The Games That Made Us Polish
Delve with us into a treasure trove of Polish children's games – and an exploration of how the past's tough communist reality may have shaped today’s generations.
Gram Nie Sam (I Don't Play Alone), a recent event in the streets of Warsaw addressed to the dwellers of the capital, was aimed at reminding participants of a variety of forgotten field games, as well as the once-common habit of going out onto the playground. (At times in the city's history, this was no playground at all, but a square of concrete, or, more simply 'the outdoors').
Its organisers attempted to bring together generations, inviting the young to discover an unknown world of playing out in the streets – and the old to dig into their memories and share their own strategies for fighting boredom. On a website created as part of the initiative, the organisers have collected a whole range of games. Some of them prove to be universal, while others don’t find easy analogies.
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Children playing in a kindergarten playground, photo: Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (NAC)
Serso – in Polish, a phonetic equivalent of the French cerceau – actually derives from ancient Rome, but its popularity blossomed at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries… Typically played in pairs, two people stand in front of each other and swiftly toss and catch a circular ring onto a stick.
This video demonstration proves Poles’ recurring fascination with the game:
A bottle seal race is a playground classic. It was enough to collect a few metal bottle caps and use either some chalk or a stick to draw the start and finish lines. The players would invent all kinds of obstacles – made of leaves, stones, or whatever was readily available – and often made the route of this race highly complex. The seals all began together, and players moved them with a snap of their fingers. One such snap was allowed per round.
Not exactly a game and more of a beautiful act, the activity required obtaining a special and relatively smooth piece of glass as well as some special objects that it would hide. Usually it was girls who dug a little hole in the ground, placed in it their exceptional little something – usually either one flower or a tiny bouquet – and then covered it over with the glass. The special little 'secret', or 'altar' thus created was often then covered over with dirt again, and its location was guarded as a mystery…
The name of this game is virtually untranslatable (its nearly nonsensical meaning is 'little beer against'). If you ever walk into a drawing of what looks like a giant, sliced pizza, you can be sure that you've intruded on the terrain of a field war. In this game, each player chooses their part of the field and names it. It becomes that player's country to defend.
One player is chosen out of the participants to run around the circular area with a pebble, calling: 'Piwko przeciwko, piwko przeciwko, wywołuję wojnę, wywołuję wojnę przeciwko…' ('Little beer against, little beer against, I declare war against…'). Here, the player announces the name of the country against which war is declared, throwing the pebble onto the area of this country. All the players run off, and the one against whom the war was declared has to pick the small stone up as quickly as possible, and shout 'stop!' At this sign, all the players stop and freeze.
Now, the player who has managed to catch the stone has to approach a different player with three steps and hit them with the pebble. If they get them, they are allowed to cut off a piece of their territory on the circular area. If they lose, their territory is taken away. Ultimately, the player with the biggest 'country' wins the game.
'Guma', or the Polish Chinese jump-rope
A break between classes was usually enough for one 'ten', or a series of jumps on the elastic rope. 'Guma' (meaning 'elastic'), a Polish equivalent of Chinese jump-rope, enjoyed record popularity. Rules of the jumps varied, but while standard top levels are usually described as ending at the waist, many brave girls wound that notch up higher and higher – tackling the twists and jumps at armpit level and even adapting it for a hand-clapping version.
The 'trzepak' institution
Trzepak ['TJEH-pak]' is a metal construction in the shape of a rectangle, typically raised among apartment blocks of concrete for very practical reasons. It is, in fact, a version of a clothes horse. Back in the day, almost everyone had carpets, and the simple construction of metal bars was employed for 'trzepanie' – slapping the dust out of these with a special beater (wicker ones were especially valued). Yet, somehow, it was always the favorite place for kids to hang out – even if a more or less proper playground was also available somewhere near. Mostly a girls’ place, the metal bars of the trzepak provided infinite acrobatic possibilities and served as the base in all varities of the game of tag.
When it comes to toys, it is probably not so much the direct influence of ideology that shaped the kids of communist Poland… Even if many remember spontaneously crying upon the news of Stalin’s death, or, being entertained with a rattle bearing his portrait. In his documentary film Toys, Andrzej Wolski attempted to portray the way that economic and ideological constraints were actually what gave rise to a world of great imagination and creativity.
Deprived of access to the same toys as children in the West, the communist centralised economic system left its toll on the minds of the youngest generations. Unwilling to accept the toy shortages, as the writer Dorota Masłowska remarks in the film:
Text
[...] these children picked up the scraps and rubbish of the adults world... glass, paper, rocks, stray cats. And they created another world out of all this...
The only way for children to enjoy their playtime, Wolski shows how homemade toys were also a stepping stone in the creation of liberal-thinking young minds.
Originally written in Polish by Anna Legierska; translated and edited by PS, 28 Nov 2013
Sources: Adam Mickiewicz Institute, press release, 'gramniesam'.
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