Ethnographers in the 19th century mostly shared the view that Polish peasants adhered to strict and rigorous moral principles. This view is confirmed, for instance, by Jan Słomka, a Galician peasant who wrote in his diary (published in 1912) that in the bygone days, people ‘would condemn debauchery to a high degree’. We remember from Władysław Reymont’s novel The Peasants (Chłopi) how the rural community treated the seductress, Jagna.
On the other hand, these same ethnographers collected hundreds of erotic songs, often obscene and vulgar from today’s perspective. In her book Miłość ludowa (Folk Love), Dobrosława Wężowicz-Ziółkowska analysed 1,700 short folk songs and subsequently concluded that ‘there is basically no area in peasant life that couldn’t serve as a source of sexual associations and references’. The symbols of amorous ecstasy in folk texts include such activities as ploughing and sowing, moving a meadow, watering horses or cattle and foraging in the woods. The most frequently mentioned rendezvous places are forests (especially viburnum woods) and other thickets, meadows, gardens, as well as sheds and barns. In folk songs, matters that would seem to have been completely taboo are expressed openly, such as women’s sexual needs, premarital sexual relations, and terminations of pregnancies. In her book Zobaczyć łosia. Historia polskiej edukacji seksualnej od pierwszej lekcji do internetu (To See a Moose: The History of Polish Sex Education from Lesson One to the Internet), Agnieszka Kościańska accurately notes that these songs additionally contained important educational elements. For instance, they warned against starting one’s sexual activity too early or against overly large age differences between partners.
However, the father of Polish ethnography, Oskar Kolberg, explained this phenomenon as follows:
A peasant doesn’t aspire to licence and very rarely enters casual, fleeting relationships without striving to sanctify them at the altar. Mistaken would be those who wished to accuse him of lewdness based on the multitude of bawdy songs he hums; these are naive shenanigans of good humour, meant for the tavern and with no wicked consequences […]
The ethnographic material does indeed provide examples that confirm the rigidity of the rural convention. There was a wide array of offensive epithets reserved for unwed mothers: zawitki, przeskoczki, latawice [equivalents of ‘hussies’, ‘floozies’, ‘minxes’]. Unwed motherhood would influence the entire rest of their lives; as Słomka writes, ‘they were tainted for life’. The distress of unplanned childbearing was expressed, for instance, through the following song:
Lullay, lullay, my tiny babe,
I found you in a viburnum wood.
As I searched for you, I sang a tune,
once I found you, I shed a tear.