been attacked by those terrible, bloodthirsty demons of the woods and ravines.

Tereska not only cures people who are troubled with an ordinary illness, but she also knows better than anyone else in the village how to unravel mysteries. Very often a girl, unhappy in love, goes to her with gifts, asking for help in her distress. For the old woman knows where lubczyk, or the love weed, grows, and when and how it should be administered to the reluctant swain. Another of her accomplishments is the knowledge of remedies against uroki, the fatal effect that may follow from a glance of an "evil eye."

In the Gąsienicowa Valley, where I tarried for a few days in one of the few hovels scattered among its granite boulders, I was taken seriously ill. When I recovered from an unconscious spell I found myself lying on the grass in front of the chalet, with fir twigs for pillows, exposed to the warming sun. Some yuhases and shepherd-girls were stooping over me, seriously disputing the cause of my illness. Then all agreed that I was the victim of uroki that some girl had "cast upon me." Against such evil there is only one remedy, and this was immediately used. Maryna, one of the shepherdesses, brought from her hovel a kettle of water, and three glowing pieces of charcoal, which she dropped into the water. Then with the solemnity due to the occasion she walked slowly around me, repeating many times a few words like a prayer, continually making with her fingers some mysterious signs, and watching the charcoal sinking—a sign of recovery.

My landlord, Jan Naziom Stopka, was a small man, blind in one eye, solemn and meditative. When he spoke he used few words, expressing his thoughts in some general truth; he had an admiration of nature that verged on the religious. He was accustomed to make weather forecasts from the hues of the mountains, the formation of the clouds that group themselves about their peaks, from the flight of birds, and the quality of the air, and he often surprised me with the accuracy of his practical meteorology.

One sunny morning I saw him, with his wife and some girls from the neighborhood, in the greatest haste gathering some hay they had left near the summit of Gubałówka. The old woman and the girls gathered the hay in white linen sheets, stooping grotesquely under the enormous bundles that covered them until one could see only the edges of their indigo-dyed skirts and their bare weather beaten feet. When I looked at the bright sky I asked him why they hurry so. Astonished at my ignorance, Stopka said: "Why...don't you feel it? We shall have rain to-day; it will last long. Everything tells it: Giewont looks so clear and near; the swallows fly so low; and there from behind Muzan come the clouds. And the clouds from behind Muzan came, soon filling the valley, covering Tatra and Zakopane, and obscuring the sky. Then they enveloped our slope with their opaque mass, in which the ravine, the woods, and the houses vanished, and beyond the nearest ash-trees nothing was seen. Rain began to fall, and continued many days and nights. Once for a time the sky cleared, and patches of cliffs and hills were seen. Streams of water splashed from the roofs on the softened ground, and many rivulets rushed down the slopes, and joined in one torrent that washed over the stony road. The girls passed with their cattle wrapped in white linen sheets. Their serdaks were worn with the shaggy side out. At night from the road below came sounds of the wild singing of the goral drivers. Rain, tempest, and hurricane seem to go best with the untamed natures of the young "falcons" as the village lasses caressingly call their boisterous lovers.

Tuesday is the weekly market-day in Zakopane. People from all the surrounding villages come with farm and dairy products to the wide, open square, which has forests and the Tatra chain for a background. From early morning a motley crowd of mountaineers, with wagons covered with white awnings, and with their small cattle and horses, fill the large market space. Men and women bend under huge bundles, and the merchant Jews display in tents orange head-kerchiefs, calicoes, ribbons, and cowhides for straps and belts. There are stretchers on which are shown scythes and sickles and a row of wagons with rock salt. Men from distant villages may be distinguished by their different costume.

Koscielisko is one of those villages from which many emigrate to America, and in almost every house on Sobickowa there was somebody who either had been to America or intended to go. But there are many villages where the new land is scarcely ever mentioned. The mania of emigration is like a contagious disease, and once it gets hold of a place, it stays there. When my neighbors on Sobickowa learned that I had come from America, they plied me with eager questions concerning the land across the water. Most of those who had been in America had worked in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. End.

Researched/typed/edited by Bill Rushin 2010.

Władysław Teodor "W.T." Benda (January 15, 1873, Poznań, Poland (Posen, German Empire) - November 30, 1948, Newark, New Jersey, United States) was a Polish-American painter, illustrator, and designer. The son of musician Jan Szymon Benda, and a nephew of the actress Helena Modrzejewska (known in the United States as Helena Modjeska), W.T. Benda studied art at the Krakow College of Technology and Art in his native Poland and at the School of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria. He came to the United States at the very end of the 19th century, to visit his Aunt Helena, who then lived in California. He stayed, and moved to New York City in 1902, where he attended the Art Students League of New York and the William Merritt Chase School. While there, Benda studied under Robert Henri and Edward Penfield. He joined the Society of Illustrators in 1907, the Architectural League in 1916, and became a naturalized American in 1911. He was also a member of the National Society of Mural Painters. He remained in NYC for the rest of his life. Benda married Romola Campfield, and they had two daughters, Eleanora and Baria, who were both artists. more info at-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82adys%C5%82aw_T._Benda
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Jakrysi
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Post Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 11:41 pm      Post subject:
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Bill, thanks for posting this old article from 1908 ! A month ago I happened upon & bought an inexpensive, small reproduction of one of Benda's famous illustrations/ a WWI recruiting poster from 1917. It has a dramatic rendering of a winged hussar on horseback and the title "Sladami Ojcow Naszych w Szeregach Armii Polskiej za Ojczyzne i Wolnosc" (?) Following the paths of our fathers in the ranks of the Polish Army for Motherland and Freedom.

Jim
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Bill Rushin
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Post Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 1:59 am      Post subject:
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Jakrysi wrote:
Bill, thanks for posting this old article from 1908 ! A month ago I happened upon & bought an inexpensive, small reproduction of one of Benda's famous illustrations/ a WWI recruiting poster from 1917. It has a dramatic rendering of a winged hussar on horseback and the title "Sladami Ojcow Naszych w Szeregach Armii Polskiej za Ojczyzne i Wolnosc" (?) Following the paths of our fathers in the ranks of the Polish Army for Motherland and Freedom. Jim


Glad you enjoyed it Jim. After reading the article I searched for info on W.T. Benda and I was very surprised of how popular as an artist and illustrator he was. Sadly this editor stripped out all my photo's for the story. I will see if I can post them here later today.

I have seen a small pic of the poster that you have. I love the Hussar's myself and I will keep my eye out for one too. I'm posting one of his other WWI posters, the Polish Museum of Chicago is where many of Benda's posters are kept.



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Jakrysi
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Post Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:13 am      Post subject:
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Yes--like that poster also


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Bill Rushin
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Post Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:03 am      Post subject:
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Thank for sharing the Hussar poster Jim, I absolutely despise tattoo's but last year I was talking about them with my young Highlander cousins in Chicago. I saw a couple of Polish eagles looking the wrong way-that's a mistake to carry forever! But I saw this work and I was impressed, look at the detail on the feathers and the horse. That is a very nice job in my opinion. Wish Benda was still around to make a poster like that.


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Hussar



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Post Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 10:00 pm      Post subject:
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The Polish Museum at Milwaukee and Augusta took a photo of my Hussar on an Iron Horse tattoo, It wasn't easy finding a portable graphic to take to the artist while the internet was still a novelty.
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lsimpson



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Post Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 6:31 am      Post subject: Re: Goral Life In a Polish Mountain Village 1908
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Bill Rushin wrote:
Pastures dotted with a profusion of postoffice flowers, and fields of oats, potatoes, clover, and flax, surrounded the homestead and covered the slope between two deep ravines, hidden under spruce forests, where two little streams in many cascades rushed down under the tangled roots of spruce-trees, large leaves of podbial, and blue myosotis, over slanting strata of slippery slate, then among whitish granite boulders. Lower down they joined in one torrent that at the sluice formed a deep pool where on hot days little boys and girls, like fauns and nymphs, splashed in the crystal water, causing dismay among the darting trout. Then the stream jumped over a rattling mill-wheel hidden among trees, and down the inclines, through woods, glens, and grassy slopes, until it reached the river winding in the spreading valley below, where followed in procession pale-green fields, marshy meadows, groups of trees, and houses with roofs shining like silver. Here and there smaller streams, coruscating in the sunlight, hurried to meet the river, rushing over boulders, and followed by the whitish road that connects village with village. Toward the south a black-spruce forest, with only an occasional clearing, stretched away for miles, and covered the foot-hills of the always mysterious Tatra.


I love this passage. The first sentence sounds so poetic, so perfectly balanced in words and in pronunciation - very lyrical. Musical almost. "Pastures dotted with a profusion of postoffice flowers, and fields of oats, potatoes, clover, and flax, surrounded the homestead and covered the slope between two deep ravines, hidden under spruce forests, where two little streams in many cascades rushed down under the tangled roots of spruce-trees, large leaves of podbial, and blue myosotis, over slanting strata of slippery slate, then among whitish granite boulders."

Wladyslaw T. Benda is a very gifted writer who has an ability only a few people like Tolkien or Austen have - they can describe the environment in a way that you can immediately see it in front of your eyes. Vivid, emotionally available and inspiring. I really appreciate such a skill - such a style of writing, where you can feel instantly connected to the environment of a story and the emotional attachment of the author.


Last edited by lsimpson on Tue Mar 20, 2012 2:31 am; edited 1 time in total
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Bill Rushin
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Post Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 2:39 pm      Post subject: Re: Goral Life In a Polish Mountain Village 1908
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lsimpson wrote:
Bill Rushin wrote:
Pastures dotted with a profusion of postoffice flowers, and fields of oats.


I love this passage. The first sentence sounds so poetic, so perfectly balanced in words and in pronunciation - very lyrical. Musical almost. "Pastures dotted with a profusion of postoffice flowers, and fields of oats, potatoes, clover, and flax, surrounded the homestead and covered the slope between two deep ravines, hidden under spruce forests, where two little streams in many cascades rushed down under the tangled roots of spruce-trees, large leaves of podbial, and blue myosotis, over slanting strata of slippery slate, then among whitish granite boulders."

Wladyslaw T. Benda is a very gifted writer who has an ability only a few people like Tolkien or Austen have - they can describe the environment in a way that you can immediately see it in front of your eyes. Vivid, emotionally available and inspiring. I really appreciate such a skill - such a style of writing, where you can feel instantly connected to the environment of a story and the emotional attachment of the author.


I agree with the wonderful writings of Benda, however I'm glad you spotted the "postoffice flowers" mistake. Yes, it should be "Pastures dotted with a profusion of flowers,". I now remember I used my microphone and "speech recognition" to type up this article from the pictures of text in the book. Sometimes it types a few words incorrectly as you just discovered. My spellchecker missed it to. Dzienki Bill
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