Fairy Tales in Kuyavia
According to folklore researchers, it is difficult to indicate the regional specificity of Kuyavian fairy tales on the basis of the analysis of available ethnographic sources. The earliest records of them were made by nineteenth-century folklorists. Kazimierz Władysław Wójcicki, in the vicinity of Brześć Kujawski, recorded a folktale, or tale, in the 1830s about a girl turned to a stone for raking hay on a festival. In 1867, the first extensive record of fairy tales in Kuyavia was included by Oskar Kolberg in the 3rd volume of his work Folk People. Their customs, way of life, speech, legends, proverbs, rituals, magical rites, games, songs, music and dances, devoted to this region. He included 45 texts, recorded, in Strzelno, Ruszków, Bogusławice, Brześć, Kłodawa, Kowal and Włocławek, among others. Kolberg divided them thematically into: 1. tales of miracles, eccentricities and monstrosities; 2. moral novels, legends; 3. Chance fold tales; 4. tales about priests (i.e. clergymen); 5. tales about devils; 6. tales about Jews; 7. tales of miracles, i.e. invented tales; 8. tales about robbers; 9. tales about birds. Most texts were variants of magical and anecdotal plots. In 1902 the poet Jan Kasprowicz, a native of Szymbórz near Inowrocław, in his book Bajki, klechdy, baśnie [Fairy Tales, Fables, Tales] included popular themes of folk tales heard in childhood from shepherds in literary works. An important item on the topic of folk tales in Kuyavia was also published by Jerzy Wojciech Szulczewski in the 2nd volume of Przyczynki do ludoznawstwa prowincji poznańskiej of 1906 [Contributions to Folk Studies of Poznań Province]. It contained 50 stories and fairy tales from Kuyavia translated into German. In the interwar years, Karol Masłowski, in Zarys etnografii Kujaw [Outline of Ethnography of Kuyavia], published several local legends related to the churches in Kruszyn and Kowal and to the miraculous image of St. Procopius in Kłóbka. After World War II, a large collection of previously unrecorded tales was brought by folklore competitions. In the 1950s and 1960s they were organised by the Toruń Branch of the Polish Folklore Society, the Ethnographic Museum in Toruń and the Polish Radio in Bydgoszcz.
Kuyavia is home to many motifs that are common elsewhere in Poland and even in the world, as the first collectors of folklore already pointed out. Oskar Kolberg, for example, recorded fairy tales in this region based on the motif of Gifts of the North Wind, which tells of a supernatural being bestowing magical objects on a human being. This motif was popular in the folklore of many nations, including Germany. There are also well-known adaptations of the fairy tale Aladdin’s Lamp, from the One Thousand and One Nights, and the fairy tale of Mr Twardowski. There is also a motif from the well-known European folklore fairy tale Paluszek, about the adventures of an unnaturally small boy called ‘Bździonek’ by the Kuyavians.
Magic fairy tales were the most popular in Kuyavia, characterised by the predominance of fantastic, magical and miraculous themes over real ones. Their protagonists are often two or three brothers: a poor one and a rich one, a good one and a bad one, two wise ones and one stupid one. The “worse” one usually turns out to be the most courageous, smart and clever, often resulting in a marriage to a princess. The theme of metamorphoses is also popular: thanks to magic, people transform into a fish, a wild duck, a bird, a lion, a whale, a dragon. Witches take the form of a cat, a blade of straw, a horse, a toad. Many fairy tales feature a devil who is outwitted by a clever peasant (e.g. a blacksmith) or a brave woman. Robbers are also heroes of Kuyavian oral tradition. Stories about them often refer to supposedly authentic events. Specific people are mentioned in them: Madaj – a giant with an ugly face, whose fate is typical of the Madejowe łoże (Madej›s bed) plot, Głyda – a master at opening castles, the vengeful Spochacz. The robbers are punished by people showing cleverness or courage or, paradoxically, by the ‘village fool’. An exotic character is, for example, the lion, which appears in various roles, such as king of the animals, an enchanted prince or a predator that the hero manages to outwit thanks to the use of magical objects. The storytellers’ introduction of such unusual characters as a lion, a crocodile or a whale was probably intended to make the story more attractive and increase the interest of the audience.
Aethiological fairy tales, i.e. those explaining the origins of various earthly things and phenomena and their relationship to holy figures, were also known in Kuyavia. There were tales about a bird that twisted its beak trying to get nails out of Christ’s hands and feet on the cross, and about a poplar that refused to protect the Holy Family during the flight to Egypt, hence its leaves trembled with fear. One fairy tale explains that the carnation has a long and hard stem because it leaned out to help Christ on the way to Golgotha and is therefore called the staff of the Lord Jesus.
In animal fables, which were less popular among the Kuyavians, the heroes were animals to whom certain character traits were ascribed, e.g. cleverness to the fox, strength to the bear, cunning to the wolf and cowardice to the hare. These texts had a mainly didactic function. Several themes of this kind were recorded in Kuyavia, e.g. Catching Fish with Tail, The Dog Makes Shoes for the Wolf and The Wren is the King of Birds. The eternal antagonism between dog and cat was also explained.
