This paper was entered into the Lionsdale A&S Championship. It was written as a letter by my persona to a woman in Italy who would be a chaperon of her son when he went to the University there. Of note are some of the...inconsistencies in Jadwiga's story. Namely that during this time the Gingerbread Guild is in full swing in Tourn, and there is no way she would be caught dead making the treat and defiling the law of the Guilds at this time...
I am happy to report that I won this championship!
Springtime
in Poland
by
HL Pani Jadwiga Radomyskowa
Image
from the Behem Codex
This
entry is written as a letter, in character, by Jadwiga to a new
acquaintance. The style is inspired by “Magdalena and Balthasar”
a collection of letters from a 16c Nuremberg couple.
Lions
Dale A&S Championship Competition 2015
Greetings my
dearest friend! I am Pani Jadwiga Radomyskowa of Radom. I write this
missive to you in hopes that our culture and customs may become more
familiar. I know the lands of Poland are far from you and our ways
may not be your own. I can only hope that by the end of this letter
you will have a greater knowledge, and appreciation for this time and
place. It is currently the year of our Lord 1569, and my home is a
small village outside of Radom. We are just south east of the center
of Poland, though if the rumors are true, soon we will be in the
western part of the great Commonwealth! My husband and I are of the
Szlachta, which is to say the noble class. We run this small village,
and have many people who owe their alliance to the King through us.
It is early April
as I write this, and spring is nearly here. Though the winter was
long, it was mild, as it has been most of my life. So as always,
spring arrives early, and there is far too much to do and not nearly
enough time to do it! As the weather warms we begin to use the last
of the winter stores, I for one am glad of this, as stews and rather
old root vegetables get redundant. I'm quite looking forwards to
fresh greens, and my gardener tells me that we should have a find
fruit crop of cherries, apples and prunes this year. Our butchers
will soon begin the harvesting of animals not fit to breed or work,
and of course, for Easter, we will have a young lamb for the feast.
My mouth waters just writing about it. Oh, but I get ahead of myself,
I shall tell you more of Easter in a bit.
My second eldest
son, Kaspur will be going off to University quite soon. He is old
enough now and quite smart. Though I wished he would go to Kraków
his heart is set on going to Italy. He tells me that many great
scientists and philosophers study there, and he would be wasted on
something more local. My heart aches at the thought of my son being
so far away, but Mikołaj believes that such an illustrious education
can only add to his marriage prospects. It is of course his coin and
decision in the end. To that end, I will spend much of this spring
getting him ready for his travels. I will be outfitting him in fine
clothing of the western style, and it will be my job to help secure
his transportation. My husband is in the Kings army and is gone quite
a bit, so it is on me to run so much of these day to day things.
Speaking of. With
the ground drying, our men will go to battle again soon. The Tartars
ever menace the western borders of Lithuania, and I am told that it
is more important than ever that we show our strength and support to
them. My husband says that this is because we may very well join with
them and become that Commonwealth I spoke of. My what exciting times.
There is also the issue of Rus. They like to sign treaties, but not
renew them, so they are ever a threat. To that end, I am busy as
ever! I must get Mikołaj's outfits sewn, source the brocade with
them, and make sure that new breeding stock for our horses is found
and arrived. Now of course, I don't do most of this, rather I find
people who's job it is to do this, and make sure it gets done. And
make sure all are paid fairly.
I am told in other
lands wives do not have as much of a hands-on approach to the
day-to-day life of their husbands home or village, but I cannot
fathom that sort of lifestyle! One must be exceedingly wealthy to
afford no interaction with the mundane! While we have gardeners, and
horse breeders, and merchants, I still must work with them, and check
the books. Moreover, when Mikołaj is gone, I am the head of
household. Truth be told, I like it this way.
It is not just our
household that is getting ready for spring, the whole village is! As
this is our village (okay, so really it is his, but please indulge
me!), we have much to prepare for the turning of the seasons! We will
be bringing on much new labor, for these last few years our
surrounding area has exported more and more lumber, salt and other
goods. This means we need men to harvest, pack and travel. While I do
not write contracts, I am one of the people who can oversee them,
though not sign them.
We are also
preparing for spring planting. New animals are trained for the yoke,
the ground is turned, and seeds are planted. As you can imagine a lot
of repairs are being done! We must have good solid building for which
to store both livestock and crops. With all the trade that has been
going on, we are looking to add a dyer to the village. Mikołaj has a
great number of sheep to his name, and we have reached a point where
it is far better to begin to dye the wool here than to ship it off.
I'm quite excited to see more of this process, though I hear it
smells terrible (can't be worse than the tannery!) and those poor
souls who work it have hands that are permanently black and blue!
All this work leads
us to Easter. I admit it has been hard writing about all these
mundane affairs when all I really want to do is tell you all about
one of my favorite Holy Days! Though technically only a few days
long, this celebration lasts most of the month! Or at least the good
cheer and festivities! We begin before Easter Sunday by gathering
eggs and dying them. Oh, we do so love the bright colors! Some of the
more artistically inclined will even trace designs upon the eggs in
wax before dying them to create even more marvelous patterns. How I
do miss that! Sadly, that task belongs to unmarried women and of
course merchants who will sell them to busy souls like myself.
On the morning of
Easter we are roused from bed by the village boys making a ruckus
with noise makers and drums. I am told this is to represent the sound
of the earth shaking when our Lord broke free from our tomb, but I am
certain that it is in truth an excuse for those ruffians to go around
the village tormenting the rest of us who would rather be sleeping.
We get dressed and I will gather a basket of our finest food that
I've spent preparing for this event. I will have sausage, bread,
mushrooms, the colored eggs and whatever greens have grown by then.
My dear husband will go and gather pussy willows, or any other sort
of flowering greenery he can find. This is to represent the palm
fronds spoken of in the Good Book. We are far away from the Holy Land
and no palm grows here, so being good Poles, we make due with what we
have.
After service, our
Bishop will bless the baskets, insuring prosperity for the coming
season. Then we will head back to the village for a great feast.
After all is said and done, the eggs will be placed around the
village for good luck and to insure growth and protection from
disease, and we will take our leftovers to the graveyard to “feed
the dead” and remind those who have gone before us that they are
not forgotten. Oh, the priest don't like it, but it's tradition.
Once the
festivities are done, it is back to mundane life for me. I shall
spend my days mending my families clothing, embroidering my husbands
war uniforms and banner, as well as making many of the day-to-day
important decisions that let us keep our village running smoothly. I
will also be making gingerbread, lots and lots of gingerbread, it is
my favorite, and hopefully, should you ever travel this far east, I
shall have to make some for you!
I can only hope
that your preparations for springtime are as at least as interesting
as mine, for I feel any less would be far to dull! Wishing you good
health and prosperity,
-Jadwiga
Sources
Referenced
Jadaszewski, Eryk Stefan. Polish Re-enactors Handbook: A Guide to 17th Century Living History in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Lexington, KY: S.n., 2008. Print.
Lemnis, Maria, and Henryk Vitry. Old Polish Traditions. Interpress Publishers, 2000. Web. 19 June 2014.
Paumgartner, Magdalena Balthasar, Balthasar Paumgartner, and Steven E. Ozment. Magdalena and Balthasar: An Intimate Portrait of Life in Sixteenth-century Europe Revealed in the Letters of a Nuremberg Husband and Wife. New Haven: Yale UP, 1989. Print.
Radzilowski, John. A Traveller's
History of Poland, second edition. Interlink
Books, 2013. Print
Zamoyski, Adam. The Polish Way: A Thousand-year History of the Poles and Their Culture. New York: Hippocrene, 1994. Print.
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